Underneath my yellow skin

Tag Archives: taiji weapons

How to self-soothe during the dark days

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I’m still reeling. I ‘m not the only person who is. The deep anger is bubbling, and I’m not sure what to do with it.

Tangentially, I’ve had the longest writing drought (except for blog posts) that I’ve had in my life since I started writing–which was when I was seven. Back then, it was poetry. A bit later, I wrote a short story for school that was a murder mystery (I found my love for it at a young age). It was about a young girl, Birdie, who was ostracized by her peers (yes, I was drawing on real life. Which is still what I do). There was a teacher found murdered, I think? There were red herrings galore, but it turned out that Birdie killed her. I drew the illustrations to accompany the story as well (they were shitty). For some reason, playing cards played a part in it as well? I can’t remember why Birdie committed the murder, but that was very Agatha Christie of me–writing from the point of view of the killer. And, no, I hadn’t read Agatha Christie at that time.

By the way, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, the book to which I’m referencing, is one of my favorite Poirot novels. If I remember correctly (and I’m not going to Google it, so I’m right in my own head), it was controversial at the time because while some people thought it was brilliant, others thought it was cheating. The reason why? Because the narrator was the murderer. Yes, I’m spoiling a book that came out nearly a century ago. Deal with it.

It was different to begin with because Captain Hastings isn’t in it. I have to admit that I prefer to have him there because he anchors the stories. Plus, he’s a good stand-in for the reader while simultaneously making me feel smart (because he’s not the brightest bulb in the garden). He has a good heart and an impetuous nature. He is credulous and susceptible to women who have hair that was a certain shade of auburn.

In this book, Dr. Sheppard is the narrator. Poirot has retired and moved to the countryside. He has dedicated himself to growing the perfect marrow, which I never knew what that was. It’s a courgette, which is zucchini in American English. The book opened with Poirot gardening and being angry because the marrows weren’t doing what he wanted. He was throwing them around, and one landed in Dr. Sheppard’s yard.

They struck up a friendship and when a murder happened, Poirot leaned on Dr. Sheppard to do the legwork. The book is written from Dr. Sheppard’s point of view as a journal of sorts. At the end, after Poirot denounced him as the murderer, Dr. Sheppard revealed that he had intended the journal to be his magnum opus after he got away with it. I have some quibbles about how Christie wrote the book because she did have the tendency to dance on the line of being not fair.


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Tenuous connection between favorites

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I have two set of favorite things. From games and Taiji weapons. I have ranked the former and likened the latter to different romantic relationships. I have not done the opposite, so I decided, why the hell not? Or at least take a stab at comparing the former to the latter.

To recap, here is the list of the From games in order of my favorite to least favorite. Of the ones I’ve played, of course. I have not played Demon’s Souls. Yet.

  1. Dark Souls III
  2. Elden Ring
  3. Dark Souls
  4. Dark Souls II (Scholar of the First Sin)
  5. Bloodborne
  6. Sekiro

As I have said ad nauseam, this is not a list of the best From games; it’s a list of my favorites. Which means no one is allowed to argue with me about it! That doesn’t stop people, of course, but that’s neither here nor there. In addition, I would put Dark Souls II (Scholar of the First Sin) ahead of Dark Souls as to which games I’d prefer to play, but Dark Souls is the better game in general.

Now. It’s a bit harder in ranking the Taiji weapons. Also, it’s not just Taiji weapons. The Karambit Form is its own thing and the DeerHorn Knives are from Bagua. I don’t know that form, but I can walk the circle with the DeerHorn Knives. The Sword Form will forever hold a special place in my heart. But….if I were to be totally honest, the Double Saber Form is my favorite. It is just amazing. Followed by the DeerHorn Knives. Which is not Taiji! Then the Sword Form, Fan Form, Dancing Hua-Li Sword Form, Staff/Spear (no form, just drills), Saber Form, and Cane Form. I would put the Karambit Form around the Fan Form, but it’s squishy. If we’re only taking the Taiji weapons forms, then it’s Sword Form, Dancing Hua-Li Sword Form, Saber Form, Double Saber Form, Cane Form, and Fan Form. I think for the process of this purpose, I’m going to swap in the staff/spear for the dancing sword form just because. So we have sword, cane, saber, double saber, fan, and staff/spear. Honestly, I don’t think I can compare the weapons to FromSoft games. I will say that when I mentioned in the RKG Discord all the weapon forms I practiced, one of my buddies said, “Are you an actual Sekiro boss?” Which was hilarious, but not far from wrong! I have a bunvch of tricks in my bag, and I am not afraid to use them.


