Don’t be swept off your feet by the vividness of the impression. Rather say: “Impression, wait for me a little. Let me see what you are and what you represent. Let me try you.”
—Epictetus

It is not difficult to see the reflections in the mirrors, but can you take hold of the moon in the water? … One moon shines in the water everywhere; all the reflected moons are just one moon… People who are ignorant… mistake the pointing finger for the moon.
—Master Yung-chia

The mind is its own place, and in it self
Can make a heav’n of hell and a Hell of Heav’n.
—John Milton

⁽⁰⁾

What is body language?
What we say is vital for communication to happen. What we do while we are saying it can have a dramatic effect on the message that the other person receives. Words and sentence construction form the content. How we say them and what we do while we say them is the context. This is body language. Only about ten per cent of our communication is carried by the words we choose to say. The body says the rest.

Body language is only part of the context. A language without spoken words, body language can be called non verbal communication. We use body language all the time, unconsciously. For instance, looking someone in the eyes means something different from not looking someone in the eyes. The most powerful of these is eye contact. Try and get a waiter’s attention without making eye contact and you'll see how strong the impact of not making eye contact can be. In contact with others, it is just not possible not to be communicating something. There is no credible way of learning new body language gestures. You can begin to choose to turn parts of your body language style up or down for the effect it will have. Yet the body language we use decides the quality of our communication. We can learn to use our body language. We can also learn to understand and interpret body language of others. How we interpret body language depends on the situation, the culture, the relationship we have with the person as well as the gender of the other. It should be noted that body language has different meanings in different cultures. This means that there is not one signal that has the same meaning all over the world. If you do not take this into account you may get yourself in some serious trouble! Therefore it would be good to become conscious of our own and others' body language

Non-verbal communication
Listed below are seven functions of non-verbal communication:
1. Repeating what has already been expressed verbally.(saying yes and nodding at the same time, giving directions and pointing)
2. Replacing the verbal communication
(nodding yes, shaking no, questioning facial expression, gestures)
3. Opposing the verbal communication
(confirming something but shaking your head hesitantly or shrugging your shoulders)
4. Affectionate (instinctive) support of the spoken word
(concerned frown or encouraging pat on the back)
5. Information about the mutual relation
(smiling, eye contact, touching, distance, posture)
6. Emphasizing the verbal communication
(a wagging finger when you express an accusation, or reproaching someone with a loud voice and hitting the table angrily)
7. Structuring and regulating the verbal communication
(the dots and commas of the spoken sentences: hemming, looking at someone and looking away, pauses, and supporting hand gestures)

Words, body, communication
When we connect with a person, we have to make it clear to each other how the content of a spoken message needs to be interpreted. How we do this says something about the relationship we have with the other person. Often words are inadequate for our purpose. For instance we do not tell each other so easily how we feel about each other, or how the words of a message need to be interpreted. To clarify the meaning of our words we have to use body language
Body Language as Style

Body language is but a kind of style to be cultivated, nurtured, perfected of which make the most to assist in verbal communication. Choose your body parts to make the body talk for you, to show the style of the language you have in mind and the effect it should make. Body language may be part of your natural setting, but you can change it, or shape it the way you want it to function for you. Body language is not fixed, though it may appear to be, yet it is versatile enough to change, according to your moods. It will help to play on or exaggerate your accent, or to make the gestures larger or smaller.

Body language – Code for feelings
Body language is interlinked with a whole pattern of behaviour of a person. Various body language signs can complement each other to make meanings crystal clear or strengthen the meaning of what we communicate.
Some groups such as prisoners, drivers, maid servants, construction workers, petty shop keepers have developed a whole specific body language which can be very explicit in its meaning for their group but difficult for others who do not belong. Such a code of body language is used to communicate where the use of words may otherwise be difficult or dangerous.

Body language is used especially to express feelings. For instance, if we do not like someone, it is often difficult to say that directly to the person. However we can make it clear, either intentionally or unintentionally, through body language. The opposite is also true. We may say that we are angry through words yet our body language may be saying loud and clear that we are not. This can be very confusing for the receiver - giving out double messages - one in words and an opposite one through body language.

It is also difficult to lie or cover up our feelings through body language. People may give their true feelings away by not being aware of their body language. Research has shown that people pay more attention to, and believe more readily, their impression of how a person acts through body language than what is said through words. As a result we tend to doubt the spoken words if they do not correspond with the language of the body. Posture and movements, our place in space, use of time and information when we speak are all part of body language.

How we come across to someone is decided only for a small part by the words we speak. Haven't we all said at times: 'I have a feeling he/she likes me', or something like: 'I doubt if what he/she is saying is really the truth'. This type of feeling is called intuition. Body language plays a major role in intuition since it gives messages about the other person that we can interpret at an intuitive level. It is necessary to get to know our own body language first. We should learn about it so that we can recognize it in others as well as in ourselves. From different aspects of body language we can always learn something as communication.

