okay, so i apologize for my hateful remarks concerning a rival school. i honestly did like some of the faculty there, i just thought that, as a school, they weren't fulfilling their responsibilities... and i realize that, over the years, the school may have changed to become a much more quality institution. i think my comments were largely in response to this particular acupuncturist, who, via self-serving and impossible arrogant claims, basically wasted an entire two hour meeting which was supposed to be about curricular reform, reverse curriculum, clarification of objectives, etc. (important stuff). so to all you tai hsuan alumni out there, forgive me. i'm not going to rescind my previous comments, because they were based upon my experiences. i actually attended the school, and that actually happened to me... but i will allow that things have changed.
so, for whatever it's worth, i'm sorry...
Saturday, October 25, 2008
why i hate tai hsuan
okay, usually i'm not a hater... i keep negative thoughts to myself (except when it comes to myself). but since one particular faculty member kept tooting his own horn and saying how "radical" his alma mater (tai hsuan) was, i just can't help myself...
i attended tai hsuan for one summer. it was a very difficult summer, because i was working three jobs, including summer school teaching, to afford tuition to that freaking school. i decided, ultimately, that the school was full of s**t, because they weren't teaching me ANYTHING. the classes combined students from all levels (including students on the verge of graduation) and were conducted in a kind of question and answer format. big news for you guys. if i don't know anything to start with, i can't even begin to formulate a question! and what's more, they expected me to learn, ON MY OWN, the names and locations of the 360 or so points. what the f*** was i paying them their exorbitant tuition for!!?? furthermore, there were some classes where the instructor wouldn't even show up... we'd wait 15 minutes, half an hour, and finally decide that he wasn't coming, class was cancelled...
during one of my last classes, i confided in a senior student that i was disappointed with the education i was receiving, and was thinking about transferring. her advice? "do it now, while you still can."
so i did. i went to emperor's in california, because the standards for licensure were much more stringent there. i figured they had to have a more structured curriculum (which they did). i have no regrets.
so to a certain acupuncturist, who claims he can treat stage 4 cancer with one needle, or by making an herbal formula without even seeing a patient, i have serious doubts about your "radical" alma mater... and everything else you may have had to say.
i attended tai hsuan for one summer. it was a very difficult summer, because i was working three jobs, including summer school teaching, to afford tuition to that freaking school. i decided, ultimately, that the school was full of s**t, because they weren't teaching me ANYTHING. the classes combined students from all levels (including students on the verge of graduation) and were conducted in a kind of question and answer format. big news for you guys. if i don't know anything to start with, i can't even begin to formulate a question! and what's more, they expected me to learn, ON MY OWN, the names and locations of the 360 or so points. what the f*** was i paying them their exorbitant tuition for!!?? furthermore, there were some classes where the instructor wouldn't even show up... we'd wait 15 minutes, half an hour, and finally decide that he wasn't coming, class was cancelled...
during one of my last classes, i confided in a senior student that i was disappointed with the education i was receiving, and was thinking about transferring. her advice? "do it now, while you still can."
so i did. i went to emperor's in california, because the standards for licensure were much more stringent there. i figured they had to have a more structured curriculum (which they did). i have no regrets.
so to a certain acupuncturist, who claims he can treat stage 4 cancer with one needle, or by making an herbal formula without even seeing a patient, i have serious doubts about your "radical" alma mater... and everything else you may have had to say.
Friday, October 24, 2008
kahala mall stinks/ random thoughts
just to let you know. i'm at kahala mall right now. it looks like they're pumping s**t out in front of the whole foods store. the whole parking lot and front of the mall reeks of "leavings." i came inside to the starbucks, bought the obligatory "venti mocha frappuccino" (crap, i don't even particularly like the stuff) and sat down... i'm killing a bit of time until my appointment out this way, writing empty nothings, looking at the upbeat kahala crowd while away their day.
there are a lot of what i would call "business people," guys dressed up in aloha shirts, holding what seem like conferences across the little tables. maybe they are financial specialists trying to calm clients over coffee and scones. and then there are a lot of "kahala moms," always dressed sporty in tank tops and shorts, pushing their decked out strollers, occasionally giving lectures to their misbehaving children, lectures that sound like they are more for the ears of everyone around them than the actual child, lectures that show that they are great parents, and their children are somehow behaving "out of mold": "why are you behaving like that? you know that in our family we never behave like that. settle down, young man." and then, resignedly, they kind of give up the act, just let the kids "stir," and talk with their girlfriends about the kids' activities, relationships, whatever.
