How High? Tracey Ann Broussard Florida International University
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Florida International University FIU Digital Commons FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations University Graduate School 2-24-2004 Jump! How high? Tracey Ann Broussard Florida International University DOI: 10.25148/etd.FI14051852 Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/etd Part of the Fiction Commons Recommended Citation Broussard, Tracey Ann, "Jump! How high?" (2004). FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 1816. https://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/etd/1816 This work is brought to you for free and open access by the University Graduate School at FIU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of FIU Digital Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. FLORIDA INTERNATIONAL UNIVERSITY Miami, Florida JUMP! HOW HIGH? A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of MASTER OF FINE ARTS in CREATIVE WRITING by Tracey Ann Broussard 2004 To: Dean R. Bruce Dunlap College of Arts and Sciences This thesis, written by Tracey Ann Broussard, and entitled Jump! How High?, having been approved in respect to style and intellectual content, is referred to you for judgment. We have read this thesis and recommend that it be approved. Dan Wakefield Kimberly Harrison Denise Duhamel, Major Professor Date of Defense: February 24, 2004 The thesis of Tracey Ann Broussard is approved. Dean R. Br ce Dunlap College of Arts and Sciences Dean I uglas Wartzok University Graduate School Florida International University, 2004 ii Copyright 2004 by Tracey Ann Broussard All rights reserved. iii DEDICATION This thesis is dedicated to my husband, Martin Silverberg. Without his love and support this book would not have been possible. iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I am deeply grateful to my professors for the time and effort they have spent on my behalf. In mentoring me they have given me a part of themselves that I will always cherish. I feel so very fortunate to have had the honor to study with them all. I am indebted to Professor Dan Wakefield, who made me believe that yes, there is a book here. His encouragement and expertise were instrumental in shaping my book. I would like to thank Doctor Kimberly Harrison. Her willingness to be part of my process, and her joy of literature inspire me. I owe a multitude of thanks to Professors John Dufresne, who first encouraged me to enter the program, and assisted me with the beginning of my memoir. I am indebted also to Professor Denise Duhamel. Her patience, kindness, and positive outlook enabled me to complete my thesis without having a nervous breakdown. There will always be a place in my heart for the people and professors I have encountered through F.I.U.'s Creative Writing Program. I believe the program is without comparison and am thankful to have been a student here. v ABSTRACT OF THE THESIS JUMP! HOW HIGH? by Tracey Ann Broussard Florida International University, 2004 Miami, Florida Professor Denise Duhamel, Major Professor JUMP! HOW HIGH? is a memoir of a journey to a black belt in Karate, one that explores the duality inherent in being a nurturing yet powerful woman. The book moves between personal growth and an exploration of karate training, questioning both the means by which martial arts training promotes growth and the dichotomy of what it means to be a good girl/bad girl. The karate style in which the author trains embraces the Samurai virtues of honor, justice, loyalty, wisdom, compassion and bravery. This is juxtaposed by the virtues of the Southern woman, compliance, hospitality, and warmth, with which the author was brought up. In the final analysis, the author grapples and comes to terms with the question of loyalty to the self. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE PROLOGUE 2 I. WHO I WAS THE MOMENT BEFORE I MET A SENSEI 11 II. HOW TO RAISE SAMURAI CHILDREN 20 III. HOW NOT TO GET NERVOUS 28 IV. THE KARATE PICNIC 35 V. COMPLY WITH ME 45 VI. LESSON FROM THE HEAVY RAIN 57 VII. MASTERING SERVITUDE 66 VIII. HOPPY DAZE ARE HARE AGAIN 79 IX. COLLAPSING HOUSE 93 X. THE ART OF BREATH 104 XI. WOLF IN THE WOODS 122 XII. WATER'S SOFTEST STATE 136 XIII. SHOULDERS DON'T LIE 140 XIV. DENY THE GODS IF THEY STAND IN YOUR WAY 156 XV. THE WORD OF A SAMURAI 172 XVI. DEFEATING YOURSELF BY VICTORY 190 EPILOGUE 199 vii "Look. Really Look." Master Joseph Kelljchian 1 Prologue I've just finished eleven