black belt.

there are only two tests per year for black belt at my dojang. in october and in march. and in march, i am eligible to test. of course, it’s a test you have to be okayed for. so while i’ve not been given a formal go-ahead, i will act as if i am testing when it comes to writing my reports, and in training. i’ll be ready in march, that’s for sure.

i put on a white belt in the summer of 1995. that same day, i quit smoking cigarettes. i took a break from both between then and now. that is, in autumn of 1998, when i moved to new york city to attend NYU, i left off my training. and shortly after diving into the wild energy of manhattan and college life, i found myself picking up cigarettes again. but not for long. once i arrived at that point where i no longer enjoyed smoking, i couldn’t really keep on with it too long. and after a couple stop n starts as well as attempts to switch to thin cigars and the like, i put tobacco down again. for good—as i think of it now. it’s been…i don’t know. eight years? something like that. it’s hard to imagine smoking cigarettes at this point. i put far too much effort, sweat, and pain into exercising my lungs for that junk now.

i came back to training in taekwondo  in june of 2010. that’s a long break, but the love of the martial art never left me. and the goal of black belt never left me. and i’m so glad i came back, because in a sense, i was haunted by my memory of it. people who knew me and heard me speak of it were pretty aware of that, pretty aware that i wasn’t comfortable leaving it in the past. it’s a very intense practice, demanding no less than true dedication. and it’s not exactly easy to pick it up again, once you walk away. hell, it’s not easy to keep going, even when you don’t take a break. this you can tell by how many people you speak to about martial arts only to hear that one day in the past, they too had a green belt, or a yellow belt, or a blue belt…or something. there are quite a few people who begin the journey. but by the time you get to black, most of them have left the path.

yeah. it sure ain’t easy. in fact, i am hard-pressed to think of anything i’ve done (aside from parenting) that has posed such a prolonged, intense, demanding challenge. on the other hand, i’m not there yet, so i’ll leave off clapping myself on the back too much here. for now, there is simply the work. the hard work of training, refining my technique, and pushing my limits. as usual.

from here until march, its all about making sure i’m fully prepared to test. beyond the long term practicing i’ve done, of course. that arc cannot be faked, or crammed for, and i’ve put in the work. but now, along with all the heavy demo team training and regular training and assistant instructing i’m doing, there’s four written reports and a number of techniques and poomsae and combo breaks i’ve got to really lean into, keep drilling on, and become as comfortable as possible with. not to mention continuing to toughen up my hand for the knife-hand strike breaking of concrete i’ll be doing.

 SAME ART, NEW CANVAS

after 20 years, the building owner where our dojang was had decided that he wanted us out. can you imagine? 30 days notice to vacate. after 20 years. this, to me, seems utterly disrespectful. our dojang was a fixture in town. and knowing master lee, rent was paid on time and i can’t imagine him being a troublesome tenant. but there it is. life does this sort of thing. and with 30 days to go, we all pitched in our time and talents and energy and moved the dojang. it was no small amount of work. nor was getting the new place in shape to be a dojang, instead of a flooring center. those renovations are ongoing. we had to tear up the floor, haul garbage, build walls, wire lights, paint, and more. it’s taken a lot of work, and the work isn’t over with. we even had to soundproof one of the walls (which cost master lee an astronomical amount of loot) because the guitar center next door was complaining about the noise that the kids’ class created. (i was seriously tempted to tell them “if it’s too loud, you’re too old!” but wasn’t sure they’d see the humor in this phrase).

i’ve gathered footage of the tear down, the move, and the building of the new place. at some point i’ll put together a fun little video to commemorate the whole transition, but i’m waiting until we are done setting up the new place. i think we’re getting close…but we’re not there yet.

students and master eat an authentic korean dinner in our new dojang.

obviously, it’s hard to match the size of our old place. it was huge. sure, the pillars that were in the middle of the room got in the way at times. but we had a ton of floor space. which made it easier to have extra equipment there. in the new place, we’ve lost our stretching machine, and our hanging kicking bag. i won’t lie: i miss those a lot! but there are a lot of pluses to the new place, too. one is that we all got to join together in creating it, building it, and bonding over custom-shaping our new place, from walls to murals on the walls, to the old Um-Yang wooden doors we brought with us and hung at the entrance to Master Lee’s new office space.

SHE BOOM DON

the demo team is still going strong. we’re in one of those arduous stretches, where suddenly your technique isn’t good enough, and so the training gets harder. we’re in one of those stretches because we are gearing up for the biggest TKD demo of the year, the annually recurring Asian Celebration, where every dojang in the area shows off its stuff. so as you can imagine, we’re being drilled pretty hard. this is a blessing and a curse, of course. a blessing, because you get to refine your technique. and that is definitely what i want, and what we all want. a curse, because, well—you don’t refine your technique without scrutiny, demand, and hard work. and that means more effort, more sweat, more pain.

i know i say it over and over, but i guess the reality of it still impresses me: how long it actually takes you to begin to get a handle on these kicks. i’ve been working on all my kicks and techniques, but i’ve given special attention to my Spin Hook and Tornado Round kick since brown belt days. (and obviously, i’ve been practicing the Spin Hook kick longer than that…since green belt days). that’s probably over half a year by now that i’ve been especially focusing on those two. i’m not anywhere close to perfecting either one. i can do them prettier than some, and not as well as others can. i can target and deliver enough speed and power to break wood with both of them, but there’s definitely a lot of room to improve in both cases. especially when we are talking about a combo of Spin Hook into Tornado Round kick–with no break between them; just a circling movement that moves fluidly from one to the other. that’s a combo i (and the team) work at multiple times a week.

