Takeoff, crash

People comfortable with high levels of violence have learned to skip steps in escalation. -Rory Miller




Thursday and Friday BJJ last week- I did it, but was too lazy to write it up.

This Thursday I had to take my dog to the vet- she had a cauliflower ear just like her mommy! So I only got to class on Friday (Kirkland). I only did drills because I just got tattooed the night before (shouldn't have been in there at all... it hurt.... but I just couldn't bear skipping).

Someone got on my case while ago for sticking my *bottom* knee in while trying to replace guard from under side control; I'm not sure why my brain wants to do that, but it does, so I have been trying to break myself of it. Tonight we did a technique wherein you *do* stick your bottom knee in first (HA!) and then swing the top one over the back of the opponent's neck, and attack that arm with a figure 4. Made them summersault, then go belly-down and lock the shoulder. I need to avoid getting so anxious about controlling the person that I can't deal with the figure 4, and I also need to cope with my instinctual reluctance to do *anything* beside let go of everything and try to jump on top once they summersault. You actually have to belly-crawl AWAY from them a bit to get that lock, and they really can't get out, even if my caveman brain is yammering that they are loose and flopping and getting ready to get up and smash me.

I know I have been bad about blogging lately. I had some kind of epiphany last month where I went down to the River and (metaphorically) threw away some burdensome life crap, and then I spent about a week and a half in a strange state of feeling too big for my physical boundaries. It was a very dramatic Kundalini-Awakening type of thing. I have touched it before, but never so strong or lasting that long.  I got really excited ("I'm Superwoman! I am going to do ALL OF THE THINGS now! I am a higher manifestation!"), then I got scared, then I set earnestly to work self-sabotaging (partly by stuffing myself with so much sugar and carbs that I feel exhausted and weak and am fatter than I ever imagined I'd be).  It is a recurrent pattern that I am well aware of, but this time it was happening in 3D, technicolor and Slo-mo. I'm frustated with my state of own-worst-enemy-ness. I remember that feeling, though. I want it back. Permanently.

In the meantime, I persevere in studying both Portuguese and ASL (see how I get in my manic state, LOL... I almost added Chinese on top of it, but decided that that was insane- will save that for later) and studying for the EMT course (which should be starting in February).

I commited to hosting a self-defence class at PSG next year (assuming it's approved, which I can't imagine it wouldn't be). It will be discusion only, focused mainly on how to spot and avoid trouble. I may do a Part 2 with some simple physical tricks if there seems to be enough interest. I asked onlist if there was anyone who would co-host so that we could get some different perspectives and experiences from different training backgrounds. Didn't get a response as of yet. I'll ask again when it gets closer.  I'm excited about it, even if I have to do it by myself. I have all sorts of ideas. I've been thinking of doing it for a few years , but now is the time. The Pagans, the gay folks, the trans folks and other fringe elements are scared and want to know how to stay safe.

Eye-opening

The four lines people cross that take their actions out of the self-defense justification are:
1)The threat isn't physical
2)The threat isn't immediate
3)They cross into excessive force
4)They participate in the creation and escalation of the situation.
-Marc MacYoung

Thursday BJJ in Bellevue. I had a really good spar with Seth; asked him to not let me do any escapes so that I would be forced to try other things. He praised me for staying on the move.

Thursday BJJ in Bellevue.  A lot of King Of the Hill from back mount. As usual, I was doing well at escaping back mount and I was not doing well at keeping it.

Friday evening BJJ in Bellevue. All spars. Carlos left early, so Chrisanne wanted to spar with me for the first time in forever. I didn't injure her. Another good spar with Seth (no escapes allowed). Kevin.... OMG. Nobody rolls like this guy. Every BJJ artist on the planet should get a chance to roll with this guy once just to experience it.  That Brazilian purple belt woman that I have always found challenging- neither of us was able to tap the other tonight, and we spent a long time working standup... so nice to get to work standup with someone my own size. New girl: she stared at me wide-eyed after time was called and exclaimed, "That was..... so EYE-OPENING!"  

Chrisanne is competing next month for the first time. She has 4 stripes on her blue belt. I have spent a lot of time puzzling over our differing strategies. She has done everything possible to set herself up to win. Whereas anyone who has been reading my blog for a while well knows, I am self-sabotaging- I set things up so that if I lose, I have excuses. It seems like either Chrisanne or I have things fucked up- and I suspect it's me.

Breaking up is hard to do

You can use a strong wrestler's strength against him, but it is almost impossible to defend against a mental edge. Every time you execute a move, the smarter wrestler will counter, attack and counter. The smarter wrestler,  the wrestler with the better technique, with the better inventory of moves, with the agility and mental toughness to keep coming at you, is the wrestler who will win.-Kyle Maynard


Thursday BJJ at Bellevue: all spars.

Friday I missed. I spent the first half of the day in bed with a headache and extreme exhaustion. I felt somewhat better in the afternoon, but decided to not push my luck with getting repeatedly hurled o the ground and throttled.  This turned out to be a fortunate thing, as my house nearly burned down that evening- and that is an that you don't really want to miss. The animals and I were evacuated and spent 2 days sleeping on Cindy's floor. ("The house is really dirty," she says when I call her to inform her that all five of us are inviting ourselves over for an indefinite length of time. "Cindy, my standards right now are very low. If it's not ON FIRE, it will look great to me.") Luckily the area fire department was on point and they did not let my house burn down. Tense weekend, though.

Thursday- all spars again. I got an armbar on Amy that I was very pleased with- it was from a weird position and I am still not great at sussing those out. Amy beats me now 7 times out of every 8, so it was that much more the sweeter. (Note that I need to remember she is VERY GOOD at grabbing kimuras as I pass her guard. She got me *TWICE* with the same routine.) I managed to mess up my shoulder.... I had a few moments of "I should really tap now, but I DON'T WANNA tap...." Thought I was over that crap, but the ego still rears its ugly head once in a while. And now I pay.

Thought I might have to sit out Friday due to shoulder, but Chrisanne said she'd come in, so I went (feeling safe in her hands).

Standing guard pass to KOB

Standing guard pass to KOB to kimura

Standing guard pass to KOB to armbar

I was happy that I am finally remembering consistantly to grab the pants with that armbar. I am also now able to usually remember to pin the opponent between my shin and knee. Still need to get a bit better about clasping the forearm to my chest (grab my own lapel if need be). Carlos also wants me to clasp the forearm more closely to my chest in the kimura.

A little positional sparring from spider guard- pass vs defend.

So there's where it happened.... I stacked Chrisanne- not much, but apparently too much- and hurt her neck.  I was horrified to have hurt her YET AGAIN, and Carlos walked over and told us we had to stop seeing each other for a while.

I feel terrible. I have always prided myself on my control, and on being able to be careful while working with smaller and less experienced opponents. Right now I am feeling insecure about something that I have always felt was one of my biggest strengths in BJJ.  It is making me feel tentative, and I hate that- I have been fighting "tentative" in myself all along and this is feeding my dragon.

 Chrisanne is difficult because I know she does not want me to go easy on her.... and she's good enough that if I *do* go easy on her, she's just going to dominate me to the point that it's not going to be useful for either of us. I'm pretty sure she would be pissed off at me if I started doing that.

Also- she had had a shitty day. She felt allergy-ill and didn't plan to come in, and then she had some bad crap happen to her and decided to come and and blow off some frustration. I feel really awful that instead of helping her do that, I ended up making her feel worse.

In better news: I have managed to drop 14 of the 15lb that I gained from being on sleeping pills. I am relieved. I didn't like being that weight- it felt like I was wearing a fat suit. going to have to be very careful from now on.

Preserving your identity

 















 Fighting, counter-assault, hand-to-hand-- whatever you want to call it-- is very much a thing of guts and nerve, visceral, not intellectual. And yet, you have a brain. Use it.   -Rory Miller


Friday evening BJJ in Bellevue. Did something to my left shin and it's been bugging me all week. I was able to do most stuff yesterday and today, but I did pass on the sparring portion of tonight (with the exception of a roll with Doug).

Standup, no-gi-type grips (meathook behind neck, outside tie). Pummel back and forth a few times like this, then duck under and take the back.

Same, then the backtaken person does this escape: on the same side that opponent has your wrist trapped, take one step forward and then turn sharply back, using the free forearm to break down opponent's arm. Single leg from here.  I had some trouble here because as always, I struggle with left/right and could not remember which foot to step forward with.

Same standing guard passes that we did last week- underhooking the thigh and passing around the back, then around the front.

Have been thinking a lot about yesterday's quote, the part about hanging onto the past because it's preserving your identity.  There's also the good one about  how dwelling on past bitterness is like swallowing poison and waiting for the other person to die.

I carry around a lot of baggage and bitterness, to my detriment. I have a very visceral repulsion toward the concept of forgiveness in these cases. To me, forgiving says, "It was okay that you did that".  Fuck no. It was not. It never will be okay.