The Pragmatics of Human Communication (Watzlavick) advises that it is impossible not to communicate. Even when you say nothing at all, you still speak something through your body language. It makes a big difference if you look at the other person or not, or if you are close or far away. Even your absent-mindedness, your silence, or your forthcoming answer conveys a message to the other person. Other parts of body language that make up the context are:

Where you sit, stand, and who else is in the room. What is the time of day, week, and year? Did you have any previous communication/s with the person?
In body language you can do nothing about your gender, race, age, height, or about your dress, hair, weight. Maybe you can do something with your gestures, eye contact, and voice.

Communication happens because of both verbal and interpersonal skills. Everything communicates. If you are not clear about your intentions, people do read or misread you deliberately. Your movements are as much a part of your oral communication.

Padding is essential in body language and in ESL, especially for those who use English just occasionally. We do a different kind of padding, loading it with words of the vernaculars we know. Smoothen it up with gestures, body language.

Face
A blank face keeps people at a distance. One sees such faces in crowded places, when asked questions in the class, or in the streets and in shopping centres. (Givens) Brown and Levinson use the concept of the face to explain politeness, a universal, resulting from people’s needs.
A positive face shows the desire to be liked, appreciated, and approved. A negative face is one which is not to be imposed upon, intruded upon, or otherwise put upon.

Positive politeness addresses positive face concerns, often by showing pro-social concern for the other’s face. Negative politeness addresses negative face concerns, often by acknowledging the other’s face as threatened. When a person threatens another person’s face, the first person commits a face-threatening act.

Expressions
Facial expressions play a vital part of non verbal, body language communication. These serve as important and necessary cues to those who we communicate with. These communications act as public relations agents for their attitudes and reactions. In different types of messages and in different situations, we send out different cues through our facial expressions. They indicate our respect for others; reflect our interest in someone or something. They show our curiosity in multifarious subjects and indicate our enthusiasm for life. Often they transmit our positive attitude about people and things or convey our ambition as professionals. At times they express our compassion for co workers, family, and friends or reveal the kind of personality we possess. Much of the time they communicate our ability to respond emotionally.

Eyes
Eye contact is the most powerful in all kinds for body language communication Body language can help you by deciding to give or not give eye contact to certain people. Eye contacts display a lot of variety. Fast (1970) suggests polite inattention. We look at unknown people just long enough to make it obvious that we have seen him/her, and then we turn our eyes away. Our passing glance is just to let the other know that we are aware of his/her presence but do not recognize him/her, and do not want to intrude upon his /her privacy. Goffmann (1969) notes that the passing glance and the lowering of the eyes is the body language for “I trust you. I am not afraid of you.”

Contact through eyes - varieties
What Fast categorizes as bedroom eyes is charmingly labeled by Ortega as the look which is the most effective, the most suggestive, the most delicious and enchanting. He also considers it the most complicated look because it is furtively infusive in that a person makes no real attempt to conceal the fact that he/she is looking. The eyelids are almost three quarters closed and it appears as if they are hiding themselves, though in fact the lids are only compressing the look, so as to shoot it out like an arrow. It is a sleepy, calculating, appraising look. 'It is the look of eyes that are, as it were, asleep, but which beyond the cloud of sweet drowsiness are utterly awake.'

Flashbulb eyes are an involuntary and dramatic widening of the eyes, performed in situations of intense emotion, such as anger, surprise and fear. The eyelids are opened to the maximum, displaying the roundness and the curvature of the eyeballs. Flashbulb eyes are a signal of imminent verbal aggression or physical attack by an angry individual. (Givens)

Understanding Body Language
Van Fleet gives some tips to listen to a person by observing his / her body language. These can be adapted in the English class to suit all varieties of situations and interactions.

Eyes reveal what a person is really thinking, no matter what he/she says in words. We can know that the person is pleased and feels good about a remark you have made if his/her pupils dilate. On the other hand if his/her pupils contract it means that s/he dislikes what you have said, so s/he feels s/he has reason not to trust you or what you say.

Eyebrows and the lifting of one eyebrow indicate that s/he does not believe what you have said, or thinks it is impossible. If s/he lifts both eyebrows it means that s/he is surprised.

If the person rubs his/ her nose or tugs at his ear while saying s/he understands, it means that s/he is puzzled by what you are saying and probably does not know at all what you want him/her to do.

Wrinkling the forehead downwards in a frown indicates that s/he is puzzled or is not pleased with your remark. If s/he wrinkles her / his forehead upwards it reveals that s/he is surprised at what s/he has heard.

Shrugging the shoulders usually mean that s/he is completely indifferent or does not care about what you are saying or demanding.

When the person drums or taps his/ her fingers on the arm of the chair or the top of the desk, it means s/he is either nervous or impatient.