at least the handful of martial artists in the dojang who can do them markedly better than myself are all at least first degree black belts. it’s comforting when there are signs that you can improve. when i see people who have spent more time than me in training, i hope they are better than myself at these moves. that’s the idea, after all.

but that’s why i tell people that it’s really not about what you’ve been shown, or what you’ve practiced a few times. you simply cannot remove the element of time and repetition from mastery of martial arts. i’ve spoken to some people who eat up the marketing of some of the more modern, combat-oriented martial arts and one or two of them seem to think that the “non-traditional” moves and “real-life oriented” technique are a panacea in the realm of self defense. i’m certainly not denying that traditional arts can be adapted to different situations with great efficiency, and that modernizing application of your art will be helpful, or can be. but even with those “modern” moves or styles, you still will have to practice thousands of times, over years, for those moves to become fluid, instinctive, powerful, and accurate in use. it’s not as if you can just see them, be shown them, read of them, or do them a handful of times and you’re set. thinking that would be a very dangerous notion to carry around.

Spin Hook Kick:

since our team began demonstrating this in a line, i’ve improved my technique. (we are all standing in a line with wood, each person spins and kicks the wood  held by the person behind them, who then drops the wood and turns to execute the same kick targeting the wood the person behind them is holding, and so on, and so on). but then, a few weeks ago, suddenly, my technique seemed to take a back slide, and i could not figure out why! it was really aggravating. i felt like the joy i’d had at my little bit of progress was meritless, and the progress erased.

then, last week, i figured out what had happened. i had stopped paying attention to my arms. and in that stopping paying attention, i had begun to let them fly out around me as i spun and did the kick. this is bad form for any kick, and you have to train constantly to keep your arms up, and close to your body (until it is second nature). it’s usually much more of an issue with lower belts. but there are definitely some higher belts who need to buckle down on it. without bragging, i think i can say that i’m generally pretty good at doing this in most cases. better than many i see…because it’s a big deal to me. this is gonna sound pretty judgmental, but in my personal opinion, nothing makes a martial artist look sillier and kicks look sloppier than when a martial artist is waving their arms around as they kick. it’s one of my personal points of pride that i usually keep this to a minimum. but of course, i’m not even first degree black yet, and have much room to improve. and in this case, it seems i had eased up on my focus, and it began to drag my technique backward. glad i realized what was happening!

aside from looking sloppy and marking you as a tkd practitioner who (still) needs to rein in a common (newbie) problem, flailing your arms about will greatly throw off your balance. this is a habit to be corrected harshly and early, if possible. yes, for the obvious reason: habits are harder to break the more ingrained they are. but also, because if you get too used to it, you will compensate in other ways, and thus, compromise your technique. alternately, if you get too used to it for too long, and then finally do correct it, you will find your balance off because you had been using arms for help and now you have to reconfigure your movement to work well without the counterbalance you had been relying on.

there’s another very practical reason you want to train to pin your elbows close to your ribs, and your arms up in front of you. and that’s to guard your ribs. i learned this the hard way with my Reverse Turning Kick. that’s another kick where, unless you train to do otherwise, you will flay your arms about; you will hold them out as you spin to provide balance.

Summer of 2010. Here, I had the bad habit of holding my arms out as I did a Reverse Turning Kick. This is somewhat common to see with the lower belts and is definitely to be corrected. I have photos of the same day where I did a little better than here, but I wanted to use a shot that clearly showed the bad habit in all its glory!

spinning kicks in particular tend to encourage a human to compensate for balance by holding their arms out.  of course, this leaves your ribcage open. which is a very bad move when you are squaring off against a martial artist. we train to kick the ribcage, and if you didn’t know it already, the ribcage is a very sensitive area. well, at one point i was sparring a black belt (2nd degree?) as a green belt, and i nailed them with (what i’ll surmise was) an unexpected Reverse Turning Kick, and they responded hotly with a hard counter to my (exposed) ribs, which cracked one of them and put me out of training for a month. had my arms been pinned close to my body, they would have only bruised an arm. which is no big deal and happens on the regular.

that incident taught me to keep my arms close to my body when doing Reverse Turning Kicks ever since! which really did a lot to tighten up the overall technique, too. but apparently, that newly iron-clad habit did not carry over to every kick. so, i move a tiny bit of consciousness back to my arms, and remind them to stay close. (i’ve found, actually, that holding my fists in certain ways encourages my body to keep my arms up more than when they are in other positions. it’s interesting what you discover about yourself and the way you use your body in a pursuit like martial arts.)

A year can make a lot of difference. Here is my Jumping Reverse Turning Kick as performed at the 2011 Eugene Celebration—taken a little more than a year after the photo (above) taken at Orchard Park. While my fists are not up in front of my chest (ideal), my arms are at least not flailing about my sides, but kept close to my body. And even that took a whole lot of practice! I think that fact, along with the nice bit of height I got, was why GGM Lee complimented me that night on the kick—which he had been hammering me on for weeks before the event!