And yes, I am intellectually aware that forgiveness is about healing the forgiver and not about letting the forgivee off, and all that... but emotionally it just doesn't wash. There are people who have done things to me that I will never forgive.

I am aware that they are not lying awake at night. More than one of them failed to ever understand what they did wrong or that they even did anything wrong at all. It costs them nothing that I hold a grudge, it just costs me (ironically, this serves to make me even more bitter).

If you're still bleeding years later, it proves that you were "right", right? That the other person is unspeakably evil? That you deserve sympathy, admiration, help, slack? We already established that the perpetrators don't give a shit that they hurt you; they are going on about their merry lives while you lie in the ditch and moan. If you let go of it, then NOBODY is carrying it, right? Somebody has to be left holding the bag. WTH, does it just evaporate? Does that prove that it didn't matter, that it didn't really hurt that much, it wasn't so bad, that "it was okay that you did that"?

I've been stuck and frustrated about resolving this emotional baggage, because I just can't put a spin on "forgiveness" that will make it palatable to my logic-rejecting inner child, and I couldn't find a way to reframe the problem.

So, "preserving your identity"........

We are brainwashed from toddlerhood in this society to admire/idealize heroes and Disney Princesses who were orphaned, abused, and otherwise got shat on and went on to rise above. It's a glamorous identity to have been fucked over and then rise above. Movies don't get made about people who were raised by loving parents in plenty and comfort, married their high school boyfriend/girlfriend, had a fun and enlightening education, got a great career, and had a successful happy life. If you cut out the part of Malala's story where she had to struggle to get an education and then nearly got murdered for it, and only show the wonderful work she is doing now, it's not quite the same. The hardships and struggles are part of the hero's journey, the hero's identity.

At what point does the tragic backstory become baggage? At some point do you get to choose whether that tragic past gooses you to get better or just drags you down? At some point do you get to choose when to just cut those chapters out of your book and begin at the better parts? It seems like there is an inevitable degeneration into using the tragic backstory as a crutch. "You can't expect me to accomplish X, after what happened to me,".... "You should marvel that I am able to do Y, after what I had to overcome"..... yes, it is a BIG part of one's identity. Big enough that the prospect of excision is quite daunting.

Drilling while pregnant

Use of force is a “Goldilocks and the Three Bears” issue. “This one is too little. This one is too  much. This one is just right.” Campfire Tales From Hell



NO, I am not pregnant. Let's just get that out of the way right now. Whomever was thinking that, go rinse the inside of your skull out with bleach.

Evening BJJ in Bellevue.

Chrisanne and I were whining in the locker room about how our thighs ached after last night (interestingly, we both ached in different AREAS of our thighs), and commented that we hoped we would not be doing anything tonight involving that same half-squat.

Well............

Same knee-push-through standing pass.  I actually didn't mind this too much because it's one of my favorite passes, and I don't think I will ever get tired of it even if it hurts a bit.

Then we did the one from last night where you prop the opponent's thigh on top of your thigh- only this time, we passed on the opposite side. After passing, we sat on opponent's shoulder with one hip while facing hir feet, and bent one leg to hook hir near ankle. As soon as the foe turns hir attention to this distracting question of "what is s/he trying to  do with my ankle, and how can I get it out?" you pop into front mount.

Then: same entry as above, only you fake being sloppy with capturing the near arm. (This was pretty easy for me, as that was the detail I was sloppy with anyway). That arm ends up between your knees. After you catch side control, fake giving opponent a little space. When s/he goes to roll into you and single-leg you, hop your butt over hir body and plant it beside hir opposite hip. Catch that arm as you go over- armbar. The catch in this was, you don't turn the same way you turn 99% of the time you go to do an armbar from a position like this. You turn the opposite way. It's very weird. Of course I didn't catch that odd detail on the first go-round, and I was turning the regular way when I drilled it.... and I had just begun instructing my poor hapless white belt partner in how to do it wrong when Carlos stopped us and fixed me.

For the previous two technique drills, I did not have that hapless white belt partner, because I had Lindsay- girl Lindsay, who has been off the mat since December. It was so nice to see her. She is- not HUGELY pregnant, but BIGLY pregnant- and I had to modify my drills accordingly. I wholeheartedly approve of continuing BJJ (with careful partners, and within reasonable parameters) until a pregnancy is advanced enough that it is mechanically unworkable. Drills, that is.... I wouldn't want to spar (even slowmo flow rolling) with someone who was far enough along to be showing prominently. Lindsey had vanished off the mat as soon as she found out she was expecting. I think she was nervous about it. So I was quite anxious to not only be careful enough to avoid causing a guard-pass-induced miscarriage, but  moreso careful enough to reassure her that it's okay, you can do this, we can work around it and you will be fine. I felt confident about it- I have good control. (However, it made me feel a little jittery when Chrisanne got a text in the locker room before class that her sister had miscarried....)

I had done a warm-up flow roll with Casey before class, and after class I rolled a while with Chrisanne (going kind of hard and competitive) and then another while with Casey. Then Casey wanted to play with an extremely complex technique and use me as a demo dummy, which eventually led to Carlos jumping in (despite having already changed into street clothes) and demo'ing several terribly evil and convoluted techniques on both me and Casey.

Turns out that one of the brand new white belts I had worked with a little last week was a guy who works (as in, career-type "work") with Casey. Apparently he had been all excited and telling his colleagues that he got his first sweep on the mat. Further details revealed a feminine pronoun.
I find myself a bit annoyed. I'm not certain, but I'm guessing that the white belt in question was the one who performed a very nice upa on me, so I let him have it. That's how I usually work with white belts. I don't try to pwn them. If they do a technique well, I will usually give it to them. I'm aware that 1)it's a Big Deal to white belts when they start seeing their techniques work on the mat, 2)It's a Bigger Deal when it's a colored belt you're doing it to, 3)The white belts usually can't tell when we are going light on them and handing them stuff,  and 4)They don't realize that it's douchebaggy to run around telling people who you tapped (or who you swept).  I don't care if he runs around telling other BJJ people that he reversed me, since the other BJJ people for the most part understand corollaries 1 through 4. What bothers me is hearing that he was boasting to his non-BJJ coworkers about it, who now- since they don't understand corollaries 1 through 4- probably genuinely think this guy really scored a sweep on a purple belt girl at his second ever class. It makes women MA-ists look bad. And Gods know the non-MA public already has for the most part a crappy-ass view of a woman's ability to be a competant MA-ist.  Now I kind of wish I *had* pwn'ed him. Sigh. No, not really... I think the way I work with new white belts is encouraging and educational to them, and I don't mind sacrificing some ego. But yeah, this tweaks me.

I think part of the reason this is getting to me a bit was a conversation I had last week with one of *my* colleagues. He's an older guy with some (long) past MA experience, a pleasant fellow, but a bit old-fashioned. He knows I train, and at some point the conversation got around (jokingly) to "what if" it ever came down to me versus him. He laughed. Not just laughed, but hooted. Could barely get out (between peals of laughter), "What do you think YOU could possibly do against ME??!!!?" Now, he is bigger than me and outweighs me significantly, but The Incredible Hulk he ain't. He also must have about 20 years on me (and *I'm* old), and has not trained in decades. I get the impression he did not train nearly as long as I. I'm fairly sure I could take this guy, if it came down to it. I also realize that he's from a bygone generation and has some of the casual and unthinking misogynist brainwashing common to that generation. But man.... he hooted. And I was pissed. This shit again.... and again, and again, and again. And again and again.

Although I spend not-inconsiderable reflection time mulling over various verbally-disemboweling responses to stuff like this, the truth is that usually the offender is someone that I would prefer to not verbally disembowel, for reasons of social civility. In this case, if I offend this guy too much, the water-purification system on my clinical Chemistry analyzer might not get its filters changed on time.
So I usually end up letting it go, or letting it go with such a minor protest as to not be taken seriously. And then I burn inwardly, and feel it chip away another bit of my confidence in my MA.

 In this instance, in response to "What do you think YOU could possibly do against ME???!!??" I pulled out my Spyderco, flicked it open, and gestured to his gut (which, I might add, is carrying some extra fat... seriously, this would not be a fair match-up).  But I wish I had felt like I could call him out on being misogynistic (I'd leave out the "delusional" part). Even more, I wish that so much of the world was not so damn misogynistic.  It feels like a riptide that never, ever, for a single moment stops fighting against me. I wonder what it would feel like to have a penis and be taken seriously- either on the mat or in the street-  just once.

