Sunday

The next phase of my martial growth would involve turning the large into the small. My understanding of this process is to touch the essence (for example, highly refined and deeply internalized body mechanics or FEELING) of a technique, and then to incrementally condense the external manifestation of the technique while keeping true to its essence. Over time, expansiveness decreases while potency increases. I call this method “Making smaller circles”. - Josh Waitzkin, “The Art Of Learning”


The FOD some two weeks ago- the last time I drew one- was Spear Hand, and today I hauled myself up out of the Pit Of Despair enough to force myself to do it. Also the Green Dragon fragments (must add that to the FOD jar) and a little Hurricane hands (including that tricky throw that I'm going to have to teach next time). The first time I sketched through Spear Hand, it felt like one of those moments when your Self disappears and some MA deity steps in and says, "Let Me ride you for a minute and show you how it's done." Always breathtaking, especially when it's Mantis. The throw was also fine, for all my worrying.

If I'm not going to be disciplined about making blocks of time to practice kung fu, I need to add the drills and a few other random things- which are not precisely forms- to my FOD jar. Otherwise they will never get practiced.

I should also unload all the weapons, kicking pads, and other peraphernalia from my Jeep.

Mentally and emotionally I'm still feeling fairly overrwrought approaching anything kung fu-like, but physically it felt really good.

I do not want to abandon kung fu. It's really hard because literally *EVERY* single technique, drill, form, and other random bit that I know was imbued into me by SK, and it all reeks of him. Every scrap of it is full of memories of him and associations with him. I think I need to somehow find a way to transfer ownership of the material so that it doesn't continue to feel like me working on HIS stuff. It needs to become MY stuff.

I'm trying to gear myself up to attempt to go back to jiu-jitsu (which would probably be a vast relief for anyone who started reading my BJJ training blog and is now wondering if I'm ever going to stop thrashing around in my tortured psyche and do some actual jiu jitsu). I have this coming Thursday, Friday and Saturday off. I'm supposed to meet JoE on Thurs morning, and CC/D Thursday evening. Tentative goal- at least one Gracie class and one Sleeper class during those three days.

Also- it might be helpful to work on something new. When I first stopped going to kung fu class, I was considering taking the opportunity to try some capoiera. I don't think right now is the time to do that, since capoiera was one of SK's things, and it'll probably make me all depressed. However, CK's sister is an aerialist at Emerald City Trapeze, and aerial silk is something I've been wanting to try for a while. They also have an "acrobalance" blass, which looks like it might be vaguely the same type of partner-lifting dance/acrobatics that a few of us were branching into from the contact improv. Their waiver makes it look like they might not let you take classes if you don't have health insurance, though… so I'm trying to find out.