Hi there It's almost it's 12 10 now. We'll give another minute or so for people to filter in but I want to just first welcome you to the Resumption of in-person readings for lunch bumps, which we're really so thrilled about My name is Noah Warren. I'm gonna be directing the lunch pump series this year And I want to first I also just thank everyone who's been showing up these past two years on zoom Kept this community kind of vibrant and bringing really some remarkable poetry to Berkeley That said it is to be back in Morrison Such a privilege such a delight And to be able to experience the kind of energy that poetry can fill a room with I think is It's been something that's been sorely missed So we'll take all right. It looks like we got the door closing So, yeah, welcome and thank you all. It's my Before we get started, please silence your phones We'll read Alex will read for about half an hour after the introduction unfortunately our friends at Moe's could not make it today, so If you are engaged make sure to seek out Alex's books on your own time. They're really worth the time All right, who is Alex Dimitrov There's a perverse logic in contemporary American poetry that suggests It's sometimes deleterious for poets to morph and change as they write their way into the future This is said to detract from the affirmation all important of developing an instantly recognizable style The result is a landscape that sometimes Looks strewn with promising beginnings that have turned stale As people reiterate the discoveries they made at 25 In counterpoint I present Alex Dimitrov Style he clearly has just look at him and he's developed a voice on the page That's vivid and pressing like none other No other poet writing today And I'm here to marvel just for a second At the mastery that underlies that style and that presence and To also just remark at how many voices he's explored in the ten years. He's been writing His resting stance I think is a semi-social semi lyric Around 25 lines that emerges in the penumbra of intimacy Going or leaving on an app or addressed to someone who may just be someone 2017's book together and by ourselves Pushed this mode a little longer and more sinister to poems that kept moving Till they found their haunting ends in the curdle of Tom Moore Love and other poems his most recent book Metabolizes Franco-Hara who's been there all along in Dimitrov's poetry It's become the style has become breezier intensely charismatic and at once more impersonal and more vulnerable Recently he said on what sounds like if I dare say it a Wisdom literature albeit a very sexy one We'll see Much is said about tenderness vulnerability and pain these days in poetry These are demanded on the surface Dimitrov's poems serve precisely the opposite They're cool their polish their brisk motion through the world and through people Takes on pathos as we begin to sense beneath these qualities what they defend against need sorrow But lightly even as the poems affecting blasé sometimes sigh about parties or men They as often pivot in the next moment to celebrate these rituals They look levelly at the continuance of change and they celebrate parties and men And of course New York I Love finally How Dimitrov has broken down the boundaries between the poem life and the mediation of these two on the internet Calling to us the listener or the reader directly Hello or Look at the sky Kiss anyone you can for sure He asks us to double our lived experience and our pleasure with our experience of the poem He writes from a cab many cabs and make sure we know how real those journeys are even as they become a metaphysical state and In the title poem of love and other poems the anaphora. I love Spills boundlessly beyond the page and has continued on to the internet day by day As it praises and mourns the world I'm delighted to welcome to Berkeley into the space one of the best and most interesting poets writing today Alex Dimitrov That was the most considered introduction I've ever gotten no you should read the poems for me actually Who is Alex Dimitrov? I'm really happy to be here. I've never Been to Berkeley and it's a beautiful campus though. I walked for about three minutes. I was really hot Clearly I'm wearing the wrong attire. I always am but Thank you for coming. I didn't know who would come Noah told me that this was the first event after two years or something like that So this is also the earliest I've ever read poems. I usually wake up around this time. So Let's see how this goes Sunset on 14th Street. I don't want to sound unreasonable, but I need to be in love immediately I can't watch this sunset on 14th Street by myself Everyone is walking fast right after therapy texting back their lovers orange hearts and unicorns. It's insane to me They're missing this free sunset willingly or even worse. They're going home to cook and read this sad poem online Let me tell you something people have quit smoking. They don't get drinks, but they juice They're a way too many photos and most all of us look better in them than we do in life What happened? This is truly so embarrassing. I want to make a case for 1,440 minutes every day where we stop whatever else is going on and look each other in the eyes like dogs Like morning newspapers and evening light so long so much for this short drama We will die one day and our cheap headlines won't apply to anything The internet will be forgotten all the praise and pandering.  They're concerned. They're wondering why I'm broke and lonely in Manhattan though, of course I'll never say it and Besides it's almost spring. It's fine. It's goth. Hello. The truth is No one will remember us. We're only specks of dust or one one speck of dust Some brutes who screamed for everything to look at us. Well, look at us still terrible and awful Awful and pretending. We're not terrible such righteous Saints repeating easy lines performing our great politics It's just so very boring. The real mystery in fact is how we managed to make room for love at all Punk rock of on guard cinema. I love you reader, but you should know the sunsets over now I'm standing right in front of nowhere bar Dehydrated and quite scared but absolutely willing to keep going it makes sense. You do the same It's far too late for crying and quite useless too. You can be sad and still look so good You can say New York is beautiful and it wouldn't be a headline and it wouldn't be a lie Just take a cab and not the six. It's never once in ten years been on time It's orbiting some other world where there are sunsets every hour and no money and no us That's luck the way to get there clearly wasn't written down. Don't let that stop you though Look at the sky kiss everyone you can for sure Someone said this book was optimistic when I came out and I thought that was a very kind of post-covid reaction to it It's nice though, you know, I'm happy if people feel good reading these poems In fact, I kind of wanted to design them for the first time so people would perhaps feel Good instead of bad. I mean I wrote two books before that where I was just thinking of knowing about myself So and I was not feeling good, you know, it's really funny I was broke when I wrote this book quite literally and I didn't have health care for two years because I was adjuncting and I was happier than I've ever been. Isn't that weird? I don't want to glamorize it or anything, but You know now that I have health care. I'm like, do I really want to be here? I'm just kidding. This is not This is not gonna turn into one of those readings No one mentioned Frank O'Hara who is of course a ghost in this book a ghost and kind of my life in New York Someone before the reading came up to you mentioned John Ashbury people who are very important to me The New York school is very important to me. And so when I wrote this poem originally, I this next poem I Thought, you know, well, you could just make fun of yourself, you know with the title and It's called having a Diet Coke with you Obviously after the Frank poem and also when when the book came out I got in trouble because someone said like Why not a regular coke? Why a diet coke?   There is no way Having a Diet Coke with you having a Diet Coke with you is even better than a regular Coke because in New York The streets are so skinny. I'm always worried about my hair walking down Lex in the morning Where if we'll ever get universal health care and I can be assured I'm dying in all the regular ways nothing unusual By a professional who touches me lightly on the chest the first time I've been touched in months So I consider falling in love after oh God Alex what's wrong with you?   I've been there I'm imagining you reading this with a phone in your hand in your room by a desk on a train or a platform Don't wait to do what you want. This is what I've wanted to say from the first line Don't wait because people don't have the answer I've written this ending before in a book called American boys But I'll write it again for anyone who wasn't paying attention or talking shit about me on the internet I'll never get over the fact that the buildings all light up at night and the night comes every night and without regret We let it go we sleep a little and we live. That's what we do I always write down what I'm gonna read cuz if I don't I like to jump around and then just read poems I had you know, it's so funny. Someone asked me a student asked me the other day because school has started again How do you order a book which is a really hard question because it's really there's no right answer. It's just style, right? However, you want to My had one guiding principle for this book is that just don't write any bad poems. So then when you're So then when you're here sort of reading anywhere, you can just flip to whatever and read it I don't know if I succeeded, but I'll tell you I feel easier flipping through this one than the last one The last one really gave me anxiety and this one's just sort of Wow, I wasn't really in a good mood when I wrote it Can you believe June There will never be more of summer than there is now walking alone through Union Square I am carrying flowers in the first rosé to a party where I'm expected It's Sunday and the trains run on time, but today death feels so far. It's impossible to go underground. I Would like to say something to everyone. I see an entire city, but I'm unsure what it is yet Each time I leave my apartment. There's at least one person crying Reading or shouting after a stranger anywhere along my commute. It's possible to be happy alone I say out loud and to no one so it's obvious and now here in the middle of this poem Rarely have I felt more charmed than a 9th Street Watching a woman stop in the middle of the sidewalk to pull up her hair like it's an emergency and it is People do know they're alive. They hardly know what to do with themselves I almost want to invite her with me, but I've passed and yes it'd be crazy like trying to be a poet trying to be anyone here How do you continue to love New York my friend who left for California asked me It's awful in the summer and winter and spring and fall last maybe two weeks. This is true It's all true, of course like my preference for difficult men, which I had until recently Because at last for one summer the only difficulty I'm willing to imagine is walking through this first human day with my hands full Not at all peaceful, but entirely possible and real The friend in that poem is Morgan Parker. She was moving to Los Angeles when I was writing this book And she was really trying to take me with her not hard. You know, it's she's a she's a good friend to move with but um And I was like, I don't know if I want to do movies yet. I Don't know You know LA seems fun, but not yet. Not yet. It's been like two decades like that in New York. Not yet July I promise you I know we're in September, but at last it's impossible to think of anything as I swim through the heat on Broadway and disappear on the strand nobody on these shelves knows who I am, but I feel so seen It's easy to be aimless not having written a line for weeks Outside New York continues to be New York. I was half expecting it to be LA, but no luck No luck with the guy I'm seeing no luck with money. No luck with becoming a saint. I do not want you perfect life I decided to stay a poet long ago. I know what I'm in for and Still the free space of the sky lures me back out. Not even canonical beauty can keep me inside and beauty I'm done with you too. I Guess after all I'll take love Sweeping all-consuming grandiose love. Don't just call or ask to go to a movie.  