Nine Years of Love, Today

Jimmy Gatz

Here's a list that Gatsby made as a boy, and which his father shows Nick, our narrator, in the final chapter of The Great Gatsby:

Rise from bed ................................................. 6.00           A.M.
Dumbbell exercise and wall-scaling ................... 6.15--6.30    "
Study electricity, etc. ....................................... 7.15--8.15    "
Work .............................................................. 8.30--4.30  P.M.
Baseball and sports ......................................... 4.30--5.00    "
Practice elocution, poise and how to attain it ...... 5.00--6.00    "
Study needed inventions .................................. 7.00--9.00    "

                          GENERAL RESOLVES

No wasting time at Shafters or [a name, indecipherable]
No more smokeing or chewing.
Bath every other day
Read one improving book or magazine per week
Save $5.00 [crossed out] $3.00 per week
Be better to parents


It reminded me of a list I made, less impressive or ambitious, when I was also a boy:

- Land kickflip over two boards
- Write three new songs for Conformity Crisis
- Talk more with [current crush]
- Unlock levels in Cool Boarders 2

I remember that I wrote this list in freshman English class, although I didn't end up reading The Great Gatsby while in high school.  In fact, I first read it as I prepared to take the PRAXIS exam for my English teacher certification.  I don't know why but I didn't get much from that first read.  This time around, though, I found compelling characters and a rich plot.  And now, years after the first go, I understand why it's included in the canon of great American novels.

Only the Strong

Just like guns, capoeira can be a force for good or evil.  Unlike guns, however, gang violence dealt in capoeira doesn't kill innocent bystanders.  No drive-by cabecadas.  If anything, it makes the onlookers cheer and applaud.  Too bad all gangs can't settle things in a capoeira jogo.

Butterfly Twist

I had my third tricking session last night, but still no b-twist.  In fact, other than sharpening what I could already do, I haven't improved much.  I learned the side flip, except my form is sloppy and I sort of just chuck my body into it.  I felt discouraged, so I was happy take a break from tricking and instead play an obstacle course game in which you eliminate the other players by throwing frisbees at them. By the end of the game there were bloody knuckles and many frisbees to the face.

Then I got home and, after delicious brownies by Alix, saw this video:



As the man says, I guess I now have no excuse not to land it.  Fortunately I also found this video to help me with my technique:

Reading Lolita in Tehran

I'm not an Iranian woman. And as I finished Reading Lolita in Tehran, I decided that I'm glad to be an American man.  Not because of the hardships that Azar Nafisi details for Iranian women during the time of her story, but because my absence of firsthand knowledge of their hardships and experience is the only thing that sustained me through Nafisi's "Memoir in Books."

This is the second book I've read this year that included a "Reading Group Guide."  Both books left me unsatisfied, so maybe the idea is that a book group is necessary to make these books fulfilling.  Or maybe I'm just not the writers' target audience.

In any case, Reading Lolita in Tehran isn't bad, but it's not good - same goes for the other "book club" novel I read.  The subject captivated me, and I enjoyed how the works of Nabokov, Fitzgerald, James, and Austen played into the story.  But the narrative and the narrator both made me want to put the book down at times.

Strange Fits of Passion

Turns out you can't believe everything you learn in school. Today I realized that I had left out a stanza from William Wordsworth's "Strange fits of passion have I known" when I used it for my 9th grade English class four years ago. My students probably still haven't gotten over it.

I came across my mistake when I used the poem as part of a series of seven response poems, a project suggested by a great friend. This would have been the seventh and final poem too, although they're all still in their first drafts, but now I need to add a stanza. In the meantime, here's what I had (first, the original; then, my response):

Strange fits of passion have I known:
And I will dare to tell,
But in the lover’s ear alone,
What once to me befell.

When she I loved looked every day
Fresh as a rose in June,
I to her cottage bent my way,
Beneath an evening-moon.

Upon the moon I fixed my eye,
All over the wide lea;
With quickening pace my horse drew night
Those paths so dear to me.

And now we reached the orchard plot;
And, as we climbed the hill,
The sinking moon to Lucy’s cot
Came near and nearer still.

In one of those sweet dreams I slept,
Kind Nature’s gentlest boon!
And all the while my eyes I kept
On the descending moon.

My horse moved on; hoof after hoof
He raised, and never stopped:
When down behind the cottage roof,
At once, I the bright moon dropped.

What fond and wayward thoughts will slide
Into a lover’s head!
“O Mercy!” to myself I cried
“If Lucy should be dead!”


- William Wordsworth


…


Strange cases and conspiracies
Made up that daring show
Which kept my curiosity
Fixed on the TV’s glow.

Each episode she got hotter
In body and in mind,
Still Mulder seemed to look past her—
ET had made him blind.

The plot would waver here and there,
But my love never did;
Yet she worked for the FBI,
While I was just a kid.

She disappeared in Season Two,
Abducted on a hill;
Throughout her absence my love grew
And became stronger still.

[Missing Stanza!]

Her return came as no surprise,
I shouldn’t have been scared;
They still must deal with all those lies
The government prepared.

What fond and wayward thoughts will slide
Into a lover’s head!
“O Mercy!” to myself I cried
“If Scully should be dead!”

Muay Thai

In my search for a documentary on muay thai, I came across two with the same title: Raised in the Ring. As the name suggests, both documentaries look at Thai kids who will often have a hundred fights by the time they turn sixteen. The documentaries show how muay thai offers kids a way to make money for their families who struggle with poverty. However, the perspective and message differs between the two documentaries.

They remind me of The Fighter's Heart, written by an American guy who makes some money after graduating from Harvard and decides to live in Thailand to train in muay thai. There, many Thai would ask him why he would voluntarily train at a camp, since he already had money and a degree from a prestigious American school. The majority of the book essentially focuses on this question - Why fight? - as the author travels and trains in major styles around the world.

Unfortunately, the 20/20 report - the second video - doesn't do much to ask why these little girls get in the ring. Instead of investigating the sources of poverty in Thailand, it focuses on a symptom of that poverty which makes for shocking television. Forcing kids to fight for money is monstrous and should be illegal. But outlawing boxing for children does not address the cause that drives many of them into the ring.