SIDE NOTE: RECIPE FOR A BETTER KUKI

As much as a new Shodan in karate, ni-dan in iai, and ikkyu in aiki has no business being a tip guru, I do think I’ve learned some things over the years that somebody could benefit from. I wish when I started, there was as much wealth of information as there is now, but honestly a good portion of it is counter-intuitive. Nerdverd, an infamous character from my past, was a prime example of this. He looked up EVERTHING on the internet and believed it. One of his problems was his inability to take what we said at face value. One example of this was looking up a school kata that was way out of his range, teaching it to himself, and then wanting to try it with (or, more accurately, on) me. Learning the 4^th kata when you can’t remember the first or second isn’t exactly the safest of strategies, let alone, using a poorly done video you found on Youtube as a teacher. But I digress.

There are some things I wish I knew when I started martial arts, and I would like to share them with you. Some of them, newbies, you might not understand right away, some are obvious, and some you just with agree with. I stayed away from the generalization of “take BJJ or Muay Thai” because frankly, they aren’t options in rural areas, and a lot of people have no business training in such arts for a ticket to UFC, or whatever dumb idea they have in their heads. A lot of schools are gladly taking your money for that reason. Not to say you shouldn’t experiment with other arts- you should, if you can afford it. However, if you really want to take multiple arts, you should do so because you love it and it’s a good fit for your personal talents, not because you feel to have to in order to become “a good fighter.” If this is your attitude, BJJ and Muay Thai really don’t need you.

Anyways, here goes:

1) 1) Go to as many low-cost seminars as you can, even (or especially) if they are not in your art.

If you live in a rural, suburban, or secluded area, you understand what I mean when I say training can get a little claustrophobic. You live many miles from the nearest MMA school, and the closest thing you can get to a good sparring match is with the same people you throw down with all the time. It’s especially important that you get as much exposure to outside school as you can. If you don’t, you get stale. Then you get to competitions and wonder why you get hammered.

Research potential seminars that are in your price range online and plan several months ahead of time so you can go to them. This goes for camps and competitions as well. Any chance you can get to learn a new technique, view a new style, etc. can only be good for you. Sure, there are bad seminars. I’ve went to a couple. But they never have been total losses to me. I’ve always met someone interesting I can spar or share information with. The prices for some of these seminars can be downright expensive, and unless you have a real desire to train under somebody (like your teacher’s teacher in Japan, for example), it’s probably not worth the money if you can’t afford it. There are a lot of good seminars out there; you just have to find them. Some of them you may have to drive to, or stay over a night. Again, if you end up learning something new, it’s not a total loss.

Remember to share whatever you learn with your mates back at your school. If you’re lucky, they’ll go to different seminars, and you can benefit from them. I had a lot of opportunities to go to these things when I was younger. Now that I have a crappy job, it’s hard to make plans. If it’s in your area, reasonably priced, but you’re not sure it’s for you, GO. You just might learn something. If you started your training as karateka, train with a boxer. If you started with boxing, train with someone who can kick well.

2) 2) Regardless of what style you know, earn to use at least one weapon you can use with both hands- so you can laugh at yourself when the weapon in your non-dominate hand smacks you in the side of the face.

This is more an exercise in humility than anything else. Say what you will about the need for kata or weapons, but nothing brings you back to reality faster than a wooden nunchaku hurdling into the side of your cheek (on either set of your body). And there’s nothing wrong with doing weapons training for the fun of it- it’s good exercise, a good break from regular training, and it helps you develop coordination (even if your body can’t keep up with your brain, and you knock yourself silly).

You can’t be a good weapon-wielder without an appreciation for distance. Good fighters know when to get in and when to get out. For some people, like myself, a couple jabs to the face is still not enough to get my feet moving. I’ve learned a lot from weapons sparring. I am less afraid because I have this (false) notion something longer than my arms with protect me. Although I am still not the best at it, I have watched a lot of fights, and I’m developing a better understanding of reach, and how to manipulate it.

The thing I think that’s most valuable about weapons is that it forces you to have good technique, even if you achieve this by accident. There are a lot of bad empty-handed kata practitioners out there, but few exceptional weapons masters. That’s because the addition of something that could potentially blunder you is not forgiving in the least of poor talent. You have to be good, or you get screwed up. I have tonfa bruises to prove it.

3) 3) Learn to make mistakes, and do them often. It beats not practicing.

There’s nothing that a teacher hates more than a kid who sits there and argues with them about

why they can’t do something, as supposed to just trying it again. They complain about their injuries, their past experience in their last art (“we didn’t do it like that”) etc., for the primary purpose of avoiding admittance that they screwed up.

If you can’t admit you did something wrong, you are unteachable. End of story. It is not even necessary (and in the early stage of training, it may be impossible) to know what exactly you did wrong, or even how to fix it. Welcome to the long road we call “training”. Rome wasn’t built in a day, and you won’t be a good martial artist for some time. Accept it.

Once you get over yourself and your need to perfect everything, you are teachable. This is when you grow the most. The moment you become afraid to make a mistake is the moment you stop learning.

4) 4)There is more to life than class.

Yes- because going to class 6 days a week for 3 hours a day is so much fun! I’m saying this with half-sarcasm and half truth. It can be, if you’re into that. But most of us aren’t. Most of us do not have a desire to be professional, or have a sponsorship or movie deals. Most of us work 8 hours a day to afford the approximately 3-10 hours of training we can actually fit into our lives. To train so much as to not do anything else is not only exhausting for your personal live, it’s not good for your martial arts, either.