I've never been boring and believe it or not. I'm all I want She made my tinder profile, right? You know, I'm done with tinder talking about things. I'm done with now. I'm on Raya whoo Let me tell you This is another poem that's riffing on Frank O'Hara Hmm what to say, you know when the when the like first big review for this book came out I didn't know if it was like positive thing or not, but the guy said I don't know I think he I should be careful what I say since this is recorded But um, he said something about like how I almost Sound like myself after Frank O'Hara. This is like also like in the time So I thought well, I wonder if people will like that and it turns out people did but I was kind of offended by it but um That's okay because I steal all of his titles in this This is a true account of talking to the moon at fire island his poem is a true account of talking to the sun at Fire Island so I knew what I was doing and still I felt a little bitchy about it, you know The moon woke me up last night loud and clear saying hey I've been trying to wake you up for 15 minutes. Don't be so rude. You're only the second poet I've ever chosen to speak to personally Well, I couldn't believe it. It didn't matter anymore that my books have never been nominated for anything Or that I've wasted so much time talking to men who don't understand me This was the moon talking to me flirting even the moon was proving every single grant organization wrong The total of grants I've received my life being zero and Here it was my time to shine literally I didn't even have to climb a mountain or have an epiphany I'm not athletic in the least I said to the moon I can barely run the reservoir in Central Park and the only reason I like that is because I can't tell if anyone's emailed me Well, I'm running I'm a very gay runner. You see always checking out dads and listening to Brittany and repeat I like to wear purple and black. I like to feel sexy What in the actual fucks of the moon you need so much help You need an NEA a Guggenheim a national book award. No, I said to the moon.  I want you to get up and write 300 poems I want you to keep writing poems no matter what don't think about anything else not even lawyers Okay, I said okay moon who knew you were such a top. I was practically shaking And even though nothing good had happened to me in the last year and I was so sad about my life and my poems I went to bed feeling loved and appreciated how many other poets have talked to the moon not even Frank O'Hara All he got was the Sun and here. I was the center of all beauty writing these poems imagine I Also stole that ending from Frank O'Hara, too It's good to steal from the dead.  It's a little cute short poem that I snuck in there I don't think my editor really wanted this one in there, but it's it's nice, you know, it's called for the critics No, you never got me no I don't think that you ever did when I walk into a bodega and buy cigarettes and ice cream blueberries and Diet Coke Also, I can cry with real enthusiasm and with feeling just as soon as I can make it home That's called performance art. That's performance art you Fox Never gotten a review that I actually liked let me tell you This poem is called New York and No one mentioned the cab poem. I love the cab poem. I never read it. It's somehow like way too It's like way too vulnerable but That poem sort of was inspired by by the fact that I was taking cabs everywhere and like I said I was also broke and people are like, what are you doing?  I'm stuck in traffic again. Okay. I'm late again I'm always late. So my friends always know this. I'm always late and I just started, you know, writing lines in the cabs and Then I started looking back at them and I'm like, you know, these are decent they sound kind of like talking to people and I became sort of the Aesthetic parameters of the book that it would sound like I'm meeting someone at a bar telling them a story or I'm sort of, you know And a cab with a friend or walking down the street with a friend and kind of trying to tell them what I'm feeling Those are weird parameters because they just feel very close to life, right? And a poem is not life. It's still an aesthetic object So I guess in some ways I was trying to break that with that poem, a poem written in a cab Which I won't read and also this poem called New York This is a poem sort of chronicling all the places I've cried in in New York. So get ready It's a lot New York is the best city to cry in I've cried on the corner of spring and green smoking one cigarette after another Taking two-hour lunch breaks in 2006 at my first internship at interview magazine I cried in Washington Square Park the other night thinking about healthcare and how I quit my job to write poetry and how even a job in Poetry prevents you from writing it I've cried so many times in front of the Fountain at Lincoln Center Then watched the cars drive by in Columbus without reason to cry and I've cried even more than the one year I lived on St. Mark's place I was in grad school and cried a cafe or land with one drink for a million hours Until I'd write a poem and immediately send it to the New Yorker feeling entirely justified because why wouldn't they want it? It was terrible all of it, but I miss those days most the sixth train is my favorite train to cry on It's always late and full of other people's fathers No one really looks at you because they're so glad they're not you and of course because they know that the that being anyone is a tragedy Like the MTA itself Yeah, some New Yorkers in the crowd. I'm sure There's something productive about crying in New York It's almost like crying alone in your apartment, but you can cruise strangers in one errands at the same time Once I was so exhausted I started crying in the middle of a drink with my friend Rachel at the Beagle which is closed now But I was telling her how people always ask poets to do things for free is if we don't have to pay rent or attend to our loneliness I've also cried when I was happy in a cab on the FDR listening to Patty Smith the day My first book got taken and again that night when my parents asked how much money I'd make and what I would do next You know after this poetry thing It turns out that next there's more crying and so many gay bars I'm going to list them boiler room Eastern block nowhere Metropolitan and I could go on but this poem isn't about gay crying Just crying in general no identity politics in this poem Not here that reminds me how I used to cry and raise pizza also on St. Mark's place And how one time a guy asked if I had cocaine and if we would go somewhere more chill to do it I was so confused. I pretended to stop crying and said no Can't you fucking see that I'm crying then I went to Cooper Union across the street and continued crying there but less convincingly Believe it or not, I've never cried in a man's apartment a man I was sleeping with or about to their they've all thought I was too detached and should cry more They've all been emotionally bankrupt to say the least especially the lawyers Clearly none of them could picture me crying in front of the Bowery hotel when I lost my wallet the same day I had three poems rejected and went on an awful date the kind that makes you wonder if you should stop talking to people and Just max at your credit card at opening ceremony Great store I've also cried in the sunshine on Houston all of its theaters and the lobby and each time I remember how someone once told me It was a bathhouse, which is delightful and makes me feel incredibly safe The sunshine is also closed now by the way like opening ceremony and that's what happens in New York when you finally find a good spot to Cry in it's more or less gone in a flash of Course there's been times when I wanted to cry and couldn't moving waiting for test results finding out someone I used to date is now married to a dancer with a nice face and no talent. Good luck with that I don't think I should count the times. I've cried at home who could anyway I've only had three apartments St. Mark's place house in an Allen and 75th and first I got that last one being lucky one night on the A train when I ran into a guy who was on the same call sheet for a Photoshoot we once did for out magazine He told me he had a friend who had a friend who wanted to pass the apartment down to a friend Because the rent was good in a nice area. I'm not friend.  I have allergies It's my favorite street in the city and my favorite street in the world Especially the red bricks surrounding the church where on many weekends in summer vendors set up their stands and sell mostly odd things A woman almost sold me a crucifix there in 2010 But I couldn't afford it so we talked about past lives and steven x and how tusk is certainly better than rumors By the end of our talk. She just gave it to me. She was a painter and had great energy and I'm sorry I know this isn't la but that word just does something for me It might be like counting the wars america's been in if I had to tell you all the restaurants I've cried in most of them are in the east village But I do love throwing a tantrum on the west side where people are slightly more scandalized because there may be a million Dollars richer. I have no idea. I have $574 in my bank account right now Which I did at the time I've also cried in front of delivery people and I never feel bad because there's so many reasons to cry here I know that they get it besides I tip 30 percent sometimes 35 if I'm feeling emotional And I like to take the time to remind people to tip. Well, it says everything about you especially on a date Naturally when I see someone crying in new york, it's like an invitation Like I should get to work and join them like we're about to do something important together I do feel lucky. I live here since growing up. I wasn't allowed to cry and if I have kids I'll definitely tell them how useful it is and how it costs only nothing You're free to cry all the time. Please cry everybody. Please use your freedom Until one day you realize you're not free at all.  