Underneath my yellow skin

Let’s talk more about Bagua

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I want to talk more about Bagua today. Yesterday, I talked more about Taiji because that’s my first love and what I’ve been doing for fifteen years. Bagua is a Johnny-Come-Lately in terms of time doing it. I think it might be a year? Probably not quite. Time has absolutely no meaning now.

I was watching the video I’d done of my teacher (doing the Swimming Dragon Form) because my memory is so terrible now. Even though we went over a few new movements several times yesterday, my brain was like, “Nah, I’m not remembering that.”

I’m glad that I have an excuse for it–my stroke, I mean. Not to mention the fact that I’m just getting older. I will admit that it surprises me that I’m not upset about it because I used to be very proud of my exceptional memory. I could remember names, dates, and facts without putting any effort into it. It’s because that’s a small price to pay for being alive.

At least that’s what I thought at the time. Now, I’m not so sure. Not about the trade-off, but about being glad to still be alive. Here’s the thing–yes, me surviving was a miracle and a once-in-a-lifetime experience. But, just like anything else, it fades  away with time. When I first got out of the hospital, I was marveling every day at being alive. I was supposed to be dead. I was not supposed to be alive. That’s sobering, I’ll tell you what.

But that was nearly three-and-a-half years ago. Day by day, the magic and wondered faded–just a litle bit. It had to, really, as it could not be sustained. When I first came out of my coma, my depression was down 90% and my anxiety was down roughly 60%. Now my depression has roughly doubled (so still down from where it was before, but not iudeal) and my anxiety is up 10% or so.

Taiji helps with all that. It’s the one thing that has kept me sane, frankly. Before my medical crisis and after as well. I thought it was all I needed because there was so much in it, you could study it for the rest of your life and just barely scratch the surface of it (if you don’t devoute several hours a day to it).

Then, Bagua entered my ilfe. Honestly, it came into my life a decade ago via my teacher showing me how to walkk the circle with DeerHorn Knives as an alternative to meditation because the latter was causing flashbacks. I was a pacifist at the time, but once as I was walking the circle (and focusing on the ‘enemy’ of the circle), I had a flash of, “If it’s you or me, then it’s you” so intensely, it shook me. That was the first time I had felt my life was worth fighting for (in that thought, I meant that if one of us was gonig to die, it would be the enemy/opponent).


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More martialing and more arting

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Yes, I’m going to talk more about martial arts because it’s one of the shining stars in my otherwise dark sky. I knew that asshole was going to ignite everything on fire, but I did not expect it that quickly. I should have, but I didn’t. I knew he was going to let all his dysfunctions fly, but I thought he would have taken a week to settle in before destroying the world. Here is the post from yesterday.

I just can’t. Arc of justice, yadda, yadda, but I think it might be better if our country just went away. If that many people want to take it in that direction, well, then I want no part of them–or this country.

I have never been very patriotic. I never understood being that loyal to something that will give you nothing back. I mean the actual country itself, not the people in it. Also, it was just a fluke that I was born here (and we are NOT getting into that right now because I cannot),  so I don’t see how it makes this country any better or more special than any other. I’ve never felt overly attached to this country or thought it was better than every other country on earth.

I survived the first term of this asshole. Barely, but I did. When the idea that he might have a second term became evident, I just could not understand it. He had lied about everything, fumbled almost everything, and left the country worst than when he started. In addition, he had no respect for anyone. He did not care who he hurt and many of his acolytes did get hurt along the way. Not that he cared about that, of course. Nor would he take any ownership of that, I’m sure.

I am a pretty pragmatic and cynical person. I have been on this earth for over half a century. And yet. Apparently, I still am an idealist at heart as a friend in college once labeled me, much to my indignation and dismay*. This many decades later, I still think that maybe, this time, people will do the right thing.

Taiji helps me deal with this as it does everything. Honestly, I don’t know what I’d do with it. looking at the bigger picture, Taiji saved my life. Looking at the medium picture, Taiji has helped me navigate my relationships much better than before. Looking at the small picture, Taiji allows me to put one foot in front of the other each day. Looking at the, uh, I don’t know what size picture, Taiji has ameliorated most of the bodily pains I’ve had. I feel much better at fifty-plus years than I did when I was in my twenties.