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A boost to the ego

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When my mother was here last during my medical crisis, I foolishly decided to show her the Sword Form. Why? Because I was drugged up and thought it would be a good idea. Why? Stop questioning me! I don’t know. I honestly don’t. It’s because I love my weapons so much and maybe I wanted to connect with my mother. Which is so stupid of me. There has never been a time in the history of ever when she cared and/or understood what I was trying to tell/show her.

Me being bi? That meant I wanted to fuck animals. Tattoos? Oh, she was not pleased by that at all. Of course, she didn’t approve of me relinquishing my religion (and had people pray at me to ‘bring me back into the fold’. Didn’t work, by the way). She said I was shirking my duty as a womn by not having children, and she encouraged me to get married so I’d have someone to take care of me in my old age. She relentlessly nagged at me for me being fat because she was concerned about my health, she said. But, when I  was anorexic and painfully thin, she was only jealous of my tiny waist.

She tried to be encouraging about my writing, but the only thing she said when I let her read a short story I had written was how it had ‘so many’ swear words in it. I can’t remmeber a time when she complimented me or appreciated me full-stop without any qualifiers. Oh, wait. Yes, I can. She was thankful when I listened to her dump her problems on me because she ‘needed’ it.

Needless to say, when she told me how grateful she was that I was still alive, I internally rolled my eyes. She only cared because I was her unpaid therapist. Not even a therapist because she  didn’t listen to anything I suggested. Or rather, very few things. She did not care about me the person, which is something that people have a hard time believing. A mother is supposed to care about her child! Rightly or wrongly, this is more embedded in our society than a father loving his child.

In this case, neither is correct. Neither of my parents love me as a person. They love the idea of their daughter as an extension of them, but me, Minna, the difficult, messy, complicated person? Nope!

Oh, I forgot to say that when I told my mother I was studying Taiji, she said that it was a way of inviting the devil to dance on my spine. How or why she came up with that, I do not know, but it’s almost poetic.

Anyway, when I showed my mother the Sword Form, it was the first three or four movements. She gave the uncomfortable laugh she does when she doesn’t like something and then said, “Oh, ah, it’s cute.”


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The patient needs a little patience

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I’m frustrated.

 

I’ve been home three-and-a-half weeks, all the drugs finally out of my system. The first few weeks, I was too busy readapting to being home to really think of much of anything. And drugged up. I was feeling no pain, believe you me, and I was flying high. When I arrived home, I was pretty close to ‘normal’. I had a mild tremor in my left middle finger; I had difficulty reading fonts (and everyone’s faces were squished together. Two eyes melded into one with the lower half of the face melted into one indistinguishable lump), and; my stamina was pants. That was the biggest thing–I couldn’t do even a tenth of what I used to be able to do.

Where that showed up the most was in my taiji practice. Before the hospital (BH), I did stretches for ten minutes, form and other posture work for ten minutes, and weapons for half an hour to forty-five minutes. Now, I do stretches for fifteen minutes or more, maybe five or seven minutes of form/posture work, and…sigh.

I have a hard time thinking about the weapons, let alone talking about them. BH, I did half a Sword Form every day, alternating left and right sides. I also did the Double Sabre Form every day, doing it as a form. Every other day, I did it as a dance to a different song. Or maybe I alternated every day? That’s possible. I did one row of the Sabre Form every day, both sides. I did a full form once a week. Did I do both sides? I think? It’s hard to remember, sadly. I did the sword drills twice a week, but only one rotation over the two days. Both sides. Four rows of the Karambit Form once a week. Walking the circle with the Deerhorn Knives on two different days (one way one day and the other way the next). I was learning the Cane Form and did a row of it (which I had learned before) once a week. I was nearly done learning the second row. I knew a few staff/spear drills which I did every day as well.

 

When I first got home, I, of course, tried to do the Sword Form with my steel sword. That was a mistake. I made it through three or four postures (movements, but I still call them postures) before my body said, “Oh, to the hell no!” I immediately knew it was a mistake and put the sword away. A few days later, I tried it with a wooden sword, but that was still too much. I could do more, but it was so tiring.

