WHAT NEXT?

Saturday morning, we’re eating breakfast together and my son has us watching that goofy cartoon show, Spongebob Squarepants.  When my wife and I first saw this show some years ago, it looked awful and dumb.  But soon I had to admit that despite appearances, it was usually funny and frequently hilarious.  Nothing wrong with a good laugh.  Anyway today the episode featured Spongebob in a complete panic over the threats of a hulking bully at school.  Oddly enough, when the dreaded confrontation arrived, Spongebob’s softness and lack of substance rendered the bully’s attack harmless.  (If only taiji were that easy!)                

After the show I remembered a few years ago when the father of one of my son’s classmates asked me for some martial arts advice.  This rarely happens, and that’s as it should be because I don’t know much.  But the other man (who knew I was studying taiji) said that he wanted his son to get some self-defense training but of a purely defensive nature.  He had in mind for the boy to learn “deflections” that could de-escalate boyish fights.  I said I’d get back to him on this.

Some time later I came back with advice.  I told the man that deflections were great, but in many situations, a bully wasn’t going to give up just because his initial attack(s) was inconclusive.  I said that in good conscience, I didn’t want to help give his son a little knowledge that could be dangerous — dangerous because it might teach how to tread water but not how to swim.

Also there’s the issue of taiji quan not being especially suitable for kids.  I might have mentioned judo, I can’t remember.  The other man has sort of a pacifist outlook but I felt obliged to point out that one can’t just count on “deflecting” an attacker who will eventually run out of steam.  I did find a couple of MA training video clips, I think they were Chen Style moves that could end a fight quickly if successful, and could be approached as hard-MA even without chansi jin (IMHO).  Just to provide some food for thought about fighting and not getting beat up.  When my own son was quite young we took a special seminar about protection from not just bullies, but adult predators.  But that’s another story, maybe I’ll post on that too, the thought just occurred to me.

 

ONE OF A KIND

Michael Jackson, Michael Jackson.  I was never a real fan of his.  I grew up in the rock ‘n’ roll era.  At a casual listen, Michael’s music tended to sounded a little fluffy to me.  But “love him or hate him” (or just not all that interested), he was a hard person to ignore.  Even for me, when a song like “Beat It” came out, or I saw the Moonwalking thing, I couldn’t help saying wow, this kid kicks ass.

So now he’s gone.  We’ve been watching some of the stuff on TV… saw a biopic last night, finally turned it off to get some sleep but it really grabbed me.  Quite a story.  And also watching some of the career highlights, stuff I knew about and stuff I didn’t.  And being reminded of his worldwide fan base which was monumental.  Plus I recall when the Jackson Five first hit the airwaves with “I Want You Back”, my brother and I dug that song.  It was the twilight of Soul Music — the Motown Sound — but it sounded as fresh as the dawn.

So, to summarize: I like the expression “One of a kind”.  It doesn’t mean you hold them out as a model for others.  But special is special.  John Lennon had flaws, but he too was special, one of a kind.  Bob Dylan… Bob Marley.

But watching Michael’s life on TV, I have to say (pardon me), sheee-it.  Can’t touch this.  Maybe I didn’t always get it.  But to put it in old-guy speak (actually Michael and I were born almost the same year): what if Fred Astaire and Frank Sinatra had been the same person?  Would it have been a big deal, sensational?  Bet your ass it would.

 

YOUR CLAWS ARE VERY FIERCE!

Sometimes I remember this unusual scene from Snake in the Eagle’s Shadow:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1sOxMX1TO4&feature=related

The cat, exhibiting Garfield-like indulgence, has torn up the secret kungfu book that Jackie hoped would elevate him to mastery.  But it looks like Cat may suffer worse than punishment, as it finds itself face-to-face with a deadly cobra!  It’s interesting to watch the different approaches as the snake tries to “hypnotize” the cat with undulating movement which we see mirrored in many a boxer’s technique.  But the cat, though a little freaked out by its creepy attacker, basically stays still and focussed on the snake’s actual intention.

When they come to grips, cat seems to take a page from traditional taiji way: never stop moving, give opponent nothing solid.  Then some claw fa-jing here and there, and the tables start to turn.

Interesting that Jackie lost his book of secrets, but was able to progress anyway by observing nature’s secrets which hide in plain sight.