Your most imporant part

At an advanced level, a mature practitioner should begin to “look outside of the box” of his or her base style. At an advanced level, studying outside your base allows one to better perceive recurring patterns in human attack; that there are only certain ways  that a particular joint or limb can move without injury; or that certain techniques are designed to produce or capitalize on a particular physiological reaction common to the species. It is therefore understood that ultimately, there may be a “correct” method to execute technique X within system Y, but ultimately, another system utilizes a nearly identical body mechanic in a related and equally effective manner to counter the same recurring human self-protection problem. The only “correct” method, therefore, becomes the effective application of that body mechanic in neutralizing or escaping a threat, and the study of individual style  (judo, jujitsu, karate, aikido, and so on) comes to be seen as simply an individual on-ramp to what amounts in the end to a much larger road.  –Michael Thue


Attempting to channel anger into one's MA is inefficient, dangerous (to both parties) and potentially ego-wrecking (in a negative way; positive ego-wrecking being an actual valid thing in MA). Good to remember when a buddy impales me in the self esteem the day before a comp. Guy is a decent person and good friend, but possibly the most insecure person I have ever met in my life (worse than me, ha ha!). It is incredibly threatening to his masculinity to think that I might be able to beat him up if it came down to it. The fact that I have trained multiple MA's for twenty years while his ass has been parked on the couch is irrelevant. I am not invested in needing HIM to know I could beat him up- it costs me little to throw him that bone, and I have (although, it must be admitted, with increasing levels of sarcasm as the years go by). Yet I have tried many times to explain to this friend that I don't want to hear about it repeatedly. Regardless of the truth or untruth of the statement, it is disrespectful and just plain shitty of him to keep saying this to me when he knows what a big part of me is invested in MA. It is invalidating. And yes, I freely admit that my own self-esteem is crappy, and I am not in a position to shrug off his statements without being hurt, pissed, and unbelieveably frustrated. And thinking it may be true.

Anyway, he hit me with this again today, and it has raised angsty feels that I did not need the day before a tournament. I informed him that he has reached the bitter end of my tolerance tether on that score, and if he ever says that to me again, we are through. Needed to be done. But I am left feeling even more disheartened and conflicted than usual on tournament eve.

Was reflecting that defeatism/confidence/self esteem are by far the hairiest challenge for me in my MA journey. Making one wonder- if you're into all that esoteric crap- if that's what it all about, if that's what it's all FOR, for me. A higher power or my subconscious or whatever trying to use MA to heal my esteem. It occurrs to me that it may be necessary to actually try my hardest and fail, and cope with that. Actually trying my hardest and failing anyway is such a terrifying prospect that I can't even wrap my brain around it. But I'm not sure where else to go from here, as I am making little if any progress on my defeatism. It may be that the only way through it is- THROUGH it. Straight through.

Friday evening BJJ in Bellevue.

Drill- pushups and sprawl to backtake. After we did all the reps, Chrisanne collapsed on the mat to wait for the rest oft he pairs to finish. I said, "Oh no. Get up. We're starting over."

Sparring. I tooled a white belt, got tooled by a blue belt, played defense with another white belt who had already been too rough with Chrisanne, so I knew I had to wach it with him. Had Chrisanne (at my request) get me in bottom side control and front mount and just hold me down. She did it very well. I couldn't get out.  She also has excellently painful Shoulder Of Justice.

Then....

Carlos, after matching up everyone in the class except me: "Come here Keetsune, we gonna talk about smashing. (wicked grin)"

Kitsune: "Oh boy. Okay, as long as all we're going to do is TALK."

Carlos (more wicked grinning)

Chrisanne: "When she asks to be smashed by *ME*, that's a different thing than getting smashed by *YOU*."

So he did to me the same thing that Chrisanne did, and if I couldn't escape *HER*,  you can guess how well I did against him. He advises more hipping up, observing that I am underutilizing my "most important part".

After we did that for a while, he started latching onto subs and then reprimanding me for passing his guard instead of dealing with the sub attempt first. That is another item for the file of "Sloppy shit that works on lower belts but not on purples and up.... so it's time to stop doing it." Usually I can pass guard and *then* get out of the sub attempt, which has been weakened by the now-suboptimal positioning. The purple belts and up, though, will often set traps that cause you to sub your own self when you move.

Carlos, re: the comp: "We all gonna be there- me, Professor Hodrigo, Professor Lindsey...."

Kitsune: "Wonderful."   (gahhhhhhhh!!)

Still no kibble.

Violence and the risk of violence goes up when people are insecure. Remember always that weapons embolden the insecure. –Rory Miller



Open mat at Edmonds.

Started with Georgette, no-gi.... she trounced me utterly and repeatedly.  Found myself in that frustrated space... that one where I just need to call it a day, because both my performance and my mental state just go downhill rapidly from there.

Note that once in this place, I should really just VACATE the gym immediately, because if I sit on the wall, people bug me to keep going.  If I beg off, it starts to look like I'm pouting like an asshole because I got tapped. Which I guess in a way I am. I think everybody could tell that I was frustrated, which frustrates me all the more because I am trying to hide it. Today, no disasters ensued from continuing under duress, but next time should just go. Haven't really found a good way to deal with that state of mind, but continuing is usually not advisable. It's the Point Of Negative Returns.

Anyway, I let Cindy use me as a dummy to do some drills and invent some new fiendish and painful contortions. Then she was rolling with Georgette, which she probably shouldn't be doing with her shoulder injury, but you can't keep her off the mat.

I rolled with a purple belt guy that I don't know, who was flow rolling and doing some catch and release. Then Craig, whom I enjoy rolling with and haven't seen in a long time: more flowing and catch and release, he wore his gi and let me let me wear my no-gi gear to make it marginally more even. Those were both kind of fun, even though my self-sabotaging mind kept flagellating me all the while with its I-wish-I-didn't-suck-so-bad and why-do-you-bother-to-keep-trying-to-do-this refrains.

As a scientist, I am very aware that I am battling a very basic concept of psychology  that just really can't be battled: it is very hard to keep doing something in the face of a lack of positive reinforcement. My "higher function" brain can yell all it wants that this is actually useful and good for me and progress *IS* actually being made... but it feels like I've been pressing a lever repeatedly for five years (longer, if you count all of my MA experience and not just BJJ) and just never getting any kibble, ever. No rat would continue to press the lever this long. My inner rat is like, "WTF is wrong with you???!??"

I continue to not know what to do about this issue, and I continue to be very frustrated and discouraged about it.

Georgette pointed out a couple of things.

1)I keep giving up my back. She rightly parsed this as, "Most of your regular training partners are going easy on you, and failing to be heavy/tight enough to prevent you from squirming (technique-less-ly) out of back mount." It makes me feel better that I had made this very same observation and come to the very same conclusion the very first time I rolled with her. At least I can see and interpret my problems, even if I don't do so well at actually fixing them.  I really need people to stop giving me slack here, as it just encourages my sloppy habits. Note that this is neither a happy nor a fun thing to face. I asked her to keep taking my back and subbing me, and to make it hurt a little.

2)She wants me to put more weight on her feet/knees etc while I'm doing standing passes. This is not the first time I have been told this, but as I tried it again, I was reminded of why I don't do it- it feels way too vulnerable. Once I start leaning on the knees, as soon as the opponent pulls hir knees back, I'm going to face plant. Georgette says, "don't let them pull their knees back." I feel that there is no person on the mat older than four whom I could actually physically PREVENT from pulling their feet or knees back.

This leads me to a principle that has been a cornerstone of my game since I started: "You don't have to move the other guy, you only have to move YOU." Which I still feel is golden wisdom, for us teeny people. You can't even begin to deal with a 200lb man on top of you in side control without embracing that idea. Otherwise you are just lying there helplessly crushed for eternity.  And yet I begin to wonder if I have taken a good thing too far.

I have been aware for a while that I work under an assumption that I simply cannot move my opponent nor make hir do anything. This leaves me with a severely limited game that consists solely of 1)reacting to what the opponent does to me, and 2)losing all my options as soon as the opponent starts restricting my movement. I simply do not even TRY anything- ever- that involves moving the opponent, or making hir do something, or otherwise affecting hir. Like sweeps. And most subs.  I escape. That's all I do, because that's all I *can* do that doesn't really involve addressing my opponent in any confrontational way- because of course as soon as we go head to head on something, I am obviously going to lose.  It's not a fight. It's not a contest. I'm not trying to beat anyone. I'm not even truly engaging them. I'm just letting them attack me while I try to escape.




Ouch.




Okay, I'm not sure what to do about this.... and it obviously is harking back to a lot of very deep-seated, ingrained, damaging conditioning from childhood on up. But it feels like a possible first glimpse into a different perspective on my defeatism problem. Which could be a first step.


Found that my Asics earguards do have a few spots where they start rubbing painfully at a certain point of a LOT of jiu jitsu over a two day period. I had to take them off, because it started to feel like I was more likely to get cauli from the earguards themselves than from going without. Note that I should start keeping a spare pair of (a different brand of) earguards in my bag.