I am still obsessed with the fan. Below, I have included a more aggressive Fan Form that appeals to the more aggressive side of my nature. You can tell that this form is for combat, for sure. I’m guessing it’s a more commonly-known form because I recognize the music from other Fan Form videos. Or it’s jsut the piece of music that everyone uses for the Fan Form.


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More about my martial arts journey

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I am continuing on my martial arts journey. I’m still working on both the Cane Form and the Fan Form. I have to stop myself from rushing onto the next weapon form because I still have spots in this form that are giving me trouble. Again, I need to make sure the corrections stick in my brain and not just blithely assume that I’ll remember them by omosis.

Side note: When I was a kid, my mother was very pushy about me doing things perfectly. An A- was as bad as an F, but only for me. My brother had obvious learning disaibilities (unlike my hidden neuroatypical traits) as well as being on the spectrum, so my mother focused on him rather than me. I was just quietly deeply depressed and anxious, and I hated waking up every day of my life.

In yesterday’s post, I talked about the connection between my neurospiciness and my obsession with the weapon forms. In retrospect, it’s hard to accept that I had overlooked something so obvious about myself. To be fair to me, though, neurodiversity was not something that was talked about at all when I was a kid. In fact, I would say most people didn’t know it existed. I certainly didn’t.

Side note: I got my flu shot yesterday and was wiped out from it. I do really badly with shot, and this was no exception. I was exhausted from it and still am. This is my way of saying why I did not finish this post yesterday. Well, at least part of the reason. I’m still tired AF, but I’m going to try to write a post today.

I have felt like a dilettante for so long. I mean, I practice every day, but not super-seriously like some people. I know there are people who have made their whole life the weapons (like my teacher’s classmate), and I wish I could emulate them. That’s not the way I roll, though. I can’t put in several hours every day constantly refining my skills. I mean, I think I could, but then I would just get lost in it to a negative degree.

Obsession is a double-edged sword, pardon the pun. I have to be very careful how much I put into it because I can get drawn into it way too deep.

Side note II: When I was in my twenties, I would become obsessed with something for a short period of time and throw myself into it. One was jigsaw puzzles. Not just doing them, but collecting them. So I would get dozens on eBay and just stash them away. Another was black…ah…fake diamond?? rings. Some kind of manmade ‘gem’. Black is my favorite color and diamond is my birth gem.


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I’m channeling my inner Veruca Salt (martial arts)

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In yesterday’s post, I was talking about the connection between my obsessive nature and my love of martial arts weapons. It’s been a long and bumpy road in discovering my neurospiciness. Now that I know that I am some flavor of ND (and probably more than one), I have to make the decision if I want to get a diagnosis (diagnoses) or not. I’m not here to talk about that right now, though!

I’m Veruca Salt at the moment (and, yes, I’m including that scene below yet again) in that I want it all now. Every weapon form at this very moment. I don’t want to have to take time to learn them; I just want the knowledge to be magically implanted into my brain by osmosis. As I noted in yesterday’s post, I am currently obsessed with the Double Fan Form. I don’t know it yet, mind, but I really, really want to learn it.

Here’s the funny thing about the Fan Form. It’s the most feminine of the forms  I know. I am not a feminine person at all. And yet, I have always been drawn to the fan. It’s the weapon form I most wanted to learn, and I kept pressing my teacher to teach it to me. She kept pushing back, but would not say why. She did show me some fan drills, but that was as far as she would go.

What I have learned since then is that the weapons are not her thing, and she does not feel as confident about teaching them as she does the Solo Forms and other non-weapon-related Taiji. to her credit, she hid it well and did her best. As she always says, anyone with more time in the practice than you had was a master to you.

It’s similar to how when you’re a kid, you think your parents know everything. Or in my case, you think that your parents are normal because you have nothing to compare them with. Actually, it was more that I thought I was broken and just utterly wrong because that’s how they treated me. They were the gold standard, and I fell short all the time.

Taiji helped me in that it gave me some self-esteem, confidence, and at least a willingness to try to set boundaries.. Unfortunately, my mother does not know the meaning of the word ‘no’, and her M.O. is just to batter you until you give in. My broethr and I have learned that it’s easier to pick your battles. In other words, we give in on the little things and then stand up on the things that we really don’t want to do. That can only be once every year or so because my mother doesn’t take well to it–at all–and will become incredibly nasty in a very passive-aggressive way.


