Sparring

In order to resist [suffering] for a long time, we have to be able to move the mind somewhere else. Beyond the body, beyond the sharp teeth of Pain. We can keep on suffering stoically….. or we can use it to learn to move our consciousness at will. Pain and fatigue exhaust the body until the rational mind, not the least intrigued by all of this, decides to take off and leave us free to explore other states of consciousness. -Daniele Bolelli, On The Warrior’s Path




Friday's Form Of the Day: the Three Step Arrow fragment. Saturday: Five Points Of the Star. Today: Leopard Fist. I removed the paper list of Forms Of the Day and replaced it with two little bowls of glass aquarium stones labelled with the forms. I had to shorthand most of them, but that's okay. Another thing that might be interesting to do someday is to transcribe the Chinese names of the forms onto the stones. Anyway, the FOD will now be in random order.

The carpool was late today- so late, in fact, that we missed Nemesis altogether (sorry buddy). So we just free-sparred for an hour or so, then SK was ready to call it a night because he was tired and hungry.

We started from standing, and I sucked really bad- in no small part because we were outside at the Hiawatha Community Center- which was locked- and thus I didn't have a bathroom in which to insert my contacts. While my logical brain tells me that with my glasses off, I can still see all I really need to see in order to fight adequately, my primal brain is whimpering, "I feel so vulnerable and crippled and impaired!" and my performance suffers perforce. This is definitely something I need/want to work through, but I'm not sure if now is a good time to do that.

After getting clobbered and slammed and battered and knocked about, I asked if we could do some BJJ so that I wouldn't be at quite so much of a disadvantage. Well, I wasn't doing a whole lot better there. SK can still beat me more often than not, especially if we are doing no-gi.

Oh well- still fun, and a good workout... even if I got my butt kicked.