hundred front kicks, five-hundred push-ups, sit-ups, reverse punches, back fists, leg lifts, three hundred back, side, and roundhouse kicks, thousands of other exercises, two pints of water, a quart of orange Gatorade, one package of chocolate-filled Mini-Oreos, a Twix bar, two swigs of Pepto-Bismol, and a twenty minute cry on the toilet seat. My right shoulder feels as though it's been whacked with a baseball bat, my husband wants to know why I'm not in bed, my teenage daughter is mad because I'm preventing her from using the computer at 11:30 p.m., I've got my period, a bad attitude, ten essay questions which I am required to answer, but cannot reveal the content of, a debt of two-hundred dollars payable to the administrators of said exercises and essays, four more months scattered with six additional tests consisting of a myriad of other benchmarks of martial arts ability, after which time, if I'm fortunate enough to pass, I will receive that which I have worked toward for six years - a black belt. All of this for the love of Karate. Or should I say hate. As much as I love Karate, I hate it. The question I ask myself at times like this is why do I continue to train? Karate is an art form that has the power to agitate me like little else in life, and yet I return to the classroom again and again. Like making love, Karate is impossible to know until you've done it. When I first walked into a Karate class, nothing could have prepared me for the internal journey I was embarking upon, or the changes which would transform my life. 2 If someone had told me I was going to become a postulate in a throat grabbing, face pounding discipline of destruction, an art whose practitioners seek inner growth while revering the Samurai virtues of honor, loyalty, wisdom, courage, compassion, and justice, I would have laughed. Had they said I was going to spend the rest of my life struggling to master the moment through awareness that any second could bring death, I would have said, "Huh?" Yet here I am, aching from what it sometimes dubbed "the GoJu 500." Five hundred repetitions of a myriad of exercises, phase one of black belt testing. If I were smart I'd log onto E-Bay and buy the $48.99 jujitsu second-degree black belt which includes forty-six books and two hours of video instruction. They claim to be, "not like traditional martial arts schools. Not only do we teach a total weapons mastery program, but also a brutal style of fighting applicable to today's hostile environment, and we are one of the few schools to recognize that a belt ranking is NOT a measure of a martial artist's ability!" Exactly what, then, is a measure of a martial artist's ability? I'm not sure. I can't even be certain of how I ended up training in Karate, or how Karate ended up changing me. I know there is no way I could ever do justice in rendering my Karate journey. I can only give glimpses, a montage that may hint at the mystery. And there is no way I can accurately render the lessons my Sensei gave me. I can quote her to the best of my memory, and only hope that the spirit of her intentions will shine through. I do have one concrete example of how Karate has changed me. It has to do with my nose. When I was a child, I really, really wanted to be beautiful. My father used 3 to tell me, "You'd be beautiful if it weren't for that bump on your nose." I spent more time than I can remember looking into the mirror, willing the invisible bump to go away, hoping to one day get a nose job. Due to skin cancer, I now have a scar the size of a dime on my nose. After the surgery, I told my father, "I don't have a bump on my nose, but now you can tease me about my scar." "What scar?" He said. Indeed. I look in the mirror but don't see it. Sometimes I think it was an accident, or circumstance that brought me to Karate. Other times I'm sure it was divine providence. Something was driving me to this discipline; only I hadn't seen it, my introduction to the art coming three years before I began training. Standing with my daughter, Laura, in the parking lot of her preschool, I waited to speak with the Karate teacher. Laura had started dance lessons the month before, but didn't like them. Karate was something I'd always wanted to try, but was afraid. I wanted Laura to grow up without the fears I had known. Starting Karate early might make that happen, I thought. I was mesmerized as the teacher, an enigmatic, energetic woman in black unloaded long and short sticks, blockers, padded gloves and other paraphernalia from her car.