Yeah Yeah, all right feels good, right sometimes Like everything sometimes Where was I this is a long poem. Thank you for making it through three more Okay, we're gonna get a little bit dark I was like, am I gonna throw a curveball in? I think I will keep it in new york though Places I've contemplated suicide or sent nudes from My bed The bathrooms at the Frederick hotel cabs The 7-eleven on 74th and first The museum of modern art the museum of modern arts robert gober opening in 2014 My writing desk the stairwells of so many buildings An elevator once my favorite wine bar, which I won't actually name A few times at a friend's place a friend I used to sleep with a friend who used to be a friend Central park the marlton hotel the plaza the starbucks on 75th and first my bathtub My bathroom my very sad kitchen In which I never cook and look how this is no longer a list poem I wonder if anyone can tell what I am I wonder why it is they keep looking I wonder why they keep looking and asking me to disappear at the same time Everyone's alone on mars tonight and love sex death have left for earth Part of me is still on a beach where I lost something years ago Part of me on a beach and life's playing from the beginning Nine hawks dividing the dusk Wild light through each tunnel in time The day I met you never ended for me I'm a control freak. I know it's hard to tell or maybe you can tell but uh So, uh, it's probably one of the reasons why we write poems some of us It's kind of a false sense of control like everything else. But um You know, uh, when I was writing this book, uh, you know, I sort of was thinking about, uh Well, I was happy like I said, but then at the end of it covet happened or like right before and I was like, hmm So we were in the editing stages of this and I thought, um, I would love to just tell people what to do one last time So then I wrote this poem notes for my funeral This is the last one.  I'll still hate them probably even more when I'm dead Play lu reads perfect day on repeat Don't cry. Don't be embarrassing It's not a good song to do drugs to so after play fleetwood and take a xanax Rent a room overlooking central park and get more drugs Invite strangers up don't return desperate texts from people who hound you because they're boring Just think about me Think of new york how the people who never liked me never liked me because they always assumed I was having too much fun And you know what I was I loved being alive Thank you Thank you. Alex. That was remarkable Um Yeah, this room was buzzing And thank you all for coming and joining us today. Uh, it's really good to be back here And we hope we'll see you again next month october 3rd for jake skates Um a couple notes of thanks and uh an injunction There should be a sign-up sheet for our email lists, uh over by the desk there. So if you're compelled put your email down Alex's reading as all the readings before are up on you will be up on youtube shortly. Uh, we can just find us on lunch pumps Our sponsors and patrons make this all possible First of all the library. Thank you amber as the living representative, but this space, uh, is a great gift and all the resources behind it Um, also the arts research center whom we're partnering with this year um By books when you get home, uh, and if you're in a little red chair Maybe you could fold it up and take it to the exit as you're leaving that would be helpful. I think Thank you


Can you go ahead? So next, I'm going to recall what's known about the homology of real flag varieties. So there's two classical descriptions of complex prismanians, so the homology of complex prismanians. The first one is in terms of generators and relations. So these are the characteristic classes of the topological bundles on a prismanian. So the homology of the complex prismanians generated by the trend classes of the topological and quotient bundle, yes, and the quotient bundle on the prismanian. And the relation is given by the Whitney-Sumformin. So the other description, which is more close to the topic of this seminar, is in terms of the basis and structure constants. So we have a complex cell decomposition of the prismanian, which means that we only have even-dimensional cells. And therefore, the boundary map is topologically zero, so there's no one-dimensional cells. And therefore, the integer coefficient chronology of the prismanian is generated by the fundamental classes of the Schubert varieties. Again, parameterized by those that fit into a k times the minus k rectangle. And the structure constants of these Schubert varieties are given by little with riches and coefficients, so there's many combinatorial ways to compute these. Now, in the situation of real-grass manias, again, the situation is less simple. First of all, it's a fact, as we already saw in the examples before, that these contain a lot of two-torsion classes. So as a first approximation, we might try to understand what happens with the rational coefficients. So in the case when both the dimension of the subspace and the ambient space is even, we have a similar situation that we saw earlier, namely, the chronology is generated by characteristic classes. Now these characteristic classes are point-training classes, since these are real vector bundles. And the situation is similar, so these generate the chronology, and the relation is given by the Whitney-Sumformer. Now in the situation when the dimension of the subspace is odd, there is, again, a subring, which is generated by characteristic classes. However, now there is an additional element, which cannot be expressed in terms of characteristic classes. So the easy way to see this is that these point-training classes all have degrees divisible by 4, and this is an odd-degree class. So this class turns out to be the fundamental class of a smaller Grassman, and it generates an exterior algebra. For the other description, again, we have a cell decomposition into real cells and a boundary map, which is now no longer 0, since we have odd-dynamic sheen cells. And again, we have to compute the chain complexes that we saw earlier in order to determine which Schubert triates have cycles, which Schubert triates have fundamental classes. And it turns out that in the even-even case, these are generated, additively, by so-called double Schubert triates. So by this, I mean the following. So if you have a young diagram lambda, then you can associate to it its double, which just means that you take the same young diagram and subdivide each square into four smaller sub-squares. So this is a double of a young diagram. And the structure constants of the Schubert triates turn out to be the same little with Richardson structure constants that we saw earlier. So now I would like to say a few words about what this additive structure looks like for flag varieties. So I should first introduce some notation. So to a sequence of positive integers, one can associate the partial flag variety, which consists of flags where, so this is just a sequence of subspaces embedded in each other, where the dimension of the jumps is just the fixed number of VI. So in other words, these are the dimensions of the quotients. So these flags also have cell decomposition into Schubert cells. And these are parameterized by coordinate flags. So by coordinate flag, I just mean that all of these subspaces are generated by standard bases. So this gives a parametrization of the Schubert cells. So for example, in the case of flag 223, so this means that we have two planes sitting inside of four planes sitting inside in R7. We can take this specific coordinate flag and we can parameterize these by the new basis elements that appear in the given subspace. So for example, here we have two four. So these are the first two basis elements. And then the new basis elements that appear in the next one are three and seven. So these are the next two indices. And then the rest of the indices appear here. So one way I like to think about this is putting numbers in some boxes. So we have numbers one through N. And we have some boxes of some given size. And we have to put these numbers into boxes, such that each box contains the appropriate number of elements. So these maps are also called order set partitions. And the number of such order set partitions is equal to the multinomial coefficient. So in this way, we get parametrization of the Schubert cells in the partial flag variety. So for example, when there's two boxes, then that means that we are in the situation of the Crestmanian. And there's n choose k Schubert cells in that case, as we know. And in the case when m is equal to the number n, then we get that the permutations index the Schubert cells in the complete flag variety. So now we know what the generators of this chain complex are. And the incidence coefficients turn out to be 0 or plus minus 2 in this chain complex. And this depends on somehow the combinatorics of these order set partitions. So the additive structure of the cohomology has a nice description in the so-called even cases. So by this, I mean that you just take a sequence of integers. And by 2D, I'm just going to denote that you double each integer. And for these 2D, you have a doubling map. So from the order set partitions of type D to the order set partitions of type 2D. So this is just a mapping of numbers 1 through n into some boxes of some given sizes. And you can replace this by replacing each number by the corresponding pair of numbers. So you would replace the first number with 1, 2, the second number with 3, 4, et cetera. So for example, when you have this permutation 2, 1, 3, then the order set partition of type 2, 2, 2 will just be that you take the second pair of numbers, first pair of numbers, and the third pair of numbers. So if you unravel what this means in terms of partitions on the crest manian, then this corresponds exactly to the operation where you take the double of a partition. And then the theorem says that the rational coefficient cohomology of these even flagrities are generated by these Schubert varieties. So the proof consists of two simple steps. First, we show that these Schubert varieties are cycles. They are linearly independent. So this is some easy combinatorics on some parity arguments. And compare this to the dimension of the cohomology of the flag variety and show that this indeed forms a basis of the flag variety. So let me emphasize that rational coefficients here are important because, again, these cohomology rings also contain a lot of two torsion elements. But with rational coefficients, the situation is really just as simple. Surprisingly, the not so nice cases are the complete flag varieties. So here you can see the bruyagraph. So part of the bruyagraph of the complete flag variety. So what the edges mean here, they mean that the incidence coefficient between two Schubert cells are plus minus 2. And the color of the edge means the sign of the incidence coefficient. So red is plus 2 and blue is minus 2. So if you compute the cohomology of this chain complex, then this is the cohomology that you get. And there's a few interesting phenomenon here. So for example, here, what happens is that these two Schubert cells, neither of them generate z-modules or neither of them are cycled. But if you take their sum, then they give you one of the generators of one of the z-modules. So this is sort of similar situation when you have to glue together different Schubert cells in order