Around Then

I'm back in my classroom, sorting through last year's work and planning for this year.  One of the notebooks had the following writing I'd done with my students in Poetry & Fiction:

Around 2008 three Frenchmen tell me to get out of the country.  I need a dictionary to figure out what they said.

Around 2003 I use a silver, putty knife to scrape fossilized gum off the bottom of every desk, chair, and table in a high school.

Around 1988 Colin tries to bite me.  I scramble up a mattress that leans against the wall.

Around 1997 Vince throws a basketball at my face.  I don't know how to respond.  He punches me in the nose, twice.

Around 2008 the top of the toilet tank is off at a Halloween party.  I pull on the tube instead of the floater to flush, and water hits the ceiling.

Around 1998 I tried to cut in half a 3" block of American cheese, just as my friend reached up while stocking the prep station's fridge.  Blood sprayed on the fryolator and grill.

Prompt Fiction

I've nearly finished a fiction writing course at UNH, and it has reminded me to give time and care to my own writing - something I haven't done since I started work as a full-time teacher last August. Here's my response to one of the brief prompts from last week:

I can't see the moon. I want it, reflected off the still water, broken into ripples that roll from a swan - its body embraced by the water. I want that Rilke poem to play out here. But I have only mud on my boots, and the water only laps at them. No embrace. And the stillness stinks of rotten, raw earth. No grace here. Just depths that I can't see, but know: some slime haunts the bottom of the water; it will stay there until the lake dries. Even then, it will harden like a scab, covering the bed that once held such a poetic promise of beauty.


The prompt had two options, and I chose the first:
1) Describe a lake as seen by a murderer, directly after the murder, but don't mention the murder.
2) Describe a place as seen above by a bird, but don't mention the bird.

The punctuation near the end and the Rilke reference need work, among other things, but it was fun to focus on my own creative work instead of my students' writing. Now I need to get back to completing my short story.

Sons of Lapetus

Part one of the Atlas Shrugged film trilogy came out recently.  Critically, it failed.  But I bet it got some Tea Party people fired up.

When Alix and I first started dating, she suggested I read The Fountainhead and told me that I reminded her of Howard Roark, the protagonist.  It was flattering.  But for many years after that I would point out the comparison whenever someone mentioned the book, and sometimes even when they didn't.  I'm glad I stopped doing that.

Jean Jacket

I broke my collarbone when I was in kindergarten.  It's not super clear, but you can see the difference between the right and left bones in the x-ray I got as part of my health exam to work in France.  Apparently x-rays are the most efficient way for them to check for tuberculosis.

I was taking off my new jean jacket to put in my cubby.  My dad had dropped me off at kindergarten that day, and was talking with the teacher on the other side of the room.  I used the kid method of taking off a jacket - grab the collar and pull as you twist your body in weird ways until the jacket comes off - and I ended up with the jacket inside-out, off of me except at the hands where the cuffs were too tight to slip.  It looked like a jean jacket jump rope attached to my hands.  

My dad says he realized, at this point, what I was thinking and shook his head "no" to stop me.  But I had already started to use the jacket as a jump rope.  It was too short.  It caught my legs and pulled them from under me.  And, since my hands were stuck in the cuffs, it also yanked my hands back.  My shoulder took all the force on the linoleum floor.  I haven't had another jean jacket since then. 

Off the Wall

Pretty soon I'll be a teacher again.  Only a long-term substitute, though, so I'm yet to have my own classroom.  When I do, I'll need to get some morale and moral boosting posters for the walls.

Three posters stick in my mind from when I was a student.  The first encouraged students in Ms. R's math class to stick through algebraic frustrations.

Next, I had a somewhat buddhist lesson in mindfulness.

Finally, my social studies teacher had a small quote above the chalkboard.

It seemed ironic given the emphasis on rote memorization of facts in the class, and the possibility that the quote didn't originate with Eleanor Roosevelt.  But it stuck with me nonetheless.

