The warranty is expired.

’This is my way; where is yours?’ – thus I answered those who asked me 'the way.’ For the way- that does not exist. –Nietzsche


Saturday's FOD: the Southern Mantis fragment. Friday's was Frolic of the Five Animals. Today's: Iron Needle.

I now have all but five and a half of my Kung Fu forms- and all but three of my Tai Chi forms- transcribed. I got Five Animals, Lun Chi, Wood Monkey, and half of Snake Versus Five Animals transcribed this week.

Drum circle went well Saturday; Tasara and Tiffany and I were all there, so we ended up evenly spaced around the circle. They both had their flutes, and all three of us had our chanting voices, so that really helped keep things rolling along.

The most interesting rhythm of the evening was begun with the didgeridoo, a long, slightly flat note which for some reason made me think, "Run, run! We have to run!" So I started a fast (not Sacred-Hunt-fast, but still fast) pitter-patter on the Flame Drum that sounded like running, and then we were all running for a while, with a sense of urgency. It was different and interesting.


Session with CK, beginning with sparring. I didn't have my contacts in and wasn't really in the mood to have all my parts rearranged anyway, so I asked her to go kind of light.

I focussed on trying to work on the centerline. I wasn't getting many hits in, and I noticed once again that in the rare case that I actually get one, she immediately follows up with a flurry of clobbering. Over time, this really ingrains a conditioned response that makes me leery of actually striking her- I know I'm gonna pay for it.

I was doing well with resisting efforts to imbalance me (which is saying a lot when you're sparring a Tai Chi expert), less well avoiding her elbows. We sparred for a couple of hours, and she seemed reasonably happy with my performance. Neither of us took any injuries, either.

Then she wanted to see the short empty-hands form. I warned her ahead of time that my knees were sore, and we both agreed that that was seriously crippling my form. She spent considerable time poking at my stance. She wants me to use higher stances and turn my torso LESS... which is directly counter to what I've been striving toward for the last, oh, decade or so, more or less.

When I work on Tai Chi with CK, I am always dismayed to be confronted with exactly to what extent I am cheating things, changing things, and otherwise warping everything I do in order to try to avoid moving any body part below my waist. It is such long habit by now that I don't really notice it.

As we manipulated stances and turns, I noticed to my chagrin that I'm not just avoiding things that hurt.... I don't really have an accurate idea of what hurts, so I simply try to avoid any movement below the waist at all, because I'm AFRAID it's going to hurt. I need to start moving around with an eye to cataloging exactly what does hurt and what doesn't, and at exactly what point "doesn't hurt" turns into "hurts".

Also- it is not okay to do big turns at the waist accompanied by dramatic wavings of the arms, and assume that that compensates for being cast in stone below the waist.

On the positive side: after this many years of having my posture picked and poked and prodded by CK, I am able to make corrections with very little prompting. Many things, I am able to fix just because I know she is about to critique them, and I already know what is wrong with them and how to fix them. Other times, she will comment on a body part out of place, and I can figure out what to do to fix the alignment without her having to give me a detailed map.

She observed that I seem even tenser than usual, and confirmed that with a few very light pokes at my back/shoulder/neck area which had me yelping in pain. I was surprised, because I hadn't really noticed myself being any more tense or more in pain than usual. She seemed to appreciate a very large difference, though. I truly didn't even remember my "rib out" injury, which sent me to the chiropractor, until she started poking around in that area. Oh, yeah, that. Yeah, that still hurts.

She thinks that my neck and shoulders are inflammed to a heretofore unseen and horrifying level, to the point that she wants me to go on a week of ibuprofen every 8 hours to see if it will simmer down a bit. She feels that I am beginning to move toward a dangerous and chronic Repetitive Stress Injury zone. She actually kind of scared me a bit with her level of seriousness, especially since (as I said) I hadn't really noticed anything out of the ordinary till she started jabbing fingers into my shoulder blades.

While commiserating (she might have to have spinal surgery next year, so I guess I'm still ahead in this contest), she made a comment that "the warranties have expired on us both". Heh heh heh.

After she had shifted from poking and jabbing to massaging, I became tranquilized to the point that I was only moderately annoyed when DD showed up. When he appeared, I bailed. (CK: "Relations no better there, huh?" Me: "No.")

Later on, CK and I met up again and took a long walk, culminating in chicken teriyaki. Then she lured me to a cupcake specialty shop (mercy). I had been doing so well on my diet for the past few months- sane portions, lots of protein, minimal garbage, a steady 124/125. But the last week and a half, I've gone straight down the tubes... a combo of stress and hormones, I think. I shot up to 128, and that was before the teriyaki, white rice, gourmet cupcake (Yes, that is CUPCAKE and not CUPCAKES) and the peanut bar things I was eating in between sparring sessions this morning. Sigh. Another long walk back to the community center after lunch.

Kung fu, with CN substitute-teaching. Several run-through's of the Northern Mantis Bo form. Then Angry Snake Defends Its Lair. I was the only one who was solid on Angry Snake. (I was the most confident with the bo as well... it was nice to have CK along to see me looking like I knew what I was doing in Kung Fu class tonight.) CN kept asking me to demo, and also posing questions to the class with the tagline, "....Anyone *besides* Kitsune?" After several run-through's, he released everyone to rep it at their own pace, and took me around the corner of the building. He asked me if I knew the whole form, and I said yes. He asked me to do it for him, twice. (I like the way CN does that; he always asks to see things twice. If you lost your balance on a turn or did some other lame thing that you really know better, you get a chance to fix it.) He gave me the opening (similar to the closing, only with the dao in the right hand... I didn't notice how he had the grip, and I had to figure that out on my own later- but I did figure it out). He gave me three other Improvement Opportunities: The first turn, there's an extra scissor step that I was cheating. The flying jump (which I am struggling to try to learn the new version of) lands with the opposite foot forward than the one I had been using. After the kick and chop, pull the sword back to the hip a bit with a splitting motion to finish it off. He seemed very happy with the form, though. He told me several times how good it looked. (I am impressing everyone with my Angry Snake.... wow!) He also wanted me to stay around the side of the building while I repped it, so that the other students didn't see the last few bits that they haven't gotten yet.

I repped that on my own a number of times, till my knees said, "ENOUGH". I like me some Angry Snake, but Angry Snake does not like Kitsune's knees. So I did a few reps of the Chen Dao, then Catherine Dao, then I was tired of dao. I then repped the Southern Mantis fragment.

We ended with some one- and two-step White Dragon defensive techniques. The one where you pak-sau the Bad Guy's elbow and step to the outside, Tiger-mouthing his throat. Then, the one where you do sort of a superman-type lunge with both arms twisting to the outsides, between the head and punching arm. I was drilling with JoE, and getting a violent enough arm twist that he was getting friction burns on the side of his neck. I felt less guilty about that once he had clocked me with an elbow while experimenting with a Mantissy takedown tacked onto this technique. My ear is swollen.... he had just BETTER not have given me cauli!