Two cases in point, my time writing my senior thesis and a child I called Paparazzi Kid(because of his dad). I did a senior thesis on kinship relations in martial arts schools at the same time I was going to karate 4 days a week. It…shall we say…sucked. Nothing sucks the joy out of something quicker than busting your ass on it and then sitting down to write about it for fifty pages. I remember as I wrote about the ins and outs of kata transmission that I was losing it. I was thinking about martial arts all the time. I prodded everyone I knew about stupid stuff like “How do you fold your gi?” and “How much do you really like your sensei?” I must have been quite annoying at the lunch table. Looking back, it was an interesting concept- looking at martial arts as an anthropologist- but I read that senior thesis recently and I think it’s crap now (even though it did win me an award). But, now to Paparazzi Kid, whose dad…well, had a very misguided future planned for him. The boy was in iai class before I started- God knows how long- and within a year I was the same rank as him. He was good too- phenomenal technique, actually- but a boy nonetheless. The kid did band, hockey, basketball, etc., and he did it to be the best. Problem is, when you take on a laundry list like that, you are bound to forget something. In his case, it was iai. From the story I have gathered, this kid would come home exhausted from school and sleep through class. Not surprisingly, he wanted to quit. What the kid does now, I don’t know, but every once in a while, his dad stops in- kinda disconcerting that his kid doesn’t come in with him. I feel like if the kid had cut just one of his activities, and cut down the number of times he came in a week, he would have been just fine. The whole thing makes you feel like it was never the kid’s choice to do it in the first place. But, this is a good story of a kid with potential that had just too much on his plate for martial arts to work for him.

Another is a kid named Lurch. A new black belt and my next pick to leave soon. The kid comes in four times a week, only to leave every class early to make it to one of his dozen activities. Talk about burnout. Anyways, the point I am trying to make here is don’t make martial arts your life. When you do, something is bound to go- like your sanity. Dave Lowry wrote an excellent article in his book, In the Dojo about this subject. If you get a chance, read it.

The truth is when you go to the dojo, everything from the outside is left at the door. But if you’re always there, don’t you lose that sense of adrenaline-high escapism that brought you to martial arts in the first place? The bottom line is that the more time you spend working that kata, after a certain point, you will get worse. Allow yourself an off day, or less training a day, so you can reset your body and brain.

5) 5)Kids…they’re practically chicken. Unfortunately, most of them grow up to be your colleagues.

Like it or not, kids rules this world. They control everything with their mom and dad’s pocketbooks. Few, like my parents, tell their kids these days that if you want something, you need to go get it yourself. It’s simply a different world, everybody, so you have to deal with them.

The truth of the matter is, 95% percent of all gyms, dojos, and schools in this country have children in them- either in separate classes, or mixed with adults. They float us financially. And a lot of them (ready for this bombshell?) have been lied to about how good they are. This isn’t an argument about rank (that’s a whole different issue which I won’t get into), so shut up about the whole thing about kids getting black belts for now. The important thing is this; you DO need to care about them. Two reasons; number one- they are from the same school as you, and number two- they will eventually (Darwin-willing) grow up to be your potential sparring partners. That said, it is in your best interest to help these defunct little brats any way you can.

For example, if you are a boxer, and some black belt kid in your karate class is punching a bag completely wrong, go help him. True, Darwin will probably weed out this child the moment he tries to actually punch somebody, but think of this- if the kid is small and awkward, that’s probably the reason he’s in karate in the first place. His parents probably thought it would protect him from bullies. And as much as thinking about the kid getting pummeled would probably amuse you (I have to admit, it amuses me), remember that you used to be a kid too. If you were unlucky enough to grow up on the streets and you live now in the ‘burbs with this kid who’s probably never seen blood before except in movies, then share your knowledge with him. You don’t want this kid getting hurt for the obvious reasons of not fucking his hand up for life on the bag, but also because he carries the same school name that you do. Do you want it to get out that your school sucks because one dumb kid couldn’t defend himself?

Also, this kid could grow up to teach other children how to punch wrong, thereby infecting the potential sparring partner gene pool. In five years, you will have a whole generation of new black belts that can’t punch, and it takes a very long time to correct something like that. In the interest of your future, don’t you owe it to yourself to have good martial artists to throw down with, instead of people with the same belt color as you who can’t fight at all? You’ve heard the saying “children are investments” and they are. Invest a minute of your time into a little kid, and he/she will suck less tomorrow.

I know, I know. All of you are saying, “But wait- what if the kid’s a douchebag?” Well, take this in comfort. If the kid is a real douchebag, he/she won’t be there for long. And you can always write nasty blogs about them when they are gone.

6) 6)Get off your damn computer and go practice…dammit.

Seriously- I’m not kidding about this one. Stop blogging about how such-and-such is a lousy fighter and how BJJ is inferior to your style of monkey-jitsu while you shove a whole bag of chips in your mouth. Nobody cares. If you really want to make the martial arts world a better place, go out and work your own stuff.

CHAPTER FOUR: ON LOSING GROUND

There will come a time in your life when nothing you go will ever go right. This is one of those times. You have fought, changed, reasoned, and scrambled to get the things you need to succeed in martial arts (which, coincidentally, are similar to the things you need in everyday life)- time, resources, and the ability to grin and bear it. There is little one can do to change the circumstances of a snowball flying down the hill directly in your path. You only pray that you know the right footwork to get you out of the way before it hits. And then, sometimes it hits, and you ask yourself, did I catch the number on that theoretical Mach truck?