When s/he folds or crosses his/her arms across his/her chest, it usually means that s/he is isolating him/her self or creating a barrier from others or is actually afraid of you and is trying to defend himself / herself.

Therefore the power of your personality and that of your students can be projected powerfully through appropriate use of your body language, keeping the above in mind.

Do not smile unless you are genuinely happy. Your smile must emanate and come spontaneously from the heart. The best way to control negative feelings and emotions is to have a neutral facial expression.

Do not allow people to interrupt you. If you are interrupted while speaking even if by your superior, simply say, “I’m sorry, but I have not finished yet’ and then resume speaking at once from where you were cut off. Thus you will be able to have your full say on the given issue.

Implications
The use of his / her body by the English teacher can make the class active and interesting. As an example many of the activities suggested by Penny Ur can be made use of in the class using body language. The activities can be linked to what has been taught earlier, or what might come later; body language can come in both as reinforcement and as preparation. Activities such as Compare yourselves (9), English words in my language (20), Fact & fiction, Family tree (24), Find Someone who (27), How do you feel? (34), Martian (48), Miming (51), Rub out and replace (67), Selling freezers to Eskimos (73), Sentence Starters (74), Simon says (76), Spelling bee (79), Walking Warmers(88), and Wrangling (99) will involve as much use of body language by the teacher as much by the students. In the process both will profit from understanding and interpreting each other's body language, rejuvenating the English class with movement, breath, mime, and other actions. In most of the cases the blackboard, another useful teaching aid will also be used, teacher and student involved, body and soul, pen and paper, chalk and duster.

Conclusion
Be completely relaxed. This does not imply you to be sloppy in the way you dress or careless about your appearance. Self confidence is the key to real relaxation. Look people straight in the eye. To avoid a staring down battle it is best to look, at a spot on the person’s forehead, till s/he averts his/her gaze. The best is to pick a spot in the middle of the other person’s forehead just above the level of his/her eyebrows. If you keep your eyes fixed on that spot you cannot be stared down. Eventually the other person will be forced to lower his/her gaze, in an act of submission, thus giving you a feeling of confidence and control.

This language of the body will help you remain relaxed and enjoy your work. Do not restrain your body gestures. If you need to use your hands or arms to make a point, do so, but avoiding pointing an accusing finger at anyone.

References:
Fast, J. (1970): Body Language, M. Evans & Co. Philadelphia
Hedwig L. (2000): Body Language, Response Books, New Delhi
Givens, D.B. (1999): The non verbal dictionary of gestures, signs and body language cues. Center for non verbal studies, Spokane, WA. La Jolla, CA, USA
Ur, P. & A. Wright (1995): Five Minute Activities, Cambridge University Press

Internet resources
Bodycom Lichaamscommunicatie. The Netherlands.

About the Author:
Dr Vijay Kumar Sunwani is the Principal of the Regional Institute of Education (NCERT), Bhubaneswar, India. He teaches English Literature.

⁽⁰⁾

ANTLER: It's important to me in that it's always flowing. Coming here regularly is one of the only things that makes it possible for me to live in Milwaukee. I can experience solitude down here, especially during winter after midnight when it's snowing. It's great to come and have coffee. I can stay for hours.

In winter I like being able to cross over to the other side, experience walking on the ice and lying on the ice... and in summer, with all the birds - I come because I love birds. I've been writing poems that have to do with the river ever since I started living here. So it is something that entered my poetry early on, and became a part of my life. I have snapping turtle experiences, big snapping turtles. And I saw a snake right down there a couple of days ago. I don't see snakes as much anymore.

PORCUPINE: Is there a divide that surfaces in your poetry between the river, what it represents as a sanctuary for you, and the rest of Milwaukee as an industrial city?

ANTLER: Yeah - and I like that word sanctuary a lot, it seems like a key word. When I first moved here, the rest of Milwaukee ceased to exist. I never went downtown anymore. I didn't go into the stores because I didn't have any money. So I would just come down here and read. When I went up north to live, I disengaged from the reality of living in the city. There's something about having a river nearby, even a lake, that's very helpful to me. But every writer is different.

PORCUPINE: Watching the river, seeing that blue heron land, I somehow feel restored. It's like a refuge here. But I wonder what it says about one's ability to appreciate the realities of the city. Do you think you could be a poet in, say, downtown Manhattan?

ANTLER: Sure. I think you would see the human drama, and the skyscrapers standing in long streets like endless Jehovahs, as Ginsberg says... confirming the human tribe and its domain among millions of people. Both worlds exist. I like the river, but I don't reject the human tribe. I don't think it's a black and white thing, the natural world being just this river escape.