I knew I could get the Sword Form back, both right and left side, because I’ve done it hundreds if not thousands of times. It was the first weapons form I learned and  how I fell in love with the weapons in the first place. I’ve told this story countless times, but I’m going to tell it once again. My teacher tried to get me to learn the Sword Form to no avail. I was adamant that I did not want to learn the weapons, no way, no how. After countless fruitless attempts to convince me, she held a wooden sword out to me and said, “Just hold it. That’s all I ask.” I reluctantly took it in my hand and the second my fingers closed over the hilt, I knew this was what I wanted to do with my life.


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How to deal with my broken mind

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I have a broken mind. This has been true since I was a kid. Or rather, I’ve always been different. I loved to read and always had my nose in a book. I devoured them rapidly, moving from one to the next the second I was done with the first. A part of the reason why was because I hated life with every fiber of my being. I can’t remember a time when I thought it was a good thing to be alive and is it nature? Is it nurture? I don’t know. Or, more to the point, it’s a complex mixture of both. By my mother’s account, I was a happy and cheerful toddler–though she is an unreliable narrator. She looks at things in the past through rose-colored glasses, mostly so she doesn’t have to deal with the negative ramifications that linger.

I am pretty sure this is one of her coping mechanisms in dealing with my father because he’s pretty unrelentingly negative. I also know that her childhood wasn’t the happiest and that she never felt like she was loved by her mother. Who, by the way, was a real piece of work. Probably shouldn’t have been a mother, but it was expected of women of her generation and culture (Taiwanese). She definitely favored her sons over her daughters and for whatever reason, my mother was her least-favorite.

All that is to say that my mother came into parenting with some faulty ideas as to what it takes to be a parent and what it meant to be a parent. More specifically, a mother. I also think one of the reasons she decided to have children was to have someone to love her unquestioningly, which was destined to fail. You don’t have kids for what they can do for you–ideally, that is. Many people do, much to their own detriment.

Ever since I can remember, I was not happy in my own skin. My mom made dresses for me, which is so not my jam. I like a long flowy skirt and I wore a dress now and again in my twenties, but it never felt right. It wasn’t a gender thing, but a sensory thing. I hate clothing and try to wear as little as possible. Dresses generally cover more than other clothing and is restrictive to boot. I liked to climb trees when I was a kid–which was also something that I was told I shouldn’t do as a girl–and that’s really hard to do in a dress. I was considered a tomboy and frowned upon for being, well, too much.


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Limitless possibilities

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Here’s the thing about taiji weapons. They’re like Lay’s: you cannot eat just one. Er, I mean. It’s really addictive–at least when it finally clicked in my brain. My brain is broken on many levels. One, I have a hard time doing anything—even things I like. Someone in the weekend thread on Ask A Manager asked how to make themselves do exercise on the regular. Other people gave good advice, but the one that I had to counter was to do it when you felt like doing it. Why? Because I never felt like doing anything. I related how when I first started practicing taiji at home, it was literally five minutes a day. The way I did it was to put it on my to-do list. Get up, brush teeth, feed cat, do taiji. I emphasized that it wasn’t a YOU HAVE TO DO THIS YOU LAZY ASSHOLE, but more matter-of-fact like, oh, right. Do the taiji thing. It expanded to ten minutes, then fifteen, and now, with my new-found love affair with the weapons, it’s 45 minutes to an hour.

I didn’t get into it, but the five minutes a day was so resentful on my part. In fact, before I started practicing at home, I went from one to two to three classes a week because I wasn’t practicing at home. When I started practicing, it was a quick section of the Solo Form (or part of a section) and then some stretches. The stretches were fine, but the Solo Form was not. I still am not a huge fan, but the Medium Form is way more my jam than the Long Form.

I’ve documented how I fell in love with the sword and it’s still very dear to my heart. Then, my struggles with the Sabre Form that has turned into a deep appreciation. Currently, I am intoxicatingly infatuated with the Double Sabre Form. It’s my everything and I would do it all day long if I could.

When I think about the weapons, it’s all about the feelings they invoke. The sword makes me want to dance and Carly Rae Jepson’s Call Me Maybe is the perfect song to dance with the sword to. I mentioned in the aforementioned forum that before taiji, the only exercise I liked was dancing. Weightlifting was tolerable and I hated the rest of it. Now, I’m pleased to be able to combine dancing with taiji weapons because they are my two favorite physical activities (well, excluding sex*). I have chronic depression and it’s hard for me to find joy in anything.

