jumping kicking verklempt machines

fell asleep at eight pm and woke up at one. before you know it i was up and practicing my one-steps. i’ll test in mid august, i think. and these last two weeks i’ll lean in. i laugh at myself. i get so obsessive about the things i love. the kind of thing that makes me buy t-shirts for each and every last thing that grips me, be it the college i get accepted into to the political interests i have to the martial art i practice. i’m very ridiculous in this way. it can’t be helped.

as extreme and corny as this type of devotion can be, it would be unfair to tear that part of it away from the passion and the art and the striving to become better, and all those things that have me doing jumping kicks in the living room while everyone else is sleeping in this town. well. i can’t be sure about that last part. this is a big meth area…. (by “this,” i mean oregon.)

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luna gets me change when i talk about money. this cracks me up. she has no idea about value yet, about how many of this equals how many of that. i’ve tried to get the idea across, but i guess it’s a bit of an odd one, hasn’t stuck yet. if i tell her we can’t afford to go to dinner at the moment or buy a particular item she wants, she runs into my room and finds me pennies. her sincerity and wonder at why this doesn’t solve everything is what is so sweet. she’s a little verklempt machine.

she also has faced her fear of spider man and risen above it. i’m so proud of her. i didn’t prompt that. i didn’t touch it after her freakout at the do jang. i felt so bad, having poisoned my child’s mind with evil spider man imagery. (i’m very dramatic like this.) then, she brings me this drawing (it’s very good, i’ll post it soon) of spider man. just regular spidey, with all the web type lines in his costume, no leering eyes of venom. i felt happy to know just the thought of him wasn’t going to send her screaming out of the room anymore. then i heard from her mother that luna had asked a day or so ago why does papi like spiderman so much?

that made me laugh, too. do i? do i seem to like spiderman that much? i had to stop and wonder. he’s not a big deal to me. anymore. but i guess she sees something, sees into me, my past. what has made me. i guess that comes across in my presentation of him? or…more probable, she mistook my great concern at her being shook by his image, my attempts to smooth out the reality of spider man with…no, but she’s right, then. she saw my great concern with how she perceived spider man. to her that is my “liking spider man so much”; my being caught up in whether or not she hated him or liked him.

what i love about young children is how they can keep you honest…if you remain careful.

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luna found out the other day that you could have a career as someone who is funny and who clowns around and makes people laugh. she decided right away that this was for her, and she, too, wanted to be a “canadian.”

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i got into sparring gear recently. been a while, so i wasn’t sure when or how it would be to get back into it. i was a tiny bit anxious. not only did i come to training originally (years ago) with a boatload of freight to deal with internally surrounding violence, but the first time i sparred in martial arts i got knocked around by someone a little above me in rank (which meant not a high ranking belt, obviously) who had not yet grasped how important control (see fourth tenet) was and so just kind of went off on me.

it wasn’t a big deal, he didn’t mean it maliciously, and didn’t hurt me, but there was that feeling of being helpless as someone pummels you. sort of a feeling you don’t want to have! sort of why you begin training at all, maybe. as far as control, yeah. don’t unleash yourself on someone of lower rank who has just put on sparring gear for the first time! that’s low class in TKD, if you don’t know. you never take advantage of certain things. like someone’s back being turned to you (unless they turn it to execute a particular kick, etc), or someone knocked down, obviously. or someone who is at a great disadvantage. at least that’s the sense i get, and what i’ve been taught so far. although in my last do jang, were were taught harshly not to duck your head, ever. and that meant that if you duck, you get hit in the head. its a bad reflex that has to be drilled out if necessary. ducking could be reflexive, but it could also get you hurt pretty bad.

anyway, sparring became much less of an unknown in time. with practice.

but in suiting up again after all this time, i was reminded of that day. i didn’t really have time to worry or get stressed. that’s the good part about training with someone as professional, as high-ranking, and as skilled as master lee is. he wouldn’t even do that. he wouldn’t throw you into a sparring match with someone who was higher ranking unless that person understood control. or i ought to say that i don’t know what he’d do, but you know he’d do it right. you have that kind of faith in him. so when i got suited up this time, it was to do drills. sparring drills. practice at kicks and counter kicks with a partner who was three full ranks above me, but never hit me hard once. and we trained in combos. actual use of the blocks in our poomsae, but in practice, and with gear on as we’ll always have on when we spar.

doing the drills was like a revelation. my last sabum was good. but he was younger. and not as high ranking. and not with the background in korea that master lee has. so while his teaching of technique and forms and everything else, really, was great, perhaps there were things yet to be implemented in the do jang that make sense. like those drills. they felt very useful. in my last do jang, we trained in all our forms, trained in our punches, kicks, strikes, and blocks…but then we just jumped into sparring gear and tried to implement them. there was no intermediary ground. and now that i experience it, it makes so much sense.

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i feel good about where i am at in training. moving at an organic speed. definitely improving. feeling great physically. at times i get impatient with my hip tendons, if one is sore, or twinges or something. this is not really a realistic expectation. when you do the things with your legs that we do in training, its bound to happen. but i don’t like my motion impeded, i want to move fluidly and without hesitation.