All we know for sure is
all places that exist
were once one place.
All we know for certain is
all the beings that exist
or will exist
or have existed
were originally all together
in an infinitesimal dot.
All we can know for sure is
if humans went from dugout canoes
to spaceships to the Moon
in 10,000 years,
in 10,000 years humans can go from
spaceships to the Moon
to Moons made into spaceships
traveling to other galaxies.

- from Know for Sure

PORCUPINE: When you go on your two-month wilderness sabbaticals, what is it you discover? What do you recover?

ANTLER: I get in touch with my earlier selves: my grade school self, my baby self, early and late boyhood, early youth, later youth, young manhood. All the various chapters become one. Then I can replay the tapes of my life without any interruption, and review what happened on the playground in fifth grade that one day. I recall all the teachers I once had, all the people I knew and loved, and what happened to them. After the tapes are played out and the memories reviewed, then silence and the sense of going beyond myself - especially when juxtaposed against huge vistas of old growth forest without human beings in sight, and the endless Milky Way scintillating above.

PORCUPINE: Why come back at all?

ANTLER: That's what I always ask myself. But in some way, one never returns. And what one becomes by the end of an extended stay remains there. Later on, growing older, you return to those places and reconnect with your more youthful apparition. You pal around with that youthful spirit and it re-enters you. So you do come back, but something else doesn't. In a way you have incarnated where you were, and that returns with you and is part of you. I can say that I am in Milwaukee and I am in my house and writing there, but it's as if I'm still where I was, still what I became.

PORCUPINE: So the depth of experience while you were away creates a reservoir for you to draw on with your poetry.

ANTLER: Yeah. Because in a way, you're risking your life - especially going off by yourself. Once you risk your life and there are bears around, there's a different aspect of commitment toward poetry. If you must die to do it, you will. And you risk everything: poverty, scorn, madness, disillusionment, alienation. It's all at risk to ultimately embrace what the spirit of poetry is.

PORCUPINE: You're describing the wilderness poet.

ANTLER: Maybe any poet at any time. But there's something magical about going off away from people, sensing your self, your desires and history, seeing yourself as a tiny little speck surrounded by trees that were around before Christ was sucking his mother's breast.

PORCUPINE: When you're walking through a forest and gazing up at treetops, can you simultaneously be noting ideas or lines for poems? Or do you have to take in your experiences purely, without thought?

ANTLER: Sometimes I get ideas and write them down in my notebook, or poems will come to me finalized in a single moment of delight.

Save as feeling if they don't know of me or the stars
what do I not know of
that's looking
through me
at something far grander
than itself...

- from Save as an Idea

But often there is no thought. I become an animal spirit wandering endless forests, gazing out at sublime non-human vistas. Somehow the wordless realm of no-thought takes over and my identity as a poet is lost, my memories of myself are lost, everything is lost, and as Emerson says about the eyeball...

PORCUPINE: I become a transparent eyeball; I am nothing; I see all...

ANTLER: Yeah, I become transparent in that way. Part of it is embracing myself, and being content with wordlessness.

PORCUPINE: So if a poet is jotting down lines while in the midst of the poetic experience, does that take away from the depth of their experience?

ANTLER: Some might say you're robbing yourself of the cosmic moment by trying to capture it, and maybe emotion recollected in tranquility, as Wordsworth said, is a better way to go, and not go out expecting or demanding anything. But I don't think one way is necessarily right and the other is wrong. Some people do best in crowded cafes, observing other people with an endless cup of coffee. And for others that's totally foreign, they have to be alone with no interruptions.

PORCUPINE: Where does your dreaming inner voice arise from - the voice that wonders about frozen bubbles and amoebas swimming on your eyes. Is it a childlike voice?

ANTLER: I hope it is. It seems one of the difficulties is that a lot of people have their child wonder-essence lobotomized. They grow up to be responsible adults but never reconnect with that wonder again. Maybe it's just openness toward a visionary experience that goes beyond knowing what's true and not true anymore, and just being in awe of aspects of the natural world that have never occurred to you before.

PORCUPINE: What books influenced you as a child?

ANTLER:The Wizard of Oz, Alice in Wonderland, Peter Pan. Those had a big effect on me. They beckoned a fantasy realm which was and still is a part of my feelings. Later, Leaves of Grass would be a major book in my life - there was this vision of love and death and nature that was truer than what I found in the Old and New Testaments, or other sacred texts of human-centered spiritual traditions. It seemed Whitman's vision was more complete, more passionate, more understanding and celebratory of human reality, the reality of the Eros energy and the human promise. I didn't have any friends, but you can read Leaves of Grass and Whitman can become your friend. He actually has lines which suggest it's something that can happen. So there's a kind of seance effect that takes place, and then the spirit of Walt Whitman walks by your side, protecting you, and you have fun taking Leaves of Grass along - that's your pal, you have fun with Leaves of Grass!

PORCUPINE:Maybe you're Walt Whitman reincarnated.

