Day 13: Salute Your Shorts

cardio: 10 mins jumprope, 10 mins Wii Fit
stretching: yes
pushups: twenty-five
crunches: forty
breakfast: egg salad, baguette, vitamins
lunch: Whole Foods salad bar (pea shoots, dandelion shoots or whatever, peas, corn, bleu cheese, Diestel turkey, falafel)
apartment clean?: reasonably

Ask me whether I made it all the way to the men's locker room before I realized that I had not packed my gym shorts, and thus was unable to work out. I had already left the house for the Old English Reading Group, which I was late for; I was not supposed to use up my one day per week (note the change) of working out at home on a day when I had already left the house; I am already behind in a workweek in which I am supposed to complete a draft of my play (by Sunday evening), a full dissertation chapter draft (by Monday evening), and a novel (by Monday 11:59pm). And I should definitely not be wasting my time on the English Grads list-serv:

"The videos [of police brutality at the UC protests] are horrifying indeed.

But to anyone teaching a composition course this semester: remember, as Paolo Freire and Miss Jean Brodie have both pointed out, that to educate is to lead out -- not to put in or deposit or inculcate, which would indeed be the opposite, and which, regardless of your own politics or opinions, is an inherently oppressive act in the classroom.

It is far more revolutionary, and far more effective, to allow the students to reach their own decisions about what is happening here (rather than to inform them about your own), and to provide them with the critical thinking tools to make their own opinions, and actions, duly complex and mature. Rather than simply swaying people one way or another, you'll help build a group of educated people who is not so easily swayed.

In other words, the most revolutionary thing you can possibly do is what you were already doing, assuming you were doing it right in the first place, since our composition classes are supposed to center on critical thought. Lead out, draw out, the natural instincts for critical thinking that are already in place. Guide them the tools to go out and research, deeply, what is going on. Never present them with any material, however straightforward it may seem, that is 'just the way it is.' Because no one, and certainly not any of us, is capable of a statement free of subjectivity, and that is exactly what we're trying to teach these students.

If there are students in your classroom (and there are) whose current reading of the situation is opposed to yours (and mine), it is still your job to encourage those students to find the words and voice to think through, investigate, and communicate their reading. And once such a reading is exposed to the critical thought necessary for such an investigation, the reading will change because the student will change. Any other approach will cause a dissenting mind to (rightly) clam up at the back of the room and grumble about 'these liberals, making assumptions, wouldn't hear me anyway, wasting more of our time.'

At NYU, in September 2001, when our chancellor ordered classes to reconvene after only a week (part of the 'return to normalcy' thing -- you want to talk euphemistic emails?) my TA walked into our 45A recitation and said, 'In the coming months, you are going to be bombarded with text. You probably already have been. It is our job, as literary scholars, to parse, analyze, and closely read texts, to uncover not only what they say, or what they appear to say, but how they say it. So in the coming months, you will discover just how important our work can be.' And then she produced three handouts, each one with a different text that represented a different 'side' of the 9/11 attacks -- Pat Robertson, who blamed LGBT and Communist New Yorkers for bringing down God's wrath, a blogger in Palestine who laid the blame entirely on aggressive US foreign policy in the Middle East, and a conscpicuously 'centrist' article. And then she said, 'Well? Go. Analyze. Let's discuss the form, not just the content, of these texts, and how they relate to agenda (or the construction of an agenda), etc etc.'

I would suggest that if anyone is going to bring up recent UC events in their classroom, they run a similar exercise, bring in texts for interpretation, etc. In any case, open a discussion, but don't comandeer it. Know that you, too, have an agenda, and that in that classroom, you are very powerful and loud -- though it is on you to get students to claim more power, and more voice, for themselves, regardless of whether you completely disagree with them. Feel free to steal my TA's ideas, as I have. I will not post this to bSpace.

Let's remember that a video from the grassroots, like an email from the top down, like our own classroom plans, is a text, one that we cannot simply take at face value. It is part of our job description not to take it at face value. Or we can do it on our own time; but when we are educating, our responsibility is to train students to read more deeply, think more complexly, and so forth."

Day 12: Wiiiiii

cardio: 10 mins (figuring out the) jumprope, 10 mins (remembering how to use the) Wii Fit
stretching: yes
pushups: twenty
crunches: thirty
breakfast: leftover vegetable pie, an apple, vitamins
lunch: dry salami, maple yogurt (Australian-style), beans on toast, bread and cheese
apartment clean?: passably

I must be quick, since I'm rushing out to go see Performing Diaspora at CounterPulse. Quick updates:

1) I was wrong. Old school protest can have significant effects -- if the protestors are willing to step out of their comfort zones. They have, and the media is paying attention.

2) The jumprope workout will work perfectly, I think, and since it is a bit more intense than the cardiomachines, I can unguiltily bolster it with some Wii Fit stuff, which means I'll get to start reporting back here on my weight and BMI and such (didn't get a chance to write it down today, but the cute little computerized voice made fun of me for not having reported back in months, then called me overweight). This will make it much easier to balance fitness and dissertation. Three weeks and counting -- woot.