Here’s a classic story about a little tori and a big uke. The little tori was practicing tai otoshi on the big uke one day and asks her teacher, “When would I ever use this on a guy like this? I mean, shouldn’t I do ago oshi or hiza guruma instead? Don’t I want to bring the guy down to my level?” The teacher smiles at her and says, “You don’t expect to be on the same level all your life, now do you?” Okay, I went on a philosophical rant. The reality is, when you’re stuck, you are stuck. And sometimes no matter how hard you try, you just can’t pull yourself out of a rut. That’s when you wonder if you are doing the right thing, investing in a hobby (or lifestyle, whatever you refer to it as) as involved as this one. And it’s funny, but every piece of advice or kind word from your instructors just makes the felling worse. So what’s to be done in a situation like this?

Well…there’s a lot to consider, past the obvious questions like, “Do you still like martial arts?” and “Is it time learn somewhere else” blah, blah, blah. The real question is this- have you changed into the person you want to be, or the person you think you should be, in order to be satisfied with the martial arts? You ever see those people in your school that are the same rank for years? They don’t care what’s on the ranking sheets, or what kata they’re on, or even that their peers are passing them in rank left and right. You think of them as slackers, naturally. After all, with the resources and talent, they should be at a much higher rank. Yet, they are the ones who stay, who usually have the soundest advice or are the first to lend a hand. They could care less with the trivial business matters of running a school. They constantly reminisce. Minus the pressure of being under the watchful eye of the head sensei, they are free to practice as they see fit. Is it any wonder why they look the happiest in the school? I’m starting to feel this way. While it bothers me that lesser people rank higher than me, I cannot deny the certain joy that throwing away the ranking book has given me. If I don’t test for sho-dan in aiki in the next year, or even ten years, I feel okay with it. Same with karate and iai. So what.

I feel that my cheer for being lazy may be misinterpreted. I did not say give up- that is different. When you do, the pain of all the things that bother you go away for a while, that’s true. Then you are filled with emptiness. If I take class away from my life, what would I do with my free time? This is what I have learned in the time I have begun this journey- if you can quit and fill up that void with other things quickly, and not feel sad or guilty about it, then it’s the right choice. If you try to walk away, and with inexplicability you keep coming back for more, then… well you need another choice, don’t you?

It’s indentifying the choices I can make, the steps that get me out of that path of the snowball that I worry about. It’s not often the choices are laid out in front you as obvious as your instructor punching you in the face in order to get your head to move your body. You have to keep your eyes and ears open, and your suspicions and hopes balanced. Where there’s a closed door, there might be a window, but it could only be open half-way. You need the quintessential crow bar.

I find that writing has helped me dump negative thoughts out of my head, and recognize patterns in my thinking that I can correct in some way or another. I like to read other martial artists’ blogs- not only for advice or parallels to my situation, but because some are way worse off than I am (and some don’t even know it). Of course, some do well for themselves, and it’s nice to find one who is down to earth and did it without Mommy’s money. Those writings make me feel a little less anxious.

I’ve tried the yoga and meditation thing. I’d like to say I practice Buddhism, but I am by no means a Buddhist. To say so because I think it fits the character of the martial artist I’m supposed to be is offensive to real-life Buddhists. I could say I am Buddhist any more than I can say I am Japanese because I know the language. I laugh at those who try to be what they can never achieve. I, on the other hand, am content with the heavy task to be someone I like. That is a constant struggle. How can an autistic individual be good at any martial art that involves the usage of things like “partnership” and “community”? How can someone with tactile sense of a finicky porcupine hope to ever achieve anything in a sparring match? Sometimes, I do wonder what I am trying to prove to myself by participating in such acts that at times I cannot fit into. Then again, it’s not like I fit in anywhere else to begin with.

So what is the moral of this story? You are on the base of hill, a snowball comes rolling down, and it threatens to kill you. You are obligated to move, correct? You just need to know in what direction. I suppose in the end, it won’t matter, as long as the snowball misses. But then, that’s not enough either, is it? Because the moment you are complacent, another snowball starts rolling. The way I look at it, you have two real choices; one, you put up a defense shield against them, or two, you eliminate the thing causing them. I prefer number two. In martial arts terms, number two would mean complete obliteration of the obstruction that is detrimental to your martial arts, which could be easier said than done. That thing could be the school you’ve gone to the past five years, or the partner you’ve sparred with that has gone way off course. So the question then becomes, now that you know what you have to sacrifice, can you do it.

And that is the suffering, isn’t it? It is possible, even likely, that things will get better. Dumb people leave, school leaders change. But you are always the constant. So in the end, it is really up to you what course your martial arts “life” ends up taking. Life may suck right now, but sensei is right- I won’t always be the little tori. And it is possible I am training to be the person I will become someday, that person I will like. For me, the past three months has been constant change. I can’t say I know how to dodge that snowball, but I do know how to dig my heels in the snow and brace for impact. I do that well. And with any luck, I won’t have too many more to go.

CHAPTER THREE: Kuki, I Long For thee

I want to talk about three people who have influenced my martial arts life greatly. One is still here, the other two have long since moved on. For an autistic person, getting close to someone special does not happen very often, if at all. I don’t really know why I was drawn out of my shell for them.

The first person I briefly mentioned earlier was Broody. He was a kid about my age; I think maybe a year younger. He had long black hair and glasses and dressed Goth-like, kinda like Goth Kid, only sensible. He was quiet, except when he held a goshinken in his hand. My first memory of him was the first day I started iai class. He wore his hakama like he owned the place, and he basically did. He was a new sho-dan who was the only one under thirty and healthy enough to keep us on our toes. He frequently worked advanced katas in a corner by himself, so I didn’t get much teaching time with him. He did, however, teach me one good lesson- speak, or forever hold your peace. I really liked him- okay, I had a crush on him if you really must trivialize it, but that’s what it was. He left just months before I started my blog and I mention him now because those first months for me (the last months for him) parallel my own last couple of months.