to get fundamental class. And here something similar, I mean, something different happens. So these two classes, either of them, generates a free z-module. But when you take their sum, their sum gives a two-torsion module. So actually, as the generator of the other z-module, you can either pick this class or this class. And either of them gives you a generator of the z-module. And their difference is a two-torsion class. So some complicated phenomena start occurring when you consider flagrities. And as you go to higher dimensions, the situation gets worse. So it might happen that you have to sum together different Schubert cells. So it might happen that you have to sum together several Schubert cells. And it would be an interesting challenge to find some nice description of these homology classes. So these are maybe the right basis isn't in terms of Schubert cells, but maybe there are some nice subvarieties in the flag varieties, which could represent generators. So, additively, this is an interesting question, I think. So next I would like to discuss the multiplicative structure in the homology ring. So I haven't spoken yet about the Mottu homology of Chris Mannions. The reason is that these are much more simple. So with Mottu coefficients, if we consider the same chain complexes, since all the incidence coefficients are zero plus minus two, modulo two, all of these are just zero. So every Schubert cell represents a fundamental class with Mottu coefficients. So additively, we have a nice description of the homology of Chris Mannions. And in order to get a multiplicative description, there is this nice theorem of Borel and Hefliger from the 60s, which says that if you have complexification of a real variety, which is smooth, and the homology of the complexification is additively generated by fundamental classes of complexifications, then the conclusion is that there is a degree doubling ring isomorphism from the homology of the real points to the homology of the complex points. And this map is given by the complexification of cycles. So if you have fundamental class of a real sub variety, you take its complexification and this map is an isomorphism. So applying this to the case of Chris Mannions and flag varieties, this implies that the Mottu, little with Richard's and coefficients are the same. So little with Richard's and coefficients over Chris Mannions are just integers. You can take their Mottu reduction and these are going to give you the same structure constants of the corresponding Schubert varieties over the reals. So there's a nice modern point of view on this theorem and this was introduced by Hausmann-Holland-Puppet. So this is the theory of conjugation spaces. So the observation is that you have a Z2 action acting on the total space of such a complexification with the fixed point set or the set of real points. So for example, there's a Z2 action on complex Chris Mannion with fixed point set, the real Chris Mannion. So this sort of suggests that one should use Z2 equivariant cohomology to study this question. So the simplest example you can draw down is the case of CP1, where complex conjugation acts by reflecting to the plane through the equator and the equator is just RP1. So here you see explicitly that the fixed point set of this Z2 action is just the real projective line. So what's important for us is that conjugation spaces are topological class of Z2 equivariant spaces which have the property that they have a degree helping isomorphism from the cohomology of the total space to the cohomology of the fixed point set. So this is the inverse of the map that we saw earlier which maps the fundamental class of a real cycle to its complexification. And later Van Hommel showed that under the conditions of the Poirot and Heftiger's theorem, if one takes the fixed point set of the complexification that, so that this, sorry, this map copper maps the fundamental class of the complexification to the fundamental class of the real points. So this gives a modern point of view on the Poirot and Heftiger's theorem and an alternative proof. So we're interested in the multiplicative structure of even flag varieties, for example, even Grassmanians. And we can consider the following identification. So pick CN and forget the complex structure and just retain the U1 action given by the complex structure. So you can think of CN as R2N with the U1, a real linear U1 action. And this, any such linear action on R2N induces an action on the Grassmanian. So this action induces an action, a U1 action on the Grassmanian. And the second observation is that if you have a real subspace in CN which is even dimensional, then it is complex if and only if it is invariant under this U1 action. Well, indeed, because by definition, the subspace is complex if and only if it is closed under complex multiplication. So by this observation, we get that the fixed point set of this U1 action can be identified with a smaller complex Grassmanian since the invariant subspaces just correspond to fixed points on the Grassmanian. So let me point out that so we have a U1 action on the double-sized, even Grassmanian, a real Grassmanian, the fixed point set of the smaller complex Grassmanian. And the dimension of this reverse Manian is double the dimension of the complex Grassmanian. So this sort of indicates that one might look for some U1-equivariant analog of these conjugation spaces. And also if one chooses the flags defining the Schubert varieties carefully, then the fixed point set of the Schubert varieties turn out to be the smaller complex Schubert varieties in the complex Grassmanian. And there is a topological class of U1 spaces with this property. So now the Z2 action is replaced by a U1 action and F2 coefficients are replaced with rational coefficients. So there's a topological class of U1 spaces with such a multiplicative degree of isomorphism which have the property that for some nice sub varieties they map them to the fundamental class of the fixed point set. And the theorem says that these even flag varieties are circle spaces with a fixed point set the smaller complex flag varieties. And in particular, this degree-halfing map maps for the fundamental class of such a double Schubert variety to the fundamental class of the smaller complex Schubert variety. In particular, this tells us what the ring structure is on the even dimensional, on these even flag varieties namely the little with Richardson coefficients describe the structure constants of these double Schubert varieties. A question when you say circle space does the same thing as U1 space, right? Not entirely. So that's a more stringent definition. So U1 spaces are, so circle spaces are particular class of U1 spaces which have, I didn't say what the definition is. So the definition involves equivangent cohomology. What's important for us is really this degree-halfing ring isomorphism property. So using this, we can conclude what the cohomology of the even flag varieties are, even real flag varieties are since we know the cohomology ring structure of the complex flag varieties. So this ties back then to our original motivation namely obtaining lower bounds in Schubert calculus. So in the end, what we get is that any double Schubert problem has a lower bound the half size complex Schubert problem. So if you have such a Schubert problem, which is real and indexed by these double partitions or doubled order set partitions, then there is a lower bound given by a corresponding complex Schubert problem. So here are some examples. So in the case of this Schubert problem, which is a problem in Grassman 8R16, we get an upper bound by doing the computation in the complex Grassmanian. So this gives an upper bound 70. And to get the lower bound, we can consider a smaller Schubert problem, smaller Grassmanian do the computation there and that gives a lower bound to this enumerative problem. In particular, this is one of the instances of the balance of space problem that I mentioned earlier where a complete list of the possible solutions appears. So as you can see here, there's some larger jumps. And however, this is more general. So this doesn't restrict to the problem of the subspaces, namely, for example, we can consider this problem in Grassman 8R16 and do the computation in the complex Grassmanian which gives an upper bound of this number, do the computation in a smaller Grassmanian which gives a lower bound of this number and in between the number of solutions are not understood. So we get a lower bound and upper bound and some solutions in between. So even, I would like to emphasize that this approach has its severe limitations. So not every Schubert variety has such a chronological interpretation. So many Schubert varieties do not have fundamental classes at all. And however, the Schubert problems without such a chronological counterpart are still very meaningful and challenging. So Frank Sotil and his collaborators did many simulations for example, using computer and they observed different possible solutions. So none of these problems, for example, have any chronological interpretation. However, as you can see, there's many possible solutions appearing for these Schubert problems. And there's also some interesting phenomena, some interesting lower bounds, some jumps. So it would be really nice to have a general theory for these real Schubert problems. So that's what I wanted to say. Thank you. Thank you. Let's thank the speaker. Very nice talk. And


Hello everyone, bonjour à tous, chag-sa-mère. Tonight at Sunset, Jewish communities in Canada and around the world will celebrate Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. Rosh Hashanah is the beginning of the high holidays culminating in Yom Kippur. Normally, it's a time for families and loved ones to reflect on the past year and come together to pray, share meals, and their hopes for the future. This year, we may not be able to celebrate in person, but we'll continue to dip apples and honey and pray for a sweet and healthy New Year for our friends and family and for all Canadians. And as you take part in celebrations over the next few days, please follow official health guidelines to celebrate responsibly, maintain physical distance from others, and wash your hands frequently. While the last months have been very difficult with COVID-19, let's look at optimism, the new year to come. And as Jewish communities have been doing since the beginning of the pandemic, continue to close our eyes. May you support a local organism, or may you be present for your neighbors and our essential workers. You have helped our fellow citizens. Since the beginning of the pandemic, you've shown us the best of what it means to serve your community. And today is a chance for all of us to celebrate the many contributions of Jewish Canadians. It's also a time to recommit to fighting anti-Semitism, hatred, and discrimination in all their forms. We will always stand with the Jewish community and stand united against hate. And together, we will make our world a better one. Know that our government will always be by your side and will do everything in its power to act against anti-Semitism, hatred, and discrimination in all its forms. Together, we will build a more inclusive Canada. On behalf of our family, Sophie and I wish you a healthy, peaceful, and prosperous New Year. Shana Tova, Omeduka.