Tornado Round Kick:

this kick, as well as the Jumping Reverse Turning Kick, are other good examples of kicks where you have to really rein in that tendency to throw your arms out. counterintuitively, holding your arms close actually helps you execute the kick better because you can spin faster. but if you don’t think about it, and don’t implement your own good training to counter it, you will most likely hold your arms out to the sides, something like I was in the photo above taken at Orchard Park in the Summer of 2010.

i had a tiny bit of a revelation, actually, with my Tornado Round Kick, just last week. (and this only came about through the demo team’s intensified training, and the scrutiny our technique has come under as we prepare for the Asian Celebration). as i said, i’ve been working on this kick since i learned it, at brown belt. and not just at the dojang, but at home (as you may recall, i have a kicking bag here). now…as it goes, these things are hard to write about. i’m pretty comfortable with written expression, and even so, it’s a risky proposition to try and translate these somewhat intangible physical understandings into the written word. but i’ll do my best.

because you learn, train for, and study the Tornado Kick in parts—at least in our dojang—sometimes it takes a while to all gel into place…to feel like one complete movement. which, of course, it must become, in time. and with this kick, so much comes into play. of course, all these things—balance, judging distance, targeting, etc—come into play with all kicks. but with the Tornado Round kick, they seem especially critical. i suppose part of that is because by the time you strike your target, you are already fully committed. with the Reverse Turning Kick, there is actually (if you want it) one last split second to size up your target and aim your foot as you turn your body. with the Tornado Round Kick, much like the Jumping Reverse Turning Kick (photo directly above this section), there is no time for a second look; there is no real room for last minute targeting, nor room for correction. when your foot is striking that target, you are in the air and turning to face it—unlike the Reverse Turning Kick, for example, where at least one foot is still touching the earth. when the Tornado Round Kick is done right, you are meeting that target with your foot tensed, extended and consciously aimed; but with your body corkscrewing so that the foot is whipped into the target, at the end of this body in motion, and thus bringing your inertia and power to a peak, where it all explodes into your target. ideally, that is.

but i had been spinning on my pivot foot (front) and then, jumping up to deliver the Round kick. this can look very much like a properly-executed Tornado Round Kick, but it is not. the difference is perhaps not drastic at first glance, but quite important a distinction. what i’d been doing was essentially an amalgam of a Turn Around Round Kick and a Jumping Round Kick. sure, you could deliver such a thing effectively. but it would not be a Tornado Round Kick, nor would it bring the great force that is inherent in that kick. obviously, the reason i was doing it that way (tho not knowing it until corrected by a 4th degree blackbelt, our team captain) is because it’s easier that way; you have time to gauge your target. and you are not throwing yourself into as much as a potentially-disorienting spin.

so what i discovered is that you really, really, really have to target very sharply on this kick. you have to know where your foot will land after you come out of this spin that you throw your body into. and that can only come about through (again), repetition. you have to do this so many damn times that this targeting is implanted in your muscle memory, and you know, even 5, 7, or 10 feet away (depending on how you deliver this kick and the size and speed of your body) where your foot will end up on the other side of this mini “tornado” that you will turn your body into.

these are the reasons taekwondo amazes and thrills me!

when you watch T., K., R., R.R. or (obviously), GGM Lee, do this (to name the ones i think, offhand, do it best), you can see how it works. they just launch their body like a top. they don’t stay cognizant and upright until the last moment where a foot shoots out. no, they throw their entire body into a spin that launches them off the ground, and before the nadir is reached, their foot connects perfectly with the target for a resounding SMACK. it’s a thing of beauty! and sometimes i can pull of a not-too-shabby one myself. but i’m a very hard critic on myself, and i don’t settle. so while i can perform one that would definitely do some damage, i’ve got a long way to go with it—because the goal is mastery, not functionality. and i will get there. i get closer all the time. realizations like this help me.

so it comes down to more  practice. but then again, it always does.

LUCHA

Paloma, napping on the Do Jang couch, in the early part of 2011

finally, after much waiting and watching and even practicing her own improvised form of martial arts picked up from all the days she’d spent at the dojang, paloma lucha has begun training in earnest!

this is something lil p. lucha has waited for with great longing for the past year. always on the margins, always dancing and punching around the periphery of  the mat, paloma—unlike luna, who joined because i wanted her to join—has long wanted to join the ranks of taekwondo students. first, she had to turn three, and of course, she had to be potty trained. in december of 2011, she reached both these markers. and last week, i took her to sign up.

she is an enthusiastic student, and so far (only two classes to judge by at this point), much more likely to get in the game and give it full attention than luna. whereas her big sister is so much a social creature that she’d much rather joke and laugh and talk with her friends at class, paloma lucha seems to really enjoy the exercises for themselves. but again, she’s had a very different introduction to taekwondo.

paloma has spent a third of her life around this community; in this atmosphere. she has seen and heard the sights and sounds of tkd before having much power of speech, even. taekwondo is for paloma, a cultural element in her life. ever-present and integral to so many activities in and outside the house; bringing language and principles along with it. she has napped on the couches in the dojang, worn her sister’s sparring gear around the house for fun, and seen her father kicking and punching a bag in the living room for a long time. she knows how to count in korean at only three years old. say charyot in a firm voice, and she will snap to attention. say kyungyae, and she will bow.

Summer 2011. The Orchard Park event, a year after the last Orchard Park photo (above). Paloma, as usual, can be found very close to where much kicking and punching is going on.

also of no small matter, paloma has not been allowed to be on the mat—even when she’s wanted to be there. she’s seen her family spend so much time on this practice, and has come to associate it with being a Big Girl, and has had it positioned as a One Day goal. how can we even imagine what a long time one year is to someone who is only three years old? if scale is relative in these matters, that would be equivalent to my waiting 14 years for something i wanted!