From what I understand (and gather from snippets I got from the Benevolent Matriarch , Head Sensei, and others, was that he walked away only weeks before his black belt test. He said he wasn’t ready. When I heard that, I thought he was absolutely crazy. Why quit just when black belt is in reach? Surely, if he wasn’t ready, he could reschedule? But now, after recently going through it myself, I have come to understand why he left us. Anybody can earn a black belt. To want to live up to it is another story. The case of a guy in my blog I referred to as Applebee’s Guy may help explain this. He, unlike Goth-like Broody, was a clean-cut kid with a winning smile and a friendly hello for everyone. He was helpful, a decent (if sometimes easily flustered) teacher, and worked very hard in class. Then, he got his black belt. A week later, he split. Without wanting to disappoint any of us, he said that he was off to college out of state and he would stop in from time to time- but six months later, there he was at the local university, working at the same Applebee’s, and he never did come back. Applebee’s Guy disappointed us with a smile and a lie, whereas Broody, outspoken about his unhappiness about the school, disappointed us with honesty. Now, who deserves a black belt?

Broody was a good lesson for me, not only in judgment of character, but in making the most of an opportunity. His leaving was even more gut-wrenching for me as he was replaced by Nerdverd. I give him credit for coming back once- he and Head Sensei talked and watched a class. I should have spoken to him then, and said, “Hey, thanks for everything,” but I didn’t. Another opportunity lost, and since I’ll probably never see him again, I’ll have to take this as an experience.

The next person I met that impacted me probably had the biggest impact of the three I will speak of here. I don’t remember when the first time I met him was, but I think it must have been on my first day of aiki class. I dubbed him” Verizon Guy” because of his job- and he was always at wits with his job- and I remember him being very friendly from the start. He was at the bottom of the totem pole just like me, and being that aiki was a small class back then and we were about the same size, it was only natural we would become partners. They say you tend to have one person that helps you learn more than anyone else, and for me, it was him. Verizon Guy was a fairly quiet guy, and like me, shared gripes about the wayward brats running around and always getting your ass handed to you in order to learn a new trick. He took meticulous notes. Every class he had a pen and paper, ready to transcribe new techniques. I preferred to draw myself. We figured out really quick that aiki doesn’t translate well into words. He and I must have beaten each other up a hundred times. We were very close in rank- I was a belt behind him in karate and we were the same rank in aiki. It made training much easier. Head Sensei could always leave us in a corner for an hour and we’d keep each other entertained. Getting our blue belt was the most ridiculous endeavor we did, doing nothing but tai otoshi and screwing it up until we were red in the face.

It took us a year to get our first aiki rank, and we eventually did get that throw down, but the toughest problem we both faced was trying to combine our martial arts life with everything else. For me, it was the trials of health and school, and for him it was workplace politics. I’ll never forget when we talked outside of school for a good twenty minutes while I was waiting for my ride. It wasn’t anything important, but it wasn’t really something I was accustomed to doing (talking with other students outside class). It occurred to me then that he wasn’t making small talk, and he could leave in his car at any time (and he had a pretty sweet car, too), but he didn’t. He kept me company. It was then I realized I had a friend at school.

For about three years, he and I were partners. We rolled together, goofed around, cried when they changed the aiki book, and hated kids. For that time, it was just he and I, the only adults in karate. When three more came in, we were elated. He had just made brown belt and I was purple with stripe (4^th kyu, for anyone who is wondering), when word came down from his job that he was to be transferred. Damn. That set me back in martial arts for long time. I doubt he knew what an impact his leaving had on me. It…well, sucked. No more of his famous haymaker, elbow, hammer-fist combo which he dubbed “around the world and back”, or his “patented” headbutt. He told us he would look for instruction when he was settled in his new town, and I hope he did. I just wish, even though I know he couldn’t have, that he would have stayed.

And so, this brings me to Batta. His name means “grasshopper” in Japanese, a funny thing considering he is a powerhouse in his own right, with his wrestling and boxing background. But Batta is a special student because he’s the first person I’ve known personally before he joined the school. He developed a hatred for kids really quick, which endeared him to me, and he genuinely wanted to learn. I have to confess that Batta is more than a student to me…but I think that is another chapter for another day. Batta has helped me fill the emptiness that Verizon Guy left, as well as put Broody behind. I miss them still, but I gained a lot and then some with Batta. I wish I could write more about him, but his story has just begun. I think when there is more to write, that it will be something most extraordinary to share.

CHAPTER TWO: I fight thee, with my cookie dough sticks of Doom!

My first love will always be swords. Ever since I held that first bokken, I have wanted to study the art of the Japanese sword. My love drove me to the point of craziness enough that, upon getting an internship to teach in Japan for the summer, and when asked what it was that I would like to do there, I said kendo. Now, here is where my mind got side-tracked. Mu was a student of kenjutsu- he preferred sparring with bokkens. I realize now that, done with just any Joe off the street (or the web), I probably would have died. I accidentally picked a safer route for myself by choosing kendo.

I told the leader of this internship, my boss, my “cultural experience” choice, and he was befuddled. “Kendo? No, surely you mean flower arranging, or tea ceremony.” He said this in broken English, which was funny considering he was barely understandable, and I could understand his Japanese just fine. So I repeated, “No, I want to try Kendo.” And he repeated, “Flower arranging? Tea Ceremony?” I can tell you that an autistic girl would not do well doing either of those things. Eventually he caved in.

