Vulgata XIX Editorial Chris Selmys Image from Tarkovsky's film "The Mirror"

Last week I ended up unexpectedly in charge of a retreat for youth who intend to go to World Youth Day. I had just finished giving a talk about the distinctions between “schooling” and “education," ripping, somewhat viciously, into most of what passes for education in the world today. Much of my material was pillaged from John Taylor Gatto's brilliant book The Underground History of American Education, and spiced up with the rage I still feel as a result of having given so much of my time to the schooling system. Ostensibly, this time was given in exchange for an education, but almost all the knowledge and skill that I now possess can easily be traced to other sources. If you are a student, have children, or intend to have children, do please read Mr. Gatto's book immediately. It is available for free here. The nuns who had invited me were very impressed with the talk, and after everyone had dispersed, they revealed that the material which they had planned for the retreat the next day was guilty of the same faults which I had criticized in the modern schooling system. So we had to stay up all night and make it again from scratch. I want to talk about one particular thing we tried which was very successful. I wanted to show people that they had an imagination, and how powerful and versatile a tool and it is. We tried one exercise where all lay down on the ground comfortably in the dark. I talked them through some extremely simple images to begin with -- how to visualize a bouncing ball, or a simple tree, for example. Most could easily produce these objects on the inner-screen, and many were startled at how vivid the images were and how responsive they could be. Some had to struggle to achieve basic results, but several people were able to imagine complicated choreographed scenes that they had previously had no idea they could. We tried changing the input to a piece of music (a tool my wife and I frequently use to get inspirations for difficult scenes in our fiction work) and asked the participants to draw the scenes they saw. Astonishingly there was quite a lot of correlation between the results. Several times almost identical pictures were produced by two or more people and many shared very sprecific themes or images. Sometimes it looked almost as though two of them had watched the same thing as directed by different film makers. Generally, the most vivid and intense images were those that were shared in common. This seems to suggest that there is some sense in which the inspiration for an artwork can be transposed into different media -- and that the inspiration is, in some sense, an objective object which the work portrays. An interesting object of inquiry -- particularly in an age when art is generally seen as wholly subjective, and its meanings as entirely constructed.

And now the news reel: the next issue of Vulgata should not take nearly as long to come out as my wife will be writing full time beginning one week from now. You should see lots improvements to the website in general, starting with a wonderful new subject index to replace the sad state of affairs that exists now. Dave is moving to the United States for a couple of years to acquire another, fancier set of academic credentials. Melinda has dispatched her book on homosexuality to OSV press and it will be in stores in May. Two of her short stories have been adapted as Podcasts and you can hear them by going to www.pseudopod.org.

In this issue you will get to read the first part of Dave's very long awaited epic Hannibal, poets from Slovenia (Miha), and Florida (Laura), Egypt Matta's psychadelic childrens story “Alvin” and the first instalment of our life's work: The New Poetics, which you can learn more about at the Aereopagus University. There is also more Cardinal Spidlik and a not-nearly-well-enough-known short story by Gustave Flaubert. There is a much better translation of it out by Roger Whitehouse, which I encourage you to buy, but here I offer one that is in the public domain. Enjoy.