Paloma is on the left-most side of the photo, while Luna is nearest the camera.

the pride on her face, wearing that dobok and being permitted, finally, to be on the mat herself, was evident. i’m very happy for her, very proud of her.

and now? it’s about time i fixed myself some lunch, showered, and get ready to take the girls to the dojang. we all have classes to attend later on.

a year ago, when luna first joined the dojang

i’ve kept her on a pretty slow pace, in terms of advancement in rank. one that just about matches the pace of my first two years in training, at young’s tkd, where i began. she is now Yellow Instructor, and if i can afford it, she’ll test at the end of this month for her green. if not this month, then in September.

luna’s biggest challenges have been nerve-related, to my understanding. social dynamics and such. the loud, intense energy of testing days, which often pack the dojang with students as well as family, trip her out a bit. she’s covered her ears before when it was too much for her nervous system. like she does sometimes when foreboding music begins playing in a film.

luna models her traditional korean clothing

she is, in the dojang like all other places, sensitive to any unusual amount of attention on her as an individual. (this is the one, after all, who only agreed to try on the hanbok i brought her back from korea after getting my agreement on one simple rule: No Comments on Her Appearance Whatsoever, Even Good Ones.)

but she’s pushed on and through, and for all of that i’m very proud of her and know she has gained much already for her effort and commitment. obviously, it is much more of an accomplishment (with, i’d argue, a bigger payoff) for a nervous person—or one who balks with fear at a thing—to rise to the challenge and overcome it; than it is for a person who never felt any doubt to move forward on a path.

while her body is still only capable of doing so much in terms of fine motor skills, her kicks are now distinct from one another. i’ll always remember her carving out her roundhouse kick in the very early stages. very attuned to it’s sideways angle, over-exaggerating the posture to the degree that she would fall over every time she tried to throw one. (once in a while she still does, especially when suited up in cumbersome still-too-big sparring gear). she remembers her self-defense moves for her rank, and everything is improving all the time. especially lately. more and more seems to be clicking for her.

the other night she really surprised me when she pretended to run a class in the living room. at the dojang, she is often shy, and sometimes won’t even do things if she is to be the only one. (she wanted to back out of her last belt test, but i told her she could do it, and she did.) but at home, she was quite confident in showing her knowledge and technique. i was laughing. she can count to ten in Korean from memory, she will lead the room in stretches and punches and kicks, she can do her poomsae (it’s only half of Poomsae Taekwondo, but that’s all the little kids are required to do at that point) and she clearly has absorbed a lot in the year she’s been showing up to train (and sometimes to play in the sitting area while i train).

most importantly to me, she keeps trying to do new things. last class, she was really working hard on getting the Jumping Front Kick. as the technique part of martial arts is especially challenging to a young child’s motor skills, it’s great to see when they are striving to perfect it. you really must play it light on correcting kids’ techniques. if they feel that all they do is wrong, and they simply cannot physically do the things that would make them excel or receive reward, it will become a joyless thing and they will stop showing up or putting any good energy into it. so you learn to give them lots of confidence for their efforts and for where they happen to be, in terms of ability. both emotionally and physically. i’ve learned much about this kind of thing in all the time i’ve been assisting the instruction of kids’ classes.

i told luna as a white belt that when the day came that she passed her green belt test, i’d buy her a new dobok; one with the red and black collar (if you are over 15 years old, it’s a black collar) instead of the white she has now. she’s pretty excited about that, too.

paloma walks the perimeter of action

paloma will join in December, after she turns three, and also, has been trained to manage and move about without a diaper. she will be very prepared for this event, having spent many. many days at the dojang watching and often punching and kicking right along with the class. paloma knows to bow coming in and out of the dojang, and can even say the proper korean phrases upon doing so. in any given situation, she may begin chanting “Tae Kwon, Tae Kwon,” like they do every Friday on Games Day for kids.

watching this gradual training/indoctrination/preparation happen in paloma has been fascinating for me, and has convinced me that 2 years old is a perfect time to start with any long-term teachings or interests you want a person to have. of course we could say even younger than that, for it doesn’t have to be active teaching, simply environment.

luna has come far in her time at the dojang, where she began from zero—including any knowledge or prior exposure to taekwondo/dojang culture. and if she keeps with it, it will always feel natural to her, and part of the fabric of her childhood and upbringing. but even at this point, we can say that paloma has been groomed for taekwondo, and for her it is simply what has been around as she came to understand the sights and sounds in her everyday; it is part of life. i suppose that all sounds obvious typed out. but to watch so pointedly how a person’s environment and community shapes them in this instance has been enlightening to me.

tangentially related thoughts:

paloma is a natural brawler, and luna is not that. luna you can knock over with a feather. luna is about 2.5 years older than paloma, but already thinks of paloma as stronger than herself. she may be! paloma feels like a little brick piggie in your arms. luna is physically slight, almost frail. they are only young children, so there is no reason to obsess over any of this, and no way to predict how/if/how much these things might change, or in what way they will matter. just making notes.

luna can defend herself physically against paloma—when she’s in a rare mood, i’ve seen luna use her longer legs to repeatedly stop paloma from charging her, greatly frustrating the bullish palomez with basically a Front Push Kick—but striking is simply not luna’s first response as a person at this point. on the other hand, paloma’s impulse to charge or swing when angry is quite natural. then again, paloma is the youngest. she’s always had to push back hard to make her will known, because she is the least able to wield language, mass, or know-how, in order to affect her reality.