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More on martial arts and me

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I am still working on finessing my Fan Form. At the same time, I was fucking up a few steps in the Cane Form, so I went back to watch the videos I had taken of my teacher doing the form. There is one simple movement that I forgot when I first learned the Cane Form, and while I focused on it in re-teaching myself, I forgot about it again soon after. And I’m practicing it every day! Right side one day, left side the next. I don’t know when I fogrot the movement, but now I’m committed to watching the video every day for at least a week in order to cement it in my mind.

It’s frustrating that’s it’s the easiest movement in the form, too. Well, in the top five, at any rate. I’ll see if I can describe it. Imagine facing forward with the cane held in the right hand, left hand lightly touching the right hand. I’m lunging forward with the cane pointing up in the air and to the left side of my face. It’s the next posture that I keep forgetting. In it, I step forward with my left foot and swing the cane to the right side and move it to a horizontal position.

Before I continue, here is the post from yesterday. In it, I mentioned finding the Double Fan Form, and I will include a video of one such form below.

It is so unbelievably easy, and that’s probably why I forget it. As I have established in prior posts, I tend to let my mind wander when something is easy. If it’s hard, I will focus and pay attention. But if it’s simple, then my brain tells me that I can learn it while only half paying attention.

Side note: I have recently fully realized that I am neurospicy. I have not been tested for it, but in talking with a friend about her neurospiciness, I’ve slowly come to realize that I am probably autistic. I used to suspect I had ADHD, but I  had no clue about autism because I had bought into the stereotypes of what it looked like. Young white boys who stimmed, wouldn’t meet anyone’s eye, and had no capacity for empathy.

In the last year or so, I have researched it and talked about it endlessly with my friend. She sent me a few quizzes to take, and I score firmly in the autism camp. She explained to me that especially in non-men, the symptoms were very different. Also, it’s not that autistic people don’t have empathy, indeed, they can feel it more deeply than neurotypical people. It’s just that in our society with all the rules and regulations we have about social etiquette, many neuroatypical people don’t know the “appropriate” (in quotes because it’s all constructed) way to show those feelings in society.


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More about Taiji (and Bagua) and me

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I can talk about martial arts for hours on end and never get tired of it. In class today, we went overc the Fair Ladies, which is something I’m struggling with on the left side. It’s in the beginning of the third section of the Solo Long Form, and it’s something that my teacher’s teacher has recently tweaked. He has changed two of the four Fair Ladies into Master Choi ones rather than Master Liang’s. In the previous form, all four of the Fair Ladies were Master Liang’s. Oh, by the way, the movement is called Fair Ladies Weaving at Their Shuttles so you can see why I call them My Fair Ladies. Or not. It could just be my brain.

I realized in teching myself the left side of the form that I have been fudging the new Fair Ladies. To be fair to me (heh), I was taught a completely different form a decade-and-a-half ago. They were awkward and overly elaborate, and I was just never comfortable with them. Then, they were changed about a decade ago to be much more streamlined and simpler. They were all Master Liang’s Fair Ladies, which were purely for health. Now, there are two of his (for health) and two of Master Choi’s (for combat). They are much more intuitive, but I have not yet gotten them into my body. Why? Because I practice the third section much less than the first two.

One really good thing about teaching myself the left side of any form is that it makes me clarify the squidgy parts of the right side of the form. Funnily, there are a few movements that I do better on the left side than the right, but they are few and far between.

The third section is roughly 17 minutes, which is longer than the other two sections put together. It’s natural to practice the first section the most, then the second, then the third. And it’s natuaral to fudge things when they’re fuzzy in the memory.

I filmed my teacher doing the first section a few weeks ago. I have that section down pretty well. I’m going to film her doing the second section soon, and I know that I’ll have problems here and there with that section. Then, the third section at some point. I asked if I should start with the third section because it’s the one I knew the least, but she said it was fine to start with the first section.

Now that I’m done with the Fan Form, I’m going to spend the next few days polishing it. Then, it’s the Karambit Form. In yesterday’s post, I talked about how I had to go into detective mode in order to figure out what I was doing wrong in one specific part of the Fan Form. How I kept missing what the teacher was doing even though I studied (I thought) her very carefully. Even when I was looking at her right hand as she caught the fan, I was looking at the fan and not her hand.