FTS

"It's not 'I get a turn and then you get a turn'... it's all my space and it's always my turn" - Greg Hamilton


Wednesday:

I bailed on Saturday's ceremony. I feel terrible about it. It is not in my nature to flake out on commitments. In fact I reserve some of my most venomous contempt for people who do that. If I tell you that I am going to do X, then you can rest assured that by God I am going to do X, even if I have to move Heaven and Earth to get it done. I have gone to ridiculous lengths to fulfill minor obligations. It is a pillar of my personal identity- my moral integrity. And this is Jen's biggest event of the year. Only three days away. And I'm well aware that she was already electrified with stress even BEFORE I bailed.

I assured Jen yesterday (for about the fourth time) that I would indeed be there and that I would be ready to do my part. This was not good enough for her. Over the course of the day she sent me four more messages bugging me for further intercourse. She wanted assurance that there is not friction between us, and she still wanted me to explain exactly what I planned to do (right down to what I was fucking THINKING) so that (presumably) she could inform me that I was "doing it wrong". When I saw all those missives piled in my box, I was like, that's it- Fuck This Shit. Aside from my own discomfort- which is a negligible consideration weighed against the integrity of my commitment- it is plain at this point that she is stressing over this to a level that I truly think that dealing with me was causing her more angst than having to replace me will.

I hate drama. I have a traumatic past in drama. I do not appreciate people trying to drag me into their drama when I have made it clear that I do not wish to go there. The last thing I wanted was a BEDS (Big Emotional Drama Scene) three days before the event. Unfortunately, there was *NO* way to get around it. I'm sure I'm going to get some guilt-inducing and stressful nastygrams. But seriously, I think any reasonable person would have said FTS a long time ago. I'm done.
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 Thursday:

I blocked Jen for the time being; I will probably have to read her mail at some point, and it's going to upset me, but I didn't want to even be tempted to engage in any further drama before the rit- nor do I want to get talked into changing my mind about quitting.

Another community member messaged me when he saw that I was leaving. He's watched Jen do this same thing to a number of people, so we indulged in a little pop-psychology analysis. It's an interesting study in self-sabotage. It's always easier to dissect these things when it's not you. I don't think I was self-sabotaging, in this case, although certain other of my problem issues definitely played a role. Yet since self sabotage is a persistant crime of mine, particularly visible in my MA training, it warrents pondering as pertains to my own situation.

Lamont messaged me to mention the Proving Grounds Championship. I figured I wouldn't qualify anyway, but apparently I do. I had skipped the Revolution this past weekend, and had not planned to do the PGC or anything else. I still haven't come up with any new insights or ideas on the defeatism barrier.
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Thursday evening BJJ in Bellevue. Glenn! He's been out for about a year. So delightful to see him back. I got to drill with him, too.

Drills- from standup, pulling spider guard. Then same, with partner proceeding to pass. Then some positional sparring, starting from establishment of the spider guard. Then postional training starting from sitting on the floor in what Carlos called "double guard pull". After a while, Carlos switched out partners and gave me a young, long-legged blue belt who huffed and puffed like an overweight basset hound. Since it was also hotter than hell in there tonight, this was not helping him. We talked a lot about breathing. I also gave him several other suggestions as we went. I know that it was because he was breathing wrong, but I still found it rather gratifying- given our respective ages- that I had to repeatedly chivvy him along when he was literally on the brink of collapsing.

A few rolls with Allison. I haven't seen him in a while either. He's always great to roll with. He handled me, of course, but I think I made him work a little harder than he has had to work to handle me in the past. I finally had to cry his mercy, though, because I just became too exhausted to continue. He complimented my on my back mount escape. I had escaped his back mount four or five times, usually by grabbing his gi top and squirming around till we were chest to chest (him usually on the bottom at that point). I said, "I thought you were being nice and giving me room to get out," and he said, "No, I was trying." Which, given his skill level, I'm going to take as a compliment even if he's fudging a bit. At that point I was way too tired to jump on Glenn, so I promised to get him next time.

Validation

Some things won’t get fixed until the Band-Aid is ripped off. –Richard Moran



I have some generalized bitching to do. It does tie into BJJ (doesn't everything, eventually?), but feel free to skip it.


I am under a lot of stress right now. Part of it is resulting from the necessity of dealing with seemingly endless truckloads of nonsensical bureaucratic red tape. I have little patience for this type of thing at the best of times; and when I'm stressed out and short-tempered, I just want to start cracking some heads together. It might make them pay better attention, at least. These people are not LISTENING to me.

I tried half a dozen times to sign up for paperless e-delivery of my credit union statements (which are being mailed to me in the form of a murdered tree every month and taking up a ridiculous amount of room in my file cabinet). It didn't work. I emailed their help line. And again. And again. Finally got a response after a month- consisting of a copy of the same instructions from the website. The ones I already followed six times and had it return error messages. I called my financial advisor. It took another week and three rounds of phone-tag to get him on the line. First he gave me a number that went to a company that had no idea who I was and what I was talking about. I called him again. Then we did a conference call with the company that handles the e-statements. It was like a 40-min call... during which I'm standing in the driveway shivering in the snow because I can't get cell service in the house. We had to explain to the guy numerous times that no, I was not in front of the computer, and no, he could not fix this problem by reading me the instructions off the website. He was no help, but we ended with him promising to e-mail me a paper form that I would fax in. Do you think this form ever appeared in my e-mail box? Of course not.

My workplace has begun rolling out the BMI sanctions. Everyone is supposed to attend a 10-min "health screening" so that they can record your weight and height. I e-mailed human resources to ask if the screeners were qualified to write the waivers for those of us whose BMI's are skewed due to excess muscle mass. She responded with an explanation of what the "health screenings" consist of and what they are for. I responded with a polite version of, that's nice, but you did not address my question. I explained the waivers and asked what those of us in that situation are supposed to do. She responded with an explanation of what a BMI is and that the company's focus is to encourage people with out-of-range BMI's to diet and exercise so that we can promote a heathier workforce.

Sometimes I feel like I'm talking to brick walls. I think I'm going to start inserting random profanities, nursery rhymes and cookie recipes into my conversations and e-mails just to see if I get a reaction. ***ANY*** reaction.

This is the person in the human resources office who was assigned to answer employee questions about the BMI program, and she has never even heard of the waivers. This does nothing to reassure me that the company is going to handle this competantly. I'll be damned if I will submit to a "health screening". Once they have those numbers, I can't put the genie back in the bottle. I'm confident that they **WILL** be misused, and then I'm stuck with all the stresses and headaches of trying to do damage control with the not-listening, red-tape bureacracy after the fact. It's better that they not have the data. Problem is, refusing to get on their little merry-go-round is going to gyp me out of hundreds of dollars in health insurace premiums. Financially, the obese people who submit to the screenings will end up paying less than me. This is exactly the type of shit I knew I'd be wading in the first time I saw the news about the BMI program.

My boss took me into her office this morning to chew me out about something that had happened at 7pm on 2/3.  Obviously, I had gotten out of bed, driven to work, done this wrong thing, drove back home and went back to bed, and then reappeared at work three hours later at my normal time pretending that I had not been involved in this nefarious activity. I explained this to her, and she looked at the time stamps and acknowledged that there was no physical way that I could have been the person responsible for this error.... then proceeded to explain why it was wrong and what a hassle it caused and what should have been done instead. I repeated 4 times, like a robot, "That's a good thing to explain to whomever did this. I didn't do this." I controlled my words, but I'm afraid that a little emotion may have crept into my tone of voice after the first couple reps. Then she told me that my quarterly review would be next week. Wonderful. Thank you. I can't wait to hear all about my errors *and* my surly attitude.

I could go on... this is how my entire month has been, seriously, I have eight or ten ongoing situations on the burner here that are playing this same movie. but I am just feeling my fuse getting shorter and shorter, and I need to do a reset and get a grip before I start painting walls with blood around here.

I am realizing that besides the prevalent theme of "HELLO YOU ARE NOT LISTENING TO WHAT I'M TELLING YOU, DUMBASS", the thing that's tying all these incidents together is that I am having a repetitive and compounded defensive reaction to what feels like me being invalidated.

I am well aware that my poor self-esteem is at the root of this emotional overreaction. It's like, "I have a mental soundtrack playing 24/7 telling me how much I suck; I do *NOT* need *YOU* to tell me more about how much I suck!!!!!!!" It's even worse when it's something that I know is a false accusation, like the work thing that is really not my fault and the BMI that really does not mean I'm a fat lazy sow.

There are a few things that need to happen here. These are destructive patterns, and I need to do something differently in order to disrupt the pattern. First thing: I need to notice when this song starts, and just take a moment to tell myself, "Here is that pattern again. Here is your blood pressure rising. Here is the defensiveness. It's okay to feel this way. The manner in which you have been habitually responding to it have not been working out very well for you. Now just take a moment to consider before you react."