luna, so far, shows practicable benefit from training in specific techniques, as well as in facing social challenges anxiety/nervousness in tkd. paloma will (one hopes) benefit not only from honing technique and learning discipline, but also from absorbing and practicing the Fourth Tenet of Taekwondo: Self Control. she’s going to need to get a rein on that!

there are many potential benefits to training in martial arts, and gaining the confidence that comes with staying committed, and achieving goals in training, and rising to challenge repeatedly, and overcoming fears is no small part of it. i know luna is gaining these, i can see it in slow motion as the days pass. plus, its been a good community for her to be supported by and take part in before school begins.

luna, white belt, doing her drills. july, 2010.

highlights in my memories of the last year:

• hearing about how at pre-school, luna had fallen while her and peers were taking a walk down a pitched terrain, and luna had basically tucked and rolled her way to standing up again. the teacher was sort of stunned at the motions, and asked if luna were in dance class or something. no, only taekwondo, was the answer.

• later, once luna was actually enrolled in a dance class (ballet style), she raised her hand during the first pseudo-recital they had (she was still 4 years old then), and told the whole room that she took taekwondo! like, out of the blue. sort of how one time at the dojang, her contribution to a conversation was to tell people she loved playing video games at my house. completely out of context. maybe someone will say they love axe kicks. and she’ll be like “well, you know what i love? playing pikmin at my papi’s house.” (she’s actually always doing that sort of thing. just talks about what she’s into, with no real mind to the venue she’s in at the moment. the thought makes her happy, and she shares it.)

• seeing luna use one of her self-defense moves at home, when paloma grabbed her by the lapels. i laughed! (no, luna didn’t throw the final elbow, so i wasn’t worried about our robust palomita.) but unprompted and in the course of a day, she broke the lapel grab with the very move she’d trained with so many times.

luna in sparring drills

•

when i play Boss Monster with the girls (in which i am a raging monster on all fours and they are armed with soft weapons they can strike me with in order to fell me and grab the prize behind me), i play out the strategy of sparring, or fighting; one that is also programmed into many video game fights.

i announce “i’ll swing my huge paw at you, but you stay back until i swing, and then rush in and strike me here, in my ribs. remember the strategy! once i swing, i’m exposed, and have extended my arm out so I can’t swing again, yet.” and they do, and learn the pattern. unaware all the while that they may just be roaring with laughter and happy to play games on the rug, i am training them even then, to understand the idea and movement of strike/counterstrike.

luna a couple of months ago

i used to joke i was having kids to raise my own little tribe; my own little fighting platoon. but even though i’ve long planned to enroll my girls in martial arts (a shot of my eldest, she’s now 18), i am not advising my girls to fight everything and anything head on. i don’t think its wisest to make head-on combat your first response. anything can happen in a fight, and you will probably be hurt, even if you emerge victorious. hurt can last a long time. sometimes one encounter can leave you with permanent pain or injury. but even if you choose to run every time, you must be equipped and ready to recognize and appraise such moments as soon as they appear.

because mostly what i am after with them—right behind the confidence they gain, and the feeling in touch with and in control of their own bodies—is for self-defense and struggle to be in their physical lexicon. for it not to be shocking that the world has violence in it. for it to be “on the table,” that you may have to strike or block a person in the right circumstance. just that fact that this reality is understood by practical (non-traumatic) lessons, drills, or experience is important to future ability to handle something drastic. this makes all the difference.

the biggest advantage any potentially traumatic scenario or action has on our psyche is simply its trauma. it’s the newness and rareness of it. the bigness, the suddenness, the extremeness that numbs us out, or freezes us up. we have to spend time conceptualizing, or bending old insufficient conceptual frameworks to adapt to this new, strange reality. but training makes for an understanding woven into the striated muscle fibers. it teaches bones particular arcs and dances. it’s not “what the hell is happening, someone is being forceful with me, someone is grabbing my clothes what do i do what do i do” it’s a few movements that break the grip with a practiced motion and hardly a thought.

to some, the loudness of blows to a dummy or yells and kicks in the air is jarring, or nerve-jangling. to my girls, it’s just another day at the dojang or home next to my kicking bag. i love how accustomed both of them are to poomsae, or hitting the heavy bag, or in suddenly throwing down a horse stance and some du bon chirigi.

•

one night, while me and luna were watching an animated film, the character walked by a clothes mannequin that was in their room. having spent far more hours at the dojang with man-shaped dummies than in any department store, luna jumped up and yelled joyously, “look papi! they have a punching bag!”

what could be more painful than navigating those thin, dim turns that sometime make up the maze of childhood? what could hurt even more than traveling those lonely paths where at times you were unwanted, bullied, confused, or first came to gaze upon the twisted features of malice?

i’d guess that if anything, it would be watching your child travel the same terrain. granted, you don’t feel lost anymore. you don’t feel bewildered or disempowered. there is not the chasm-taste flooding your sinus passages; the open-ended mystery of when and where on earth the car will land when it is done tumbling. but the increased empathy channels the pain with a furious efficiency. it is in those moments of understanding that you nearly curse the ability to feel entirely…or damn the world for remaining so terribly unchanged after the passage of decades.