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More about martial arts and me

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I am still thinking about how conceived notions can really mess with your mind. This is because I finished re-teaching myself the Fan Form yesterday, and I got stuck at the very end for quite some time*. As I mentioned yesterday, it involved a toss of the fan, and I kept ending up with the fan facing the wrong way. It was frustrating the hell out of me because no matter how many times I watched that two seconds, I could not figure out what I was doing wrong.

I looked at the feet, the fan, and the waist. I looked at the left hand (the hand that was holding the fan) and then the right hand. And I still kept fucking it up. I was starting to question my sanity. I followed along, and even though I was doing what the teacher was doing, the fan kept ending up the facing wrrong way.

It wasn’t until I looked really carefully at the right hand (the catching hand) that I realized what I was doing wrong. The teacher had her right hand inversed so she was catching the fan ‘backwards’. It hadn’t occurred to me that this might be the case because that’s just not something we normally do in Taiji. I should have at least thought of it because there is another place a few movements earlier where she reversed her hand holding the fan. It was in a movement that is pretty much the Snake Creeping Downward, but with a fan.

Side note: It’s exciting to me when I recognize postures from the Solo Form in other forms. Especially when I don’t need any prompting in order to do so. To be fair, this was not a hard one to recognize because Squatting Single Whip is pretty iconic. If youv’e done any Taiji, you’ll recognize it. In fact, it’s the one I mentioned two posts ago that teachers like to do when they’re aiming on being showy/flashy. Not to say the posture in and of itself is flashy or showy, but that it’s one that can easily be made flashy/showy with little effort.

When I saw what the teacher in the video was doing, I mentally smacked myself on the forehead. I had looked at everything but the relevant hand–which was a great metaphor for missing the important things in life. Even when I looked at her right hand, I was watching the fan and not the hand. It’s a good lesson in looking at everything and not having any preconceived notions as to what is important and what isn’t.


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Martial arts are life to me

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I have more to say about martial arts, specifically Taiji and Bagua. Before I do that, though, I want to say that technology can be so frustrating. I mentioned yesterday that the videos  I was watching of the Fan Form suddenly stopped working. They were mp4s and were a bit spotty on Chrome, but I could watch them in the end.

Yesterday, Microsoft informed me that ‘something went wrong’ and to try again later. I checked in later, and it was still the same. I was flummoxed because I had literally watched the videos the day before. I Googled it, of course, and I tried the first couple hacks. I cleared the browser. I turned off my Ad Block (that wasn’t suggested, but I figured it probably had something to do wiht that–also why my Chrome was freezing and chugging, I suspected). I turned my computer off and on again. None of this worked.

I was getting frustrated. Technology is great–until it doesn’t work. Then it’s frustrating as fuck. To my surprise, I’m considered a heavy user. I don’t think I know that much about computers, but I’m pretty damn good at Googling things. I do reach my limit, though, and when I do, I get incredibly frustrated.

One of the suggestions was to try it on a different browser. I tried the videos on Edge, and they worked perfectly fine. I just talked to my brother about the problem (because he’s my techie), and he said he’d been having problems with YouTube on Chrome, too. I had been having that as well and had, indeed, called him about it. His suggestions was to reset Chrome (which he suggested for this, too). It worked somewhat before, but not this time. We both concluded that the issue was Chrome.

I thought it might be my AdBlocker, but who knows? As long as I can watch it on Edge (Edge!!), I’m good. It runs better on Edge, too. Chrome used to be good before it got so damn bloated. Maybe I’ll try out Edge for a bit and see if it’s better. It pains me to say that, but I’m very much a ‘use what works’ kind of person rather than brand loyal.

The funny thing is that Chrome is running fine on my desktop. It’s just my laptop that is having issues, and I don’t know why. Different Windows? Maybe. If it is AdBlock, maybe that’s a different version as well? No idea. Like I said, after I try three or four things, I’m stumped. I’m just glad it worked on a different browser.

I have included a winning Taiji Fan Form below. This one is performative, yes, but not as flashy or energetic as some of the other videos I’ve posted (this is a compliment, by the way, not a negative). It’s funny because even though she won, she made one obvious mistake that I could catch. As I’ve said before, that’1s not a diss, but just an observation that I’ve gotten much better at my weapon forms.


