Writing and Taekwondo

At the end of each semester, I always spend a little time reflecting on what students have learned, wondering whether I've taught them enough, and simultaneously wondering about the very old question of how writing can be truly taught. This sometimes leads me to think about tae-kwon-do, the martial art form that can be roughly described as "Korean karate."

I took a semester of tae-kwon-do as a P.E. elective while attending the University of Texas in Austin, and while I was quite untalented in and ill-suited to this sport, I learned something about the connection between the mind and body and also about how we learn. My poor performance in mastering the actual moves of tae-kwon-do probably helped me to learn these particular lessons more acutely, even if in a painful sort of way.

It's become a bit of a cliche to use martial-arts metaphors when musing on the ways in which we can lead a more stress-free life and stop struggling against unchanging forces, but there's a reason the comparisons seem so apt. In comparison to fighting styles that emphasize force or strength, Eastern martial arts especially depend on the mind-body connection and on learning to use outside forces in your favor instead of struggling against those forces. The word "do" (the third part of tae-kwon-do) translates to "way" or "path," which brings to mind the "paths" associated with Buddhist enlightenment. As Mr. Miagi from Karate Kid puts it (yes, I'm quoting a silly 1980s movie): "We learn to fight so that we don't have to fight."  In martial arts, paradoxically, you also learn not to fight in order to learn how to fight. Almost all of the Eastern martial arts emphasize using an opponent's movements against him, and learning not to expend energy in wasteful ways.

I earned a yellow belt at the end of my semester of tae-kwon-do, but I didn't feel as if I had mastered much in way of fighting moves. My instructor, a middle-aged Korean man who was quite short but whose power you could feel as he maneuvered you with his hands (yes, like Mr. Miagi), observed me toward the end of the semester and asked if I had missed many classes.

"No," I replied, although I knew what he meant. I was awkward in my movements, and I still had too much self-consciousness about my body. I still thought about tae-kwon-do too much as I went through the motions, and thinking about it too much is not only antithetical to an entire Eastern worldview, it's also quite counterproductive when it comes to fighting, especially Eastern martial arts. Ideally, it becomes like playing a musical instrument. You think about it at first, but when you've mastered the techniques, you learn to let go and focus on the emotion.

That little yell people do when chopping blocks of wood with their hands? This represents this idea of "clearing your head" in some form. The yell is a kind of meditation, a way of pushing out distracting thoughts in order to focus your physical and mental energy on the hit or kick.

In that direct sense, writing can be compared to tae-kwon-do because it is a kind of meditative act that involves getting into a kind of "zone" in which you forget you're writing altogether.  This is not as mystical as it sounds, because the best writing (before editing) involves pure thinking and learning to let go of the mental barriers that prevent us from writing in the first place. Of course the analogy only goes so far. In a paradoxical way, learning to write is quite different from fighting, because writing must be done with mental clarity and, at least by some definition, writing is "thinking too much." Also, good writing of nonfiction involves taking ownership of what you're writing and understanding, with some degree of "self-consciousness," that it needs to be understood by others.

Another parallel in this comparison involves the nature of learning. As I have pointed out, I was no great tae-kwon-do fighter when I earned my yellow belt, but you wouldn't expect a "yellow belt" to be too much of an expert, would you? The great thing about the belt system is that it defines degrees of learning and rewards the learning process as much as the results. As my Korean instructor pointed out, the belt, even a black belt, does not necessarily designate an absolute level of mastery or how much of a "bad ass" a particular belted person might be, but it does represent an accomplishment in learning. It is a sign that you have learned up to a certain level and mastered those lessons on some level.

Sometimes with writing, I think we expect mastery to come too quickly, when the reality is that every writer is a writer in process. Every good writer is always learning, because improvement is always possible. Successfully completing freshman composition does not mean that a young writer "knows how to write" in every possible situation or that they have mastered the craft of writing. It simply means that they have, hopefully, learned to take ownership of their process and to understand that they are in control of their own writing. I desire most of all to impart to students the idea that they don't write papers for me. I don't need more papers to read. They write papers to develop their own thinking and, in conjunction, their own writing.  
You must learn to not write in order to write, and you must learn to write so that you do not have to see writing as an impossible task involving procrastination and anxiety.  

