End-gaining

When it comes to a typical 'wrong-doing', end-gaining is the catch-all phrase in the Alexandrian world. 'The ends justify the means' is a commonly used adage and unfortunately often the attitude towards political and societal affairs. Luckily, at least while putting hands on other people, I learned a lot about my end gaining habits. I learned so much that I'm convinced that I can find more end-gaining habits of mine until the day I die.

When Marjorie Fern visited our school, she brought one of my favorite toys with her. It's balls made of hundred of rubbery strings, in bright colours, easy to catch and interesting to feel. I played many games illustrating some of Alexander's ideas, and I like the playful atmosphere created by simple games. When David told me about the workshop with 35 high school kids I immediately thought of using these funny balls.

I went on an internet search after coming home, and the some iterations in my search (from soft and fluffy via stringy to Koosh) I found some Australian online shops offering Koosh balls. Amazingly, these balls were sold as stress reliever, as toys and in a shop for camping gear. The adventure supply shop had the best offer, and so I thought: I want them, I order them. 75mm sounded a bit small to me, but still acceptable, so I typed an order round about $100 in and diligently supplied my credit card details.

I gained my end, the rush of the online shopping experience still exhilarating me a bit. I checked postage and shopping condition, whether encryption was used, but not the actual catalogue of the shop. I compromised already enough, I ignored a better prize offshore, or waiting for sold-out supplies to be restocked. Then I decided to browse the site where I ordered again, finding my way through the idiosyncracies in a mixed bag of online shop.

The choice of products of this camping/hiking/adventure supply outlet surprised me a lot. Only in juggling stores I might have come across the category of 'throwables', and I was stunned by the amount of items listed. Besides Koosh balls, they offer a lot fun things to throw and catch. I caught the item I ordered at the end of the first list, and checked the second page.

OMG, OMFG! Sets of 6! Okay, calm down, let's see what else they offer. 90mm Koosh balls. Oops. Sets of 6. A set of 20 in its own bag. Hmpf. Like in a lot of good shops, if the quantity goes up the prize goes down. A quick calculation makes it obvious to me that I would have ordered totally different if I had checked the range of merchandise first. Bloody end-gainer!

I worked in the computer industry, and know about the finality of electronic transactions. It'll take hours to write an email explaining that something went wrong, to sort out this situation with an better outcome for me by the means of the internet. I think Amazon let's you change orders before they ship them, yet smaller shops even let you order (and pay for) out-of-stock items. A 1-300 number prominently shows on top of the screen, so I inhibit my self-pity about my end-gaining and call their number.

So I explained my stuff-up to Damien, and asked him whether I could change my order. I guess that he pulled up my order on his computer while we were talking. He seemed relieved when I indicated that I happily still order for the same amount, and promised to take care of this within 15 minutes after our call. We chatted for about 10 minutes, and I realised that my end-gained order transformed into another encounter of random friendliness by strangers.

It didn't even take 15 minutes for the email with the changed order, and instead of two dozens Koosh balls I'll now get 30, and some bags to put them in as well. I still have no idea whether the delivery will arrive in time before the workshop, though I'm quite confident. Anyway, I enjoyed the great service this little call brought with it, and gained some interesting and fun insights.

Work in front of computer screens contributed a great deal to my patterns of mis-use, and I still need to remind myself often of my directions not to study my old habits. I researched for at least two hours on the web for this funny thing, interrupted by a unicycle ride to check local stores for something to pick up straight away. Like a hungry hunter I went for the first prey in sight. I fell for my end-gaining habit, but it didn't hurt. I noticed what I did, and so liberated myself from falling for my 'end-gaining has failed' habits as well.

Instead, I reevaluated the situation to improve the outcome. End-gaining often leads to undesirable results, but life goes on anyway. The sooner you detect an end-gaining stuff up, the more chance you've got do less and achieve more. In retrospect, the little unnoticed bits of forgetting my means made me try harder instead of acting smarter. Choosing a different reaction unveiled bits of my personal patterns, and probably made me one percent less end-gaining than before.