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Taiji, Bagua, and me

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Let’s talk more about the Fan Form. I worked on polishing it today, and I’ve already noticed little tweaks here and there that I had to make–from learning it this week.. Part of it is my now terrible memory and part of it is just human nature. Also, no one is perfect. While watching the video I’m following, I noticed a mistake or two on the part of the teacher. No shade because again, no one is perfect, but it says something about how much I’ve grown myself. Ten years ago, I would not have noticed the mistakes because I was still relatively new myself, especially to weapons.

It’s the same when I watch my teacher’s school’s demo. Her teacher is a master so I don’t see his mistakes very often (or at all). However, when one of his students does a form, I can see the little errors they make. Again, this is not shade. This is not me trying to put myself above them because I would make the same amount of mistakes they did if I presented any of the forms I knew. It just shows how much I’ve grown since I first started studying Taiji. Here is my post from day before yesterday about many things relating to martial arts.

I have included a different Fan Form below. It’s more aggressive than the one I know, and it has kicks and leaps in it. It’s breathtaking, and I would not mind learning it at some point. There are so many fan forms, and I could see spending your whole life studying just those. In searching for a good fan form video, I came across several. And I want to learn every one. Every single one!

I have to hold myself back, though, beacuse as my teacher said to me once, it’s better to learn a few forms well than to learn several dozen badly. She put it more diplomatically than that, but it’s what she meant. And I get it. I tend to get obsessed with things that interest me to the exclusion of everything else.   It’s the neurospiciness of my brain, and I have to decide when to feed it and when to starve it.

Ed. note: For whatever reason, the rest of this post got lost to the ethers. I probably thought I saved it and didn’t. I’m just going to continue this post and take it in whatever direction I want to go.

I am still brushing up on my Fan Form. I have completed my re-teaching of myself, but there are several places where I can tweak and/or tidy up. I can’t watch the videos, though, right now because Microsoft is fucked up in some way. So I just did it from memory, which was not great. My memory, I mean. There is a bit at the end that I would like to review, but I can puzzle it out and do my best until Microsoft fixes their shit.


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I’m getting serious about Taiji and Bagua

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I’m finally starting to get serious about the weapon forms–and I want to focus on the combat aspects of martial arts from now on. I’ve always cared more about that than the health benefits (though that is quite the perk, too.

Side note within the parathensis: I have nevur focused on the health benefits because while I appreciate them, they were just not at the forefront of my mind. They were what kept me alive, though, during my medicla clisis. For that reason, I think of the healtth benefits more fondly when I think about Taiji. It’s still not the main reason I do Taiji, though.)

I am used to being a weirdo, and I am fine with it. I know that a lot of people think of Taiji as a very chill martial arts–which it is, mind–but it’s still martial. I have mentioned this before, but when I used to be on Twitter, I would wax poetic about the weapons. Inevitably, there would be several women tweeting back at me in shock/indignation that I had that side to me. One woman said in a very disapproving tone (believe me, it came across very clearly in the tweet) that she wouldn’t have thought that I was that kind of person. When I asked her to elaborate, she said violent–she didn’t think I was violent.

Side note redux: This is one of the ways that patriarchy has been harrmful. Women and AFAB people are taught since birth that the most important factor for them is to be nice.  There are two quick and easy ways to cut a woman down–by saying she’s not being nice and by saying that she’s fat.

I learned to take the power away from the word fat when I was in my thirties. So many people used it as an epithet, and I jsut was not having any of that. I would say that I was fat, and if someone liked me, they would scramble to disagree with me. “Oh, no, you’re not fat. You’re just solid!” It was funny because by that time, I didn’t think of fat as a negative, but merely a descriptor.

Side not to the side note redux: This was also my reaction to people who were horrified that I didn’t like whatever popular media thing that was being discussed, whether it was The Beatles, The Big Lebowski, Seinfeld, or whatever else other people liked. I didn’t like any of them, and I made no bones about it. There was one woman on Twitter who simply could not believe that I didn’t like the things she did (and that she considered things everyone should like). She would say that she couldn’t see how anyone could not like them and then insist that I must like them.


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