I remember the first time I put the bogu, the gear, all on. It was the hottest day of the year. Not to mention that the keiko gi that was borrowed for me was a heavy weight grade, which did not breathe at all, and weighted an extra fifteen pounds with sweat built up in it. On top of that, I had to carry all of this extra weight while not allowing my heels to touch the floor. The head instructor, a man named Ito-sensei, would come by and, with his shinai (a training tool designed for the primary purpose to not hurt), tap me on the Achilles tendon. How nice. It did such a good job of teaching me to keep my heels off the floor, that it took me nearly a year to write it out of my brain when I took up iai in the States. I wasn’t allowed to spar really- I would have killed any one of those children who-incidentally- were also my English students. However, it was Ito-sensei who showed me the first thing- and honestly, the most important thing-I have ever learned about sword work. The very first thing I did was wait in line behind a bunch of six year olds beginning kendo the same day, for my turn to hold his sword. He told us, “This is why you do kendo. “ Now, this comment is not in any way saying that kendo will help you navigate a Japanese sword, because I will tell you from personal experience that it does not. I will get into this later. I think what he was trying to say was, “This is a weapon that can kill you- have some respect for it.” There’s not too many ways that I know of that directly instill fear, but for a martial artist who likes weapons, getting to hold someone’s sword that has a bigger net worth than you do and being trusted not to break it when you have never touched such a thing before certainly instills fear into me. I stood before the mirror and watched as Ito-sensei taught me how to do an overhead cut. I think if I wasn’t hooked then, I was at that moment.

There would be many weapons after that one, but another Ito-sensei gave me is also very special. On my twentieth birthday (twenty is a big age in Japan- it is the coming-of-age year), my host parents and the town threw a party for me, complete with the most delicious cream soda and presents. Ito-sensei attended, and brought for me a white oak bokken. It was beautiful. He told me I should clean it with a cloth once a month. It is so nice that I only used it once for the first day of iai class. The funny thing about that bokken is that it reads, “To Mr. Ito, thanks for coming to our seminar.” It’s a re-gift.

Head Sensei saw me use it the first day of class, and immediately stepped in. He told me it was a really nice bokken- too nice to be using it in this class. I figured, okay, but why? And then I learned. Kendo was far different than iai, in so many ways. The main difference was getting hit. Sure, I got my fair share of wraps when a child or a local police officer would miss my kote entirely, leaving this big welts on my forearms for days. But it meant nothing compared to getting hit with a bokken. I think, despite obvious loss to limb or possibly life, I would rather sometimes get hit with a sword. Bokken, in the hands of crazy people, turn you all sorts of colors. In any case, there were some people in my class, Happy Sensei, for one, who didn’t know the meaning of the word “light.” I didn’t like the idea of denting my beautiful white oak bokken, let alone slitting it in two, so I bought a red oak one; it lasted for almost two years before finally cracking. Bokkens are probably my favorite weapons because they are forgiving, unlike a sword. A good one will last nearly forever if you take care with it.

My first experience with iai was having to change my chudan-no-kamae. In kendo, the chudan stance involves the point of the shinai to be rather high, so as to go into the tsuki strike area or the throat. The idea is really the same for iai, except one major difference; the bokken (like a sword) is curved, the shinai is not. If you were to point a sword in the kendo style of stance and then thrust it, you’d end up with the point ending somewhere in your opponent’s forehead. The iai stance, the point is lower, so you only see the point of the sword if you are looking at yourself in the mirror. It’s supposed to conceal the length of your blade- can’t really do that with the shinai. This was one of many headaches iai gave me. Then, there was my footwork. Kendo feet are balancing almost on a tightrope, where as iai is very natural. It’s hard to believe now I could screw up “natural” walking, but it’s easy when you are used to walking on the balls of your feet. If this wasn’t bad enough, I had this kendo habit almost broken before I went back to school that fall and picked up kendo club. A word to the wise for anyone: never EVER do two sword styles at once. I don’t care what the All Japan Kendo Federation says, I cannot fathom being able to do kendo and iaido together, without going crazy.

The first time I sparred in kendo was with a third grader half my height. I couldn’t score on her because she was too fast, and she could not score on me because I was too tall. We battled to a 0-0 tie, and I was just fine with that. The first time I sparred in iai was with these things called goshinken sticks, crazy little Nerf bats of doom. I went against the youngest sensei of that time, a kid I will call Broody, because he always seems to be in a state of gloomy…except when he did sparring. He enjoyed slapping the crap out of people. Besides Head Sensei, he was the only person whom I ever heard make a cracking sound with the goshinken stick that resonated across the dojo. The first time I sparred with him, I won. This was the only thing kendo actually helped me out with. That pissed him off, so he hit me in the head. I don’t remember much after that. Broody and I ended up becoming really good partners for each other. He with his skill and speed and I with my quick thinking made for some good battles. I think you could say he was my first favorite opponent. But then all too quickly, he was gone.

Some of the older sensei have older models of the goshinken not made by the Actionflex company. The insides of these models were made out of anything from wooden dowels to PVC pipe, and very often would break with one good hit. One of my teachers, Happy Sensei, had one that reminded me of a fukuro shinai- the early model of the modern shinai. It was basically a wooden rod with a bag sewn over top of it. He cracked me in the mouth with it, and the whole side of my face went numb. For days, I checked for a bruise, which I did find upon brushing my teeth several days afterward. The inside of my cheek was purple. It was the coolest bruise I ever received, and I was thankful for not having to lose teeth from it. Thank goodness for technology. As much as I hate the idea of untrained kids hitting each other with sticks, knowing that they are going to do it anyway, I am thankful for Actionflex and Nerf. They may be poor substitutes for the real thing, but do you really want sharp swords in the hands of idiots?

I loved the sword because of its safe distance it put between me and the other guy. Sure, you can’t cut them if you are too far away- a lesson Head Sensei taught me several times over- but it helped a mildly Autistic girl get over her discomfort with having to get close to people. Weapons became my joy, and addiction. Yu can never, as far as I’m concerned, have enough weapons. I don’t own a gun, but if I ever did, I’d probably collect them too. I started to do something similar going through the ranks of karate.