I think one thing that I need to resolve to do is to stop the cycle of repeatedly explaining things to people who are not listening to me, and wasting my time, and getting more and more frustrated. Next time I find myself there, I think I need to get over the reticence about appearing impolite, and the aversion to causing a confrontation, and just look them in the eye and say, "I'm sorry, you must not have heard what I just said to you." and pause long enough to let them grasp that we're breaking the script. (I consider myself a good communicator, so the failure to resolve these incidents heaps another spoonful of "you suck" on the pile. Didn't I explain it well enough? This must be my fault too. The objective reality, I think, is that yes I did- the other person is not listening, which is their failing and not mine. But even if I can truly internalize that (which is a struggle), I still have to resolve the practical aspects of the issue somehow.)

Another thing that needs to happen is that I need to explore methods for resisting feeling invalidated by other people. Why is it- KNOWING that my body is healthy and that I diet and exercise more than 97% of the population, I still fly into a head-exploding, defensive rage at being told that I "need to diet and exercise" by some human resources drone who doesn't know me from Adam? And whom I know for a fact is simply wrong? Why can't I just blow her off? Well, because her judgement- anyone's judgement- is automatically regarded as more valid than my own. Which means that if she says I'm a fat lazy sow, I really must *be* a fat lazy sow. If my boss insists on correcting me on someone else's mistake, well, maybe I did make that mistake after all. Or I might do so in the future. Or I should take the responsibility for it even if I didn't make it. Not only do I suck, my perceptions are wonky and I can't trust my own judgement. That's a sad and SCARY place to be.

This is giving other people way too much power over me, as well as using up a lot of my energy and just making me feel like crap. And I'm not getting the objectives solved ("What's your objective?" my former shrink liked to remind me, when I got too sidetracked by trying to wring justice out of my exchanges and forgot the original point of said exchange).

This definitely plays into the most destructive block in my training- my defeatist attitude. Fortunately, I train with mostly nice folks and I don't have a lot of people telling me to my face that I suck. Occasionally I have a situation such as Hostility Boy treating me with unveiled contempt, or getting plowed by multiple white belts in succession, or having a brand new no-stripe white belt offer to show me how to do some BJJ, which makes me feel invalidated. This is part of the angst of being forced to wear belts as well. Wearing a colored belt is making an assertion to yourself and others around you that you have a certain level of skill.  It is sort of INVITING challenges to your feeling of validation, especially if you have a hard time keeping up competitively with those of your own rank or lower.

Might write more on this later. It is definitely a big issue that I need to do something with, for the sake of my training, my career and pretty much all other aspects of my life. But right now I need to gird up and make myself tackle one more set of phone calls to some bureaucrats.

Dang. I have way too much practical crap to deal with right now to get sucked into one of these big navel-contemplating self-help projects. But isn't that the way it always goes. 

The biochemical variable

Respect is for those who deserve it, not for those who demand it.



Friday lunchtime BJJ at Seattle.

I was relieved to see Glenn walk in right before the lineup, as it seemed to be "Big Boy Day" on the mat... there were plenty of people there, but they were all huge! Glenn's always good to work with, and I'm happy whenever I get a chance to work with him.

A vigorous set of warmups, including running laps. We had run laps yesterday as well, and my plantar fasciitis was feeling the effects. I did it, but it felt like there was a knife under my right heel every time it hit the ground, and I had a noticable limp. The line is being crossed between pain and functional impairment.  I think if I was asked to run laps again tomorrow, I would be physically unable.

You are under side mount. Bump up and frame your arms. "Talk on your phone" with the hand nearest opponent. Then turn into hir. At the same time, use your "phone" hand to control hir bicep (this was the detail I had to be corrected on). Continue turning till you are on your belly. (Note that this is *not* a hip escape/shrimp.) With the hand that is *not* controlling opponent's bicep, keep the elbow braced on hir. Allowing this elbow to move or collapse is what lets the opponent dump all hir weight back on you and squash you back under side control. Once you are fully belly-down, move *JUST THE FOREARM* to get the underhook. Again, keep that elbow in there.  Now you can get your knees under you. That all-important bicep grip (you've still got it, right?) will now let you yank opponent with the perfect leverage to help you dump hir over and get on top.  The sequence (which I had to say aloud with every rep to avoid rushing/skipping bits) is Up, Phone, Arm, Turn, Under.

Next: same entry, only now as soon as you turn into opponent, s/he tries to slide into scarf position. The key for you now is to get your matward elbow fully underneath your body as you are lying on your side. As soon as your foe's knee comes at you, grab the pants there and do that same roll onto your belly. You now have the pants in one hand and the shoulder/lapel in the other. Stretch opponent out. This will shove hir onto hir back. Resist the impuse to get to your knees too soon- the technique is actually tighter and more effective if you keep your belly *ON* the mat till you secure side mount. Now you can get to your knees.

Lots of drills. I've always struggled some with this technique, and the rolling onto the belly part is exhausting in a core sort of way. Glenn was getting tired too, and we kept up a cheerleading patter to chivvy one another through the last of the drills. He's good with that, and with helpful feedback during the drills.

Tired and ravenously hungry by the end, so I skipped the sparring.

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Between my new library card and my new Kindle, I have been availing myself of several Rory Miller books that I have not previously read. I have oodles of good quotes to share. One item that was brought up in my reading got me thinking about tournaments again.

Anyone who's been reading my blog for a while is familiar with my ambivalence regarding competitions. I'm a self-defense oriented MA'ist. I enjoy the aspect of "fun" in BJJ sparring, as well as the practical aspects, but am just not interested in the competitive sport aspect. I have had a middling performance in the comps that I have done, and it's not fun for me.

Although I don't really appreciate a discernable feeling of fear- and I'm fairly self-aware, so I feel like I'd know- I do tend to experience a rush of physical weakness at the beginning of a match and in the first minute or so. It feels like all the energy just leaks out of my body like water out of a holey bucket, and I feel like I weigh about 800lb when I try to move.

One of the Miller books briefly discussed the adrenaline dump, the "lizard brain" mentality, and other body chemistry things that happen in self-defense situations. It's a significant impairment that can negate all of your preparation at the one moment you most need it. That's sobering. It's scary to think that if I'm faced with an attacker, I might feel that same body reaction that I feel when I'm facing a tournament opponent across the mat- that rush of weakness and exhaustion.

This argues for doing tournaments, as often as possible, for the purely practical self-defense-oriented goal of learning to cope with and work through that crippling biochemical zap. From that viewpoint, it's difficult to come up with excuses to continue ducking tournaments.     

Well, except for one- my tenuous sense of confidence in my MA, which has all the solidity of a spun-glass figurine. If I start doing a bunch of tournaments and get my ass mowed into the ground over and over, is that going to drive me into despair bad enough that I might lose even *MORE* confidence...... or even give up and quit altogether?

S-mount and ocarinas

Those who restrain desire do so because theirs is weak enough to be restrained.   –William Blake




Many thanks to those who sent me hugs after last weekend's debaucle. I really appreciate it.

Tasara and Tiffany Ann and I discussed it over e-mail some. If it was just the money thing, I think we could work it out. The woman is a control freak- she's the first to admit it- and she just wants the structure of the event a certain way. That is reasonable, since she is the founder and all- but my ritual style isn't very compatible with the hospital-corners approach that she favors. Too much rigmarole; too much (IMHO) assuming people are too stupid to figure out what's going on without being led by the hand; too much imposing one's own agenda instead of going with the flow and letting what wants/needs to happen, happen. Not only do I not enjoy doing it that way, I think it stifles the more timid people in the circle.

 Furthermore, my confidence crumbles under harshly-delivered criticism, and I'm starting to see that it's just *never* going to be good enough in her eyes.  The *participants* at all of my events seemed to have a great time, and the energy is good, so I'm going to focus on that upside. I'm not a bad leader- this situation is just not the ideal fit.

Tasara wants to meet in person and figure this out. I told her that I'm not hosting next month anyway (since I've just done two months in a row), and I want to just table it for a while and discuss it later. I may be clearer about what to do after some time has passed. (And, uh, SHE may be a little clearer later on as well....) I may just decide to bow out. I'm okay with that.

I brought the double guiro to the drum circle, and it has a nice sound (both registers of scrape-rattle, plus two registers of "woodblock" (more if I tap the handle, etc)). Housemate has a teeny little frog-shaped guiro, which I borrowed, and that was fun as well. Sounds just like a cricket. I forgot my egg shaker, though, and I really missed that. Note to double-check next time and make sure it's in the box.

I have dug out the sweet potato ocarinas. Haven't yet figured out what key they are in, but I did figure out that they are all the same- a set of 3 sizes- so if I can learn one, I should be able to play all 3 (altho the smallest one is annoyingly squeaky, and tiny enough for the fingering to be awkward even with my small and deft digits). Eight top holes and 3 bottom holes (the middle of which is always uncovered) on each. No holes covered is obviously the same note as all holes covered... and it's a sharp or flat, of course.... it would be way too easy if it began with a plain C..... but I will have to get my bass clarinet out to figure out which notes are which. I can make guesses by ear, but they are only guesses. May be able to find a rough fingering chart online, if I can ID the key.