ANTLER: I don't think so - although on some level I may be. I think it's more complex than that. The spirit and the energy Whitman put forth was absorbed by thousands of poets and spiritual seekers who then had the awareness that he embraced inside himself. I don't think any one person can be an incarnation of Walt Whitman.

PORCUPINE: How did your friendship with Allen Ginsberg shape your view of poets and poetry?

ANTLER: One of the main things he represented for me was complete courage to trust who I was without fear, and to write poetry with complete candor and openness. He criticized society's injustice and intolerance, and did so with compassion, tenderness, hopefulness, and humor. He had something to replace it, or balance it with. Endless encouragement of younger poets was also a big part of his mission.

PORCUPINE: Do you have a sense of yourself maturing as a poet?

ANTLER: I hope so, and I believe in that. I think there's a poet you can be in love with, a thought you can move through as your sensitivities change during metamorphosis from childhood through adolescence, and through the various stages of adulthood. As one matures, one's work goes to different levels. Some people think poets are better in their younger phases than in their older phases - like, say, Whitman, Wordsworth, and Swinburne. I never felt that way.

PORCUPINE: Would you still be a poet if, after today, you could write no more words?

ANTLER: Yes. The definition of poetry on one level in our society is that you write things down on paper and get them into print, which proves to others in your tribe that you are a poet. But that's just step one. Your book then has to receive positive reviews, then another book must be coming, and you have to keep cranking out books until you're a corpse. That seems to certify you as a poet, but endless ages unfold, review what you've done, and make their own judgements. There are poets today who we think are the greatest on Earth, but who we might have nothing to do with three hundred years from now. And in ten thousand years everything is dust. So on a huge time-frame, all that we do ends up obliterated, the Earth ends up being swallowed by the sun and the sun cools.

But I find, especially in early adolescence, there is something very poetic that boys and girls don't even know they have. Some people write poetry when they are young, but go on to other things and stop writing. And yet, because they touched base with it once, it's always a part of their story. I don't think there's anything to be afraid of - the spirit and feeling of it is more important than its publication.

Before there were books and literary magazines, the spirit of poetry existed, and the pulse of the connection with the Big Mystery was felt and experienced, and the tender realization of mortality was present. The fact that Neanderthals buried their dead with flowers sixty thousand years before Christ is very affirming and reaffirming of human beauty and soulfulness.

PORCUPINE: It is there, early in our lives and in the small moments, that our vision begins.

What must it be like for fish
watching ice form
on the surface of their lake
Or looking up at fish
frozen in ice above them
and feeling the water
Thickening around them
till they too
can't move
But are still alive
looking up seeing
falling snow
Slowly cover the ice
till darkness
engulfs their realm...

- from Looking Up at the Milky Way Thought

ANTLER: It's a beautiful thing when a young person decides to give their heart to poetry and follow it as a spiritual path - to be infatuated with it the same way as your first love experience with another person, whether it works out or not.

PORCUPINE: ...when one creates a relationship with poetry, and trusts in where that voice will lead.

ANTLER: That's beautiful - to trust in it and have faith in it. To believe in a soul that began before your birth and continues after your death. And knowing it's just a start.

Doting on Summer Snowflake Shadows

Cut-out
paper snowflakes
taped to windows
in winter
left up
year-round
Cast shadows
of their shapes
on walls
and ceiling
And the shadows
of their shapes
move
as the sun moves
Slowly
as I lounge
on a couch
drinking iced tea
Admiring them
and their shadows
this 100 degree
July afternoon.

- Antler

Reproduced here with permission from www.porcupineliteraryarts.com. Photo is by Vicki Reed

⁽⁰⁾

On my computer I have installed some of the finest software to make my computer run faster, smoother, safer and with fewer crashes. The reality of these additions is I now have icons on my screen hauntingly reminding me that I haven't got much more than a clue about how to make them work. People often desire to upgrade or improve the quality of how their partner relates with them. Often a couple or person enters therapy with the notion that if their partner would improve then things in the relationship would become excellent. It is as though the person wants the therapist to install some sort of fancy software in the other person and then reboot the whole system.

The trouble with any upgrade or new program is each creates a new piece of learning or skill development which has to be mastered. Manuals have to be read, options explored and procedures experimented with. Only if the consumer is willing to put in the time and energy to build knew skills and knowledge is the upgrade worth its original expense.

The same phenomenon occurs in how we relate to our partners. Each improvement desired requires the "user" to become skilled and proficient in new ways. Yet in therapy I rarely hear a client say "upgrade me" so they can become capable of maximizing the potential of their primary relationship.
Many people approach how they relate in their primary partnership as though the skills are automatic. Any failure, or most failures, are seen as the other person's fault. On the occasion when a person does admit to a personal lack it is often brushed away by saying "this is who I am". However, we aren't born knowing how to master the intricacies of relating to another person. For most of us it took almost all of the first grade to learn the alphabet, a few spelling rules and how to add and subtract. After 5 hours a day, 5 days a week of endless repetition we finally mastered these minimal basics. Then summer came and we took 3 months off. Our poor second grade teacher spent the entire first month retraining us in skills we thought we had mastered. Sadly, few adults are willing to even consider spending 30 minutes a day, 5 days a week, learning to communicate with their primary partner. No wonder after 10 or more years together many couples still feel as if their relationship is in the second grade.