i’ve written before about how my heart aches when taking luna to the park (and now we add paloma) because of how overjoyed she gets about going to see “all my friends.” paloma and luna feel that every child is a benevolent force, and a well-loved friend they simply haven’t spent any time with yet. oh, how my heart breaks for the entire world when i am walking with them; for the human race that we learn the truth of things; for the truth of things. they literally leap for joy as we get closer, and i smile, soaking up their joy…and feeling any lingering news-worthy thoughts of extrajudicial execution, torture, bombs, unending wars, collapsing economies, lies and greed fading out of my mind the closer we get to the rides and the laughing children, and the further we move from the news.

the girls will usually find children they want to befriend, and play near them, looking for an opportunity to join in play. it can be a lot of fun to watch children socialize. it can be endearing. it can also be hurtful, and even angering.

luna’s experience with boys so far in her life has not always been so positive, but she doesn’t seem to register it in a long-term sense yet. she takes the moments of disappointment in stride, although i’m sure it stings when friendships don’t work out, or people don’t treat her as she imagines they should. but there’s a good chance it stings me even more to watch.

yesterday luna hopped up on the merry-go-round where two boys were. they hopped off right away, and so i helped paloma climb on, and began pushing it around for the girls. as soon as i did, the boys came back, yelling happily for me to spin it very fast. i demurred, smiling, reminding them that a “baby girl” was on the ride. (yes, i still need to improve my language…i could have said “a younger kid” and avoided playing on the “girl” thing at all, which i suspect was used there as a remnant of a patriarchal values).

luna immediately chimed in and pointed to paloma saying “yeah, she’s 2,” to make sure it was clear to everyone that she was not the Baby Girl in question. the boys barely noticed luna’s tiny and cartoonishly-high voice. she added for good measure “i’m five.” the two boys, laughing together in the often-insular relationship brothers can have ignored the side conversation and just kept begging me to spin the ride faster. i began doling out Life Lesson Number 845, about minding the needs of the weakest or slowest or youngest or something but they just hopped off the merry-go-round when they realized i wasn’t going to listen. luna sat for just a moment after that and then told me “i’m done, papi.” and so i stopped the ride and let her off. and the girls moved into the park to find other opportunities to connect.

luna found her opening a bit later when three boys (the two previous boys plus another one) were gathering sticks for one of their games. she began picking up sticks and had a tidy bundle soon. paloma also joined in, but when the boys and luna ran off to compile their sticks, paloma didn’t notice, so happy was she in her new task of finding sticks. i laughed to watch paloma all alone under a tall tree, picking up sticks…that was enough for her. she had no end goal as luna did. she had no bigger game design in mind, as the boys did. she was just happy because she was in the park picking up sticks. these are the ways children teach us about joy…remind us about the moment, and show us how to live in it.

but i couldn’t stay there, so i called to paloma and had her walk with me close to where luna had gone. there was no way i was going to let luna run off with three boys who were mostly bigger than her and older by a year and not keep a close watch. as it is, luna is about the size of most three year olds i see. already, she is beginning to get all the comments i did growing up…about how you are Too Small. it will be a little less hard on her, i hope, as she is a girl. and in this culture, being a boy who is Too Small is a tougher road than being a Petite Girl. at the same time, it is not fun to watch her be singled out and told “You’re small for five years old.” it sounds like old, dead echoes settling into a full-color day. i’ve watched it happen for her already a few times. luna, not knowing how to reply to such a comment (how do you??), as well as being a self-conscious sort, will hunch her shoulders, look down, and manufacture a smile, tucking her chin to her chest and sort of shrinking into herself a bit. when i’m around, i immediately assert that “luna is the perfect size.”

so i’m watching like a hawk as these boys do what boys do. i see them measuring her height, pulling the smallest boy against her and noting that they are the same height. i’m guessing the boy is three or four and they are making a point about that. i don’t move, but just keep watching. i don’t like seeing her handled by anyone. it was the tallest boy who felt confident enough to grab them and squeeze them together to measure heights. he looks six or seven. they all stand in a small clearing off to the side of the rides area. their bundle of sticks is in the center of the clearing.

after a minute, the second biggest boy comes over to me, noticing my stare. bold little critter. asks me “who are you looking for?” i tell him “i’m keeping an eye on my daughter.” i’m not smiling. these boys remind me of other boys i’ve known. and ones i’ve read about in books. i don’t trust them a bit.

the lookout kid goes back to the group. i see him whisper in the ears of his friends. later i will regret my words once again. i will tell myself “you should have said ‘i’m noticing how well you kids play together,’” thus encouraging positivity and wielding my Behavior Mod chops, rather than making them feel i was a scrutinizing authority. oh well. i was on my guard. i get very protective over my girls and have been since the days i was raising rainsong. so i guess i was trying to let him know bluntly that i was there and that i was there for luna.

after the ear-whispering session, i notice the dynamic of the group has shifted, but i can’t entirely blame my words. it seemed it was headed that way sooner or later. a group of boys with one girl—and her being smallest—is an unstable dynamic. in this culture, and in many cultures, i imagine.

the boys are now positioned all facing luna—with the collective bundle of sticks behind them—and asking if she has a “credit card” as they brandish what i imagine are expired credit cards. as one, they tell her she needs a credit card to play with them, and luna is scrunching into her dumbfounded smiling position, not knowing how to deal with the sudden rejection. her “friends” have drawn a line, and luna is no longer allowed into their game. maybe it’s because she is attached to a too-watchful adult, but maybe it is just because she is a girl. i am not trying to figure it out. i am in motion.