Firstly, there is the ubiquitous bo kata that everyone must learn- for what reason, I do not know. The bo wazas were much more helpful in learning how to use the weapon, and even those I didn’t fully understand until I was preparing for black belt. The XMA bo katas perplex me for all the wrong reasons. First off- metallic staffs. The dizzying aspect of being a judge, having to watch something that shiny spin round and round repeatedly, reminds me of a bad carnival ride which causes you to have a seizure or throw up. At least at the carnival, you can stop the ride. Secondly, the fact that most of these staffs aren’t even wood, but plastic or fiberglass. I have these visions of bo shards spiraling into crowd, causing loss of eye to unsuspecting bystanders, screaming “My eye! My eye! The toxic chrome paint chips are burning!” Obviously, a joke, but I watch these XMA children perform, and it worries me that they can do spins and release moves, but not a proper block. I can just imagine these children actually trying to block a swing from a competent artist, and watching in horror as their super-expensive stick gets obliterated. I am a traditionalist- I take my bo in natural finish wood only- no frills needed. The staff is not cool if you suck at using it, no matter how shiny it is. This is a lesson I am reminded of when one Purple People Eaters comes marching across the floor with their bo out horizontally, ends searching to spear anything and anyone in its path. Children with any weapon is a scary notion, but I’d rather them have a bo then some other weapons. But that is another argument for another time.

My latest conquest has been the tonfa. Sleek, light, and practical (if you are a police officer), they are probably the easiest on my hands and have a definite “badass” feel to them. It’s not flashy at all, and it will punish you if you are unskilled (namely, the radial nerve in your arm will punish you when you hit it- numb city). I just wondered if tonfa was a popular XMA weapon, so I went on Youtube. You can see a couple use it, but notice right away that they don’t use the tonfa much. I suppose like the sword, it is rather unkind-looking to those not dedicated to its practical use.

Suddenly I am reminded of the kid that came into our school, looking for sword instruction. The kid bragged that he had trained in fifteen martial arts. The kid wasn’t a day over eighteen, meaning that if he were being truthful, he would have tried and quit a martial art every year of his life since age three. By today’s standards of professional children, I don’t doubt it as a possibility. However, it wasn’t this, or the Nascar-like gi top he wore to class that alarmed us. It was the fact that when unsheathed his sword, you could hear the earth split in two (or at least our eardrums). This cocky brat thought that, because he owned a sword, he could use it. That’s like saying if you have the ability to jump off a cliff, you should- before knowing how deep the water is below (or if there is water). The child was furthermore very offended when Head Sensei told him to “stop toying with that” and did not think he needed any instruction for how to properly draw out the sword. This, Head Sensei counted on, as he wanted no part of this awaiting travesty. The kid did not come back. It’s moments like this I thank Darwin’s Theory of Natural Selection.

Next Week: Friendship kuki-do

CHAPTER ONE: rolling the dough

I blame two ex-boyfriends for this. Because these events happened nearly three years before I started the blog, I shall call them Mu and Dan. They were two martial artists who came from drastically different starts in life. Mu was a troubled kid from Baltimore who is the most spiritual person I know. His martial arts came out of necessity, and was no doubt nothing refined (he showed me his switchblade once that he carries wherever he goes). He had a particular fascination with bokkens, and he was the first person that ever handed me one to use.

It was like fish to water. He showed me how to do a basic block (which I still use today) and I remember the excitement I had. Holding that piece of wood was oddly empowering. I remember feeling joy as I knocked his bokken down. This was, I can say for certain, the birth of my martial arts.

Dan, on the other hand, went to the best martial arts school money could buy. His teachers included Navy Seals and West Point graduates. His stories what were got me. He’s say things like “oh, such-and-such used to make us do push-ups until we cried, and then we’d yell, ‘Can we do more, sir?’” - those kinds of things. His style, as far as I could discern, was essentially Kung-fu, although he claimed it was a hybrid. I loved his stories, but I could not put the martial artist he had to be capable of being, to him as a person. He had already changed at that point- moved on to other things, in this case, college.

But he was the one who gave me the motivation to start my martial arts journey. He went with me to my college’s karate club that first night and…well…let’s just say it was anything but storybook.

The first time I stepped into the college gym, complete with six sports sharing the space and leak buckets everywhere, my intimidation level went through the roof. It wasn’t enough to be the new kid on the block, but to have 50+ people all kicking past their heads through heavy bags, focus mats, and at each other? You’re talking with a person here that can’t tell her right from her left- that doesn’t have the coordination skill privilege to call herself “with two left feet”. I explained to the woman in charge (and, at the time, I didn’t pay much attention to the fact that women leading their own schools were a rarity, even in a college setting) that I had done some karate before, and that I wished to work out with the club. Unbeknownst to me, the “club” was the college karate group- the cheapest instruction I would ever have at $85 a semester and the most painful. These people were, as Mu and Dan playfully joked, a cult. They loved their karate teacher to the point that some would train two hours a night, six days a week with her, regardless of what papers were due the following day. They also had a ritual called “fight night”, which- let’s be honest- was point sparring mixed with the jubilation of the fact that it was Friday night, and the fact that the dining hall let you horde sugar cookies by the handful. For some reason, people thought getting pelted repeatedly in the head with kicks right after dinner was more fun than spacing out at home or going out drinking. I suppose they were right- especially in a one-street town that only had one bar, barely big enough for a pool table with a missing eight ball. You could always identify the karate “cult” by who ate nothing on Fridays- I knew them. Dan was friends with most of them- the quintessential of who I call “A-teamers” with the perfect grades and athleticism to boot. They had addictive personalities already- two of them were going on to medical school- they didn’t know when to stop studying. Naturally, I thought I was like that too. I like to learn. But they were smart enough not to eat on Fridays. I wasn’t. But that’s a story I’ll share in a bit. I told the lady I wanted to join, and she said, “Ok, but you might want to take the karate class first.” Hmm.

