Being one hundred percent present here and now is the talent of a true martial artist. Through the practice of martial arts, we can learn to feel this presence, call upon it, cultivate it, make it a part of ourselves. When we can enter this dimension at will, it becomes possible to have free access to an enormous source of power.
-Daniele Bolelli, On The Warrior’s Path
Saturday: 131.5 (Don't even ask me how I've gained half a pound with everything I've done in the last two days.... I haven't been eating poorly, either, so I don't understand it.)
Lunchtime BJJ at GB Seattle. I couldn't get moving in time for the basics class, but that's just as well, because I wanted to go to Sleeper later, and three back-to-back classes would probably have been a bit much.
There were about a zillion people on the mat. saturdays really are tending to be crowded lately. Since it was "competition class", it was all positional sparring and timed matches. That female blue belt from yesterday was back, so I was happy to get a chance to roll with her this time. She is 115 pounds! But very strong and technical. It was some really good rolling.
A white belt guy. We were doing pass vs sweep from closed guard, and he sit-up-swept me four or five times, and I couldn't do a thing to stop him. That was frustrating. I passed his guard a few times, but of course I was pretty useless on the bottom.
I was going to take a break after that, and was sitting on the side with my coat off, but there was an odd number and Rodrigo was chivvying me back onto the mat. I can't say no to Rodrigo. Even if I'm tired and I'm being urged to fight ANGELA! Somehow I found a second wind. This was a fun roll too. She plowed me of course, but I'm actually satisfied with my performance against her- I put up a decent fight. I tried really hard to keep moving and transitioning. I even GOT A SWEEP on her. This is a really big deal. She did a takedown from turtle using my shin, three times. I want to learn that one.
I warned Kelly that Amanda, our foe from the Revolution, is likely to be at the small house tournament at the end of the month- Rodrigo has invited her gym. Kelly was not thrilled to hear this.
Sleeper: again, no drills, just working. Balance/sweep exercise with both Cindy and Lamont. Useful tidbit from Lamont: There are certain points that I need to shrimp out onto the side of my hip to get better leverage, which is totally counterituitive. It seemed like doing that was going to result in the both-knees-together-pressed-to-the-side thing that I am also trying to break the habit of. But I could see that his suggestion was working. My brain didn't want to do it that way. I need to retrain that urge.
Two or three matches against Jalen- inlcuding one starting from standup. Again, competitive and fun. As usual, I spent more time in controlling positions, but he tapped me a few times and I didn't get any on him. He really does not try for top side control, front mount, KOB, or anything like that. He is not looking for points, he's all about the sub. He doesn't fart around getting them set up, they pop out of nowhere with no warning. If I was fighting him for real, I'd need to focus on defending his subs and try to win on points. He doesn't get me with the orthodox stuff, he gets me with the wrestling moves and Cindy's weird sneaky tricks. He *so* has Cindy's fingerprints all over his technique. Also, he is very explosive. He often surprises me and gets the drop on me with the suddenness of his moves. He takes a lot of crazy chances- sometimes they pay off, but sometimes he ends up doing things like reversing himself or pulling me past his own guard.
Jalen sit-up-swept me a couple of times, which really frustrated me, after having that done to me repeatedly this morning by that white belt guy. Getting sit-up-swept has become a sensitive sore spot for me. For some reason it makes me feel particularly ineffectual and helpless. I need to ask someone to show me some counters for that.
I didn't last very long today. It was good to get a little gi followed by no-gi, but I was really noticing the limits of my gas tank.
It was really nice to see Lamont after so long. I showed him the pic from the last Revolution, where Prof Carlos is lying spread-eagled on the floor with his coat askew, and Lamont (wearing his Sleeper t-shirt) is standing right behind his head in an authoritative pose that- with a little imagination and perhaps a suggestive caption- could make it look like Lamont downed the prof. We all had a laugh over that.
Run-through of Sil Lum Tao- just because for some reason I felt like doing that today.
Sunday: 132.0 Are you kidding??!? It as a truly perverse world we live in when you can do six BJJ classes in three days, eat right, and GAIN weight. This is frustrating.
The creative writing challenge on Mythic Scribes seemed to have withered and died. I had been on the edge of my seat waiting to see what the other writers would do with the rich fodder I'd tossed them, and was really disappointed that no one seemed up for the challenge. It finally dawned on me that perhaps some of them didn't find my spin on it quite as amusing as I myself did. So I posted and asked them, and to my chagrin, it was true- at least a couple of them thought I'd been offensive and inappropriate to write certain things I'd written about other people's characters. Rats. I still don't think I did anything out of line, but obviously some of us just wanted different things out of the project which turned out to to not be happily aligned objectives. In my mind, part of the fun of writing in a "shared universe" type of format is that you get to F with other people's characters, and then we all have to get creative with the hands we are dealt. I didn't really stop to think that some artists are very touchy about creative control. You really need to loosen up about that if you're going to work effectively on collaborative projects... but admittedly perhaps I skewed a little too far in the opposite direction.
I apologized profusely and repeatedly, deleted everything, and withdrew from the project, but my creative ego feels bruised. One of them was *REALLY* PO'ed that I had killed off a tertiary character of hers that she apparently had had big plans for later, and posted (among a lot of other prickly commentary) that she intends to ignore the "crap" I wrote about her characters. Ouch. I think any artist would be wounded to hear another artist refer to her work as "crap". That hurt. Although this is truly small fish next to some of the REAL problems in my life right now, this was an unpleasant interlude.
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