Tensegrity

David offered me the opportunity to do my tensegrity workshop during our school's residential. This meant that my car was heavily loaded with plenty of light objects, sensory overload by having a variety of models was part of my plan.

I got so much used to have tensegrity models in my lounge that I nearly forgot the awe they inspire quite often on first sight. Martin hardly couldn't keep his hands off them while driving to Maitripa, and I knew that the strategy of using them as attention grabber would make the presentation part much easier.

I arranged plenty of the smaller and simpler models on the table next to the stage area, the tower and the larger sphere standing next to me. The mind map I made half a year ago laid on a table close by as well, yet I think I used it only a couple of times.



I wasn't tempted to rehearse the presentation, yet I took the chance to work in front of the group with Michael Shellshear on my nervousness about it. He helped me defining a clear goal, and suggested to have a clear beginning, middle part and end for the presentation. Finding a SMART goal wasn't easy, tensegrity offers so many ideas and connections to the work, and of course, eagerly end-gaining as I can be, I wanted to put a lot information into the workshop.

My idea was it to give the participants a more embodied understanding of tensegrity, and to learn more about the qualities of such systems in general. Yet Michael steered me into finding a single quality as focus - bounciness. I'm pretty sure he set some anchors when working with me, although I couldn't consciously describe them.



I started off with a short explanation of the origin of the term, letting my admiration for Buckminster Fuller shining through. I used the metaphor 'island of compression in a sea of tension' to describe the discontinuity of compression (we're no stack of bricks, although some people's thinking is sometimes as flexible as one).

I used to model with a similar structure, but with different tension material (rubber, ie very flexible and nylon ie very tense) to give the participants the first opportunity to play. The models nicely demonstrate expansion and contraction in all dimensions, and squeezing and pulling made the difference in mobility depending on the pretension level (golgi, I hear ya calling) obvious.

I felt quite calm and collected, the adrenaline didn't throw me off but kept me moving confidently. Before I could lose the interest of my audience by the technicalities of the minimal tensegrity system (tensul), making pauses in the verbal part allowed questions, so I could navigate along the mindmap in response to my audience.

The fun started for me when I explained the teamwork task, the 'middle' part of the workshop. I demonstrated the total collapse of a tensul from a box shape into a hodge podge of strings and sticks, and asked the participants to do the same with the models I handed them before.

I had no idea how long it would take the groups to get the models back together, I still consider even a tensul quite a challenging 3d puzzle. I could kick back a bit, observe the attempts of rebuilding with plenty of space to offer help and answer questions. The first team to succeed were Rossi and Jenny, proudly claiming to have won this friendly 'competition'. Yet, instead of simply bragging about this victory they continued to explore kinestically their little toys, while the other teams by and by caught up.

In the two presentations I held no team failed in the end, although some needed to start over a couple of times (you can connect the materials I gave them to a boxy shape which isn't a real tensul). The task kept the participants engaged and interested, and the success yielded many smiles of accomplishment.

This made it easy to get to end part of the workshop. Playing with the tensuls brought up some questions, and offered me the chance to relate the tensegrity idea to anatomy and AT work. Well, I might have stressed the similarities I suspect a bit more, but I guess I will do this workshop again. The questions were interesting, and especially the demonstrations with the shroom-tower model seems to work very well.

I took Carina's suggestion to ask everyone for a single bit they learned in that workshop, and noticed that I achieved my goal - transforming the term 'tensegrity' from a learned-sounding expression to a more lively concept.

However, in retrospect areas for improvement become more apparent. Bounciness, the initial goal, was left out a bit. I realised at home that some of models can be thrown around quite a bit without falling apart, I might use a sphere model for some contact juggling like acts, with some deliberate drops to show the bounce. Now I need to find a good backdrop to shoot some videos of models in movement (the hall I held the workshop with its beautiful Buddha statue would have been ace for that).

Luckily Ana took the photos you can see here, pictures can often tell so much more than words.