Of course, being the autistic that I am, I didn’t understand that what she actually meant to say was, “Come back when you have taken the karate class and earned your yellow belt.” So I went to club with Dan. Dan, being a black belt in his style, was shuffled off to the black belts’ group. I was thrown in with the yellows, taught by a rather grimly brown belt that probably didn’t care too much for teaching. She persisted to yell at me for my stances and punches, to which I remember to this day, her shouting, “Don’t you know where your freaking solar plexus is?!” I didn’t know. I was newbie. It’s funny now, being that I’ve gone on to do Gross Anatomy and I’ve actually seen it up close. It was an hour and a half of getting screamed at. Needless to say, I did not find much ambition to go back a second night.

So I decided at that point, after talking through the metaphysics with Mu and the logical strife with Dan, I sucked up my pride, admitted to myself I was not able to learn karate through osmosis, and signed up for the beginner’s class. Now, this class was strictly to fulfill a gym requirement. It was meant to introduce you to karate, get your belt so you could say to your friends, “hey, I got a belt!” and never return again. The students that came out of the woodwork for this class were astonishing. I will tell you about two of these people; Chunk and Paco. Chunk was a girl of…let’s say larger than normal body mass, whose exercise regime consisted of tapping a couple buttons on her computer to play World of Warcraft (later, she did not have to do this, as she invested in Bluetooth headset technology so she only had to say the button command). Her karate goal was to touch her fingertips to her ankles. When she achieved this, she showed me in such a proud manner, and I remember thinking, “Good, now you can retrieve the bar of soap in the shower when you drop it.” Let me be clear- I am not mean to fat people. Just lazy ones who bitch about their weight while stuffing chips in their mouths. There are many big people in martial arts who go on to do great things. She is probably not one of them. On the contrary, Paco was an overachiever with a Napoleon complex (and no, he was not obviously short) who had anything money could buy. If there was a golden key that claimed to unlock the key to martial arts, he bought it. The first thing I remember about Paco was that he ran out and bought this gaudy silver sparring gear set when everyone else borrowed some from the dojo vault (a Tupperware box). Nobody liked Paco. In fact, my first semester of college karate was devoted to ignoring both Chunk and Paco.

The thing that got me most about this class was the waiting list. People would tell me, “Oh, if you wanna get into Karate, you have to get on the list. I got on when I was a freshman. I’m a junior now and I’m still waiting.” I found out why. If you did it legitimately through the registrar’s office, you’d be waitlisted and screwed. People bum rushed the instructor before the first class of every semester, hoping to get in. Someone told me this, and I felt like it couldn’t hurt to try. There were 100 people who felt the same way. I figured a class this ridiculous to get in to had to be worth it. I waited for an hour, and finally was taken off the list and enrolled…the last person to get a spot in class. It was a good thing too. I was a senior that year and it was my last chance to get in.

The good thing about entering a college beginner’s class is that it does wonders for your self-esteem. No matter how hopeless you think you are, someone will always be more inept at athletics than you. I remember this, thinking about how some of the kids in my class had trouble with jumping jacks and stretching. Then, there was kata time. The head instructor was obsessed with group kata. We, all 100 of us, had to do group kata while dodging each other and the drip buckets for gym’s creaky ceiling. The amount of people who would bump into each other doing Taikyoku Shodan was hysterical; I never did figure out if my instructors were laughing or crying at us. The funny thing about it all was that we were cramming both Taikyoku Shodan and 27 movements every free moment we had, as if we’d actually fail our yellow belt test if we didn’t. That’s what the fear of college taught us, but that’s not how the martial arts are learned. I wonder now how many of those diligent students forgot those katas.

Even though it was a beginner class, I worked my ass off. I wanted to go back to club and prove I was good. I also wanted to prove that my escapades in my martial arts classes would be a worthy senior thesis topic. I am proud to say I am the only student from my college to ever have gotten karate to count as credits for my major. Incidentally, my senior thesis, “Kinship in the Martial Arts” won an award and $100, but didn’t help my anthropology career any. Maybe that’s why one year later, the school dissolved my major. Needless to say, between working physically and mentally, I pushed myself. And this was my first sense of injustice. I got a yellow belt at the end of class. Chunk got a yellow belt. And so did Paco. And, the hard work paid off…how? I was disgusted at the fact that I got the same belt as a lazy fatass who’d skipped class half the time and a jackass that alienated 99 people plus his instructors. But there was nothing I could do. I knew that after that, Chunk would be a memory, and she was (her yellow belt, I horrifyingly remember, was quickly shown the proper respect of being shoved underneath her bed with 20 pounds of wet clothes and garbage on top of it.). As for Paco…that was another story.

Perhaps now would be a good time to tell you, a little more chronologically, how I got into martial arts. My parents had taken me to a karate school, which was in the business of cranking out black belts and making money, when I was about 6. The only thing I remember about being there was getting to kick and punch this big red foam thing. My dad remembers the instructor shoving a contract in his face, demanding he buy one year of lessons. That instructor probably still remembers my father telling him to go piss up a rope. And so ended my martial arts career. For now.