I can find quiet moments of contentment such as chilling with my cat. I can be engaged by activities such as playing video games. I can be pleased chatting with friends. My brother came over last night and we tried the new Thai restaurant down the street. That was a really enjoyable time. But all of these are very muted. Which, to be fair, is my style in general. It’s partly just my demeanor and partly the depression.

All that changes when i grab my double sabers and wait for the music to start. Or not. Even when I practice with no music, there is joy in my heart as I move the double sabers in the air. I am someone who feels chained in so many ways, but when I do the Double Saber Form, I’m free.


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When the student becomes the master

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I’m still bothered by my doctor’s insistence on my weight, but here’s a weird thing. My clothes are fitting better. A pair of shorts that were tight on me months ago are now swimming. There’s the possibility that they stretched, but not that much. My weight is still high so my guess is muscles. My body is made for muscles, thankfully.

Side Note: I am insanely pleased with my biceps. And my ass. I’ll get to that in a second. Yes, I know I’ve blathered about it before, but I don’t care.

When I had to use my desktop briefly, I loved having my dual screens. It was so nice not to have two sets of browsers squished side by side. On the other hand, my desktop does not have an SSD so waiting for it to do anything was torture.

Side Note II: It’s really funny how tech rapidly goes from ‘never in a million years’ to ‘ how the fuck did I ever live without this?’ in a heartbeat. I still remember when I vowed I would never let emails replace handwritten letters and when I vowed that I would never use emojis. Then, when SSD became a thing, I scoffed at it because how much difference could it really make? A lot as it turned out. It’s funny because I am a weird mix when it comes to technology. On the one hand, I use it heavily and know more about it than most people. I said to my brother that I know a bit more than people in general and he said I knew a lot more. It’s hard to judge because I just use it the way I use it.

I rail against new inventions as being intrusive before unwillingly adapting them and then fully embracing them. Currently, I’m thinking about my next laptop because this one is on its last legs I think. I need my brother to take a look at it. I’m also thinking about getting a sit/stand desk with an ergonomic chair because I want to be more active without, well, being more active. I hated actively doing exercise whenever I tried it. I hated the gym. I hated brisk walking. I hated yoga. The only things I didn’t hate was lifting weights and dancing. Or more to the point, I liked the results of weightlifting and didn’t actively hate the activity while I loved dancing.

Taiji has been a godsend now that I’m obsessed with weapon. Not only is it something I really enjoy, but it’s excellent exercise. There’s a weightbearing set that I used to do, but I stopped when I got in my car accident. I would like to pick it up some day, but in the meantime, the weapons are an excellent weightbearing exercise.


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Tricking myself into being healthier

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I’m fat and I know it. Don’t like it, but it doesn’t bother me as much as it bothers my doctor. Which is a lot. I’m going to have to change my doc again, sigh, because she is way too fixated on weight, pushy on me taking drugs I don’t want to take, and just not great in general. I had to pick a new doc during the pandemic and I basically closed my eyes and threw a dart. I chose someone I thought might be more holistic and compassionate, but, no. I’m not too mad at her because it’s so endemic in our society (thinking being fat is the worst thing in the world and morally wrong), but I’m certainly too old to put up with it.

At any rate, I want to lose weight because I hate the way I look. That’s it. I don’t care about the health implications and I never have. I know it’s all the vogue to say that I’m getting in shape for my health, but that’s just not true for me. Except one thing. I want to be sturdier and not so out of shape. I hate losing my breath just from walking more than I’m used to so I want to work on that. A few problems. One, My lung capacity isn’t great. Two, I have never been good with walking up and down stairs, probably because of aforementioned bad lung capacity.

I don’t do well with putting myself on a diet because I tend to become obsessed, much to my detriment. For me, the line between diet and eating disorder is exceedingly thin and easily crossed. Even when I know about the dangers, I feel myself getting pulled into it and am helpless to stop it (I know I’m not actually, but it feels like it at the time.) The way I trick myself is to focus on eating better, not specifically looking for weight-losing foods or diets. I can’t count calories or weigh myself because they become obsessions in and of themselves. I tried to do inches as a substitute for pounds, but I know the conversion and that didn’t work, either.

If I do anything that smacks of dieting, I start spiraling. How do I get around that? By focusing on the foods themselves.

