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.
Losing myself in the weapons forms has been one of the best things I’ve done for myself. When I’m moving my sword, for example, I just feel at one with the world. I don’t know if this will make sense, but I feel the most like me when I am doing my weapons forms. I don’t feel complete without one in my hand, and doing those forms bring a joy to my heart almost unlike any other.
I have completely changed my goal for the weapons forms this year. I was going to add all these different weapons forms, but given the wobbles I’ve found in the forms I already know, I think it’s a better use of my time to perfect those first. Given that I keep making the same mistake in the Cane Form, I have to figure out a way to make the corrections stick.
I am also teaching myself the beginning of the Swimming Dragon Form (bagua, hands only) on the left side as I’m still learning the right side. My teacher tosd me to do the first three movements repeatedly as a drill to get ready for the rest of what bagua has to offer me, but I’ve gone a bit past that.
I am trying not to get ahead of myself, but it’s difficult. I don’t have that much time left on this earth. I feel like my third and final death isn’t far off. And before I go, I want to learn all the weapons forms I can. And not only learn them, but be relatively OK at them. It’s only recently that I’ve allowed myself to think that I’m decent at weapons. I have a bad habit of comparing myself to others and ruing the fact that I am not as far along. I love the weapons, but I have struggled to make myself practice Taiji in general in the past. It’s my brain working in a very weird way, and I have to find ways to get around it.
Even when I want to do something, my brain will rebel against it. I have to find ways to work around my brain, which is not fun at all. By the way, I have learned this is yet another trait of autistic people.
I did the Fan Form well today. I am pleased with that form. Still a bit embarrassed that it took me so long to figure ouut what I was doing wrong, but mostly glad that I did figure it out eventually. My impulse, of course, is to teach myself the left side of the form as quickly as possible, but I need to calm down and not rush it. It takes some time for the form to stick, and if I rush to the left side, it’s very possible that I’ll fuck it up.
In fact, I think I need to focus on the right side of the Cane Form so I can get it to stick before going to the left side. It’s so tempting to hurry forward, but one of the main tenets of Taiji is to CTFO. Not in so many words, obviously, but my teacher will often quote Master Liang, “No hurry, no worry.” Ironically, my mother, who came with me to a few classes, mutated that into, “No hurry, no going too slowly.” That is so like her, and I could only laugh ruefully over it.
That was me wandering all over the place in this post. I’m going to let it go and call it a day. I will try to stick to a general theme in tomorrow’s post, but I can’t promise anything. This is part of how my brain works, and I don’t think it’s changing any time soon.