the indomitable human spirit

It's been a while since I've blogged about either books or movies. Usually, I'm comparing the book version of something to the film version. This edition will not follow that modus operandi. This one will be a little more like those silly essays we used to write in high school and college, comparing seemingly disparate works to one another. In college, I compared a Nathaniel Hawthorne short story to one by Edgar Allan Poe and then tied that symbolism to Biblical representations of water. It was deep, but quite a stretch. Maybe I'll hunt that down and share it with you this weekend.

Anyhow. On to the analysis. In this corner, wearing Crip blue and throwing up gang signs, we have Stanley Tookie Williams' Blue Rage, Black Redemption. And in the other corner, we have the brilliant Cool Hand Luke, starring Paul Newman.

The mere comparison of these two works must start with a description of the characters. The former, Tookie, is best-known for being a co-founder of the Crips. In his two-part memoir, he rails against his past and what eventually led him to death row. The missteps that led him to prison are many, though until he landed at San Quentin, he had never before been incarcerated. He was a larger than life figure in South Central LA during his lifetime, and that spirit carried over into his life in prison. He refused to submit to the prison culture, maintained his ethics, and turned over a new leaf. He wrote an 8-part children's book series to prevent youth from going down his same stretch of road. His turnaround was so drastic, there was a film made about his prison redemption, and he was repeatedly nominated for the Nobel Prize.

The latter was Luke, a fictitious character, but one with an antiestablishment persona just the same. His refusal to submit to the rules laid out by the sadistic warden at the work camp led to beatings, harder labor, nights spent "in the box"...and earning the respect of all his fellow inmates. He fought the system up until the very end, playing his part with that trademark Newman grin. He wasn't locked up for murder, but his long trial at the work camp tested his mettle just the same.

Tookie & Luke both refused to let their spirits be broken by an inhospitable imprisonment. Tookie stepped into the realm of peacemaker while in prison, refusing to participate as the gang hooligan that took him there. He brokered truces between Bloods & Crips, which few on the streets have even tried, much less succeeded with. All the while, he faced a prison bureaucracy that was out to get him, much like the sadistic warden in Cool Hand Luke. Both spirits of these men were indomitable, unable to be broken. Despite crueler than cruel circumstances, they managed to hold their heads high until the very end.

Queue this movie, check out this book. I don't think you'll be disappointed by either.

mmm, sulfur!

i'm a writer for a music website called jamsbio. well, sort of. i was a beta writer. once they stopped paying for contributing, i kinda quit doing it. more important phish to phry. the premise of the site is that certain songs are linked to memories in your life. listen to a song, tell a story to go along with it. interesting concept, no?

whilst on a bicycle ride today, mind a-wandering, i connected another sense to memories. the beginning of my ride was hella fun. zipping along a paved path, twisting alongside four mile run in breezy wooded glory. much fun. except for that god-awful smell. sulfur. it immediately linked to several happier memories in my past. thank goodness! here it is, my moment of zcent.

the ball fields in north lauderdale were next to the water treatment plant. every fall (or was it the spring?) i played ball in the asphyxiating stench of sulfur used or released in the treatment of raw sewage. i loved playing baseball, bad as i was, so my young mind came to associate that smell with baseball. the smell of the non-potable sprinkler water used municipally at most city and county parks always brought me back.

when we moved to coral springs in the last month or so of fifth grade, i quickly realized that living less than a quarter mile from the treatment plant would put that smell in my nostrils for the majority of the days i played front lawn baseball or football or rode my bike. it was then that i also started camping in boy scouts. any of you that've been to camp seminole in davie (few in number for sure!) know that the water we were supposed to drink and clean with was tainted by the same resident of number 16, periodic table. it took a few years before my taste buds would adjust to the shock of such a vile elixir, nevermind my body to the simultaneous shock of a cold outdoor shower and the sensation of not getting clean in tainted water.

i'm not really sure where the stench came from today. dog poo fermenting in four mile run. industrial runoff along west glebe road. stagnating water. straight up raw sewage. who knows. all i can say for certain is that, pretty as it was, i'm probably going to avoid that route until it cools off and that cooked putrid olfactory assault subsides to less nausea-inducing levels.

in the interest of my sanity

positivity is hard to maintain at this time of year. the end-of-the-year stresses outside of the classroom. the deteriorating behavior inside of it. from here on out, i'm going to have to follow a rant with a rose-colored glasses look at work, because i hate being so down on so few, when i should be high on success.

edition one. this boy struggles with writing. he's still learning english, though you'd never know it to have a conversation with him. he's a fluent speaker in two languages, with little trace of his native spanish. he busts his hump day in, day out, with the best attitude you'd ever want to have in a student. give me a class full of him, i'll be challenged, but happy. he's made a year's growth this year in reading. today, he wrote his best paragraph all year. on topic, five sentences, clear ideas, main idea, details. all it took was that little extra support before he started writing. instead of head-scratching confusion, he wrote for thirty minutes like he knew what he was doing. now i finally know what it takes for him to succeed in writing. too bad it was so late in the year!

writing

i spent quite a while this weekend trying to write about my adventures. i apparently have a severe case of writer's block. my affliction has affected me before. i'd learned a lesson from the last time.

i must write when the feelings, the emotions, the experiences are still fresh in my mind. the euphoria. the rejection. the pain. the elation. some of you may know that i was using writing as a catharsis for some not-so-happy times in my life. it even got to the point when my scribblings were so good that i considered compiling said sad stories into a book of sorts. they're all true stories, though if i ever were to consider the book route, i'd change the names to protect those involved. it started over two years ago when lee and i lived together. i'd just returned from christmas break, and i had a stunning realization as i sat in my apartment alone late at night. so, i took out my laptop and started pecking away. two hours later, i had quite an introspective look into my head. and so it began...

i'm not sure how this applies to my current writer's block. probably something along the lines of if i want my tales to be more adventurous (even taking some literary license in them), i should write about them very soon after the adventure. the more time passes, the less the adrenaline will affect and accent the writing. my book has popped back into my head again, albeit with a happier twist. problem again, details escape me and the initial euphoria of those moments have passed. maybe with a little help from my friends...