Visual Connection Mapping is still open and active but no longer operating at Our Place Society on Pandora in Victoria City

Visual Connection Mapping is still open and active but no longer operating at Our Place Society on Pandora in Victoria City, Vancouver Island British Columbia Canada. Visual Connection Mapping has been privatized now.

The reason why Visual Connection Mapping is no longer operating at Our Place Society is as follows:

The new Community Engagement Programmer at Our Place Society (OPS) requested the numbers of the clients I see each week. I asked her why – as it would not benefit the clients, nor would it benefit the development of the program I invented called Visual Connection Mapping.

The request of receiving the numbers of clients I engaged with each week symbolized to me, as the Chief Operator, an evaluation of Visual Connection Mapping from the Community Engagement Programmer on to me; and it also symbolized an evaluation of the clients. To me, as the Chief Operator and Developer of Visual Connection Mapping, I knew that any form of evaluation would ruin Visual Connection Mapping and the Private and Confidential nature of the model (between the client and the helper). Engaging in any form of evaluation process with the Community Engagement Programmer from Our Place Society and Visual Connection Mapping would be a violation of trust from me to my clients and it is the exact the reason why individuals end up falling through the cracks of society in the first place.

Visual Connection Mapping needs to remain non-evaluative as that is the essence of the model.

These are the reasons why I no longer conduct Visual Connection Mapping at Our Place Society any more.

We have irreconcilable differences.

Picture of Visual Connection Mapping in the infancy stages, 2009. Title: “Trauma and Shock.” Dated February 6, 2017. Dampness has seeped onto to the paper and smudged the work but to me the smudging ink contributes to the title name of Trauma / Shock so it has an added layer of meaning to the Vick (Vick is short for Visual Connection Mapping) drawing.

Conversation starts to rise

Visual Connection Mapping is intended to convey the feeling that the individual who is talking has been listened to. Over time structures and patterns in the conversation start to rise. These developments can lead to making connections to seemingly random topics. Sometimes these random topics seem to lead to logic and clarity. The conversation gets turned into a verbal personalized story which turns into circles, triangles and squares. These circles, triangles and squares are often put into symmetrical formations. The symmetrical formations on the page is the logic and the clarity of the personalized story. The natural balance of lines, curves, triangles and circles is the thread of topics through the verbalized monologue or dialogue. It is the belief that the visual illustration shows the individual that he is being taken seriously and without any form of judgement. In contrast to visiting a counselor or general practitioner who may listen and then write down a diagnostic DSM code classifying an individual through charts, Visual Connection Mapping is based on the individuals own experience of his own existentialism versus someone else’s judgments of him. The pictures of Visual Connection Mapping provide the viewer with the opportunity to unravel his own life situations. This method is human being to human being. Human beings can help each other by intention.

 

Code of Hammurabi 1772 BC

When conducting Visual Connection Mapping sometimes I may or may not consider what is justice and what is not justice.

Three components of justice that I may / or may not consider when applying Visual Connection Mapping are from the principles of the Code of Hammurabi from 1772 BC, namely

1. actus reus
2. mens rea
3. non compos mentis

Just World Hypothesis and VCM

Sometimes / on occasion, Visual Connection Mapping would apply theories from others, such as the Just World Hypothesis, namely that actions and conditions have predictable and appropriate consequences.

Array of authors continue to inspire VCM

“The entire world needs diversity of ethno – linguistic entities for its own salvation, for its greater creativity, for the certain solution of human problems, for the constant rehumanization of humanity in the face of materialism, for fostering greater esthetic, intellectual, and emotional capacities for humanity as a whole, indeed, for arriving at a higher state of human functioning.” Joshua A. Fishman (1982)

At the drop in center: what do I see?

Date December 18, 2014 at the drop in center at Our Place Society time 1030 am. Often professionals and non professionals would want to know what I saw when I went to Our Place Society because they themselves were curious but did not want to venture into the drop in center where the paid staff and the volunteers monitor and manage the influx of 800 vulnerable people coming in and out the drop in center every single day of the week.

Title: What do I see?

I look out the window while I sit in the drop in center at Our Place Society and I see individuals. One man is sitting on the concrete floor outside. He is a middle aged man. His hair is short and brown/black. Next to him  is a little dog, that looks like Bengy.

 

The dog is orange in color and wrapped up in a blanket, with just his head sticking out. The man has a green t-shirt on and a dark red dress shirt. He moves his head from left to right. He has a cigarette behind his right ear. He sits and remains seated while he talks to a standing man dressed all in grey clothes. His dog has a black leash band around his neck and the dog sits on a black and grey sports bag.