I remember our last cat, who died a few years back.  Once as a young animal he spotted something lying on the living room carpet, it was a lipstick tube of my wife’s that had gotten misplaced.  For some reason our cat found this small black cylinder very uncanny-looking, I don’t know if he thought is was a snake, or what.  But he sidled up to the object slowly in that catlike way they have, paused, and then: bambambambambambambam!  Man, that sucker’s paw flicked out and popped the lipstick case so many times so fast… it looked like over half a dozen strikes in the space of a second or so.  Marvellous sung…

 

WORLD LIKE A FLOWING RIVER

More Robert Santee:

http://books.google.com/books?id=xC7RNh4Bba8C&pg=PA38&lpg=PA38&dq=robert+santee+tao+te+ching&source=bl&ots=w-z0QuTztD&sig=n8nZBdYBi4MN1bDzNJppoy-xmPQ&hl=en&ei=wCY3SuHCKo_-sgP7ka3SBQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1

 

FORGET TO REMEMBER; REMEMBER TO FORGET

From Dr. Robert Santee:

http://abodetao.com/cgi-bin/shop.pl/SID=1211089855.330/page=tea_ceremony.html

 

AUSTERE GREATNESS OF SHUGYO

Thanks to Cook Ding’s Kitchen for sharing this gold:

http://cookdingskitchen.blogspot.com/2009/06/forging-training-in-martial-arts.html

 

WEIRD SCENES INSIDE THE GOLD MINE

When we move without moving, what leads?  What follows?  What’s in-between?

And — does the order stay the same when circumstances change?  Why should it?

Does the hand lead?  Is the hand led?  Does the hand exist?

Maybe the hand does not exist.

But isn’t the hand the paragon of doing in our human life?

Maybe thus/therefore, it must take last place in the topsy-turvy world.

If things go forward, they must go backward.

You can only pull a string of pearls, not push.

How do you hold without hands?  Same way Dr. Hawking does.

Weird scenes inside the gold mine.

The blue bus… is calling us.

Driver where you taking us?

 

CLOSE AT HAND

I can’t remember which former post of mine talked about Bubbling Well being in the ground as opposed to part of the “foot”.  Probably one of my silly haikus.  Anyway I’m not going to trouble to find it again.

But last night and today I’m thinking about Laogong Point and about my hand shape, which is basically nowhere at this point, I think I let it slip away.  Hopefully to re-emerge better in the future.  But I decided that I was focussing too much on the hand itself, which in one sense should not have any shape at all, certainly not most of the time anyway.  Yang hand, yin hand, open, closed, soft, hard, forgotten, attended to……………… 

Transitional hand?  Never mind, these are just words.  The only thing I’ve accomplished is softer, more yielding, which is good.  One can hold a lot of tension in the hands, probably this is first place to try and let go.  I have to seize and hold on to and release things all day long at my work, so I’m very aware of this issue.

But I did a little looking around this morning and found a word I needed: “surface”.  Maybe it’ll help at some point.

http://www.acuxo.com/meridianPictures.asp?point=PC8&meridian=Pericardium

 

STRIPPING AWAY OF EXTRANEOUS

http://ejmas.com/tin/2004tin/tinart_morgan_0204.html

 

CANDLE OF THE MIND II

Here’s a challenging post from Unka Kim’s Bloggie Thingie: http://sdksupplies.netfirms.com/0804-7-blog.html

“Habits vs Learning”

>>>”One of the truisms on the internet is that you should never practice without a sensei. If you do you will develop bad habits that you won’t be able to correct, or that will be much harder to correct than learning them from scratch.

All I can say to this is that if you can’t correct a habit, you can’t be taught. The martial arts are a life-long process of modifying habits, of changing and refining movements. The problem isn’t developing a bad habit, the problem is not practicing enough to develop a habit at all.

So if you’re too far from a teacher, or too young for class, or can’t afford the lessons, get a book, get a video and work on it by yourself. For iaido that means swinging the sword. Trust me, I’ve seen enough beginners and even people with years of practice, to know that whatever bad habits you develop, they won’t be any worse than if you’d studied only under a sensei. The difference is that you’ll have all that swinging behind you and won’t have to wear the grooves into your bones like the rest of the class. You’ll have a base on which to build.

Happy swinging.”<<<

Unka Kim’s blog may have a silly-sounding title, but a quick read of his bio suggests he has little need to put on airs: 

http://www.martial-arts-network.com/q&a3.htm

I liked what he said in Habits vs Learning, and also his boldness of saying it.  Now, coming from someone like me, reposting snippets like this could be viewed as quite self-serving.  Why not be brave enough to simply face the fact that I need more lessons, hundreds more in fact, instead of looking for support that self-training isn’t a hopeless waste of time?  Actually that’s a bit overstated.  The vast majority of us MA wannabes are not indoor students of masters.  We learn what we can where we can, practice it as much as we choose to when we think we can, and then if we’re lucky we find the right teacher who tells us as much as he/she thinks we can manage about how we’re doing it wrong.

Unless we’re in the military, peace officers, or professional combat-arts teachers, MA pursuits are simply a personal indulgence, no?  Some of us may think that we’re preparing to defend our loved ones and ourselves against street thugs, but whether that’s realistic or not, the odds are it will never be put to the test.  But once again I overstate, so don’t mind that “indulgence” crack.  Earlier this morning for some reason I recalled an old expression, “It’s better to light a single candle than to curse the darkness”.  To which my mind conceived a smart-ass reply, “What if you don’t have a candle?”.  But that’s missing the point.  We always have ourselves, and another day of life if we’re spared.