Mrs. Ford, My Typing Teacher

When I think of down-to-Earth, competent and pleasant teachers who have had a great effect on students in spite of not being dramatic performers or extroverted personalities, I think of Mrs. Ford, my 12th grade typing teacher.

I was one of the last wave of high-school students to learn typing using the old electric typewriters. We spent our days drilling with timed exercises, in which our speed scores were calculated using deductions for our errors, and we learned to type things like memos and envelopes by counting returns and line spaces.

I took typing as an elective because I had vague ideas of wanting to be a journalist or a writer, but I soon found out I loved typing for its own sake. I loved the mechanical purity of typing, and I loved it as an exercise in mental concentration and meditative mind-hand coordination. While the regimentation of typing class and its emphasis on avoiding errors stressed out some hapless students, I found that typing relaxed me. My fingers danced across the keys and produced sheets of clean, typewritten exercises. I had always been plagued by bad handwriting, in spite of my ability to write decent prose, so typing for me was a kind of revelation. The QWERTY keyboard liberated me from the embarrassment of illegible handwriting, which was always slanting the wrong way and which conveyed an unintended lack of confidence in my ideas.

In my mastery of the wizardry of typing, Mrs. Ford was my Merlin, or if you prefer, my Dumbledore. Mrs. Ford was an old-school secretary, a professional-looking woman who wore glasses and always had her hair neatly pinned up. (She was not a fantasy-type secretary, however, in case the reader's mind has wandered in that predictable direction.) She ran the typing drills and exercises in the class with a precision and consistency that did not allow for goofing off or interacting much with the instructor. This was a skills-based class, after all, not a critical-thinking class in which we were to discuss the problems in the Middle East or the symbolism of Moby-Dick. We were just there to type.

Mrs. Ford was a no-nonsense woman, but she was not a drill sergeant or an old battleax. She was pleasant and straightforward, and she modeled for the students a kind of professional sensibility, showing us how to behave in ways that were appropriate to the workplace (depending on where you work) in spite of what we might be feeling or thinking. I never knew if Mrs. Ford was having problems at home or if she secretly despised certain students. She was just there to teach typing, and there wasn't a lot of creativity involved in teaching the most efficient methods for typing.

Mrs. Ford liked me, maybe because I was one of the few males in the class, but probably more so because I typed efficiently and quickly, and I learned from my mistakes. She smiled at me when I finished the exercises twenty minutes early and put my head on the desk to rest. In her own way, without saying so, Mrs. Ford believed that hard work was its own reward.

Some of us have had those "star" teachers who have made a huge impression, changing us in some fundamental way, but we also have had many other teachers along the way, good teachers who aren't praised often enough for being good and consistent, even when teaching a basically undynamic subject such as typing. And most of us hardly ever thank those teachers who have made an impact; by the time we think of doing so, usually years have passed. I never tried to contact Mrs. Ford again, never sent her a card or a thank-you note, and I don't know if she kept teaching or if she perhaps passed away. I hope Mrs. Ford knows she was a good teacher. Whenever I'm writing and I take a moment to think about the beauty of typing (which I'm still rather good at), the mechanics of this tool of the writer's trade, I think of Mrs. Ford and think, here's one thing I was taught that's still working, still keeping me ahead of the class.

On Learning Sign Language

Every semester at COM (the college where I teach), we can take one free class as part of our benefits package. This semester, I signed up for a six-week course in American Sign Language, and the experience has been quite interesting. I have bad hearing, so I was partly motivated to take the course by a vague notion that it might be good to begin learning sign language now. I've also always been fascinated by Deaf culture in America (the growth of which can at least partly be attributed to earlier educational efforts to quash sign language in America, an effort that included tying the hands of students so that they would learn to speak and write English instead of signing).

