poem!
Learning how to fall
In Tae Kwon Do class this morning, the instructor, Brent Stouffer, began teaching us how to fall. The first fall we are learning is a side fall. The lesson was practical yet metaphorical.
The principles are simple and
logical
Once you feel yourself falling
commit to the fall.
Control
it.
Tuck the head
land with the left leg and left arm stretched out
perpendicular to the body
parallel to one another,
spreading the impact over the greatest possible area
to minimize the damage.
The right leg—the supporting leg—should be
bent, the foot on the floor.
Avoid landing on the elbow.
That’s how Marsha broke her arm. I repeat:
Avoid landing on the elbow.
No matter what else you do, don’t land on the elbow.
Brent lies on the mat, describing his position.
Then he stands, calls us onto the mat, one by one.
Danny goes first. Brent takes him down with an easy sweep
Gently lowers him,
points to limbs out of place,
places them where they belong.
Judy and I look at one another.
Who will be next?
I step forward. Brent lowers me,
I’m on the mat, my right foot too far back,
my hand palm up when it should be palm down,
my left leg not yet parallel with my arm.
My head on the mat! Aargh. I should know better.
I self-correct, lift my head, tuck my chin into my neck.
Then I stand, ready to go down again.
Brent sweeps me off-balance:
my limbs reach out with hand palm down,
my head tucked and off-mat,
my legs still wonky and needing post-fall correction.
We practice falling more
from a sitting position, sprawling to the mat,
hitting it hard with arm and leg,
committing the form to muscle memory.
We end with a story of a man who resisted falling.
His partner said, “You either make me look good
[that is, you let me take you down]
or you end up in a lot of pain.”
The resister surrendered. He fell. And he could get right back up again.
Once you feel the fall coming,
commit to it.
Control it.
Land on side/arm/leg/foot allatonce
Minimizing the impact
minimizing the pain
so you, too,
can get right back up again.
Class ends. But
we never discussed the feeling. That feeling when
you know the fall is coming. How to discern? How to
commit in
time—not too
early, and, please
god, not too
late?
Driving lesson
I read some DMV-issued advice book for parents teaching their kids to drive. Ah, I thought. Now I’m ready.
Days later, Callie was at the wheel. We were headed to church—a 35-minute drive on twisty country roads.
Slowing down, I told her,
isn’t always about hitting the brakes;
sometimes it’s about easing up on the gas pedal.
She hugged the curve around the small waterfall she had christened Little Blue several years before.
And accelerating, she said,
is not always about stepping on the gas;
sometimes it’s about easing up on the brakes.
Post-FemRhet FreeWrite Day 6: perhaps a poem again
I’m not sure what I want to write today, but poems always seem good when I’m writing randomly in journals, so let’s go with that.
For the record, it’s way scarier writing anything publicly here on this blog than to write in a journal. But labeling this a “free write” helps. Freewrites aren’t supposed to be good! they’re just supposed to be free. I haven’t even linked to any of these posts from my Twitter or Facebook pages. If you’re here reading, then it’s by some random miracle.
Tracks across the page
lines laid out
these metal rails
grooved
ready for rumbling
strong enough to take the full-speed bursting weight of the train
to feel the dime crushed and spit to the dirt
Guiding the coal, the passengers, the cattle
to their final destinations
with a sureness
that reassures
and irritates me.
That poem started with me thinking about the ways letters are just these mini-pictures that we’ve attributed meaning to—they can look like hen scratches across the page. Somehow scratches turned into tracks, and next thing I knew, I was picturing train tracks.
Then I remembered a time when I was taking two kids I babysat someplace on a train. I cannot remember where, though I know we did go to a Patriots game in the same time period. Is there a train that goes to Foxboro? I have no idea.
Anyhow, the boys asked for coins so they could put them into the track and watch them get smushed by the train. Some guy yelled at me for letting them do that. He said people could get hurt if the coin went flying out. Maybe he was right, but he honestly just seemed incredibly grumpy at the time. I told the kids to throw the coins at the old man instead of putting them in the train rails.
No! I didn’t do that. Can you imagine? That would make for an interesting story, though, wouldn’t it?
As I kept writing, I would reread and think about the train and the rails and writing. I started using punctuation but I couldn’t decide what I wanted to do. I did leave in a capital letter to signal (ha! train pun!) a switch (ha! I think that has something to do with trains, too?) in direction. Well, actually the point of the poem is that there is a lack of a change in direction.
Writing that is too sure of itself feels good but it also feels wrong. Like a romantic comedy or an episode of Law and Order—when things just go the way they’re meant to in the course of an hour or two, and you feel all good because of the closure, but you also know that it’s completely contrived and not at all applicable to real life for more than a half second.
Full disclosure: At some point the train-and-rail description also seemed sexual. I’ll let you decide where. Or maybe all writing is always sexual. That seems at least possible and perhaps likely.
I’m going to end on that fun note. And I’m going to add a picture of railroad tracks.
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