Underneath my yellow skin

Martial arts saved my life

I have yet more to say about martial arts and how they have changed my life. Here’s yesterday’s post about this, that, and the other thing. My journey has been slow, winding, and desultory. There have been times when I’ve focused and been intense. There have been times when I’ve resisted and dragged my feet on learning anything new. This is how I am, like it or not. I am an extreme person, and I wish that I weren’t. Well, I’m not so sure about that. More to the point, it’s not something I’m going to change, so I’ve resigned myself to it.

I am at the tail end of the Fan Form, and I want to buy a new fan. There are some really fantastic ones like this, but I’m not going to spend that much on a fan. I’m thinking of a nice steel or aluminum one which is about a third the price. I don’t know why I balk at the price for the fan when I spent roughly the same on my new saber. I think it’s more because the fan is purely decorative whereas the saber I bought cost what it did in part for practical reasons.

What I’m trrynig to say is that if I bought a fancy fan, it would be for purely cosmetic reasons. Plus, I would rather buy one that had sharpened spikes like this so I can dip the spikes in poison. Er, what? I just think that would be the coolest thing. Not that I would ever do the poison thing because that’s not what it’s about for me.

Watching the video of the Fan Form made me excited all over again to learn more weapon forms. It’s so elegant and lovely, yet deadyly (when you know the applications). When I first started learning weapons, the Fan Form was what I really wanted to learn. My reasoning was that I could carry a fan with me whereas I would not walk down the streets of Minneapolis with a sword or saber in hand.

The cane is another weapon that can be carried around in regular life. Unfortunately, I don’t love this form. I just haven’t gelled with it, though it’s…fine. I wonder if it’s because it was the weapon form my teacher was teaching to us when the pandemic hit. We were in the last row, I think, and then we had to put it on ice for a bit. I think? Or else she taught it to us earlier, but was re-teaching it to us. At any rate, I recently recorded her doing the form and used the video to brush up on my form.

Side note: I am including anotherĀ  Farm Form below. I want to show the different forms that still adhere to the basic principles.

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This is something I have had a hard time wrapping my brain around–the forms are alive and changing. They are not hard and unyielding, which was how I treated them. There was a time when I was so frustrated beacuse it seemed my teacher’s teacher was changing the Solo Form every week. I was teaching myself the left side of the Solo Form at the time, and every time I talked to my teacher, it seemed it was different.

The third section is the hardest section in the first place, and it’s the section that I have practiced the least. I have the first section down. It can use some refinements, of course, but it’s very solid. The second section is decent, but not as polished as the first section. My teacher has shown me a few of the changes, and I’ve filmed her doing them. The changes, I mean. Not the whole second section. I’m hopning to do that in our next private lesson because there are a few movements I really need to clean up.

It’s funny how I have been doing the Solo Form for a decade-and-a-half, and I’m sure there are things that I’m doing wrong. That’s human nature, and I try not to get frustrated about it. I think that my brain has gotten a little shaken up during my medical crisis, and I do wonder if tthat’s part of the reason my forms are a bit shaky here and there. I don’t think it’s the whole reason because as I said, I’m human.

I noticed in watching the masters that they weren’t perfect, either. They were a hell of a lot closer to it than I am, obviously, but I have noticed small mistakes here and there. That’s exciting, by the way. That I’m able to notice the mistakes. Fifteen years ago, I never would have been able to tell because I didn’t know better.

My teacher liked to say that to a newbie, anyone who practices is a master. I used to think it was her just shining me on, but I came to understand what she meant. To someone with less than a year’s worth of practice, I was a master. To someone with thirty years practice, I was still a newbie. It’s all relative, and it’s her way of saying that anyone can be a teacher to someone with less experience.

I don’t like tutoring, but I’m pretty good at it. My teacher used to rely on me to tutor when I actually went to class in person, and I didn’t mind. One of my ex-classmates said more than once that I had taught him one of my least-favorite postures nearly perfectly and very clearly. I joked that it’s because I didn’t like it that I knew it better than postures I actually liked. I had to think about it more than the ones that came naturally to me, so it was more fixated in my brain.

I am so close to finishing the Fan Form. This is usually when I would get frustrated and rush the process. for whatever reason, the closer to the end I get ,the more impatient I become.

It’s late and I’m tired, so I’ll wrap this up here and pick it up again tomorrow.

 

 

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