i pop into the midst of the group like a bomb. “you like ganging up on people, hunh? you like ganging up?” i say to the boys, towering over them. i sweep up luna with one arm and begin to leave the clearing, the boys, and their bundle of sticks behind. (i laugh now, imagining what it might have been like to pull a Jerry Macguire and grab luna’s sticks before departing.) one of the boys protests that their games are “boys only” (so much for the credit card requirement), but “you can play!” he says. before the boy has even quite finished his sentence, i whirl and offer a bitter rejoinder that makes me laugh when remembering the scene later: “i don’t WANT to play your games!”

as luna often does when i step in and put a stop to kids’ cruelty, she wraps herself around me in a tight hug, a silent Thank You in the shape of a small but firm embrace.

i know i can’t always save her. and i know the world doesn’t work like that. and that she will have to bear her own scars in time, as we all do. as my other (older) children have. i know that the boars and bears and bullies that roam the plains of childhood and young adulthood will find her in time, when she is alone and her parents are not nearby. but hell if i’ll make it easy for them.

it’s a tuff spot in her speech use. she knows enough that she tries to speak in some pretty ambitious sentences now, but half of it is mushmouth to me. i can’t help but start laughing from deep affection, watching her hand gesture and her forehead wrinkle as she launches into her talk. frustrating to not understand it so well sometimes. i don’t want her to take it as her fault. we work it out.

she hears “agua” a lot, as well as “water” (water said with an oregon accent and a slightly new york-tinted accent, both) and it has all worked out so far to waga. she’s quite a character. when i get to playing on the congas, when i fall into a groove, you should see her start dancing. moving her shoulders forward and back one by one. she’s beautiful and funny.

joy, originally uploaded by nezua.

Lunita cracks me up. She takes a blue marker and scribbles on her VHS tapes. her favorite movies, she brings me a tape of Fantasia with scribbles and I don’t get mad of course, but laugh and say “Oh, very pretty!” but she had other ideas.

“Oh nooo” she says. That’s what she says when she sees something out of place or wrong. Like when the people who did the front stair repairs used concrete with pebbles in it. She stopped and pointed at the patch with the odd texture. “Oh nooo.”

She wants me to clean the tape now, wants me to show her how to clean the scribbles off. She assumes they will come off. She’s right, when I scrub, it comes off. She brings me another tape. I tell her “It’s okay,” meaning we don’t really need to take the scribbles off. But she insists. Points at it urgently. “Oh noooo!”

Won’t play it until it’s cleaned. So I clean it. Try to sit back down and finish up what I’m writing. She comes to me with another tape. “Oh noooo.” I say “It’s okay, Luna. It can stay like this, really.” But she gets upset, “Oh nooooo!” and now she’s not just evoking sorrow and alarm, she sounds aggressive. And I just begin laughing. “What are you getting angry for?” I ask her. “You are the one that scribbled on it! You didn’t even get in trouble!” I’m still laughing the whole time. Not angry, just cracking up in earnest. “If you don’t like them scribbled on, stop scribbling on them!”

I hadn’t brought up that she is the one that did it yet. She gets it, and leaves the tape on my desk, goes back to the living room. She suddenly looks happy to escape the conversation.

So funny. Reminds me of us grownups. We scribble on things and then get mad because they are scribbled on. Blame it on others. Want them to fix it. Kids are just straightforward…we learn later how to confuse ourselves about these things.

Yeah.

All Luna’s life (and before she was born) I will sort of orchestrate certain sounds or songs. Like the THX sting and the FOX Pictures riff, and the opening song to the first Star Trek show. I like the physical channeling of the energy. Luna is used to this, and she now does it faithfully if you play Star Trek.

When I first played Fantasia for her, she was delighted to see the conductors! Doing what papi does! To music! It was so funny to see her jump right into conducting along with the movie. How many two year olds can you sit down in front of Fantasia and they not just watch through the non-cartoon part, but conduct along with it? Too much.

my oldest son emailed me from my site a few days ago and asked me to get in touch with him, i think it was the next day…or maybe it was two days later that i called him, but oddly and unexpectedly, the day happened to be mother’s day and it hadn’t occurred to me that it might be an strange moment to call except he was just sitting down to dinner with her and i hope she didn’t think i was trying to pull some kind of clever macaroni coup on her special day.

yeah and of course i do not mean that i won’t discuss US politics again, those aren’t my intentions. it’s specifically the primary madness that continually tractor beams my mind! but what are ya gonna do. my job can often orient me back in that direction. and i didn’t tell you, i may yet get into the DemocraticNationalConvention as a blogger in august. not through my job. more on that later if it happens. but i’m sure that will ramp up all the lunacy again. regardless, for today, I’m sure you know how i feel. for the moment, the primary hoedown—and even junk between mccain and obama etc just the whole bag—is fredo and it is dead to me. i will take it out on a boat and come back alone!

it is only when the warm weather returns that i realize for many months i’ve been chilled and kept subdued in a state of wanting. in a lacking of light. and it happens over and over. every year, and yet—with every winter comes a new forgetting.

and shortly after, a new remembering.

somewhere in all of this, my back muscles knotted up something fierce. it is actually really painful and cramping my movement. i think i need to immerse myself in a hot, hot shower. knead that out. i wonder, again, how much of that is from the bed. i keep looking at them. its such a chunk of cash, but i am sure it’s worth it. to wake up feeling rested and not aching and cramped for space. this will be the next purchase. this also means that lil ‘nita needs a new bed, as she now has the air mattress which she sleeps in more and more. tho she still wakes up and crawls into bed sometimes. she’ll be happy to get a real bed, her own.

