I am learning Taekwondo. Tuesday was my first class, and as I tied my white belt on for the first time, I had that old Suzuki quote in my mind:
“In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s there are few.”
I have forgotten what it is like to learn something about which I know nothing. As I have moved through my life, I realize that I have focused on learning things for which there is at least some foundation. More often I find myself in learning situations where I don’t challenge my ignorance, as my ego intrudes in my ability to learn something. We all have a need to seem like we know what we are doing.
So it is with some glee that I have abandoned myself to taekwondo. I know nothing of fighting, have only flirted with martial arts in the past through an introduction to ta’i chi, and my body is, at 35, becoming stiff and less supple as I enter middle age. Today, as I get ready for my second ever class, my hamstrings are tight, my back is aching and there are sore ligaments in my arms that I never knew I had. And yet, the activity is exhilarating.
What I cherished from my first class is the focus that reminds me of what it’s like to play music and be in the groove, the workout, and the teaching. My teacher, Master Kook, is a former Canadian team member and a brilliant teacher. He is young, kind and demanding, and he teaches with care and precision.
I think now that the real value in all of this is both the physical exercise and the mental challenge of doing something completely strange to me. It’s good practice for the ego, letting go of having to be an expert, and surrendering to the joy of being a beginner.
Michael Herman has left Bowen Island, recuperated in Chicago for a wekk and is now in Nepal. His blog, the more and more aptly named “Global Chicago” is being maintained at the Global Chicago Wiki, in a place called GlobalChicago: PracticingInNepal. Saves on bandwidth and dialup charges.
His journey to Asia promises to be worth keeping tabs on.
Moon and Mars together
Photo by Allan Gould
This is a photo of Mars out beyond the limb of the Moon. It took me years of looking into the sky to convince my mind that when I look up there I am not seeing a two dimensional surface. Sometimes it helps to really focus on the moon as a sphere, and then it becomes clear, once one astronomical body has depth, that everything else lies in a field that extends away from us.
I think we are somehow conditioned to see the sky as a roof, a sensation that cathedral architects have played with for centuries. It’s a strangely liberating feeling when you realize that the objects in the sky are not “up there” but rather “out there.” This photo is a nice reminder of that perspective.
Oh my goodness…the folks at BlogsCanada have included Parking Lot in their list of top Canadian blogs for this month. I am truly flattered.
Go visit the list for some great Canadian reading.
Thanks to judges Jay Currie and Jim Elves, and all of you anonymous folks who nominated this humble scratch pad.
Nelly’s Poem by Etel Adnan
From the Lebanese Women’s Association site
I conclude this survey of Tammuzi poets with some lines from the Lebanese poet and painter Etel Adnan from her long poem “The Spring Flowers Own“:
I see heading East the pearl-colored
march of clouds
roses lend their blood to young
soldiers drowning in the Tigris
flowers triumph
over the human race
their tragedies are
short-lived
their agonies exude incense and myrrh
at the entrance of
temples they are the
ones to be eternally eternal.
march of clouds
roses lend their blood to young
soldiers drowning in the Tigris
flowers triumph
over the human race
their tragedies are
short-lived
their agonies exude incense and myrrh
at the entrance of
temples they are the
ones to be eternally eternal.
I envy their youth
their lucency their
quiddity
we are the shadows and they,
our hosts.
Adnan originally started writing in French and now writes in English. Her first poems were published in Shi’r as translations from French to Arabic in 1964, just as the Tammuzi poets were moving on and Shi’r was wrapping up. In many ways, Adnan embodies the dispersed identity and complex and sophisticated voice that the Tammuzi poets seemed to me to represent. She has essentially been an exile all her life which she said in an interview, has affected her thusly:
I was always an Arab, and have been like that not even as a Lebanese or a Syrian. I always felt like an Arab. It makes no difference to me. For example, I went to Morocco in 1966 and when I entered to the hotel and heard Umm Kalthum in the lobby, I said to myself: here is the Arab World. When it comes into expression, of course there is a problem because I went to French schools and my mother being Greek we did not speak Arabic at home. Children learn language at school and at home. I didn’t speak Arabic neither at home nor in the school. I grew up knowing French. I also speak Greek and Turkish, because my mother was Greek from Turkey and my father was an Arab in the Ottoman Empire. So, I knew these two languages, but I never learned them in school. So I don’t have a problem in identity like saying who am I? Because I feel I am an Arab, I am a woman, and I am a person in the 20th Century, and hopefully the 21st Century. But, when I write of course I have that question. For whom am I writing? For Americans I am an Arab. Arabs say why don’t you write in Arabic? So, we have to solve that problem through translations, and also I think the notion of identity should change. Identity is not a race. It is a culture and it is a commitment. I am committed to the Arab World and I am an Arab.
I have collected 19 poems and two full books of poetry from the Tammuzi poets over the past few days. You can view them at the Parking Lot Wiki: Tammuzi poets collection, where you can feel free to add more poems or poets if you find them. It’s a fascinating collection of poetry in English, giving a slice of Arab culture that is lost in the current cloudiness about good guys and bad guys. Enjoy!