Was appalled to find- while researching ocarinas online- that There's An App For That. Lord help us. You can now bring up an image of holes on your iphone and BLOW INTO THE BOTTOM OF THE PHONE and it will produce ocarina notes in accordance with how you place your fingers on the screen "holes". The song book that comes with it includes "Baby" by Justin Bieber and "Bad Romance" by Lady Gaga as well as the Legend of Zelda theme song, Bach, and Debussy. Can you believe it? Don't know whether to laugh or cry.

Also, I have ordered a kids' recorder (that should COME with a fingering chart). Cotton candy blue plastic see-through. Will probably only have one octave... but I can't resist musical toys. I added a plastic kazoo to the order as well.


Speaking of leading drum events, this year's site for PSG has still not been announced- which is disquieting. This means some sort of problem with the site. I'm hoping it will not be a new site again- that is stressful and a ton of work. Whatever issues they're having re: site means that they haven't even gotten around to contacting the onsite staff (which they usually start initiating in December), nor has anyone addressed the Hunt yet. I'm not sure who could step in for Beau if he does not do it (this is why we should all have a lieutenant- I love you Dru). Less lead time= more confusion and stress, so I hope they get their poop in a group pretty soon.

I don't know if I mentioned that my wood and skin djembe suffered a mortal wound in baggage handling last year. I think that with my recent layoff, I'm not going to deal with it this year- just take the Remo. But lest we have a second percussive death, I'm thinking about shipping Flame to Derek. I feel so bad about how much I lean on him for stuff like this, but I don't have many options. This, however, is another reason that the delay is chafing my nerves. If I have to ship drums, that needs to happen early. And Gawds, I'm already begining to dread having a confrontation with James. Am I awful if I hope he has a funeral to go to or something, and doesn't show up?

I need to get to an office-supply store or something and get some of those "Hello my name is______" stickers. Jo (my evil twin) said that she was going to have T-shirts made up... but in case she doesn't, we can wear stickers: "Hello my name is NOT KITSUNE"; "Hello my name is NOT JO".   Ha!
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Wednesday evening gi class at Sleeper Athletics. Cindy was ill, so Eric taught. "Seatbelt" ("prayer") guard pass. Standing pass utilizing a double-handed "joystick" grip on one sleeve cuff, push knee down, slide near knee through.

Then this: start like you're doing a bullfight pass, but instead of going to the side, cross-step your leg between your own arms and place the foot beside opponent's hip. Keep both pants grips and arch back for KOB. Then side mount.

I don't know about that KOB- the arm positions felt weird- but I like the "joystick" grip. It took me some fumbling to secure it, but it's good once I've got it.

King Of the Hill, pass vs sweep or sub. As usual, I am adequate at passing **IF** I can break closed guard. On the bottom only once, with the new guy. I spider guarded him right away and held him off for a bit, but then he passed.

Then rotating 5 min spars with Jalen and the new guy. I worked S-mount on the new guy, and it was going nicely- in that I was able to stay on top a lot. I was careful to hug that shin right up to his belly.  S mount, front mount, KOB, back again. I was on top a lot. Points up the whazoo. Unfortunately, he had really good choke defense and was muscle-defending the armbar, so I couldn't for the life of me finish him. I did kamikazi the armbar twice, using a good self-lapel grip and the "rolling" pry attempt, but I just couldn't make it happen.

Jalen- we started from standing, used the wall some (he got a nice reversal on me using the wall). I tried a double-leg takedown, telling myself, "Commit, commit..." I committed more than I usually do, but still not enough to make it work. He tapped me once with a kimura, and I tapped him once with a head-and-arm. It was hella sloppy- my arms were totally mispositioned- but I had him well pinned with his elbow at his ear, so I thought, "If I can just hold him here and keep microadjusting, hopefully I'll be able to get enough pressure on the side of his neck," and it took a while, but- Yay!

Had some fun matches tonight, felt pretty good, still feeling pretty good afterward.

This is not about training.....

I am laid off.

Again.


FML....seriously.

The Walk Of Shame!

Even some of the best people I know live by the “I just wanna do my own little thing.” Satisfied with the happy little island they created for themselves in the middle of the ocean of the surrounding disharmony, they look at life from their seat in the audience. I consider this attitude one of the main causes in the mediocrity in the state of things. Often for creative people the beauty of their inner world can become a handicap. Too caught up by their subjective experience to learn how to dance through the physical world.  The result is that, limiting themselves to the cultivation of their own spiritual world, the most sensitive people leave to the most careless the management of collective reality. Daniele Bolelli, On The Warrior’s Path




Yow, sore body today. Especially the right front thigh (the sit-up sweeps?).


Basics class at GB Seattle. A bazillion people on the mat today. I got to drill with (short) John (I don't know what to call him...there are too many Johns, and they are almost all blue belts now...), which is always lovely.


Single-leg setups from standing- that same one we've been doing forever. John suggests I try to get the elbow up further. I like the way he gives suggestions: "It's up to you, but..." like I said- good partner.


Defense against opponent sitting up and grabbing your leg while you are standing (prep for X guard, De La Riva, etc). Grab the back of hir collar and the far knee, step out (spread the feet) with the outside leg, step backward with the outside leg, then lift the inside leg and place it behind opponent's butt. Flatten hir out and sprawl into side control. Apply copious Shoulder Of Justice.


My instincts want me to move the inside leg (the one at opponent's crotch) because that feels like the one "in danger" somehow. I really have to stop and force brain to override gut and do those TWO steps with the outside leg first. The initial step gets the leg out of the way so that the opponent can't trap it or stretch it out. The second step gives you something stable to stand on so that you are able to lift the endangered leg. There is just no shortcut here.


Speaking of short- being so, it means that it's difficult to give "good shoulder" and hold that leg away at the same time. Even with short John, I kinda hand to pick one or the other. I chose S.O.J, although if I have an opponent with really squirrely legs, I might need to switch that up. This shortness problem may mean that I will need to settle for top half guard  instead of side control. (Where can I buy six or eight inches?)


Another note: When I am the one doing the sitting up, I'm not sure why I always want to make life more difficult for myself by forcing myself to do a full armless situp. Yeah, the abs can always use the exercise, but let's get practical here. There is nothing wrong with putting the hand down and using it to push into a sitting position- and hey, look how much easier and faster that is.


Note that the stupid side is particularly stupid with this technique. If you're going to stand up and let someone grab a leg, let 'em have the left one and not the right one.


Escape from top half guard: swoop in with one arm under the head and other hand attacking the leg, sit out, Swing the leg up and out, turn belly down again, side control. (Yay, even more S.O.J.!)


I badgered John to do more shoulder pressure with both techniques. I think he was just trying to be nice, but I said, "Come on- grind it- more, more!" (hee hee)  He was wearing a patch from Thirteen Hands, Lindsey's new school in Fremont. I miss Lindsey. I told John to tell Lindsey hi from me.


I also saw Sabrina. I haven't seen her in forever. I knew she had come back and was training, because I saw her commenting on the school website. She is now a BLUE BELT one stripe!!!!  Whoo-hoo! I congratulated her.


It was nice to have a Rodrigo class today. I see much less of him now that I spend more time at the Bellevue satellite, and he is busier with administrative stuff as opposed to teaching, now that the GB conglomerate has mushroomed into half a dozen different pods. I wish I wasn't a little late getting in- having to do the Walk Of Shame before him when he hasn't seen me in  weeks. (It wasn't my fault... there's a really inconvenient train that bisects Seattle periodically and traps all car traffic for 20 min... sometimes it catches me on my way to the school)
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Saturday afternoon no-gi at Sleeper. I failed to plan well today. On Saturdays, I really need to shower at GB and get fast food to scarf in the car so that I can go straight from one school to the other in order to be on time. Today I went home for a shower and lunch, and ended up 20 min late. (Walk of Shame, twice in one day! Yes, this one was my fault.)


I had wanted to stick to just drills for a few weeks at least, but unfortunately Cindy was ill- she was there, but not rolling- and Stacy was on her way out just as I was coming in. We were down to Lamont and Terry, and they were just sparring- so I had to fight Terry for several spars and then Lamont. Mixed bag of results.


I had made a comment when I first walked in, about the mat already being an ocean of sweat just from the two of them... Terry sweats a ton, and after every roll, we moved to a new section of mat to try to get away from the pool. It was fruitless. The entire floor was soaked.


One hilarious interlude where Lamont and I were rolling, and Cindy was trying to corner us both- urging me to be rougher and telling Lamont (jokingly) to stop being such a bully. When we finished and were both lying there panting, looking at her, she shook her head and rolled her eyes, snorting, "Ass." We looked at each other, and then back and her, and I said, "Which? Him or me?" "Both- him for being too mean and you for not being mean enough." It was so funny. It can be really enjoyable on the occasions when only a couple of people come in, and you can either get really focused and get a ton of specialized work done, or you can get relaxed and goofy and have a very fun time. Or a little of both. Cindy also told us a great story about competing in an open division against a mountainous woman (Cindy's my size- about 5 feet tall and around 130-ish if that). Apparently  video exists. I told her she has to dig it out for us.