it’s odd, the offense some feel when you affiliate and align yourself with your heritage(s) where you did not before. there were one or two people at the start. they liked me much better when i didn’t bring up many things. it’s still like my father said. so many will appear claiming authority to tell you who you are. well, he didn’t say that. i’ve paraphrased him by now. he said something like “everyone seems to know better than you,” when it came to feeling out your identity, your meaning as attached to what you are made of ethnically, socially, whatever.

ever since crazyface tried to use the word “jew” to stab at me recently, i have been thinking more and more on that side of my family. i’m writing a long post on it. soon, i am thinking i may change the star in my UMX symbol to some fashion of a Star of David. the eagle, the serpent and the rock at the start of tenochtitlán, in front of the Jewish star. i was using the EZLN star, but i think its time for this change. i have to try the design out. it may mean a new blog. or it may just mean a tweaking of the old. more on this later…this quandary i’m in lately over whether i should change my UMX blog as i change…or just let it rest at some point as an archive and sign of an earlier time and move on.

i’ve just been thinking of it a lot, jews and mexicans. how both peoples have been persecuted, displaced, despised and hunted, becoming almost nomadic in quests to live and survive. nowadays illegal is slurred and dripping with ugliness and hate and a blanket license to treat as subhuman just as much as jew was in scary days past. not that people cannot resurrect that ugly past with much more than one word.

i was not taught much affiliation or pride with being descended from jews or mexicans, but (in addition to my personal need to reconnect with my roots) as both peoples are under attack, and have been, i feel very strongly that my remaining silent and unidentified with them is somewhat disloyal. not to die out, and not to hide out. it’s never been about pretending to be something i’m not. to me, living under some adopted name and by speech and appearance attempting to distance myself from these is pretending. and i feel a duty to underline and resuscitate my affiliations with mi antepasados and my ancestors, considering not only have the groups typically been “nomadic and hunted,” but specifically, my ancestors who came into this country only 2 and three generations ago on both sides did so to live, to prosper. for a chance at a better life or even moving away from violence that sought them. not simply to move in some exotic or worldly way.

and i’d have to add that it’s not all about them being persecuted. it’s about the name of jews being used in israel to oppress others, and i feel i should say something on that, too, as i do not approve of that, and would add my voice to that disapproval. as a person, and as someone affiated in some way, even if small. but i’ll save the rest for the post.

there is so much to know as a craftsperson and an artist who uses digital means. oh if it were only so easy just to write and make visual art/video or record music. before any of these finished products can be presented, there is SO much learning about the tools. ugh. mix camera with computer (shooting/editing video) and you have a library of information you have to know. how tape is made, how it captures, what 60i vs 24p vs 24Pa mean, how to digitize them, how to use various software programs, tools IN those programs, how they all interact, how to troubleshoot problems in everything from blogs to mixing boards, i can go on and i know you know what i mean. i taught myself adobe illustrator “on the job,” as when i illustrated my first book (i’ve written a few, only one is published now), it seemed that vector art would be a better bet than pixel-based art, so i had to learn the software. that’s usually how it goes. need gives way to self-teaching in a new area. i love the new learning. and the bigger knowledge base. as i’ve said before the more you learn the more it can overlap and intersect, and thus deepen your understanding in all areas at once, a sort of whole-greater-than-the-sum-of-parts thing, but with understanding and intuition to use that understanding in new ways. sometimes all the pockets of ignorance that can rise up and stymie a project at various points, or the demand for time that is needed to keep moving forward with different learnings in different areas is frustrating. and the technology moves so fast that you really have to work hard to stay on top of all the changes in all the various places. but nothing makes me feel more alive than learning something new. well, perhaps that is hyperbole. but if so, only barely.

i was really annoyed that my obama vid showed so much interlacing. i wont bore you with technical talk, but there was a lot to figure out in the way of avoiding that, and i’m still not sure i get it all. it will take a few times shooting/editing more until i can test out some things and see what the best workflow is. interesecting considerations between cameras, formats, software, settings, final presentation format, etc. ugh.

i’m so hungry. i guess i should push Submit (on the compression window, as well as for this post) and then go eat. and then shower to try and work out these knots. and then come back to this virtual tail-gunner seat and try to finish up icirr. hop back to richard’s illustrations before dawn tomorrow. hit UMX posts in nibbles, hope to have a solid one for monday. i think i may have some Headline posts saved up not posted yet. see if those are still timely, fill the weekend up a bit. i think i have a youtube on reserve too.

lately my dinners have been so big and heavy full of sauces and calories and flavors and butters and steaks and i wonder if i’m trying to put on weight for the summer. it’s all very odd. i was running on the regular and really getting fit. and then i just sort of fell into king henry the eighth mode. a drumstick in one hand, a carafe in the other, and gravy running down my neck. mmmm. gravychest. it’s like i’m singlehandedly battling (and batter-ing) winter away from the dining hall doors. trying to bundle up in a regal layer of fat or something. hunker down in my throne room of ribeye. king fatty will rule with a tenderized fist.

moo-yah!

And here is a series of myself and mijita, mi queridita lunita.

1

this was before she was born. that’s papá practicing with curious george, who seems out of it.

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

she’s so fierce.