Hello and welcome everybody to this latest act of learning special interest group webinar series from Walt and I'm delighted that Deborah Arnold's here today to share her toolkit which is a fantastic resource just as we go through these few slides to get us started if anybody's interested in getting involved with our group please sign up with us join our I'll give you skills in a second of where you can join up and join the group events there's currently this week going on tell fest was a fantastic free event for people to join if you still got two days to sign up and join on things is all the things of obviously the Debra's presentation today and then the active learning network have a global festival learning coming up in April so if anybody's interested wants to submit a proposal there's the link in all there for that yeah so if you want I'll post this in the chat later if you want to get involved with us and join the group I'll post that in the chat so please do and we have other resources and things on our website you can meet the community there's our blog and you can see past recordings of our webinar series so at this point I'm gonna pass over to Deborah who's gonna talk us through the elem for life dynamic toolkit so without less than just more to me gonna pass over Debra okay thank you very much Richard and welcome to everybody thank you for taking time out of your lunch breaks to to join this session I'm actually joining from France so one hour ahead I was able to have my lunch at a normal time but as you could tell from my accent I am of British origin I just left the country about 30 years ago so I work as national and international projects coordinator for O'Neige which is a member association called a digital university for management and economics now we're not a university per se because France doesn't have anything like the open university but we support our members in pedagogical innovation creating open educational resources and we also have a mandate from the French Ministry of Education to represent all the French digital universities from the different disciplinary fields in international projects and this is where the elem for life project comes in so I'm just gonna give you a bit of background because Richard said that this was my toolkit I prefer to use the collective hour toolkit from the from the project elem for life which developed this so let's get this right from before where are we here we go oh no I don't want to do that I want to do that for the screen share and so this is from the elem for life website we can share the links in the chat later so you'll be able to just see here the different partners that were involved so from O'Neige we were the coordinators of this project which finished last year so it was an Erasmus plus project and I know perhaps some of you are sad that UK organisations can no longer participate in Erasmus plus for the reasons that we that we know in this project we had the University of Dundee and I'd particularly like to highlight their contribution in particular Helen Booth who is a learning technologist at University of Dundee and who is herself an alt member because the the toolkit that I'm going to show you Helen was very much involved in in creating that alongside also Magdalena Juzinska from the Warsaw University of Technology who was in charge of the overall design so it really is a collective effort and other things that I'm going to show you have also come from this this wonderful partnership and we go back a long way if you end up on this page on the site you'll see that we go back to 2003 so nearly 20 years history of collaboration this was our sixth project we're taking a little bit of a break right now but looking forward to continuing the collaborations and also to seeing the dynamic toolkit being used Richard that he knows of students who reference it use it and we're hearing feedback all the time from from teachers who find it useful so I hope you will too so you're probably very curious to see what the toolkit looks like so I jumping in here with a live demo it is designed to be extremely simple to use so it shouldn't fail on me and just to go through some of the the principles behind this what we had from a previous project was a framework of soft skills where we had digital skills here we call them here we consider them digital soft skills so they're not the technical digital skills they're all about communicating through the digital technology methodological skills things like learning to learn analytical skills personal skills and then social skills so everything to do with collaboration negotiation and so on so this was a framework developed and validated to a series of focus groups in a previous project and that we now use to classify the different methods in the dynamic toolkit we also classified them by methods or by modalities we know now that these modalities are less clearly distinguished especially with all the practices that came to light during during the pandemic but at the time when we designed this we did separate blended face-to-face and online and we also had outdoor activities as well which is which is very nice for active learning we also found that teachers were very very interested in knowing which particular activities could be done in a very short time slot which were more for a long duration through a month for a semester some of these you actually need to build on them at progressively in different sessions and then group size was an important factor and as many of us know it's very challenging to do active learning in large group sizes so the idea here was to enable filtering of these what we have in the complete list are 30 selected methods all of these were identified through desk were tried and tested with pilot teachers and also integrated other outputs from the LN project which I'll show you at the end but if we just come back to the filter I'll just do a very quick filter on social skills obviously the more we filter the less choices we have but if we filter the the social skills and the example that I want to show you here is is brainstorming because this technique is perhaps one of the the richest the the the most richly documented in the in the dynamic toolkit so we have a short description we have a case study which is a video which is also a standalone video on YouTube and it's also integrated into the LN for life MOOC which I'll mention again at the end we have a list of the different tools that can be used as a pedagogical scenario to help teachers actually implement this there is information here quite simple information about assessment here we're not really considered with assessing this particular method and additional resources either scientific articles and then connection with other methods in the toolkit so that's the main body of the of the entry in the dynamic toolkit on the right we see let me move up to the stop sorry if I'm making people dizzy with the with the scrolling the whole sheet is downloadable as a PDF so you can take it away look at it offline make notes on it there are examples of actual practice from teachers who have who have used it and again this was where we enriched the dynamic toolkit in the second half of the project after we'd produced all the content for the for the MOOC we decided to re-inject some of this into into the method so it was a really circular process of describing the methods testing them in the pilot projects using the results of the pilot projects to create the MOOC using the results of the MOOC to enrich the dynamic toolkit so we can for example see here the the play card as an infographic which summarizes the process to go through the definition of the the topic and so on okay and I'm sorry to see messages in that it's not working okay so coming back to the dynamic toolkit we also have the description of which soft skills from the framework this method mobilizes and helps students to develop the appropriate modalities that can be used although I think inventive teachers could now do brainstorming completely online I'm sure that's possible and I'm sure there are examples of of this group size here it's been classified as individual but with notes no particular cost involved for some of the other methods where you need to use particular tools we mentioned the cost although we were very careful about associating these different methods and techniques with free open access tools and then the different categories that that the method is appropriate for and so that's really what we have times 30 for all the different methods now I'm just looking at the time 12 minutes past past one for you in the in the UK and Ireland we could have a quick run-through from from the the participants if you want to put in the chat a particular method that you're interested in or particular types of activities that you want to look at we can see what else is in the is in the dynamic toolkit so I'll go back to the homepage does anybody want to suggest filters or particular methods the outdoor mode okay let's see what is classified under the outdoor mode this is a leap in the dark for me what do we have okay we have real-world missions this was because this was also a transnational project with people from different languages we had a lot of discussion about what we meant by outdoor and I and I think native English speakers would think that outdoor is learning outdoors in nature but for the majority of the partners outdoors meant outside the institution so this is why we have things like real-world mission within companies and it's interesting that I never managed to convince the rest of the pit that outdoors was really outdoors in in nature so this is why we have these examples here so we have the we have the real-world missions within companies let me go back we have experiential learning okay which is also linked to to the to the mission we have problem-based learning and we have participation of higher education students in associations so these are more external to to what goes on within the within the universities and other higher education institutions so sorry to support you that we didn't have nature-based activities but if anybody does have nature-based activities to contribute this would help make the the dynamic toolkit even more dynamic by bringing in new activities and does anybody have examples of active learning techniques and methods that aren't included in the in the dynamic toolkit such as these things that we could explore to to enrich and bring in further participants can also speak if they wish I suppose voices activated for those who can I want this is not just a one-way presentation I'd also like to have a discussion and question and answer here thank you Richard a challenge I like the idea of it still being called outdoor so villain did that that means that our definition of outdoor is acceptable to you or that we should refine it and really restrict outdoor to outdoors activities in the sense of outside in the wider world we're just to have my tuppence worth in there I yeah originally thought it was outdoor as an outside of the the institution outdoors so I found it confusing I think clarification around that might help for those who are native English speakers but in saying that any of the activities that are in there you could do outside really if you thought about it yeah you can do brainstorming outside you can do yeah I'm gonna see about about tweaking that term so that it relates more closely to to those four methods that are collected under outdoor yeah but I find it it's very useful when you go through this to give you ideas for me it's all about triggering ideas this toolkit and it gets you started if you're a bit stuck or you want to try something you don't know where to go so I do you find it is is a fantastic resource nice shirt with with our staff to get them up and running to think about running okay that's thanks Richard I mean that was exactly the intention I mean we give scenarios but they're not prescriptive scenarios they're examples of what other teachers have done for inspiration rather than being you know recipes that you that you have to follow and and I think the the way many of us teaching in higher education is is really based on that being inspired by examples from from our peers because I also teach myself and beyond being the project coordinator here I also teach on a fully online course and I teach project management and so if I went back to the dynamic toolkit when I talk when I took on this course to see how I could make what was very a very traditional online course when I inherited it how I could make that more active and bring an active learning