SK8

This video's five years old now, but I thought of it as I washed the dishes the other day and Sigh Your Children came on my ipod.  I'm still impressed by the level of rollerblading my French friends had/have.  I'm also still embarrassed by how poorly I represent skateboarding, as most of my stuff is me falling and then smiling at the camera.  Good memories.

Z-Man

I spend about 1/3 of my life asleep.  If I make it to my normal life expectancy, then the amount of time I've lived so far - all 26 years of it - will go to sleep.  Fortunately, I like to sleep.  And so does my body.  I recently defeated a flu that overtook me when my defenses were down from lack of rest (I played dodgeball until 2AM, then woke up early), and the recovery took hours and hours of extra sleep.  Too much sleep.  I decided in the haze of influenza that if I could have one superpower, it'd be to not need sleep.

On the day I felt the sickness take over, I got to see Donald Glover perform at William & Mary.  It was worth the fever.  Too bad this is the best video I could find:

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.

Trickster

Yesterday I tried tricking. I met up with two friends at a gymnastics facility where they both work, and I'm glad we had mats to practice on because it's been a while since I've done any flips. After a couple of tumbles I got reacquainted with my old tricks. Now I'm looking to learn some new ones, so next time I'll start to try the corkscrew, butterfly twist, and double leg.

What I like most about tricking, more than any one move, is when guys flow things together and emphasize the capoeira and break dancing influences. Tricking uses elements from a bunch of styles that I like, so I'm excited to practice some more.

Sri Krishna

I like kids, but they're exhausting to deal with in large groups. So hard to impose order. The only time I could calm them down was when I taught kung fu for an after-school program at an elementary school. It must have been all those cool moves they thought I could do.

The classes were part of the instructor program I did at my kung fu school. I didn't get paid, since the head instructor insisted that we volunteer, but I was in 12th grade and got to leave the high school early twice a week so I didn't mind. Besides, it felt good to volunteer.

I didn't think much of it when I mentioned the classes to an older instructor who taught tai chi. He said, "You don't get paid?" I shook my head yes. He smiled. "Well, somebody's getting the money." Even then, I tried not to think about it too much. My goal was to be more spiritual and rise above material worries.

There's a passage in the *Bhagavad-Gita, my new bathroom read, that stuck with me the other day. Sri Krishna tells Arjuna:

"You have the right to work, but for the work's sake only. You have no right to the fruits of work. Desire for the fruits of work must never be your motive in working. Never give way to laziness, either."

I know it's not an original idea, but damn if most religions don't make excellent tools for political power. All this talk of duty and surrender of one's ego - devotion to a greater good beyond the individual and this world; If I were a greedy dictator I'd love this stuff. Though I doubt it'd work on little kids.


* Translated by Swami Prabhavananda & Christopher Isherwood; Barnes & Noble, 1995. The quote is from page 13.

Metal: Adamantium and Nu

I used to pretend to suit up as Wolverine during youth soccer games. First boots, then gloves, and finally the mask. Then I'd run at the incoming offensive attack and swing my arms out and down to imagine those adamantium claws shooting out. My memory of this, now, alternates between my point of view as my eight-year-old self and that of someone on the sideline, confused or amused by this kid putting on imaginary boots and mask, then sprinting forward with all seriousness.

Sort of embarrassing, but I was young and in love with X-Men. Less forgivable, or just more embarrassing, was my affair with Nu Metal. Two things recently brought this back to mind: 1) This incredible Map of Metal - I sacrificed two hours at that altar - and 2) Part 9 of the AV Club's series Whatever Happened to Alternative Nation? The writer despises Korn and Limp Bizkit; I was totally into them.

Still, I had some good influences in those darker days*. Skate videos and magazines, my primary cultural influence at the time, kept me on track with hip hop and punk. The two dominant cassettes in my walkman were Wu Tang's Forever* and a mix tape of Misfits and Dead Kennedys that a friend made me. That same friend once said to me, when I was deepest into Korn, that as the singer of my once-punk band, I shouldn't try to sound like Jonathan Davis.