The first step in learning to relate optimally and in learning to protect our partners is to be willing to upgrade ourselves. When you seek to improve the quality of your life together then I would suggest you begin with a rigorous and honest self evaluation. This evaluation can begin by utilizing the following six questions.

1) What skills do you need to learn in order to become a more effective partner?
This step involves figuring out what skills you lack in order to make the most of your relationship. This can include a wide range of things. For instance, do you even speak, yet alone understand, the language of your partner. If you tend to speak in a language of feelings and your partner speaks in a language of analysis are you proficient in speaking from their cognitive perspective? Do you know how to respect and value the usefulness of their language and thought pattern? Other skill areas can include do you know how to touch your partner in ways they like being touched, or listen to them in ways they find attentive. You can form your own list, often based on complaints you have heard a thousand times in a thousand ways as your partner struggled to communicate with you.

2) What skills do you already have which need further development in order to be optimally useful?
Many basic skills for relating and communicating are already known by most people. However, if you know how to listen but can't do it for more than 2-5 minutes consecutively then this skill is underdeveloped. If you know how to be intimate, providing it doesn't last too long or get too intense, then your intimacy skills need some work. Frequently people come to therapy complaining that they have already tried listening, touching, caring, or whatever and that none of these accomplished what they wanted. On inquiry it becomes clear that they tried each of these 3 or 4 times for about 1-3 minutes each and when they weren't met with an awesome response the person gave up. Upgrade your skills.

3) What habits do you have which interfere with the quality of how you and your partner relate?
Most of us have through the years acquired a variety of habits. Some of these will be conscious and others non-conscious and many are useful. Fortunately most of us can drive by habit. Each time we enter our car it isn't some new adventure. Along with useful habits we often have ones which don't work well in our primary relationship. When I got married I had a basic non-conscious habit of shedding my shoes and socks as I entered the house leaving a trail, like breadcrumbs in Hansel and Gretel, by which one could track my sojourn from the door to the bedroom. For the rest of the night I would agilely step over and around them never conscious they were there. I found this skill useful as a bachelor. However, my partner was unimpressed with this physical prowess. The reduction in tension was amazing when I learned the strange skill of carrying them into the closet.

Now the socks thing was easy. A little motivation and a few weeks of practice and the whole thing was fixed. A more complicated example has to do with a tone of voice I used to use when I was scared or anxious. The tone, which I was unaware of, had a quality which devastated my partner. When she heard that tone she believed I was saying she was "the stupidest human being on the face of the earth". When I finally acknowledged this as a problem, several years after she first complained, it took three diligent years to break the old habit and learn a new set of skills. First, I had to learn to hear that particular tone. Second, I had to learn how to stop it. Then I needed a replacement tone. Finally, I needed new ways to deal with feeling scared or anxious.

This last example lends itself well to the next three questions:
4) Are you willing to commit the time necessary to master upgrading how you relate?
Some tasks we can learn quickly. Others, like learning to master language patterns or listening skills take time. If you are serious about learning to relate better and to provide protection to your partner I would suggest you are going to have to find time. This often turns people off because they believe they don't have time available or that they are too tired from their day. Odd though, because is softball season starts, or the garden is ready to plant, or the snow has cleared from the golf course many people suddenly have time. You can tell what matters to a person by how they spend their time. Based on the time you spend how important does your partner feel? And how much would they believe you are sincerely interested in improving the quality of how you relate? Upgrading your skills will require time consuming practice and study.

5) Are you willing to exert the sacrifice and self discipline necessary to accomplish learning?
Learning takes effort. How many years of practice did it take you to you to go from learning to count to being able to do algebra or geometry? Most of us practiced 9-12 years or more. Do you find your partner less complicated than math? I doubt it. Practice, practice and more practice.
Second, learning takes instruction. For most of the skills any of us have mastered we have had teachers, books, videos, friends or mentors to teach us. Frequently we required a combination of several of these. So, in learning to relate better it would be logical that you will require the same. Do you have teachers? Are you reading books or watching videos? Are you learning from friends (who know how to relate well)?

6) Will you suspend your ego often enough and long enough to allow your relationship to flourish?
Perhaps Nelson Zink put it best in his book Structure of Delight when he wrote something to the effect of "....would you rather be happy or right...?". Winning in relationships means either both persons win or both persons lose. All to often I hear fights where each person eventually turns to me expecting I will declare one or the other "right"! This is a losing proposition, for if one is right then both will lose. It is critical for you to learn to find what is valuable and useful in everything your partner presents and to reinforce and celebrate this. To do so requires suspending your own desire to win or be right and allow room for both of you to contribute, succeed and flourish.