i suppose i should consider myself part of this crowd. it is the unspoken privilege of observers and narrators to be "above it all," or at least pretend it's so. who knows, someone may be commenting on me, this shabby looking kid with the wandering eyes and the quiet typing fingers. i suppose i'm not above reproach.
things have been hectic this week. hell, for a while. it's funny. when i'm in the midst of the fray, there are so many things i think i'd like to be doing: writing, practicing taiji, making music, whatever... but when there's a moment of free time, i have a hard time recruiting the attention necessary for much of anything. i waste a lot of time sort of glossing over things, visiting facebook like every ten seconds... i hate that feeling. i feel like i have to refocus myself, but a larger majority of myself just doesn't care enough to do that. there's something comforting, i suppose, in just "washing out," just "vegging" (as was hip to say in my generation)... like water rippling out across my borders.
maybe that's what dreams/aspirations are for: not that we actually reach them, but in the midst of our "business," they serve as a fictionalized counterpoint to allow us to go on. sort of like hope. convince yourself that hope exists, or at the very least, have faith in it, and you could lean out across any abyss holding weights isometric and outstretched, like forever... so i suppose, in a way, i shouldn't feel frustrated about not being able to follow my idling projects, maybe i was never really meant to.
***
i was thinking about teaching, penguins and the bodhisattva path. one paradox of the bodhisattva vow is that it speaks heavily about an "other first" prioritization with regards to salvation. it's not that you save yourself first, and then reach a hand out to the world to "pull it up and out." it's more like you are always lowering yourself so that others may "step on you." which makes me wonder...
i think i understand a bit of it now, though. as a teacher, as a TRUE teacher, you can never think you "KNOW" your subject, and just deliver it like a package to be unwrapped... you have to ALWAYS be like a penguin, continually digesting the world so that you can later regurgitate it to your kids... in other words, you have to continually "relearn" your subject and think of the best way to make it assimilable to your particular students. in a sense, a teacher is a perpetual student.
we assume that the curriculum is a constant, and the student is the variable. but it's not true. the curriculum, what is taught, changes depending upon the nature of the student. so in essence, a teacher continually relearns (or perhaps even learns for the first time) his subject as he teaches his student.
with regards to taiji, for example. sure, i thought i "knew" my forms. i had practiced them to the extent that they had become engrained in my body. but as i tried to teach what i "knew" to my students, i discovered that i had to "relearn" the form in a different way, put a new, accessible vocabulary to it. and in doing this, what i had known of my forms expanded. i came to see different angles to everything...
maybe the bodhisattva path is arranged the way it is because of this very insight. it is a fiction to believe that salvation is a destination, a constant. it is a happening. and you only allow it to happen by constantly readjusting yourself to it, such that it "opens" to both you and your student. salvation IS this very process, this salvific process of bridging two uncertainties...
there are a lot of what i would call "business people," guys dressed up in aloha shirts, holding what seem like conferences across the little tables. maybe they are financial specialists trying to calm clients over coffee and scones. and then there are a lot of "kahala moms," always dressed sporty in tank tops and shorts, pushing their decked out strollers, occasionally giving lectures to their misbehaving children, lectures that sound like they are more for the ears of everyone around them than the actual child, lectures that show that they are great parents, and their children are somehow behaving "out of mold": "why are you behaving like that? you know that in our family we never behave like that. settle down, young man." and then, resignedly, they kind of give up the act, just let the kids "stir," and talk with their girlfriends about the kids' activities, relationships, whatever.
i suppose i should consider myself part of this crowd. it is the unspoken privilege of observers and narrators to be "above it all," or at least pretend it's so. who knows, someone may be commenting on me, this shabby looking kid with the wandering eyes and the quiet typing fingers. i suppose i'm not above reproach.
things have been hectic this week. hell, for a while. it's funny. when i'm in the midst of the fray, there are so many things i think i'd like to be doing: writing, practicing taiji, making music, whatever... but when there's a moment of free time, i have a hard time recruiting the attention necessary for much of anything. i waste a lot of time sort of glossing over things, visiting facebook like every ten seconds... i hate that feeling. i feel like i have to refocus myself, but a larger majority of myself just doesn't care enough to do that. there's something comforting, i suppose, in just "washing out," just "vegging" (as was hip to say in my generation)... like water rippling out across my borders.
maybe that's what dreams/aspirations are for: not that we actually reach them, but in the midst of our "business," they serve as a fictionalized counterpoint to allow us to go on. sort of like hope. convince yourself that hope exists, or at the very least, have faith in it, and you could lean out across any abyss holding weights isometric and outstretched, like forever... so i suppose, in a way, i shouldn't feel frustrated about not being able to follow my idling projects, maybe i was never really meant to.