ASL is not structurally related to English in terms of syntax or morphology, although it's probably an exaggeration to say it's "completely unrelated" to English, as some claim. Much of the vocabulary has connections to the English word-equivalents. The sign for "french fries," for instance, is made using the sign for the letter "F", and there are many similar signs ("boy" uses the sign for B, and so on). The ASL alphabet (which is not the foundation of the language, but more like a supplement) also corresponds to the English alphabet, and is used for things like spelling names and movie titles. ASL uses a system of understood signs (many of them like picture words), mime, and facial expressions, along with some aspects influenced by American English.

Our instructor (an older woman originally from Thailand, I believe) was terrific, encouraging and supportive, and she worked in a lot of interesting stories about how the signs evolved or what visual pictures originally inspired the signs. The sign for "Spain," for instance, seems to have come from the movements of a bullfighter. ASL is a very original and beautiful language in its own right.

Alas, I don't think I took to learning ASL very well. My instructor did praise my ability to use facial expressions, a skill I must have honed through teaching. On the other hand (no pun intended), I seemed to struggle with remembering the shape of hand required and, whether the palm is supposed to be down or up with a given sign. I also disliked working in pairs, which is something she, quite logically, asked us to do quite often.

On the last day of class, I started to reflect about social anxiety and how that might hamper one's ability to learn language, which is essentially a social activity, after all. The sign-language instructor even mentioned that we were doing better than her other classes, because we weren't as shy. I may have learned to fake not being shy, but I think it still interfered with my ability to really take to sign language (that and a kind of self-consciousness about the body, which also hurt my efforts to learn karate). I'm just guessing here, but I imagine polyglots (those with an ability to learn many languages) would tend to have highly evolved social skills and be able to adapt to new situations easily. I'm afraid I don't fit that bill very well.

Or maybe I just didn't practice enough. There's no substitute for dedicated practice and a serious motivation to learn something. My motivation at this point was simply to be exposed to the language and to get a solid foundation, and I think I accomplished that.

Graduation

I just got the official word today that I have finished my MFA degree with the University of Texas at El Paso. It has been at interesting process, and as with any worthy educational endeavor, it has changed my perspective as well as expanding my knowledge and skills. In many ways, it was similar to my experience in the MA program, in that the quality of the faculty far exceeded the reputation of the program (which ought to say something about the competitive nature of academic jobs in the humanities). Going through the process of writing my thesis, in particular, raised many questions about the effect of the "program" mentality on writing in general and why exactly writers feel the need to be validated in terms of educational credentials as well as publication. (Once you're writing a thesis, it feels too late to really ask such questions seriously; it seems just as easy to finish the degree.) But I am setting aside those questions for now and trying to enjoy the sense of accomplishment in finishing this degree, which is in one sense a "second master's" but in another sense an entirely different kind of degree -- a terminal degree that is perhaps supposed to signify that I am a much better writer than I am. But all writers -- or at least all writers of any worth -- are writers in progress, writers who are constantly working at their art and improving in complex ways. We have often seen the problems faced by famous writers once they accept their greatness; perhaps it is far better, artistically, to accept that one is always learning and striving toward greatness with the acute awareness of the elusiveness of this goal.

Peter Pan and his American cousin, Huck Finn

This year marks the 100^th anniversary of the publication of Peter and Wendy, the novel by J.M. Barrie based on his earlier stage play (which was not put into text form until after the novel) and the basis of numerous versions of the Peter Pan story to follow. (An annotated version of the novel has been released to mark this anniversary.)

Peter Pan remains the ultimate Victorian-Edwardian fictional tribute to childhood, a story about a boy who won’t grow up and a story that reflects and comments on the very clear demarcation between the innocence and endless optimism of childhood and the serious and rigidly structured state of adulthood. Peter Pan, the mischievous and rebellious boy forever on the cusp of adolescence, embodies the adventurous and imaginative spirit of boyhood.

