A few days ago, I wrote a post about how I’ve pared down my daily Taiji/Bagua routine. For the past year or so, I had been feeling a bit of a slight drag when I did my morning routine. Instead of looking forward to and being eager to do it every morning (well, really afternoon, so it’s morning only colloquially), I did it with a sigh and a heavy heart.
I still wanted to do it, mind. I was just burned out.
Here goes the backstory.
I have OCD tendencies. It’s not full-blown OCD, and it’s probably not diagnosable. When I mentioned it to my therapist a few decades ago (then-therapist), she said to me in a stern tone, “You know you don’t actually have OCD, right?”
Yes, I know that. But I have OCD tendencies, and I am internally obsessed with many things. I have learned to keep it mostly to myself and to gauge how much to let out without seeming ‘weird’. Also, probably autistic, but that’s more likely to be diagnosable.
I could talk about my martial arts weapons all day long. Not the technical aspects, but the beauty of them and what they mean to me. I like to joke that they’re my romantic relationships, but it’s not far from the truth. What I mean is that each weapon stirs something in me that I could conceivably slap a romantic label on it.
The Sword Form is my first love. I have such warm feelings for it. No, it’s not the most exciting form any longer, but it’s the weapon form that started my love for the weapons. I have told this story a million times, but I’ll tell it once again.
A year or two after I started Taiji, I graduated from the Solo Long Form. All that means is that I learned the sequence–not that I was any good at it. Soon after, my teacher mentioned it was time to learn the Sword Form. I resisted. While I had started studying Taiji because I wanted to be able to defend myself and really liked the idea of learning the combat applications, I recoiled from the very idea of doing weapons.
I was a pacifist at the time, and weapons seemed too violent to me. It was only when I was walknig the circle with the deerhorn knives (Bagua, not the point of this post) as my meditation that I had an ideology-changing moment. I was focusing on the ‘opponent’ in the middle of the circle as I walked. In a second, I thought, “If it’s you or me–it’s going to be me.” Meaning, if it was the opponent’s life or mine, mine was going to win.
That’s the second I stopped being a pacifist and embraced that my life actually had meaning. It was momentous because up until then, I thought my life was worthless. So when I say Taiji changed my life, I mean it literally.
I shut down my teacher thoroughly and firmly when she mentioned the Sword Form. She tried to bring it up again, gently, but I would not listen. She knew that the more she pushed, the more I would dig my heels in.
A few months later, she brought it up again while holding a sword out to me. I think it was a wooden practice one, but I don’t remember now. I protested and would not take it. This time, she did not give up and told me to just hold it. I reluctantly took it in my hand, and the second my fingers closed around the hilt, I felt a frission of recognition course through my veins.
It really was that instant. I knew the minute I held the sword in my hand that it was what I was meant to be doing with my life. I had only had been that certain about something once before in my life (not having children), and once I set my mind on it, I could not be swayed. I bugged my teacher to teach the Sword Form to me as fast as humanly possible. I drank it in like it was the nectar of the gods, and I learend the Sword Form (at least all the postures) in a short amount of time.
Because I don’t do anything half-hog, I bought a really nice sword at my teacher’s school’s demo–which was about a month after I started learning the Sword Form. There was a martial arts weapons vendor there, and I immediately gravitated towards one of them. The vendor told me that I had a great eye and that the one I liked was the best one there. It was stainless steel and a Hanwei sword. The forge that made it burned down, and they didn’t know when/if they would rebuild. It was pricy, but I rationalized that it would laugh me a lifetime. I had to have it, and I bought it.
Once I learned the Sword Form (right side), I taught myself the left side of the form. It was fairly seamless until, ironically, I came to the easiest posture in the form. It was only two simple movements, but for whatever reason, my brain refused to parse it correctly. I realized it was precisely because it was so easy that I never paid that much attention to it. Once it clicked, it was easy AF, and I laughed at how much trouble it had given me.
Back to comparing my weapon forms to romantic relationships. I said that the Double Fan Form was my love-hate relationship. It’s beautiful and elegant and I’m really proud that I’m more than halfway done. On the other hand, it’s hard as fuck, and I despair of ever teaching the whole thing to myself. It’s harder than all of the rest of the weapons forms combined, and that’s saying a lot.
My teacher laughingly asked if the Double Saber Form was now my jilted lover. I laughed and said it’s more like the FWB. I still like it and have the hots for it, but it’s not a burning fire that is consuming me.
I think I would call the Cane Form the booty call. It’s not my main, but it’s looks mighty good when it’s late and I’m desperate. The Saber Form is…hm. It’s the last resort. I would still do it, but I would rather not.
To be fair, though. I have come to have appreciation for the Saber Form. I hated it when I first started learning it, and I had a long, complicated road to actually learning it. WHen I finally did, years later, it was after the slow and painful realization that the Saber Form was NOT just a slightly different version of the Sword Form.
I’m tired, so I will end this here and write more about it tomorrow. I have a lot to say, especially about the Double Fan Form.