Thursday

In addition to physical confrontations, symbolic forms of fighting between reality and individual desires are the daily bread of anyone who is alive. The physical violence that the hero … has to deal with is the most dramatic example of something that everyone experiences in daily life: conflict. Conflict with friends, lovers, people who cut you off in traffic. Internal conflict with one’s laziness, weakness and lack of discipline. Conflict between desires and possibilities. Conflict between dreams and closed doors. Conflict between one’s ideals and ones’ behavior. Heraclitus was right when he said that conflict is at the root of all things. -Daniele Bolelli, On The Warrior’s Path


Today's FOD is Wood Monkey.

Thursday Kung Fu.

CK and SK were there early working out; CK wanted me to join in the working out and SK apparently wanted to discuss something with me, so I was going to join them …. However, when I came around the corner, there was JM. I was vexed, as I have confessed point-blank to CK that I am uncomfortable working in a small group with JM; she knows that I regularly find other things to do when JM is going to be present. I have also confessed to SK that I do not want to discuss my personal training issues in front of JM. If any of them had seen me before I'd seen her, I would have been stuck there, but I saw her and did a 180 and left. Really annoyed at the both of them for putting me in that position. I wandered around the campus for an hour and a half till start of class, then went in and made an excuse.

Hand strike drills, the first three Black Crane line drills, apps of the first three Black Crane line drills with partners. JoE grabbed me again (wince). It went mostly okay, he smacked me a bit too hard a couple of times.

JoE wanted to see the Southern Mantis bit, so I showed it to him. It still has some "what comes next" hesitations, but it's coming along.

Individual forms. Touch Bridge (yesterday's FOD), the Tai Chi short form, then Three Step Arrow. SK came back there to see me standing in Southern Mantis guard, and I said, "What's the difference…" He finished "….between Southern Mantis guard and Black Dragon guard?" Uh, yeah. Well, foot position is the same but Black Dragon is a longer stance (rectangle) while Southern Mantis is a square. Southern Mantis does not do the rounded shoulders and hunched back of Black Dragon. Critique of my Three Step Arrow: The high and low blocks, the palms need to roll toward the body each time. That seems so weird (and takes longer), but I guess I need to work on that more.

Since we didn't get a chance to discuss what SK wanted to discuss before class, we ended up doing it after class- and it turned out to be a whole mess of terrible angsty sh!t that I'm just as glad he didn't dump on me before class (and in front of JM, gads), or I would have wanted to just skip class and go the hell home. As it was, I didn't get much sleep. Thanks, pal. Thanks a bunch.

The one bad strike I took from CK on Tuesday- a knee (hers) to a shin (mine) hurts, but there isn't a mark to be seen. I had put jow on it immediately. Amazing. There should have been a gnarly bruise.