in a purely online setting with an additional challenge of a very very large cohort of 80 students so I was combining many of those challenges and constraints on my own course and the dynamic toolkit did help me although I still obviously I'm in a process of continuous improvement of that course as well and Ian's asking is the toolkit only in English it is for now we do have plans to produce a French version but we will be hosting those on our own on edge website and we will probably we haven't decided yet if we reproduce the whole dynamic version or if we concentrate on the on the downloadable PDFs but there is a plan for a French version what other language versions would would be useful I was just can you hear me all right yes I can Ian thanks yeah it would be quite useful because I deal quite a lot with Spanish Chinese Spanish Chinese Korean I'm not saying there's about five different languages that we end up dealing with but it sometimes some of the people we deal with they might find it useful to have a sort of toolkit in their own language rather than just in English we're translating quite a lot of our material from English to all the other languages and we're dealing with quite a lot of different institutions around the world about we've got 56 at the moment and these are all educators but some of them might need a little bit of help on these sort of activities because it probably would be useful if you know that's why I said it be quite useful even if there was a PDF version of different languages as you were hinted at rather than so you might have the English but then if you wish to download a PDF of it in your own language here it is that might be useful okay well on that note I should say that all of the results of the LN for Life project are published as open educational resources with a Creative Commons license so anybody is free to take these and to adapt them translate them and I agree that just taking the PDFs and translating them and making them available is perhaps the optimal solution especially because as many projects this one has come to the end of its funding period although as I said before LN as a network an informal network is very solid we don't actually have the time apart from the commitment to maintaining the website for at least five years so if anybody wants to take on the translation and adaptation and perhaps as well this is just a call out to Richard the ALSIG could actually serve as a federating point for us to keep each other up to date on what we've done in terms of translations and then I can see with the team behind this the LN for Life website what we can do as well about making those translations and adaptations visible but as we all know open educational resources take on a life of their own once they're adopted and adapted by the community so that is also part and parcel of the spirit of LN and these Erasmus plus projects in general it's actually a condition of the European Commission we publish everything as open educational resources because it's using community funding they were just eating has her hand up she want to come in yes I didn't either in the chat or speaking every hand up or is it a you were free to grab the microphone if you want to say something or your makes not working okay okay but if you want to pop it in the chat then then I'll pick it up and reply okay thanks very much okay so in the last five minutes I just wanted to show you some of the other what platforms you host these on this is actually a word press website and the LN for life dynamic toolkit was was developed using a word press plug-in get in touch with Helen Booth from University of Dundee for more details on on that and so yes thank you Luke okay so just to wind up what we also have and this is what we did at the end of the project we realized that we had so many useful things that we learned and created during the project that we produced this lessons learnt kit in the form of ten key takeaways so things like a checklist of how to identify of how to implement active learning in higher education there's the evaluation report from the MOOC and I'll show you the MOOC in a moment we collected some good practice examples in well that is the dynamic toolkit so sorry a circular reference again we looked at synergies between higher education and the corporate sector because we were focusing on soft skills for employability we also created again for the corporate sector a ten minute micro course because that was a demand that was coming in from from companies who were very interested in the dynamic toolkit but companies being companies they want is really really quick and short so I invite you to take a look at that as well we can put the link to that in the in the chat sorry and let me do that multitasking okay what else do we have we had a specific report from Poland again from the corporate sector we had an expert discussion blog from the French event that we ran and then we collected a whole series of videos from our final conference which was the LN for life knowledge exchange again hosted by the University of Dundee so you've got all those resources there as well that you can now delve into to see what what the project produced and then finally the MOOC active learning for soft skills development which is a self-paced MOOC but it is a discussion based MOOC so a lot of effort went into the design of this to encourage the sharing of experiences amongst participants and very very professionally produced by the whole partnership but carried by our partners at Polytechnico de Milano and this is the Polytechnico bespoke MOOC platform which is Poc Polymy open knowledge and so here you have the like on any MOOC platform you have the dates this is the current iteration if you ever go to this link and can't find it then just do a search for active learning for soft skills development as soon as the session finishes a new one opens it's completely free and here we've got as I said we've got the the the videos that were produced by teachers who piloted the dynamic toolkit we've got the play cards the stimulus for reflection and discussion and also helping teachers learning designers educational advisors and so on in devising your own plan for your own sessions and courses so it really is a fantastic resource for continuing professional development and that's the last pitch I will do we have one minute left so I will stop sharing my screen but I'll just post this link into the chat as well sorry I'm moving my screens around and like over perhaps to Richard to close for the last minute or 30 seconds of this lunchtime I'll see webinar and I hope you found it interesting next ever was very interesting was good seeing somebody else go through it as well I don't know if is anybody got any questions at this point you can take them in the chat or grab the microphone I'm gonna stop the recording so thank you for that


Hi, it's Bridget. Welcome to Sunday Morning Coffee with Bridget. Today, we're going to talk about patterns. All right, so we're going to talk about how patterns help us and how they hinder us. Okay, so help and hinder. So if you have watched any of my videos about intuition and energy or if we've worked together in private session, you've heard me use the term patterns, patterning, and oftentimes I use it as a way to to show you the transparency of what is naturally occurring in your life. The transparency of what is naturally occurring in your life, how things are unfolding. There's a pattern to all of this. If we could zoom up into the atmosphere and look down, we would see all the patterns, the patterns in nature. We would see all the patterns in the way that we've created things and to help us give us a framework, a perspective and how to communicate and connect everything that we do is based on patterns. These are also connected to the rhythms and cycles of life like the seasons or the dawn of the day and the evening night. There are all these patterns that are in place to give us a form, a structure, a little bit of an outline to help us out as we're bumping around in these clunky human bodies. So let's talk about how patterns help us. Oftentimes I think people forget, especially in spiritual work, especially in psychic work, healing work, energy practices. We talk a lot. Practitioners, just like myself, we talk a lot about patterns and we use that to show the transparency of that which is negative or that which is hurting us or that which is not helpful to us. And I want to intentionally flip that and start by talking about how patterns help you. How do patterns help you? So take a second here. Other words for pattern might be routine.  Start at the beginning of the day and think about routine. Now that routine is a pattern. It lends itself to the transparency then of how your life unfolds. If your pattern is a pattern that is healthy and helpful, then your life will be supported by that pattern. Healthy and helpful would be things like, obviously, choices about food, choices about beverages, choices about intake as far as inputs into your body sensory-wise, such as the shower, the hot or cold of the shower, the lotion that you put on, the scent of the body spray that you wear or the cologne or the shampoo that you use or the the input such as do you turn on the news or do you, which might be considered, we might think of that maybe in the hindering category. So let's think about this way. The the communication inputs that you get like podcast or audio, maybe you listen to music in the morning to start your day. Maybe you listen to a book or poetry. Maybe you journal. Oh, that would be me. Maybe you do some cards. Cards, what's that Bridget? Okay, so if you are listening to this on Above Life channel, you might not know I have another channel, a YouTube channel called Fairy Grasshopper. Fairy Grasshopper on YouTube and that channel I do card readings. I use Oracle cards or second card decks. Kind of like Taroba, not really, that's not what I usually use, and I do readings there and that's a positive input. That's something that starts my day in a way that supports me. Me, Bridget, so then I can support you, all of you, right? So that's what cards are. So those are positive inputs. Those are the what's coming in, what I'm taking in. And so your morning routine is totally sensory. It's auditory. It's physical and physical body. It is heart-based on the interactions or communications you might have with your roommates, other people, significant others in your life, including children, that kind of a thing, right? And all of those things affect you in the way that your life is unfolding. Now, when you are conscious of your patterns, then you have more power through your choices to co-create, work with life, work with those cool tools, techniques, simple choices to put you in a good mood, put you in a rhythm that creates a pattern that supports your energy to be uplifted, to move forward. The momentum is lovely and the motivation is movement-based and just feels really good and rhythmic. And it might not be, whoo, pick me up. Let's go. Come on. It might not be that. You might not be the, let's go to the cycling class at 6 a.m. You might be the type that's like, hey, my pattern in the morning, Bridget, I'm telling you, my pattern in the morning is to be mellow and ease into the day. I hear you. I'm raising my hand right now. Me too. However, I think my husband would say, I wake up talking because I do sometimes, especially in the summer months. When the sun is out a lot, I love the solar energy, so it gives me an extra charge of battery juice overnight. When I wake up and I see that sunrise, really positive input for me is seeing the sun rise in the morning and looking at the clouds in the sky. That, that is a sweet, sweet connection for me. And that inspires me and gets me feeling real good. So I get it when you need to ease into the morning and do simple things. And that's easy when you're not getting up late, trying to drop the kids off at school, packing lunches, packing your own lunch because you're trying to be healthy, all this stuff. There's a lot of thought that goes in to the morning, to the routines or patterns that you have in the morning. I get that, but the morning or the start of the day for you, whatever that might be, because it actually might be evening or later in the day for you, depending on your work and such and your, your style. And the, the energy that goes into recognizing through your awareness how impactful patterns are when you start your day, that's beginning. You're beginning, beginning, beginning. Now you might be falling back into old patterns, autopilot stuff, which autopilot and falling into