CK and I spent the morning doing a bit more of the slow, light sparring that we had done Tuesday morning. We also spent about half the time doing non-striking balance work type "sparring", which was sort of like aggressive Contact Improv. The object was to "attack with your CENTER" and also to try to stay relaxed and not have a lot of muscle and stiffness involved.
Then we picked up JB and did some formwork- short and long open-hands tai chi. As usually happens, we spent more than an hour on the first five moves of the form. Also, a lot of move-from-the-center focus, and a goodly amount of correction on weight distribution, knee position, and arm altitude.
JB looked awful. I haven't seen her in about a week and a half- CK told me that JB's cat had passed away, but JB hadn't told me- and when I mentioned it in the car, I got a very abrupt "I don't want to talk about it". There is also rumor of some kind of drama going on in her personal life, but I never know what is going on. JB said straight up that she was avoiding everyone and that's why she hasn't been to class, and that she still doesn't really want to interact with anyone. I'm worried about her, but anxious about being pushy. I left her and CK in the early afternoon, partly because my attention span was all used up by then and partly because I want her to get a chance to talk to CK alone about whatever she needs to talk about.
I had really wanted to avoid angsty talks with CK about the Shaolin group. We haven't had a whole lot of time together this visit, which helped in that respect, but we did get into it a bit in the car on the way to pick up JB. Again, I am dismayed at how wound up I am still getting once this topic is stirred, for all that I've tried to let the whole thing go.
CK agrees with me that- with CN pulling back for school- unless DD involves himself more, the group is a slowly-rotting corpse which will disintegrate fully in the visible future. She also couldn't argue with my assertion that we are not doing enough sparring and are in danger of turning into the dreaded "forms factory" model. SK has admitted that both he and CN are anxious about taking responsibility for teaching and supervising sparring, and that's why we're not doing it, even though Nemesis and I have been consistently asking for it (and SK wants more too). I suspect that even the return of DD would not help that, as he was never big on sparring either. Part of this also has to do with the fact that all three women (myself included) are reluctant to spar with Nemesis (and to a lesser degree JoE) because of their lack of good control and the high likelihood of potential injuries for us. Yet neither Nemesis nor we the intimidated will be helped by simply avoiding the whole question of sparring forever. I can't understand why no one but me and SK (and Nemesis, to some degree, from what little I've talked about it privately with him) is disturbed about this whole learning-a-martial-art-without-ever-doing-any-fighting thing. Like spending years upon years learning how to fish, but you never actually put a line into the water. If I was running this show, no one would get above one stripe without being more proficient in sparring than any of us below SK are now. (Developing enough control to be able to spar without injuring your training partners would also be a requirement for advancement, were I the teacher.)
Since neither CK or I had any answers or ideas for that thorny apple, we returned to the topic of forms- and she asked me specific questions about what I am discontented about in that arena. I told her that over the last year, the more junior students have learned several new forms and now have forms resumes that are hot on the heels of my own- yet I have not been given the resources to progress in turn, and am essentially stuck repeating the fifth grade over and over while watching the first-graders catch up to me. I also resent that CN, SK, and even CK (whom I technically OUTRANK in Shaolin!) are given more material by DD whenever the opportunity presents itself to do so, but *I* an never given any more material even though I have repeatedly groveled for it. I have asked CN point-blank several times why he is dragging his heels so stubbornly on giving me any new material, and the man flat-out refuses to tell me. SK refuses to teach me anything new without CN's permission, because he's afraid of getting in trouble for it- so so much for that angle.
And yes, I am aware of my hypocrisy in spending one paragraph bitching about turning into a forms factory and then the next paragraph bitching about how I can't get any more forms. I explained to CK that I'm grubbing for forms because it seems like that's the only thing I have a snowflake's chance in Hades of ever maybe getting... I'm lusting after the crumbs because I'm starving.
CK gave me the talk about how getting more forms isn't necessarily "progressing"..... which I countered with, Yeah, I know- but I can do the same simple form by myself in a bare room for six hours a day for the rest of my life, and yes, I will keep progressing and getting better. But without any tools or feedback, it's slower and more stumbling than I want to be going. Besides which it is monumentally BORING and really hard to stay motivated.
She said something about how masterful I must be at this point on those particular forms, after so much review. I told her that my forms all still suck. Silence. Yeah- It didn't even make sense to *ME* either, even while it was coming out of my mouth.
I have been working on the assumption that my Shaolin forms suck. I know that my Shaolin forms suck in the same unquestioning way that I know water is wet. Part of this is attributable to my own personal neurotic hangups, and part of it is attributable to the fact that I can't find any other reasonable explanation for why my teachers have persistantly held me back to the extent that they have. We have an uncannily talented group of more junior students, that it's difficult to avoid camparing oneself unfavorably to. JM encourages that particular bad habit in me by giving me (a much more senior student than herself) an irritating amount of unsolicited instruction and corrections. I'm sure there's more additional psychological garbage wrapped up in there as well, that I'm not even aware of. Consentual reality through all of these distorted lenses is questionable.
But it's a bit of a mindf*** to stop and wonder- "Hey.... I wonder exactly how much my Shaolin forms really DO- or really DON'T- suck?" What if they don't suck after all? How would it change my training if I found out they don't really suck?
There is really no one that I can trust to give me a truly objective assessment of my Shaolin forms. (Not that I can really cast blame for this; in most cases it's because the person has an interest in being NICE to me.)
CK then wanted to know why I didn't feel I was getting tools and feedback in class. Well, I am- but not at the level that I need and want. As I said, the past year has been spent working on forms I already know. Yes, mine have plenty of improvement to be made- but the bulk of CN's and SK's time is (understandably) spent on those students who still didn't know which foot you step with on the lunge, and such- when I need some more detailed and advanced feedback. They tend to watch the group do a form, and then pick out some of the things that stand out as group-wide problems, to work on those. But I feel like I am having DIFFERENT problems than the more junior students, and I am not getting the specific help for those problems.
I've blogged a lot about this, and I still don't feel like I'm articulating it well- nor do I feel like I'm getting anywhere.
Okay, a starting point:
I think that I need to start forcing myself to request individual forms help from SK (and maybe a little from CN as well) during Thursday "free forms time" again. I have not done so *at all* for nearly a year. Mostly because I couldn't bear for *anyone* to watch my formwork while I was enduring Epic Slump 2010, and partly because it is hard to separate one of the teachers from the class while making it abundantly yet politely clear that JM is not welcome to tag along and watch/assistant-teach.
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