This six question inventory can provide you with a starting place to learning to upgrade your relationship.

Reproduced here with the express permission of Celeritous Dancer, Chtd.

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I'm pacing up a steep incline on rented equipment. The quiet is thick as snow. It muffles my senses. I feel distant, aloof. Part of something and not part of something. I watch for tracks, spoor of another kind of reality.

The first one I discover doesn't give me enough to go on. Is it a set-down? Has something flown in and landed here? I'm not sure what I'm seeing; maybe just the imprint of snow that fell off a branch to land on drift beneath a tree. I see, only vaguely, what may be flight feather marks pressed into the scuffed mass before me. They begin to emerge more clearly uniform as spaced blade shapes. I pace round the disturbed area, measuring against my snow shoe's stride, estimating probable wingspan. It's a big one. The indentations are hours old, too much wind and friction have scoured the edges soft, made them indistinct. But if this is a print of what I think it is, it's a beauty. What makes me doubt my luck is the lack of any other telltale marks nearby. No similar set-downs. No other scuff marks. No lead-up tracks of any kind.

So I aim along a hog back leading over a ridge where, even with snow drifted well over 100 inches, huge rock outcrops stab through, slate colored, into daylight. I mean to hug the tree line since there is little point in going beyond it. Not much sense in traveling exposed above the protection of forest in Central Oregon's Cascade Range.

I love snow shoeing. It's quiet. It takes you places you can't always get to on skis. It removes you from the world of daily human commerce. It lets you reconnect to something so much larger than yourself, or your kind, that you begin to recognize a sense of the sacred against all reservations, including your own. I think it's the silence.

As I walk, the sound of my own breath becomes a mantra to focus my concentration. My thoughts drift away to the white rolling between pine trunks, the occasional glimpse of blue, a distant, broken mountain top. This is where I find peace. I grew up hiking these mountains spring, summer and fall. Only recently have I discovered them accessible in deep midwinter.

I see sign everywhere now. Coyote track, pine marten, snowshoe rabbit. Mountains are never dead things. They only shroud themselves in a meditation so deep it fools us into thinking that the breath has stopped, the heart no longer beats, the intellect has failed. But these are only tricks of the trade. This is all healing trance work. We have to walk the blank page of a slope to recognize the scampering of an EEG measured in the increments of animal prints.

It's while I am thinking these thoughts that I see it. Another set-down. Two… No… Three set-downs. And there's the weasel trail that leads to the first landing only to disappear in a fury of shattered snow. The distinctive, even, hopping register of a pine marten or small weasel doesn't appear again. Instead I see loosened, scattered snow, signs of a struggle. Just outside the disturbed area, on both sides, are the perfect prints of two wing tips, flight blades fanned open, rounded like a Cooper's or Red-tailed Hawk. A full two foot span from tip to tip. And it's recent. Everything is still clearly defined.

The take-off must have been ragged against the weight and struggle of even a winter-thinned animal, which explains the two extra set-downs. My approach is careful. I don't want to tread on what it is I have come to see. I follow along the progression of all three battle scars. At each touchdown I see the print of wing tips. They are precise. Beautiful. Now I know what snow angels were meant to look like.

Originally published on LiterarySalt.com. Reproduced here with permission

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Of course, I’m being somewhat facetious. In their raw form you couldn’t run your car on either. However both organisms have the potential to be made into biofuels such as ethanol or biodiesel. And that, if done in a careful and sustainable way, could greatly reduce the greenhouse gas emissions that cause global warming.

However, in spite of some of the hoopla about biofuels, there are still many obstacles to overcome. Yes, you can already get ethanol mixed with your gasoline or biodiesel mixed with your regular diesel in many North American cities. In fact, in countries like Brazil, gasoline is always blended with at least 20 per cent ethanol and you can easily get 100 per cent ethanol for your car. So far, so good. But these biofuels have problems too.

As I discussed in a column last fall, a widespread adoption of biofuels, such as biodiesel and ethanol could cause serious damage to the environment and provide few benefits if the crop used to make the fuel isn’t chosen carefully. Corn, for example, is the largest source of ethanol in the United States, but it is a poor choice for fuel because if you do a life-cycle analysis (looking at all the energy needed to make the stuff), the energy obtained from corn-based ethanol is only marginally better or worse than the energy you get out of it. Plus, corn is heavily reliant on fertilizers and pesticides.