patterns back into patterns, like old patterns, et cetera, as long as the habits of the patterns and the behaviors connected to the patterns are healthy and helpful to you. And if they're not, and you still fall back into a pattern, something that you maybe got out of sync with and not a pattern with, maybe, maybe you used to like to walk in the morning, get into like a mile walk before you go to work or something or start your day, then, and you've gotten out of habit of that. And so you feel kind of bad and there's a little bit of guilt. So what you do then is you don't want to introduce negativity and bully yourself, be mean to yourself, belittle yourself through your brain and push yourself into changing the pattern. What you want to do is inspire yourself. So how you do that is you, to support a healthy pattern, when you recognize you're not in one, or you want something to be different with your patterns, new beginnings, fresh starts every day. What you do is you soften your energy and you imbue compassion in your heart. Be compassionate for yourself. Folks, this is what self-love is all about. In these moments, when you have patterns and you've done good for a while or you don't haven't done good forever and you want to make a change or create a change or introduce a change, new day beginnings. Constant opportunity to practice grace with yourself and forgiveness for what you haven't done. Bygones, bygones, bygones, let the past be the past and today is the present. And you have another chance tomorrow and then it's another fresh start. So no excuses about that. No beating yourself up. Don't get stuck in self-bullying. Use self-love and self-care by giving yourself compassion from the heart space, from your empathic energy. Use that to support your pattern shifts gently, gently, gently. Okay? Then now that we've talked about like the helpfulness of patterns and how patterns can support you as far as creating a rhythm to your life and allowing and recognizing that life is unfolding, how you have chosen it. It doesn't feel like it sometimes you feel like autopilot. Autopilot doesn't mean you don't have choice. You have choice. Is it an inspired choice? That's a question for you to consider and you have the answer to that. You have the, and guess what? Guess what my friends? The answer to that for you could be different every day. Your routine might be different on different days. There's nothing wrong with different. There's nothing wrong with that. And so when we look at the patterns of things, what is commonly known or focused is on the shadow of things. Like, oh, that's a pattern, which means old belief system, which means this is a problem, which means this is a habit, a bad habit, air quotes, bad habit that I just have. Like this is just a problem. I have issues, all blah, blah, blah, all that, right? That if you have a pattern of behavior that you don't like, of course you're going to look at patterns and the concept of patterns as something that's negative or challenging for you, but it does not have to be that way. So I invite you on the shadow side of pattern to use it. Use the transparency of the pattern to shine lights through the cracks of the negative personification that you have in your human form and your human life of the patterns. You can do that. You can do this. I'm not suggesting that by shining a light onto the pattern that you are required to take action. No. Your first step is always, always awareness. Always awareness. Never action as a first step. Action is a response. If that's the first place you go, it's a response, a response, a response. And it's likely being coming from, it's likely coming from the survivalist mind that you have. You don't need that. That's not helpful to you.  And you can use the shadow or the negative patterns or the patterns that you feel are not that healthy for you. And you can recognize and acknowledge through your awareness that you would like a change. Or you can simply hold your own space, be compassionate for yourself and say, you can say, when you recognize and you have awareness of this, you can say, not now, not now. I am not going to change this pattern now. That is not the choice I'm going to make today. You might wake up tomorrow and it might be the day to make a new choice, a different choice. And guess what? Every day is the pattern for a new beginning to occur. You can rely on the consistency of the day and the day and the day. New days all the time, new beginnings all the time, that is consistent. You can rely on that. There is no uncertainty in days. They come again, they come again, and you focus on the positive intention of that. And that alone is inspiring. Tomorrow is a new day. And why wait? Allow yourself to love inside the shadow, to soften the edginess of this dark, scary place cave-like that the shadow, it gets such a bad reputation for that. It's not that. It does not have to be that. We do not need to stereotype the shadow. We do not need you to judge it. That's like the last thing you need to be doing. You don't want to start a new pattern of that, do you? I don't think so. So notice the healthy patterns. And when you notice unhealthy patterns or things that don't make you feel emotionally good, it might not be that the world decides that this is a bad pattern. So therefore, this is something that I should change. It might be that you think, you know, I know that I feel better when I meditate. So even if it's 10 minutes, I'm going to do that. And I'm going to attempt to honor a pattern of maybe three times a week doing a meditation. And if I do it more, yay, that's great. And if I don't, so what? I'm attempting to start a pattern, a repetitive, consistent pattern. Because you just happen to notice that that's good for you. If that works for you, for example, just simple, simple, very simple. So we've talked about patterns today. And I talk about this a lot when I work with energy. And I talk about things like energy grids and energy patterning and how it affects you as a person and how it affects the way you feel and your mood and especially empathic energy, which empath is heart based, which we all are, we get a lot of information from our feelings. And it's about time that we work with that to the best of our ability to support us, not to look to weed the garden of what's bad. We get to embrace all of ourselves, all parts of us, including these patterns that maybe are starting to become out of place or too small or old school for you. And you don't like that. If you don't like it, if it doesn't feel good, you can change it. Gentle, subtle changes. And guess what? It doesn't have to be right now today. You can say when you are aware of the pattern, you can say not now, not now. And you just set it aside because, because don't worry, I assure you, don't worry, don't worry not, don't you worry now. That pattern will come up again, especially if it needs a change in. If it needs to change, it's going to ask over and over and over again until there's something else that helps to break the cycle of the old thought pattern that will set the heart free to use that positive empathic momentum to change it, to open you up in healthy, helpful, and positive ways. Lots of hope in this space regarding patterns, regarding shadow. Don't be afraid.  You powerful, energetic spirit being. I see you. I see you from all the way over here. You shine beautiful in that heart space. Use the patterns. Use the info. Embrace your awareness and acknowledge the power of your choices. It doesn't mean you have to take action. It means acknowledge through awareness the power that you have to choose every single day. All right. I feel like I just coached y'all. How do you feel about that? See, intuitive coaching, pretty good. That's what I do in my work and private session and in my groups, too. So keep eyes out for that, for the cool services and things that I offer and share. So I'm Bridget. Thanks so much for listening. I hope I've inspired your spirit today and filled you with hope. The purpose of the work here on Above Life channel is to encourage you to live your life. This is your unique individual lifetime. It's yours. Craft it. Grab it with both hands and embrace it. Embody it. It is your life after all. So live it. Just live it. Thanks for being here.


Good morning everybody. It's technically still morning. I'm looking at the clock. It's 1042 AM August 2nd. I only know that because it's my birthday. So here we'll break away right here. I got this cute little voicemail from my dad this morning when he and mom called and I wasn't near the phone, so I didn't hear it right away. Yes, I did call them back and talk to them for a bit. But he left me this cute little message. Fun fact, my parents, one or both of them call and they do this every single year, all 57 years of my life. So here you can listen here. Hey wonderful daughter. Happy birthday to you. Talk to you sometime today, maybe, when you get to your phone and read the message. And hear my beautiful singing. So we're gonna actually get on the road and go for a little drive for a couple of hours and maybe drive to the coast, get some lunch out or something like that. The garage floor is still drying and we can't really close the door all the way till like Tuesday. Everything's locked up. And there's nothing in the garage for anybody to steal, but an old hammer. So if you really want it, have at it. Anyway, you can't get in the house and we've got security cameras everywhere. So if you do get in, we've got your face on camera. Well, by the time you post it, we'll be done anyway. Won't we? Yeah, we'll be finished. But you know, that's not the point. Anyway, we've got security. Yeah, security. All right, so we're gonna hit the road and we will bring you with us if we do anything fun or shopping or, you know, whatever we do, I don't know what we're doing. Can't do much, you know, hello pandemic. So anyway, we'll be back. We'll pictures here that I could take from the car. Even if we wanted to stop and get a better shot, there was no place to stop. We're in Cape Kewanda. Kewanda, K-I-W-A-N-D-A. Yeah, near the Oregon coast. And I have to tell you all, for a world in a country that's in the midst of a pandemic, I know Bob and I are out driving and we're kind of contributing. It's very people-y out there. There's a lot of people walking around, not only a lot of people visiting, not a lot of people driving through like we're doing. They're stopped, they're walking around and they're no masked. There's a lot of people, more than I expected. Probably not as many as normal, but more than I expected.  We stopped at a local Fred Meyer to use the facilities and get some food. And with literally, we've just been in the car. This is the first time we've gotten out of the car, but look at the view behind me. It's pretty good, huh? Happy birthday to me. Hey guys, it is Monday, Monday, August 3rd, 2.41 PM. I haven't vlogged all day today, I've been busy. So I edited the vlog for last week, but it took me three times of starting and stopping my computer, because for whatever reason, the screensaver I was using was causing the computer to freeze. And after much Googling and much trying of different things, I switched screensavers and now it's working fine. Yeah, it's Monday, did I say that? But I did get it done, and I got my writing for the week done and everything's scheduled and posted and all of that jazz. I also got, ta-da, the wall behind me emptied. And we're all ready to hang the pegboard as soon as Happy has time. And I got things mostly, I think, organized into the bins and trays that I want to use that came in. I have a few Dollar Tree things that will work with a clip that I want to use too. I need to make sure I don't lose these because I think I'm probably going to have some parts I'm going to want to take back. I do have some of these elastic bands, but I think these are, I think I already had these, but I have some of these other, what are they called, they're for the status. I don't know, anyway, they look like this. I'm going to be using a couple of them, but there's too many, I think. So I'm going to want to return some of them. Okay, folks, we're out for our evening walk before dinner. It's warm, but it's not as hot as it's been. And to be honest with you, we're both dragging today, it feels so like Monday. I'd like to go take a nap, which is funny because I know we worked on the garage floor this weekend, but literally yesterday we did nothing, but plant our butts in a car and go drive around. But we're both dragging today. Okay, so I got everything in the garage. I can get in the garage. Oh, oh, God. So that pile knows basically all