Things have sort of come to a head regarding the belt thing. I have not been wearing my belt into Sleeper on gi days; it just makes me feel too much like crap, and I thought I could get away with it. People are mostly all uniformed up these days, but in the past, it was common for people to come to gi class without a gi, much less a belt. Unfortunately my recent beltlessness did not fly under the radar as well as I would have liked, and Cindy finally called me out on it.


The four of us had a long conversation on the topic. I'll have to incubate it and write more later.


During this discussion, I whimpered that if I keep going into Gracie Barra, sooner or later someone is going to give me a purple belt. Cindy asked me what I was going to do then, and I said that I honestly do not know. She professed that I had better figure it out PDQ. (She also said that she's surprised they haven't done it already- which shook me.) I've been a four stripe blue for a really long time. I don't remember when my last stripe promo was, but it's got to be somewhere around a year ago now- and in December I will have been a blue belt for three years. I have- umm- been sort of lowballing my attendance cards, a little- maybe- which may have bought me some breathing time. I've only been getting about every third or fourth class marked off (and this is not counting classes at Sleeper).


 I don't know if I could actually bring myself to step on the mat (at either school) in a purple belt. I can't even imagine it or think about it. On the rare occasions that I have tried, my brain just shrivels up painfully like a salted slug.


Whew, legs even more painful now. I can barely bend over. Gonna ache big time in the morning.

Angst

"To die will be a great adventure." J.M. Barrie


I have a recurring nightmare in which I am trying to drive a speeding car along a crowded, twisty highway. I am in the backseat. I am leaning over the back of the frontseat, barely able to touch the steering wheel, with no access to the pedals at all. It seems an apt metaphor for how helpless I feel in the grip of my negative moods.



Emotions are not wrong/bad. They are what they are. Emotions come. The heart wants what it wants. We feel what we feel. We have no control over the emotions we feel. Flagellating oneself for the emotions one feels is futile. Denying the emotions one feels is futile.

Sometimes emotions that we are feeling are not only painful, they appear to take on an actively destructive role to the point that they become the enemy.

The mind, heart, and body are not only capable of eating themselves, they are capable of attacking one another…. in a seemingly endless cycle of pain.

Where is safety if one can't be safe inside one's own mind and heart and body; inside one's own self? Where are the resources to survive when the self is striving to destroy itself?

If one's strength is rooted in the sense of self, where to find strength when the self is divided and one side is fighting the other?

A warrior whose survival depends upon trusting instincts, has trusted instincts that led to disaster. How does one ever trust instinct again? If the lesson isn't "Don't trust instincts"- and it can't be- then what is it?

A warrior faces down a fear with great courage- and got mowed so completely that hir entire being embodies the concept of defeat. Again, what is the lesson? From whence comes resolve to face any fear again?



Form Of the Day: Sil Lum Tao. I have not been able to bring myself to do the FOD for weeks. Today I did this one and the Southern Mantis fragment. It felt really good. It felt really terrible. All Shaolin is still drenched in the essence of my betrayer. I still cannot transfer ownership. I want this to be mine and not his.



What can I do with my BJJ to make sure that as it evolves, it is MINE, and will remain mine even if I should lose my teachers sometime in the future?

What needs to change in the student/teacher relationship so that one can be respectful, loyal, even personally fond of one's teacher- yet the essense of the art is not so much as one with that person that if you lose hir, you lose the art as well? That if s/he betrays you, your art betrays you as well? That if s/he causes you pain, your art causes you pain as well? That if you lose respect for your teacher, you lose respect for your art as well? That you are defined only as a function of that teacher, or can be defined only in respect to that teacher?

This would be a lot simpler and easier if MA was simply sport to me. The spiritual aspect is its best strength and its worst weakness.

Who am I? Grief/detox/processing

Loss of the friendship is still number one on my distress-o-meter so far.... but I'm starting to look ahead with a clinical interest to the time I'm really going to start freaking out in earnest about the question of my very identity as a martial artist/warrior now that SK and my kung fu group have been amputated from my life.

In the Shaolin tradition, at some point (usually after reaching black sash level, which is intermediate level) it was common to leave the temple to wander the world. Some came back years later to continue training, others didn't. If you didn't leave the temple when your teachers thought you were ready to, they kicked you out.

CK often references her own having been "kicked out of the temple"... DD declared her so when she moved out of town four years ago, even though she was a mid-level white sash at the time.... everyone always considered her a more advanced MA'ist because of her other arts and teaching skills.

I had no intention of leaving the temple, ever. Never even entered my mind.

One of the things I liked about Shaolin is that there was really no ceiling on what I could learn- I was never going to be "done". (Also, I never thought I'd approach CK's level of skill, nor approach black sash.) I fully expected to still be training under SK when I was 100 years old.

I certainly never expected to be leaving like THIS. I had my doubts about the class surviving after DD abandoned it, but I always figured that even if the group disintegrated, I'd still be able to get together with SK regularly and train. It never once crossed my mind to think what would happen- or what it would be like- or what I would do- if he was just....gone. Forever.

If this was another era, and my teacher had died, as his senior student I might be expected to take over teaching the group. If SK had actually died, I'm not sure what I would do- but I would have at least felt some responsibility to honor his legacy by thinking about and providing in some way for the rest of the junior students.

My teacher's not dead, and I haven't reached some level of rank that causes me to feel it's time to take walkabout from (or get kicked out of) the temple. This is a lot messier, more confusing, and without honor. It feels dirty and unfinished.

One could view this, however, as the universe (or God/s however you may define such) kicking me out of the temple.

If I were seeking some kind of higher meaning in this, one could wonder if there is something else I'm supposed to be doing now.

Hey, wait! I'm not ready! I wasn't done yet! There is still so much I wanted to learn from SK!

I am left with a very fundamental question: Who am I now? Who am I as a Shaolin practitioner permanently separated from her temple? Who am I as a warrior permanently separated from my mentor?

To Slay Pollyanna

Problems set in if the performer has a brittle dependence on the safety of absolute perfection. -Josh Waitzkin, “The Art Of Learning”




Tuesday FOD: Five Animals. Both the regular and the mirror versions seem very smooth and powerful today.

Tuesday lunchtime BJJ at Gracie Bellevue.

Double-leg drills, KOB drills, butterfly sweep setups. Positional training- try to pass/defend open guard. A couple of rolls- Bree, John, some white belt guy.

A long time rolling with Ben, which was actually pretty frustrating- trapped on the bottom a lot, getting choked and armbarred.


Kung Fu at CC's. Started with some reps and apps of a section out of a Green Dragon form- same form we were working with last time, but a different section. I really like the way this flows; very Dragonesque:

Start kneeling on rt knee, left Leopard Fist extended shoulder level to west, palm facing south. Rt Leopard fist guarding rt side of head.

Stand and bring both straight arms down in front of body, then circle slightly to right. Turn to face south, continuing the swirly circle to parry a low kick off both hands in front of thighs.

Turn west and step with left foot, bringing both arms up and over in a karate-chop motion chest level. Left hand is slightly ahead of rt.

Step west rt foot, circling both hands over head from left temple to rt to strike rt blade-hand palm-up head level to south. Left hand is warding palm-out at left brow.

Scissor step left foot to west behind rt. Left hand drops to Black Crane guard at rt jaw. RT hand circles to left shoulder and then down-and-out to groin strike to west with knife palm as you sink into the scissor stance.

Note that all of these arm motions are continuous and flowing with no pauses.

After that, they made me teach them the first part of Hurricane Hands, up to the elbow-grind and palm-heel.

Then D and I did a little slow sparring. They're still on my back about my constant Snake striking to the neck. I also took D's back and RNC'ed him, although I couldn't actually take his back with good form because he's too big for me to get my legs around him. He was cracking up the whole time time, even after I proceeded to throttle him till he had to tap.

I'm still having trouble with the big kicks- I need to react faster and stop freezing up when I see one coming in. Also having some difficulty with his wide right hooks- no one I'm used to sparring really tends to use those, so it's new. I don't know what style he favors, but he uses a lot of Mantis- always a challenge.



I cracked like an egg. I e-mailed SK and asked him if he was ever going to speak to me again. I know, I'm weak and pathetic and I'm a masochistic dumb-ass. But it's been four weeks and I'm going nuts. I want to know if anything can be salvaged, and failing that, I'd like some closure. Either way, I really want him to clear up some confusion about what really went down. He gave me a lot of contradicting information. It's difficult to move on either way when there's so much conflicting information and you don't really understand what happened.