Day 11: Mr. Roper

cardiomachine: 20 mins leakybeaky, 15 mins ellipsis
(read James Joyce's Ulysses)
stretching: yes
pushups: twenty
crunches: thirty
breakfast: one eggs, beans on toast because I wish I were British, an apple, vitamins
lunch: dry salami, maple yogurt (Australian-style), cold cauliflower soup (Ara's mom's recipe), a few brussels sprouts
apartment clean?: reasonably

Last weekend we saw DV8's To Be Straight With You at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, and it was one of those rare pieces of art that was both politically effective and artistically virtuosic. Not least because of a monologue, made up of text from an interview with a young Caribbean homosexual whose father stabbed him when he came out of the closet, a monologue which a dancer performed while performing Olympic-level feats -- with a jumprope.

A fucking JUMPROPE.

Keith (see yesterday's post), who is friends with that dancer, and told me that the dancer had once been a competitive jumproper, and that the director just decided that he'd have his performers use what they know. Keith said, "You know, they say that ten minutes with a jumprope is as intense a workout as a thirty-minute run." The Jump Rope Institute (yup) confirms that this is true (click here). Of course, I could never jog because the impact is bad for my bad arches, and so, the elliptical and exercise bike are my albatrosses.

Cut to me in the stretch room at the gym today. One of the biggest difficulties in this new fitness plan is simply getting to the gym -- when I need all the time I can to deal with pressing dissertation deadlines, and plays that just won't get written, an unnecessary trip away from the home office fucking sucks. And I hear this Indiana Jones whoop-crack sound and I look up from my downward-facing-dog and see, again,

a fucking JUMPROPE.

One of the other things I hate about the gym is how laws of probability necessitate that most of the people at the gym on any given day will be people who go to the gym regularly. Fucking in-shape undergrads walking around in muscle shirts while I grunt through my paltry twenty pushups don't you judge me. And one of those very fit undergrads was right there, jumproping.

And it was so cool. Criss-cross, double spins, or whatever the hell, superfast, I just watched in awe for a second, which was embarrassing, and besides, at the gym, you're not supposed to look directly at anyone, which is another reason why I hate it.

And another thing I hate about the gym is the elliptical, because all that work doesn't go anywhere, because elliptical-walking is neither a transferable nor an impressive skill. But jumproping, as we have seen, is. And if I do that frequently enough, I could have something neat to whip out at parties.

So I bought a jumprope. Weighted handles, for my fitness enjoyment. And now, two days out of my weekly four, I can get my cardio in without going all the way to the gym. The foot impact, which is light if you're doing it right, shouldn't be a problem for my feet. In fact, I think it might make me lighter on my feet.

Oddly, I just realized that the dance piece we saw at Yerba Buena the week before that had a major section that mimed a jumprope, which we discussed at some length in the car on the way home. THE FATES HAVE TOLD ME TO JUMPROPE.

Day 10: Everybody's Fight

cardiomachine: 20 mins psychbike, 15 mins ellipsicle
(William Tydeman's The Medieval European Stage, 500-1550)
stretching: yes
pushups: twenty
crunches: thirty
breakfast: two eggs, potatoes and toast at Ann's Soup Kitchen, vitamins
lunch: root vegetable tostada from Tacubaya in West Berkeley (compliments of my lovely wife)
apartment clean?: certainly

Ann's Soup Kitchen has a 15% discount for anyone wearing UC Berkeley gear. Before I stepped up to the counter, I quickly grabbed my Cal gym shorts from out of my bag and put them on over my jeans -- the cashier told me that the discount only applies on Fridays, but that, yes, the shorts would have counted.

On the way from Ann's to the gym, I bumped into a former student of mine. She asked if I was going to the rally. We spoke for a few seconds, I awkwardly said "Well, I'm not teaching this year, so I've got nothing to strike from... it isn't my fight, I guess," then she went to the rally, and I to the gym.

Later on, I sent her this email:

"It was nice to run into you today -- just to let you know, I did end up attending the end of the rally, and marched through the streets of Berkeley in the protest. Two minutes after we spoke on Bancroft, I realized that I had actually said the words 'this isn't my fight,' which is untrue anyway, especially because any fight, anywhere, that affects access to education is a fight I shohuld consider 'mine.' I
don't agree with everything that the protestors were saying, but I reminded myself that marching in solidarity is not the same as marching in lockstep, and that an imperfect gesture is still sometimes better than no gesture at all. So, thanks for reminding me, if only accidentally, of what my priorities are."

My voice is hoarse from the chant-yelling (when I do such things, I do them right, and yes, I did get on the mike for the giant speaker system so that I could rustle up the crowd); my favorite part was when we marched outside Berkeley High and did a special cheer just for them:

This is everybody's fight!
Berkeley High is hella tight!

As usual, the Berkeley protesters have offered up a massive prix fixe spread of broadly-defined and often half-baked demands and philosophies; I prefer to order a la carte. At the march, between the deafening calls and responses, I discussed with Keith (from Performance Studies at UC Davis) all of the points I complained about in yesterday's post, particularly because Keith's thesis is on a relevant topic. Keith shrugged after a while and said, "Yeah. It's hard to be smart at a protest." I said, "Exactly. Exactly." And we marched on, in solidarity but by no means in lockstep.