the smalls. There's his big toolbox and the table saw and the chop saw. They are too heavy for me. And even though the toolbox has four wheels on it, it's too big. I can't end heavy. I can't move it by myself. So yeah, I have to wait till he's done working. But the good news is it'll be a lot less of a process than he thought because I had some time this afternoon and I got all the smalls in here. So the floor is dry. It's not sticky. There's still a couple of loose pieces of, you know, the garage confetti, AKA garage herpes on the floor, but that's fine. He's gonna power wash the driveway this weekend because yeah, there you go. Because there's some of the dry cleaner. That's not epoxy. That's some of the stuff we used to clean the garage. It didn't quite rinse away completely. Hopefully he can get it off of the power washer. So, but after we, that'll be this weekend after we load the garage. And we also are gonna be taking down those this weekend. And my parents have been quarantining at home as have we, as you know. So they're asking if they can come help. So I'm gonna leave that up to Bob. I'm okay with it as long as nobody's been traveling or exposed to people they shouldn't be. So anyway, I am gonna go inside now. I'm gonna finish this and have another one. And yeah, I'm not tired anymore. Good news. So anyway, and I got a lot of steps in, I think. I would see. You have almost 5,000 steps now, which I didn't have that many before. It's all good. All right. Onto the next. Good morning. Technically it's still morning. It's Wednesday, August 5th, I think, 10.47 a.m. Obviously I'm in the car. Wednesday seems to be my run to the post office day. Where I drop off at the orders and check out the keel box and stuff. And I have two more paper grocery sacks full of purged stuff. So I need to pick up more boxes to pack them with. There's the mail person. And no, I can't just stop the car and ask her to pick if she'll take the boxes because they won't do that. Anyway, I need to check on the keel box and I need to get some party mail boxes anyway. So I'm gonna go to where I'm down there. It is Thursday. Obviously I'm out getting the mail. I don't think there's anything in here for me. I think it's all for the son-in-law. Yep, he still gets mail here even though they have their own house now. Mostly it's just junk, but anyway. He always tells me, why don't you throw it away?  Anyway, I got a couple of slow stitching projects today. If you're watching this clip, he saw some clips of that. I got another meditation journal page done. I got two more pages of my slow stitch books all sewn together, which is amazing because if you could see my art room, it is a disaster. I moved everything that was on the shelves and in the bins on the small bits bank wall off and sorted, organized, purged, wrapped up two more purge boxes. They're listed right now in the Etsy shop. Link is below. But it means that there is stuff on every conceivable surface in the art room. And there's not much room to work on art, but I did find a little space, so that works. And yeah, it's all good. Bob has a late afternoon meeting, I think, for work. And then we're gonna head over to our weekly date night, AKA the grocery store. It is three or something on Friday, August 7th. We're out for a walk. Husbands upstairs working. Kids are all coming over for dinner later, but the house is already clean. Dishes are done. Before I have lunch, I think I'm gonna just go for a walk. I'm having one of those sort of blah, blah, blah days. I think especially because of COVID, you all get it. So anyway, I thought an invigorating little walk in the fresh air, I do have a mask because I'm guessing because it's Friday lunchtime and kids aren't in school, that it's probably gonna be people who are down near the park, so I'm probably gonna need this. But I'm going to turn on one of my playlists and listen to some music, probably Andrea Bocelli, and go for a walk and get some fresh air and some vitamin D, and then go back and have lunch and then see what else we can get up to. All right, I'll be back. August 8th, I think, I know, 6 a.m. We are getting ready for another day of working on the garage and stuff. And hopefully at some point today we get my pegboard hung up finally. I've been waiting like a week. Oh, you saw me. I gotta tell you, I haven't even like used it yet. Love it. I can see everything. I can get to the washi tape real easy. I can see all my trims. It also helps me keep control of how many trims I have because I'm one of these people that if you don't give me a designated capacity space to store stuff in for art supplies especially, then I will just keep adding and adding and adding. And so I need to limit myself, which is why this kind of system or the drawers and bins work for me. Plus I can find everything, which I love. And if it's in a bin or a drawer, it's labeled. These aren't labeled yet. I don't think at the moment they need to be, but love it. I also have some surprising results to my latest round of fabric dye, which to be honest, I've lost track of how many days they were in the dye. I wanna say like four or five days, maybe longer, but I don't know exactly. I might be able to tell myself when I review the tape. I don't know, or the video tape. It's not tape anymore, it's video. Anyway, surprising results, which I'm gonna switch the camera around and we'll go over. This first one is basil. It was supposed to be a purple gray. And no, you don't need to adjust your camera. It's like a light beige color. So it's not purple gray at all. So I don't know if I did something wrong or if there's a different way to process the dye. I have no idea.  This is rosemary. It's nearly an identical color. It's supposed to be yellow-green. It is not yellow-green. So again, I don't know what I did wrong, but to be honest, I dumped both of these. I didn't even save them. I'm going to let the fabric is dry. I'm gonna take swatches and add them to my color book. And I'm gonna make a notation that I must have done something wrong. But yeah, they're not great colors. And I have one more of those. Should have been green. Can you see that that's almost the exact same color the fabric was when it went in there? Barely any change. So yeah, I dumped that one too. Now, the surprisingly good one was blueberries. Oh my God, people, yes, I saved this and I have more fabric dying. Look at that color.  I love that. That's blueberries. So yum-ee. With all things in art and life, some successes, some failures. So, but I love the blueberry one. It definitely is what I would call a dark blue-purple and it will lighten a bit as it dries, but I don't think it's gonna lighten a whole lot. And I'll be taking swatches of all of them and I will be making notations on the three sort of leafy ones, right? The spinach, the rosemary, the basil. There might be a different way to process the plant material to get the color out, to extract the color other than what I normally do, which is boil the crap out of it. So I'll have to do some research anyway. So that's it for today.  And I have a few more things in the purge bin again. And there's I think six boxes again in the Etsy store of purge boxes. There are descriptions in each one of the listings of the type of materials that are in each box.  And it barely covers the cost of the materials inside if it does at all, but that's okay because I just want them to go to a good home where they're gonna get used. So anyway, I think that's it for the moment. I'm gonna sit and drink some water and chill for a bit and just relax. I think I'm gonna end the day here, the week here and the day here. It's been a busy, crazy day. We got the pegboard hung, we got a bunch of stuff in the garage done. We have two to three weeks, at least before the garage cabinets come in. We just found out there's a delay in the shipment because, you know, hello COVID, but that's okay because my husband has some sorting to go through things that were pulled down off the wall and he wants to sort of start gathering like materials together and kind of going through his stash of stuff down there and seeing what he can keep and what else he can get rid of and all of that jazz. So it's a big job, but that's okay. He can take his time now and get it done. And he has time if he doesn't wanna paint in the garage, which he's kind of debating back and forth about, then he has time to get it done. So anyway, I think that's it for the moment. It's been an interesting week. COVID is giving us more interesting weeks and not, I think not necessarily interesting in a good way, but, you know, it is what it is. We're just keep it on, keep it on, right? Baby steps, that's the most important thing is that we keep moving. So I hope you're having a good one.  Don't forget to like, share and subscribe. I sure would appreciate it. And if you can support the free content here on YouTube and over in the Facebook art groups, not just for me, for all of your favorite creatives, most of them have a way to support them financially, whether it's Patreon or an Amazon affiliate link or an Etsy shop or something else. They're usually in their video descriptions. If you can't find a way to support them, check the description for a way to contact them and ask. If you're on Facebook, you can message them and ask. I know I would appreciate it and they would too. So that all being said, don't forget to go out and have a great day, have a great week and do something nice for yourself because you deserve it. I'll see you next week. Bye guys.


Welcome to The Anxious Morning. Every weekday morning, we'll take a few minutes to go over some important lessons that you can use in your anxiety recovery journey. Away from the endless noisy scroll of social media, The Anxious Morning brings you support, education, inspiration, encouragement, and empowerment. For more, visit us at TheAnxiousMorning.com Yesterday, we examined the idea that while we think that we are protecting ourselves from anxiety, panic, and fear, we are likely unable to do that, and that we are really just hanging on. We adopt a strategy designed to keep anxiety and fear at bay. Then we delude ourselves into thinking that they are succeeding, when in reality, we are doing nothing more than holding on tightly because we are terrified of the consequences of letting go. To be certain, the idea of letting go is a difficult one for most people to cozy up with. We hear about letting go all the time. As general life advice designed to teach us to not sweat over details and small stuff, it makes sense. But when confronted with what you see as a real threat to your life or your sanity, letting go is not exactly going to be at the top of your to-do list. That's okay. Nobody starts the recovery journey intending to totally let go and let the chips fall where they may. That seems patently absurd at first glance. But it is not. Letting go and allowing the worst to happen is exactly how we take our first tenuous steps toward recovery. When we let go, we stop trying to hang on, and we resign ourselves to allowing the worst to happen. When reality shows us again that the worst never happens and that we are always capable of moving through that fear to wind up okay, things start to change. This is the essence of recovery. This is how we do it. If you could just decide to let go right now, we wouldn't have much to talk about, would we? If it were that easy, everyone would just stop fighting and recover six days later. Clearly, this does not happen, so we need a plan. We need a plan for how to let go. How can you learn to do this insanely scary thing? How can you learn to let go? I'll give you one word, practice. You cannot hang on for dear life all day long as a matter of standard operating procedure. Then expect that you will be able to let go when fear is at its peak during panic.  That will never work. Instead, you need to practice. You can practice letting go in small bits. You can exercise and strengthen your letting go muscles by experimenting in smaller situations where much less appears to be on the line. The odds are high that you rarely practice letting go, so you will likely suck at it when you start this, but that's okay. Practice makes progress. If you can work on letting go at a smaller level, the idea of fully letting go when in the grips of extreme panic and fear starts to sound less absurd over time. Tomorrow, we'll talk a bit more about the concept of letting go as a practice. If you're on iTunes or Spotify or someplace where you can leave us a rating or review, take a moment and rate the podcast and maybe write a small review. It really helps us out. Or just tell a friend about us. Thanks a lot.