I now see his advice as an informal intervention, and he did it with kindness and tact that transcended our early-teen maturity. He said I should try to stick with my own style. He put it in a way that encouraged me, especially since I looked up to him as a musician. I think he even went so far as to somewhat praise Jonathan Davis' voice, though I knew at the time that he didn't like it or that music one bit. But friends don't let friends try to sing like Jonathan Davis.




* Darkest Days is the name of the Stabbing Westward album I bought, featuring the single "Save Yourself", after I heard them on the Spawn soundtrack - my nu metal gateway drug and possible evidence that comic books encouraged me to do many silly things.

* Forever was a double-cassette, so technically that makes three dominant tapes in my rotation.

Grendel

"All order, I've come to understand, is theoretical, unreal - a harmless, sensible, smiling mask men slide between the two great, dark realities, the self and the world - two snake-pits.

This comes near the end of John Gardner's Grendel. Reviews of the book claim that it will enter the canon of high school English classes, among Lord of the Flies and The Catcher in the Rye. And I can see how Grendel's reflection on order fits in with Ralph and Holden.

It does not, however, fit in with the prominent "Out of chaos comes order" banner stapled to the bulletin board in my 9th grade English classroom. The teacher told us that it came from the ancient Greeks. It has stayed with me, since then, as I have wrestled with this perennial idea.

Chaos vs. order is one of many questions that frustrates Grendel while he seeks meaning as a self-conscious creature - not the mechanical evil that Beowulf portrays. He eventually finds that his relationship with the humans, the Danes, defines them both. And in the end, he can't resist the urge to raid the mead hall where Beowulf waits.

Though 1,200 years apart, the reality of the two stories, Grendel and Beowulf, is the same. All order and chaos come from narration - perception - be it Ancient Greek, Middle Ages Anglo-Saxon, or Post-Modern American.

The Card Shop (Pt. 2)

I sat at the table with two fellow fifth-graders and one adult player who also helped part-time at the card shop. He summoned a Shivan dragon.

"Eric, take the kids into the other room and close the door." The owner looked out the window, across the street, as he said this. I then remembered my older sister talking about a big fight between rival groups at the high school: the freaks vs the gangsters.

High schoolers were the ones who ripped the metal grates off the radiators when they walked through the halls in our school. Some had spikes, others had baggy clothes, and they all had mean looks. We picked up our cards and went into the side room. Once Eric closed the door, I could hear a bunch of high schoolers enter the shop.

"Hello Gordon. Here to buy something?"
"Eh."
"If you're not gonna buy something, you need to go."
"Whatever."
"Now, I don't want anything going on across the street coming into my shop, so if you guys aren't gonna get anything then it's time to go."

They went on for a while, as we pretended to focus on the game. Eric started to sweat.

"Alright, you guys can come out." The high schoolers had left, and they hadn't touched the radiator grates. Eric looked at the owner and Bob. They both stood behind their respective glass counters, and I'd never seen adults so alert. Bob looked back at Eric, and said, in that rising-to-shrill voice that usually came out as he would explain how he was gonna win the game, "I had a hand on my shotgun the whole time."

Sophie's World

Through daily installments, I recently finished Sophie's World. It was satisfactory as a novel and worked well as a bathroom read. I liked the regular installments of philosophy, and that Jostein Gaarder presented them through a fictional narrative. Unfortunately, the narrative felt more contrived than many of the philosophies in the book.

That being said, I will now take issue with the plot in a spoiling way - though I argue that this is no real loss to the reader. It's a philosophical story about a girl who realizes that her world isn't really as it seems: not an original plot, nor is it necessarily trite. My issue is with Gaarder's execution of the story. Specifically, Hilde's reaction to Sophie's dilemma.

Hilde's father writes Sophie's World, the text-in-text, as a means of sharing the world of philosophy with his daughter. As such, the text focuses primarily on the lessons that Sophie receives. Characters and plot serve more as medium than substance. So why does Gaarder make Hilde care so much about her father's manipulation of Sophie, and make it a central issue in the book? I, the reader, certainly don't care about the manipulation, nor do I believe that Hilde would react that way. Then again, I only read it while sitting on the toilet