Here we outline three kinds of writing that we regard as making up a sufficient approach in writing, to skill: journal(ing),language(ing) of struggle and pattern language(ing).
**1 Journal(ing)**
Journal(ing) is one of three basic modes of writing in this assemblage. It's the most 'personal', in the sense of most immediate, and can be most 'poetic' too. It's the basic grounding of 'a view from somewhere': in a life, among lives, in relationship.
Writing in this first mode is fairly raw reflection, in a day in a life. Its value is that it’s not over-digested or formularised; it’s as close as possible or helpful, to whatever is presenting. It can be ‘’poetic’. Its limitation is that it’s very particular: this life, this day, here; a third person can find it hard to get context. At the same time, if the poeisis is done well there are also possibilities for recognition of alikeness (although we refuse ‘universality’ or even ‘sameness’). A **view from somewhere** is a basic commitment.
**2 Language(ing) of struggle**
Language of struggle is one of three basic modes of writing in this assemblage. It operates under the discipline of describing and invoking, as helpfully as possible, a repertoire of kinds of perception that can be usefully be brought to the dancing and weaving of an activist life. It's basic intention is to radically re-ontologise the world, and to help resolve what it takes to live an activist life 'well'.
Writing in this second mode is concerned to describe and evoke: what is an activist life-world made up of (what are we in relationships with), what is the (performative) nature of skills and, pivotally, what is the nature of the practice of **mobilising of skill**, in dance, into the flow of existence; and what, for goodness sake, does it mean to do this ‘well’?
Since these are means for living gracefully in-and-into the flow of life, we need to do this description and invocation in a somewhat narrative and contexted-situational-located way rather than in bald dictionary-compilation fashion. But radical **re-ontologising** is the basic intention, in a way that enables and invites graceful performance, elegant arcs of trajectory, a remarkable quality of eventual weave, persistence of memory.
Practically, maybe it all comes down to mobilising recognisable (danceable) patterns that have at their heart, radically altered relations of production. This **is** a politics of continuous, mundane, 'no time out' (re)production of life and social order. Altered social relations - to be added xxx
**3 Pattern language(ing)**
Pattern language(ing) is one of three basic modes of writing within this assemblage. The intention is to characterise ‘chunks of practice’ that may be mobilised and articulated together, in a design-like intentional fashion, to constitute actual practices of actual radical formations. While this mode is in a sense more technical or operational than the other tow, it remains poetic and evocative: patterns need to be 'danceable' and 'singable' into the flow of intentional practice.
Writing in this third mode addresses 'chunks' as patterns, and we understand these in the way that Chris Alexander and his colleagues exemplified when they presented a pattern language of urban and domestic space in the 70s; as **elements of order** that are experienced as present in eminently living, beautiful, habitable, well formed, convivial environments.
> We can see these three modes of storying as together constituting a kind of travelogue in the space of a life. We also might also then see them as mapped into three elements of Buddhism’s description of mind, perception and skilful, continuous encounter with experience during a life journey: *vedanā*, *sañña*, *sankhāra*. Recognition and action (theory and practice) in the dhamma - to be added xxx