I've been really terrified to ping him, because 1)if he ignores me, that's going to be really hurtful, 2)If we do talk it out, it's going to be a painful and difficult conversation, and and 3)If we're really finished with each other for good and all, I'm not eager to face the finality of that. As long as it was kind of hanging there inconclusively, some corner of my mind could maintain a little Pollyanna fantasy that everything might be fixed somehow and we could all go back to class and relations as usual. But I'm going nuts. I think the time has come to step up and slay Pollyanna- much as that's going to hurt.

Freaky dream interlude

(Being in a) Hard Zone demands a cooperative world for you to function. - Josh Waitzkin, “The Art Of Learning”





I forgot this sweep from Thursday night, and I don't want to forget it, because I liked it:

Start on your back, with feet on kneeling opponent's hips (butterfly style), grip on both sleeve cuffs.

Hook top of rt foot around opponent's ribs just above your left foot.

With rt arm, underhook opponent's left knee. You are pulling yourself to hir, not hir to you. You want to be 90 degrees to hir now.

Rt hand keep grip on sleeve cuff and presses opponent's hand to your own left ribs. Don't open the knee too far out.

Pull sleeve and lift knee to get underneath opponent.


Another thing from last night I forgot to blog about- one of the guys was moaning about how rough Lindsey's warmups are. (hee hee). He said, "I'm coming in late next time!" The conversation was too far across the room for me to speak up and inform him that if he arrives late to Lindsey's class, he'll have to do pushups for so long that he'll be sorry he missed the warmup!



The FOD is the Northern Mantis Bo form.
123.5


As often occurs during very difficult periods in my life, last night I had an entire series of vivid, violent and bizarre dreams- after each one, waking up bug-eyed and disturbed.

In one of them, I was one of several escapees breaking out and fleeing some kind of military prison. As the sharpshooters picked off escapees, said gunned-down escapees turned into zombies who immediately attacked their fellow escapees (eyeroll). I and one other escapee made it to the front gate along with one of the zombies. I slipped between them and left my fellow escapee to deal with the zombie while I continued to rabbit for the horizon. When I woke up, I was disturbed because that is atypical behavior for me, even in a dream. True that both the fellow escapee and the zombie were adult men, and that guy probably had much better odds against the zombie than I did (especially since I was unarmed)I didn't know that guy or have any particular loyalty toward him, hanging around to try to help would probably result in getting shot and zombified myself even if we managed to take the zombie.... but still. Not characteristic for me, even in a dream. When I'm upset and depressed, I tend more toward an extra bit of the kamikazee- not running away like a bunny.

In another one, I was an office clerk in a prison (quite the prison theme going here; at least I was on the correct side of the bars this time), and an inmate was telling me and a fellow clerk that he'd had a premonition that my fellow clerk was going to be attacked and murdered in a spectacularly bloody fashion in one of the offices. (Complete with transferred visions; yeah, it was brutal- it was a tiny office, and it looked like the corpse had been stuffed in a blender with the lid off) For some inexplicable reason, I trusted this inmate enough to stand alone with him in a hallway (him unrestrained and me unarmed- I was just a clerk, not a guard), and thank him for doing this to protect my colleague. He didn't attack me, which I half expected him to. When I woke up, that one disturbed me because I had just been berating myself for trusting foolishly- why did I trust *that* guy? I guess I only have to worry about my close friends betraying me and stabbing me through the heart, not delusional prison inmates that I'm dumb enough to meet with unarmed in deserted hallways.

And no, before you ask, I wasn't on any intoxicants or pharmaceuticals at all last night, not even a Unisom- although I wished I'd taken one- hell, a handful- by the fifth or so espisode of this whacko dream series. The 5am wakeup was the limit of what I could bear; I just gave up and got out of bed then. Can hardly wait to see what's going to be playing on the mental big screen tonight. Going to bed these days feels like walking the Green Mile. I've been sleeping on the wood floor for a month, just to try to jog myself out of what feels like a sort of hostile territory- the mere thought of putting the mattress down makes me feel nauseous. I should be getting my camping equipment back in the next day or two... I'm going to set up the pup tent in the living room and try sleeping in there for a while to see if that's enough change of scenery to jog me out of this negative pattern. I will also be able to drape the tent with a blanket and try to get a little more darkness; the eyemask isn't getting the job done.

Thursday and Friday

An armed man will kill an unarmed man with monotonous regularity.
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Thursday:

Today's FOD is Frolic Of the Five Animals.

I didn't go to Kung Fu today.

Despite having seemed understanding at first, SK was apparently more upset with me about that than he let on. This morning he text-bombed me and just ripped me up one side and down the other. Like, to the extent that I don't know if he'll ever speak to me again in any context. He accused me of not considering my training important- which feels like a blade in the gut. That's just deliberately trying to be hurtful- he knows that's bull. He also suggested that he may ask CN to take over teaching due to his guilty feelings over his role in my hiatus.

I had never intended this to be a permanent hiatus, I just needed a break- a few weeks maybe, until a couple of interpersonal issues got cleared up and some raw emotions got decently scabbed over- but he was steamed up enough to sock me with several additional bits of heretofore unknown (to me) information that- unless he was exaggerating for effect- means the situation is even worse than I thought, and may well be unfixable.

What a clusterfuck this has become. I wonder if he was just having a really bad morning, and he'll be more rational after a few days..... or if this was a peep behind the filters, into what's truly going on in his mind. I wonder if I'm never going to hear from him again. I did say, "Take some time to think" before his textual version of stomping out and slamming the door. It would be my preference for none of us to burn any bridges here.

I was distraught enough about this that I could not go to BJJ today. It might have been a good distraction, but I think the first time someone swept me, I would have burst into hysterical tears- which behavior isn't really fair of me to inflict on my teammates.

Crap. :(

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Friday: 123.5.... getting too thin. I recently went on a salad kick, but I was also putting some dressing on it (many salad dressings have more calories than hot fudge sauce, didja know that?!), and some breaded chicken bits, and too much cheese, so I wasn't expecting a weight dip.

Today's FOD is Sil Lum Tao.

Lunchtime BJJ at Gracie Seattle. Lots of warmups, a hip throw (I got to drill with Vince, who obviously knew what he was doing, so he helped me out), then King of the Hill from various start positions. I actually won two of these, which almost never happens. Tweaked my right knee somehow, though. I thought I might have to sit out after that, but I walked it off. I could see the throbbing, jumping muscle right through the thick gi pants, though. We'll see what that feels like in the morning.

The final round found me in bottom half guard with a mammoth white belt crushing me. We must have thrashed there for four minutes. Yes, Kintanon, I remembered my homework about ceasing just lying under there, but I squirmed and wiggled and he was just lying on me with all his weight- I could *NOT* get out. He couldn't get out of the half-guard either, though. Finally the timer sounded.

Got in line to bow out- my heart was pounding so hard, and my stomach was rolling- I had to duck out of the line and run to the bathroom because I thought I was going to throw up. I didn't, but I had to lie there face-down on the tile beside the toilet for a time.

That small-size purple belt invited me to roll, and gave me some advice about tightening up subs before starting to move the main part of the body to finish them.
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Went to the (non-MA) gym and did formwork. All the mirror forms with their regular-side counterparts (except for Leopard 3- I forgot that one). Couple of bobbles, but mostly looking good. I'm happy with how Five Points In the Mirror is coming along. Touch Bridge In the Mirror as well. Many reps of the opening of Tiger Versus Crane In the Mirror- I'm up to the first set of double Tiger claws, but the second technique of the form (which involves a turn as well as doing something radically different with each limb at once) is a bugger. Sil Lum Tao (the FOD). Snake Versus Five Animals, Kiu Two.

I do so much "micro-fu" formwork in my tiny living room, and at my tiny workspace in the middle of the night, that it was novel to have enough room to do everything (including the jumps and rolls and kicks) and not have to pause and back up several times during each form. It was also really nice to have the mirror wall to work with.

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Evening no-gi at Sleeper. I was a little late (stuck in traffic) and missed half the warmups.

A few guard passes from various starting positions utilizing a cradle over the neck and thigh. I was drilling with Alecia, and noticing my ever-shrinking weight against her solid twenty-ish pounds heavier and the fact that every once of it is muscle. She made a couple of comments over the course of the night about me putting up more of a fight than before.

Some positional training from various guard positions, then a few free rolls. I got to work with Alecia, Eric, George, and Cindy.

I asked Cindy for some options for when I'm on my back and she's standing. No matter what I try to do, she spins to the outside and sits on me. She does this to me multiple times every time I work with her. She showed me that I need to close up, and/or hook the leg that she's trying to bring around. I have no doubt she'll just come up with another way to sit one me, but at least it'll be a DIFFERENT one.

Yes, I tried to get out from bottom half-guard again, but this time I was severely handicapped my my sore knee- which is now swollen and painful. I sat out the last roll or two because it was getting worse.