Behind the dog and the man is a full shopping cart to the left and to the right is a wall of different textures of materials that looks like a white mattress with a sheet on it, clothes towered on top and all kinds of cloth I cannot easily identify.

Crowding starts to grow in the open outside courtyard as two other individuals sit in their disability four-wheeled driving wheel chair – like devices. One man is brown in complexion with a red hat and a red logo on his black jacket and the other man is dressed completely in black, with a black wool hat on. Both individuals are smiling while they look content socializing with one another. Another man directly behind them has a clown hat on.

It is purple, red, yellow, green and black with about five points sticking out. He is a man between 30 – 40 years old and stands with a blue pack on his back with a rolled up pink blanket wrapped inside a blue thin camping mattress, all neatly placed snug coupled to his backpack. His blue and red lined scarf and two water bottles marks his craft of travelling like a soldier prepared.

(Image of a U.S. soldier carried his bag as he prepared)

He stands tall and still with a cup of coffee in his hand. He stares out past the black steel gates at Our Place Society’s courtyard and has a very clear spirit of happiness glowing from him.

Then he disappears and magically found his way inside the drop in center and our eyes met for a millisecond. His pupils in his eyes were dilated and he was smiling. Then he disappeared behind a staircase. I did not see him again.

The Mustard Seed Model, Victoria City

Title: The Mustard Seed Model, Victoria City, Vancouver Island, BC, Canada

This journal entry of mine was written in November 2014.

Recently in November 2014 The Mustard Seed closed their drop in center in Victoria City. This closure has resulted in marginalized individuals exodusing to the Our Place Society on Pandora Avenue. I witnessed this exodus because I go to the drop in center at Our Place Society (OPS) to conduct Visual Connection Mapping which is a communication device whereby I listen to an individual’s story and draw a picture. I find it is a very ingenious phenomenon – that is – to close one of the two Victoria City drop in center whereby creating a full-on monopoly position for Our Place Society. In one month Our Place Society has increased their service load with no extra government funding to sustain them. To me, the closure of the Mustard Seed drop in center represents a new Victoria City model of care and that is to decrease quality and increase efficiency – but what about the possible detriment the closure brings to the Victoria City community? This is what I call The Mustard Seed Model.

Who is measuring the possible negative effects that the closure of the Mustard Seed drop in center can have on the already fragile strain a marginalized individual experiences?

Will the strain result in an added stressor?

Is this really the most effective way to contribute to solving homelessness in Victoria City?

My recommendation would be to first evaluate what the effects would be to both the community and to the individual before making an adhoc management and / or Board decision instigating the closure of the Mustard Seed drop in center in Victoria City, Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada

 

 

Eyes to the soul

Above is a image of Visual Connection Mapping (VCM 34)

While working with the City of Victoria’s most vulnerable population on Pandora ST at Our Pl;ace Society, British Columbia Canada – I often experienced a profound sense of religious feelings. Often Bible verses would help me to understand and gain insight into what I was feeling and they often helped me put undescribeable situations, feelings and observations into some sort of context, which often lead to a kind of transcendence experience, which was impossible to slot into language. It went so far beyond the English Language.

Brainstorming ideas

1. Dyscalculia
2. Pre-frontal cortex: eyes to the soul

Books referenced

1. Title: The genius engine : where memory, reason, passion, violence, and
   creativity intersect in the human brain
   Author: Stein, Kathleen
   Locations:
   McPherson Library: QP383.17 S74

Quotes and Bible verses for inspiration to help with conducting Visual Connection Mapping

1. “Happiness is a butterfly, which when pursued, is always beyond our grasp, but which, if you sit down quietly, may alight upon you.” Nathaniel Hawthorne
2. “To live is to be militant.” Seneca, Letters
3. “Do not remember the former things, or consider the things of old. I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.” Isaiah 43: 18 – 19
4. “There is that maketh himself rich, yet hath nothing: there is that maketh himself poor, yet hath great riches.” Way of Righteous Life 13:7

Paintings that I referenced and looked up

Rembrandt, Return of the prodigal son, 1668

 

 

 

 

Karl Kraus – the disease which it purports to be the cure

I conducted Visual Connection Mapping for many years, and am still practicing, but along the way I would question it. These are three quotes that resonated with some of my practicing principles and confirmed resolutions

1. “As far as science is concerned, there is no doubt whatsoever in my mind that to look upon it as a means of increasing one’s power is a sin against the Holy Ghost.” Karl Popper, The Moral Responsibility of the Scientist.
2. “Psycho-analysis is itself the disease which it purports to be the cure.” Karl Kraus

Dereistic thinking

 

When I was conducting Visual Connection Mapping I noticed at times some clients had dereistic thinking.

Dereistic thinking = thought processes marked by their disregard for reality and conventional logical rules of discourse.