Side note: It seems that the lactose-free foods I’ve been imbibing are no longer sitting well in my stomach so I’m going to have to go completely dairy-free, sadly.

I started the journey by cutting out dairy and gluten. Caffeine is up and down, and I’m still not sure if I should imbibe it or not. I don’t want to talk about it again because I’ve nattered on and on about it, but there are pros and cons to me drinking caffeine that have to do specifically with my migraines. Anyway, eating vegetarian/vegan doesn’t necessarily mean eating healthy because a lot of the subs have oils and such, which means calories. I’m trying to cut out on plant-based mayo, plant-based cheese, plant-based butter, etc. It’s not easy, however, because there’s a part of my brain saying, “You can eat so little, why not gorge on the things you CAN eat?”


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American toxicity of constant productivity

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There was a question in the Ask A Manager’s work open thread that really struck a chord with me (and many in the commentariat). It was about having a question about what did you do for self-improvement during the pandemic placed on their list of standard interview questions. She thought it was tone-deaf and was wondering if she was just being too sensitive since she had a (literal) breakdown during the pandemic. The question is here (search for Keymaster of Gozer if the link doesn’t take you directly to the question, which it should). It struck me not just because it’s an awful question, but because it’s so on brand for America and its passion for being productive all the time.

It’s everywhere. You see it often in fitness magazines that counsel how to turn ordinary events into exercise. It’s doubly so for parents who have a serious time crunch. I’m not against it in general because it can make sense to do a twofer when you’re running short on time. However, the mania for making every minute ‘productive’ is, ironically, counterproductive to mental health. I know for me personally that if I only think about maximizing everything for productivity, I start feeling like shit because you can never 100% that category.

In addition, it’s a con when it’s used in the business sense. It’s a way for TPTB to keep their workers down by holding up a mythical standard of productivity over their heads that no one can live up to. If the workers are pressed to be productive at all costs, they can’t take time to think about anything else. It’s always frustrating when non-Americans on AAM comment about how dismal things are for employees in America because we fucking know! They’re right, though, in that so many of us are caught up in that web. And, again, being told it’s unproductive to ‘only’ work 40 hours per week is not uncommon in America. American workers are told they’re lazy if they actually want to have work/life balance, much to everyone’s detriment. Not only to the worker who is forced to give so much of their life to the company, but for the company itself as an exhausted workforce is not good for anyone.

Anyway, in response to the question above, my answer would be thusly:


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I knew I loved you before I met you

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I have a confession to make. It’s really hard for met to admit this because I feel as if I’m cheating. I have had one love for several years and now….There’s a new game in town and I can’t help but be drawn to it. I’ve tried to deny it, but I have to let my feelings out. I’m just going to say it so I don’t have to have it preying on my mind, unspoken, any longer.

*covers sword and puts it away in a safe place*

I am in love with the double sabers.

Whew! I feel so much better now that I’m gotten that off my chest. I can move on with my life now.

I know it sounds silly, but I do have mixed feelings about the double sabers. Let me rephrase that. I have mixed feelings about my feelings for the double sabers. There’s no mixed feelings about the double sabers themselves.

I feel a passion for them I haven’t felt in ages. When they’re in my hands, I am filled with a joy that I can’t describe without being reduced to using trite soundbites. And, it’s different than the feeling I have about my sword–which is the same with the different energy each weapon has. The love I have for the sword is deep and abiding. Holding it in my hand is coming home again, wrapping myself in a cooling weighted blanket, and sipping a cup of raspberry tea. The double sabers, on the other hand, are an exhilarating kind of love. It’s a put on your fanciest outfit and dance the night away before having hot sex for hours kind of love.

If I were in a monogamous relationship with  the sword, I would definitely be cheating on it with the double sabers. So, I feel a bit guilty because I have always said that the sword is my true love (jestingly, of course) and while I wasn’t being serious about it, it was the weapon that changed my life. It’s what got me to totally buy into taiji after five or six years. It felt so natural in my hand as if it was meant to be there. It was an extension of my arm and learning the left side of the form was as natural as breathing to me.

When I saw my teacher demonstrate with the double sabers, I felt an excitement that I hadn’t felt–well, ever. As I said, my love for the sword is different and I never had that NRE with it. It has always been like a long-lasting and stable relationship in which there is happiness, deep satisfaction, and an emotional fulfillment, but not the passion, the butterflies in the stomach, and the sense of  naughtiness.

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