***
i was thinking about teaching, penguins and the bodhisattva path. one paradox of the bodhisattva vow is that it speaks heavily about an "other first" prioritization with regards to salvation. it's not that you save yourself first, and then reach a hand out to the world to "pull it up and out." it's more like you are always lowering yourself so that others may "step on you." which makes me wonder...
i think i understand a bit of it now, though. as a teacher, as a TRUE teacher, you can never think you "KNOW" your subject, and just deliver it like a package to be unwrapped... you have to ALWAYS be like a penguin, continually digesting the world so that you can later regurgitate it to your kids... in other words, you have to continually "relearn" your subject and think of the best way to make it assimilable to your particular students. in a sense, a teacher is a perpetual student.
we assume that the curriculum is a constant, and the student is the variable. but it's not true. the curriculum, what is taught, changes depending upon the nature of the student. so in essence, a teacher continually relearns (or perhaps even learns for the first time) his subject as he teaches his student.
with regards to taiji, for example. sure, i thought i "knew" my forms. i had practiced them to the extent that they had become engrained in my body. but as i tried to teach what i "knew" to my students, i discovered that i had to "relearn" the form in a different way, put a new, accessible vocabulary to it. and in doing this, what i had known of my forms expanded. i came to see different angles to everything...
maybe the bodhisattva path is arranged the way it is because of this very insight. it is a fiction to believe that salvation is a destination, a constant. it is a happening. and you only allow it to happen by constantly readjusting yourself to it, such that it "opens" to both you and your student. salvation IS this very process, this salvific process of bridging two uncertainties...
the copper thief
honest abe
is turning blue-green
for the copper thief
in him he distills
all cheap and empty
well wishes, and the
worthless escapees
from pockets
too weary to hold.
he pulls veins from
the world they built
their tangled and connected
world, a wealth so
under-appreciated
it goes unnoticed
and secret running
juice, empty and insipid,
from hollow ear to hollow,
from bored intention to
the taken consequence.
like weeds he gingerly
plucks them, careful for
the roots, and paints them
the color of the sea
and envy, which they long
(servicable) forgot.
they say blood smells like
copper.
but in sterile
wound-holding
bandages
the world has forgotten.
so the copper thief
sets about and collects
and hoards the treasure
they've left behind
and unknowing.
is turning blue-green
for the copper thief
in him he distills
all cheap and empty
well wishes, and the
worthless escapees
from pockets
too weary to hold.
he pulls veins from
the world they built
their tangled and connected
world, a wealth so
under-appreciated
it goes unnoticed
and secret running
juice, empty and insipid,
from hollow ear to hollow,
from bored intention to
the taken consequence.
like weeds he gingerly
plucks them, careful for
the roots, and paints them
the color of the sea
and envy, which they long
(servicable) forgot.
they say blood smells like
copper.
but in sterile
wound-holding
bandages
the world has forgotten.
so the copper thief
sets about and collects
and hoards the treasure
they've left behind
and unknowing.
romantique
it was a nice summer
one to remember
to remember
and now and then
i take it out
to polish it and
search for cracks
there was a moment
when you crested a hill
and the hot asphalt
around you shimmered heat
(or was that you,
was that you?)
and the scent of you
or that moment
was clean and sweet
as orange blossoms.
the world, even the sun,
captured in that single
drop of sweat on your cheek.
you brushed it away.
of all that we did
that is what i remember most
that feeling of hope and openings
like it would last forever
it would last forever
like it would.
but even with all my care
a bit of tarnish is
inevitable.
i'll still give it a last rub
like a genie lamp
and then, like the rest,
pack it up in
recycled newspaper
for another rainy day.
one to remember
to remember
and now and then
i take it out
to polish it and
search for cracks
there was a moment
when you crested a hill
and the hot asphalt
around you shimmered heat
(or was that you,
was that you?)
and the scent of you
or that moment
was clean and sweet
as orange blossoms.
the world, even the sun,
captured in that single
drop of sweat on your cheek.
you brushed it away.
of all that we did
that is what i remember most
that feeling of hope and openings
like it would last forever
it would last forever
like it would.
but even with all my care
a bit of tarnish is
inevitable.
i'll still give it a last rub
like a genie lamp
and then, like the rest,
pack it up in
recycled newspaper
for another rainy day.
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