Thankfully, there are plenty of other options. Canola does better in a lifecycle analysis, for example, and sugar cane - which is where Brazil gets its ethanol from – better still. However, sugar cane requires a hot climate and there are concerns that displacing Brazilian subsistence farmers to grow sugar cane will push them into slashing and burning the rainforest for cropland. So all biofuels still have an environmental, economic or social cost. If these fuels are to be sustainable, such costs need to be minimized.

One promising biofuel that scores well in preliminary studies is cellulosic ethanol made from switchgrass. According to results of a recent study published in the prestigious journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, switchgrass grown and managed for biofuel can produce 500 per cent more renewable energy than the energy it needs to be grown and processed.
For the study, researchers conducted field trials (the first for switchgrass) over five years on 10 farms in the Midwestern United States. Looking at all the production and management information from each farm, they were able to estimate greenhouse gas emissions and net energy inputs to outputs. After a life-cycle analysis, the results were very positive: greenhouse gas emissions from switchgrass-derived cellulosic ethanol on the farms were 94 per cent lower than if the energy had come from gasoline.

Another benefit of switchgrass, and part of the reason for its success in the trials, is that it is a native prairie grass that grows on agriculturally marginal land. This means that fewer chemical inputs are required to maintain the crop and makes it less likely that growing large crops of switchgrass would take away land that would otherwise be used for food production.

Biofuels have the potential to help reduce pollution and global warming emissions, as well as the regional conflicts caused by our dependence on fossil fuels. But choosing the right fuel crop for the right geographic area is critical, as is making sure that all social and environmental factors are considered. If we can overcome those hurdles, you can look for more biofuels made from waste wood, used vegetable oil, and yes, even algae, at our pumps in the future.

Originally published on Feb 8, 2008

Dr. David Takayoshi Suzuki is distinguished Canadian geneticist who has attained prominence as a science broadcaster and an environmental activist. He is also a co-founder of the David Suzuki Foundation.

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There’s the rake hero who’s trying to reform in order to land an heiress with money to resurrect his crumbling estate, there’s the “daughter of a misalliance” heroine who’s fiercely proud of her parents who married for love and lived in happy poverty, and an assorted bunch of secondary characters which Regency fans will easily recognize. Fans searching for something that does anything different with the standard plots featuring these characters will need to look elsewhere though.

Will is a rake. Orphaned in his youth, brought up by those who did the bare minimum of their duty to him, he’s been on his own for years. The only relative who has ever cared for him shows up at his door and forces him to agree to squiring her around during the latest Season. Maybe while doing this, Lucille will help him nab a young lady of fortune. Like Lucille, I found it hard to believe that some girl who wanted a title wouldn’t have already married him. Some nabob’s daughter/granddaughter maybe. He’s good looking, not insane, seems to have his own teeth so why would he believe no one would accept him?

And I really can not believe that Will would feel the need to ask Allegra to tutor him on what and what not to say to innocent young women. That he wouldn’t know that most of his early comments to Allegra would be viewed as incorrect things to be said to a young lady of good family. The man would have had to have been raised under a rock not too. I could accept that he’s bored with talking to young misses straight from the schoolroom but not that he doesn’t know how to gently flirt or what not to say.

Of course Allegra’s parents were loving, kind, wonderful, supporting, altogether perfect even if they lived in poverty. Naturally she’s a gifted musician too. And her hoydenish temper and ways could be assumed to be from her Italian father. It’s just as obvious that she’ll never want to fit into the stiff-necked London ton. I have to be honest and state that once we know what we know about her father’s background, the fact that, even when he knew he was dying, he didn’t attempt to set her straight about it makes me think he’s an idiot and poor parent. And why is her mother called Lady Grace? She’s the daughter of a Viscount, correct? Wouldn’t that make her an Honorable Miss?

Allegra’s cousin Lynton is a priggish stuffed shirt. I saw nothing more to him beyond being kind to Allegra because she’s family but of course he won’t understand her or see her true worth or admire her for who she is — the plot won’t allow it. I thought for a bit at the end that he might redeem himself but then, no, he went straight back to prighood.

Sapphira, Dowager Lady Lynton is an evil, beyotch whore. Again there’s nothing more to her at all. Though I do have to admire the lengths to which this self absorbed woman will go to discredit Allegra in the eyes of Society. And Mrs. Randall, Allegra’s put upon chaperon, she’s a nonentity in the story and in person. She’s got no personality or interesting aspects to her character at all and could be a potted plant for all she does for the plot.

I kept waiting to see if this was all really a send up of so many versions of this story I’ve read before. I felt the last seventy pages were extraneous. But I do like that Will is getting a chance to be his own man and work for his estate rather than have all his money problems miraculously solved by change in his or Allegra’s status.

There’s nothing really, terribly wrong with all this but I’ve read it so many times before. It’s not that I don’t like Will and Allegra and hope for their happiness. I do. But there’s nothing new or fresh about them or their road to their HEA. C

Originally published at DearAuthor.com. Reproduced here with Permission.

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