Yet, in the stage play and musical, the character of Peter Pan is usually played by a girl or woman, and the character of the father and Captain Hook are played by the same actor. Similarly, the Lost Boys and Wendy’s brothers are often played by girls. These kinds of choices, along with the fact that the girl protagonist, Wendy, plays a mother figure, give the story all kinds of strange Freudian undercurrents and a general sense of gender confusion. In the original play and novel (not the Disney film), Wendy and her brothers pay a sad price for the act of putting off childhood. Aside from the idealistic yearnings for a childhood that lasts forever, the story in many ways comments on the special confusion of adolescence and the way in which we grow into our sexual identities.

A few years earlier, in the 1880s, Mark Twain released another book about a boyhood hero, the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Unlike Peter, Huck Finn is distinctly male, an adolescent, tough boy hardened by living with an alcoholic father and having to survive on his own. He smokes a pipe and fishes with a bamboo fishing pole on the banks of the Mississippi River. Gender confusion does not figure into this realistically rendered story, although there is a humorous scene in which Huck dresses like a girl. Huck and Peter Pan also share a love of adventure and a fondness for the wilderness. But while Peter has difficult relationships with Wendy and women in general, Huck generally feels a fondness toward women and a shy kind of desire to please them.

A more important difference exists between the English Victorian creation of Peter Pan and the very American boy hero of Huckleberry Finn. While Peter Pan refuses to grow up, and while the story in general hangs on to sentimental notions about childhood, Huckleberry Finn sees himself put in a situation where he has to grow up. He has to learn to consider what is valuable to him and to question the mores of the corrupt society around him. He has to learn to accept the consequences of his actions and to do the right thing to help a friend, even if that means he is doing the wrong thing according to the rest of society. Huck Finn must learn that sometimes being an adult isn’t easy and can be pretty confusing, almost as confusing as being an adolescent.

Of course, in spite of Victorian sentiments to the contrary, we know that childhood is not always an easy time and comes with its own confusing moments. Most Victorians also knew this, and indeed they lived in a society in which child labor and poverty had become side effects of the industrial age. Perhaps Victorians sentimentalized childhood as a way of protecting children in a symbolic sense, to reassure themselves that things were not as bad as they appeared.

Mark Twain also sentimentalized childhood to a point, especially in his first boyhood classic, the Adventures of Tom Sawyer. But in Huck Finn, Twain became more honest in his assessment of childhood and considered the special pain of adolescence as a time when one wrestles not just with gender identity but with a whole host of other issues central to one’s moral and intellectual identity. With Huck, Twain created the American counterpart to the English romantic heroes beloved by Tom Sawyer. Huck is adventurous, yes, but his adventures are full of real danger and serious consequences, not the stuff of pixie dust and daydreams.

Open Minds Quarterly

I have just had an essay published in the Summer 2011 issue of this journal, which focuses on stories and poems involving the survival of mental illness. Although the essay cannot be read online, I wanted to give the journal and its fine sponsoring organization a plug, anyway.

9/11 Poetry

Recently I was asked to participate in a commemorative ceremony marking the 10th anniversary of 9/11, and I began researching poems in hopes of finding something that we could include in the event. While I did not manage to find an appropriate poem, it was interesting reading through a lot of the poems inspired by that day.

Many of the 9/11-inspired poems, especially the most well-known and well regarded poems like "Photograph from September 11 by Wislawa Szymborska, focus on the memory of bodies falling from the sky, those visual images of men and women in business attire jumping from the burning buildings, in a sense "choosing" certain death over the hell of destruction (although it's a mistake to think of it as a choice at all).

I wrote a short story that also touches on these particular images, so I understand why they're compelling and why they linger in the mind. In a very real way, creative writing, and especially poetry, says what we cannot otherwise say. To paraphrase one expert on the subject, poems exist to explain themselves.

These 9/11 poems meditate on the haunting images of falling bodies, because what else besides poetry can really do these memories justice, even if poetry itself remains inadequate? Only poetry can explain the unexplainable, something so grief-inducing and moving as the sight of those people leaping into oblivion. We can never get used to the images of those falling bodies, so all we can really do is write poems that try to capture that bottomless feeling of seeing these people, the sickening grief and boundless compassion that we felt as we saw the images and realized what we were seeing. We would have done anything, but we can do nothing, and so we turn to art and poetry.