Friday, June 24, 2011

So we had a jujutsu class yesterday.

There was some kind of mutual respect, some kind of understanding, and eventually, a real meeting of mind and intention.

Someone with the compassion, skills, intellect and depth, to grasp what my teacher is trying to do.

It was one of the most fun training sessions I have ever had the privilege to participate in.

Honestly, I am pretty verklempt about just getting back into jujutsu at all, but with this particular person, I am really having to reach into my roots, to keep my center as anything like a sempai. Fortunately, my motto has always been "don't do as I do, do better than me" and everyone always has.

It's not my main talent, my gift and leaning is with weapons.
However, with my understanding of the body, my interest in jujutsu is persistent. I just need people to train with, who understand that years of indiscriminate training has damaged me, and I can only participate in a very specific, discriminate way.

The class left me unharmed, invigorated, and very, very happy.
I am happy to say, it did the same for our new student, who is also our teacher, in another paradigm.

I am not sure how it all ended up here, but I am just so grateful for a chance to get back to some real basics, and this exploration of the principles of martial movement, in this particular paradigm, that I don't even care that we get up before the sun does, to do it.


Saturday, June 18, 2011

I'm a bit lost in space, in terms of my martial arts career.
I'm unhappy about not pursuing Kokoro Ryu, but am really enjoying SMR and the people we train with.

Neither of us know how much of it we can still do, but neither of us has really ever asked the question, physically, either. I have continually worked to improve.

I can't remember enough Kokoro Ryu, to do it justice. Other students have better memories, and more talent. I mentored them, but I can't do it by myself.

SMR is probably the more comprehensive, understood and acceptable path. Not my usual thing, but the signs are all good and easy, and I find myself leaping though steps most often hallmarked by hesitation.

When my teacher puts the research he so frequently talks about, into action, and finds out what he was taught, and does something with it, that will be interesting.

The path is hard, narrow, and without reward. But it is the path, and it will guide the seeking soul who beats and follows its way along, with curiosity.

I shall Remain Curious. 

Sunday, June 12, 2011

It's been a week I would have sold my soul for, back in Texas.
Days breezy, highs in the 80s.
Nights breezy, sometimes stormy with rain, worrying about managing overflowing rain barrels.

Nights with fans, just out of sheer indulgence.
Sleeping under a light down comforter.. in later June.

In my old Texas life, an unaffordable luxury. My waterbed unheated, a cold shower with mint soap, going to sleep under the highest ceiling fan speed possible.

Yeah, life is different.

Shadows rise up again, and again, and many times they are just echoes I should learn to develop some kind of iron equanamity for.

They say that when the student is ready, a teacher shall appear.
This is not my exact experience.
My experience is that the avid student must scare teachers out of the woodwork, seek them out, bend their life to the teachers', and just generally make it work.

Woody Allen was right.
80% of life, is just showing up. 
I am such an unimaginably lucky girl.

At the beginning of my life, I was so hungry, so in search of something.

I was not in any position to understand my own quest.

I was Ronin, I was a starving coyote, I was raw bones, sinew, and attitude.

One man took me on, he took me in hand, and polished my raw aggression against his own compassion. Another of my teachers knew him, and handed me over, like some kind of hot brick or other liability.

Brendan took me on, took me as a student, and took it into his head to civilize me.

He took the wild live steel that was me, for a year or more, nights after practice, bounced me around the mat, Sanshiro-Sugata style, dragging my ragged self around, and off, the mat, with never an ounce of pain, harm, or damage. It was like being in a moon bounce, with a friend who helps you bounce, and get up again, except that your brain cells will never be the same. At some point, you have to let them know, that you can't play anymore.
That was the point I really had to re-evaluate my own heart.
Because, up to now, no one could break me.
Now, I am broken. It was an accident.
It was many accidents..
I can't do what I did, I can't be who I am.
I have to live in this curious half-life.
I am not here.
I am not there.
Three feet of steel, is my heart, it is my existence.

Three feet of steel, four feet of oak.
The singer sings, I am stung between bitter, nasty cultures.. one, I kill you, other, I kill you another way.
My heart is broken, that I must kill anyone, anyway. It's not my way, or my wishes.

The solution, is obscure.

There is nothing, there is no way. We like nothing.
We survive.
I am such an unimaginably lucky girl.

At the beginning of my life, I was so hungry, so in search of something.

I was not in any position to understand my own quest.

I was Ronin, I was a starving coyote, I was raw bones, sinew, and attitude.

One man took me on, he took me in hand, and polished my raw aggression against his own compassion. Another of my teachers knew him, and handed me over, like some kind of hot brick or other liability.

Brendan took me on, took me as a student, and took it into his head to civilize me.

He took the wild live steel that was me, for a year or more, nights after practice, bounced me around the mat, Sanshiro-Sugata style, dragging my ragged self around, and off, the mat, with never an ounce of pain, harm, or damage. It was like being in a moon bounce, with a friend who helps you bounce, and get up again, except that your brain cells will never be the same. At some point, you have to let them know, that you can't play anymore.
That was the point I really had to re-evaluate my own heart.
Because, up to now, no one could break me.
Now, I am broken. It was an accident.
It was many accidents..
I can't do what I did, I can't be who I am.
I have to live in this curious half-life.
I am not here.
I am not there.
Three feet of steel, is my heart, it is my existence.

Three feet of steel, four feet of oak.
The singer sings, I am stung between bitter, nasty cultures.. one, I kill you, other, I kill you another way.
My heart is broken, that I must kill anyone, anyway. It's not my way, or my wishes.

The solution, is obscure.

There is nothing, there is no way. We like nothing.