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Sunday, October 24, 2010

Note Taking

I gave her a dry peck on the cheek, goodbye. She turned quickly and kissed my mouth, warm and hot and an eternity.

"Don't do that," I said.

Mockery flitted in her eyes. "Why not?"

"Because I will love you, and you aren't worthy of my love."

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Words are so strange. They're supposed to be our most objective way of communicating. But they're so arbitrary.

Take "progress," and "progressive." The political "progressive," a Leftist of course, is progressing toward ... what? There is a goal. It's just that the goal is a theory. Marx and his dictatorship of the proletariat. An impossible fantasy, a philosophical construct, by which is meant, an ideal. An ideal is something that can never exist.

As opposed to progress. A deeply conservative value. Westward Ho. It's about the real world. Science, technology, geography -- mastery of the concrete.

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I'm keeping a record of bjj now -- techniques and their combinations. I'm convinced that when the black belts show 17 variations of some move, it should be just one, and a move that logically follows. Not 5 or 8 or 12 techniques -- two, or three. I understand the temptation of the teacher. There are so many fascinating things-- show them all! But no. Show what can be learned. Not everything that exists. Teaching is about what the student learns, not what the instructor knows. Give plenty of time to drill the move, review the previous lessons, drill the basics. It is, sadly, about rote. Instant mastery is for geniuses in science fiction books. Everyone else has to practice.

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Of course she is worthy of my love. But she still has to court it.


J

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