This is what bothers me most about own culture- the need for all things young and beautiful. The idea that a child should peak at 10 or high school is damn near ridiculous, considering we live now to be about 80. What do you do with the rest of your 70 years? This obsession carries on in sports more than anything (except Hollywood, but that’s a problem for another book). I had a friend, not too long after my run-in with the black belt factory, who had made a local newspaper for her dealings in karate. She was a black belt at age ten who competed and won medals, and was training for the Junior Olympics. Everyone was ga-ga about it. She was supposed to become the next big thing. It turns out this is not an uncommon news story. “All-star kid, does this and this, gets A’s and is a three-sport star!” There’s just one thing the story forgets to take into account- the kid. A couple years later, my friend quit karate. So much for being the next big thing. I bring this up because here I was, at 21, wondering if I was too old to start in karate. It’s rather dumb to think now- yes, I was too old to make the newspaper or compete in the Junior Olympics, but those weren’t the goals. When I first came to karate club, I met two young people; one purple belt, and one almost going for black belt. They were both 17 or 18, bubbly and full of energy. At the beginning of that semester, the latter girl got her black belt, and decided to take a break from class. She never came back. The other girl, despite her age, was a wealth of information. She told us which people are good to spar with (and in some cases, which ones to stay away from) and never once talked down to us yellow belts. It was nice- I wish all young high-ranked people were like that. The point is, age shouldn’t matter. Maturity should.

As yellow belts, we were the babies. It felt at times we were the prey, too. I got the feeling as I lined up for class sometimes the high ranked belts were T-rexes looking for a quick meal, and we were the little plant-eaters they could pick off without anybody noticing. The yellow belts were always the biggest group; we were a collection of rag-tags who were delusional in thinking a yellow belt actually separated us from white belts. We instinctively knew we all had to band together to get through this semester- everyone, except Paco, anyway. Paco had his own grand delusion- that he was the leader of us all. He took it upon himself to lead group kata, to “give advice”, and to go full force on us as a favor because “that’s how they do it on the streets.” It was only natural that Paco took me under his wing…and promptly squished me with that wing. There is a special circle in Hell for students like Paco, where I believe he is forced to teach clones of himself karate until eternity ends, just so he can figure out he isn’t the shit. As much as Paco was on my nerves, I had another problem- I sucked at sparring. I hated it. I had a knack for getting punched in the face a lot. Naturally, the way to cure this was more sparring, I thought. Study the sparring patterns, I thought. Do your wazas- kick, punch, punch. Block, punch, kick. Kick, kick, kick. So, I went to Fight Night.

Remember what I was saying about the sugar cookies on Fridays? There were few foods at college worth eating, but the cookies were to die for. That’s why people used to sneak in Tupperware dishes on Fridays. I discovered this delectable truth the same night I went to Fight Night for the first time. I thought it strange that my pre-med friend, who normally ate like a horse, ate so little at dinner time. Then I went to class, and understood why. I usually pride myself on my conditioning- I was a gymnast and a child, always did sports and other physical activities. I wasn’t a lazy kid. I thought to myself, I can handle this. My stomach thought otherwise. I had no less than fifty sparring matches in less than an hour, all of which I lost, and can’t remember how many times I walked into a punch. I puked my sugary cookies up into a snow bank as soon as I was out of sight from the gym. Sad.

But one good thing came out of Fight Night. I fought a couple of the instructors and found out how good I actually could be someday, if I stuck with it. I still suck at sparring today, but I’ve gotten a lot better. It actually wasn’t from lack of skill but lack of confidence that I was so bad. Paco saw to that. He would make sure to always hit me hardest, for my own good, for course. I don’t know what he intended to prove by hitting a girl that hard (not that I ever think girls should not spar as hard as boys, but he was overkill), or why he seemed irritated at the few times I downright screwed up in group kata. I kept thinking it was a good thing I was only mildly autistic- I had several instances where I wanted to jump him and beat the shit out of him. I think my fellow yellow belts were catching on to this fact because towards the end of the semester, they started sticking up for me. The more Paco opened his mouth, the faster someone in the group shut him up. I’ll never forget the time that the quietest, most laid-back instructor we had, tore into him after Paco suggested he was doing the kata wrong.

Finally one night, there were one-on-one sparring matches in front of the whole club. They were highly entertaining. Then, it was the yellow belts’ turn. Naturally Paco was ready to everyone his prowess, and everyone groaned. I got picked to be his opponent. I don’t know if it was completely random (and I expect it wasn’t), that the instructors chose me, but I stumbled up there anyway, expecting to get beaten. But I didn’t. I won. And that was the end of Paco. I think that was the turning point to my martial arts career. From that point, I could have quit after I graduated from college, and I would have been fine with that. But the moment I won that first match, I knew I loved it. I got my orange belt at the end of the semester, and that was the end of college karate. I lamented that I didn’t have the courage to start sooner, but I did, and I guess that was the important thing.
Half way through this first year of college karate, I got the bright idea that, since my martial arts school back home that I was already studying iai and aiki at also offered karate, that I should do it there, too. I never, ever, EVER recommend taking two styles of karate at the same time. EVER! This was a horrible idea that I will never do again. I don’t know how I did it. My college was two hours away from home and I would study five days a week at college, and go to class every other weekend on top of that. I called it “research” for my paper, and it was to an extent. I was also a nut. But I digress. It was a good thing I earned that orange belt. Head Sensei let me do a lot of things on the account that I was a good student, one of them being allowing me to wear my belt from my college style. Thinking back on it, I’d rather have worn a white belt until I caught up in rank, because I ended up wearing that belt for a whole year. That poor, poor belt left orange thread everywhere.

It’s quite funny how things turned out after I started going to this school full time. I met some nice people- one of them was around my age and rank, and shared the same frustrations about being the same rank forever as I did. Because of his job I called him Verizon Guy, and ended up being more instrumental in my martial arts than I would ever know. I also met one student in particular, who…maybe is best left for when I talk about my love for swords…