don’t get me wrong, i am not talking about focus, or happiness, or triumph expressed, or effort, or recognition of effort or achievement, or expectation of formal respect—such as bowing to a master or a blackbelt.

hm. perhaps it would be more accurate to say nowhere is ego more quickly divested of disguises than in the dojang. nowhere does it seem to stand out so harshly as there, where there is generally a collective feel of respect and effort divested of the need to be showy or false. where, usually, there is a truthfulness as expressed in sincere effort that cannot be masked by words or flash. if your form is tight, it will show. if you didn’t practice but instead watched TV, there will be no need to make excuses; it will show. if your kicks are crisp and fully in chamber, all will see. if your punches are launched and executed properly, your dobok will pop and people will hear it.

but we are all humans. so there will be personality that interferes at times. i suppose i’ve already met the first person in this new dojang who is bringing personality my way. or should i say “insecurity”? probably.

part of sparring is intimidation. so there is definitely a time for psych games. but this is going down upon meeting one person for the first time. clearly he is feeling froggy, even though two full ranks above me. it’s a troubling sign to me, personally. i expect you to embody a humility on the mat when you are high enough in rank. because restraint and humility are signs of achievement there. it is the insecure beginner who needs to withhold respect even from his classmates, even from a new one. i don’t want to see…any belt above yellow acting in ways that indicate they are confusing targets or sources of angst in themselves or having something desperate to prove. this will translate in their art, and that can get people hurt. plus, it’s just not beautiful. and beauty is why i love taekwondo.

you can tell when you meet people at the dojang how confident they are. at least in my experience, those will be the kind ones, the ones who show you respect, even if above you in rank. granted, you bow when you bow, and i don’t mind that. it’s a salute of respect, and that respect is earned. anyone who has trained for any amount of time knows this. i choose sabum-nim/kyobu-nim (masters/teachers) i respect from the start. and then i invest trust in them. that is how it works, as far as i understand, with teachers in any area. no respect, no trust? nothing learned. maybe pilfered, but that’s different.

anyway, i could tell by this cat’s greeting as well as some of his behavior while we were warming up that decisions will have to be made about how to deal with this particular challenge in the story. finally, at the end, he asked me if i was going to go to the sparring sessions on saturday. i told him i was going to wait to do this until i got my lungs back in shape. he told me i should come so they could catch me up. he said it jokingly, mock-threateningly. a higher rank can make these jokes to a lower rank. as well as invite them to spar. it doesn’t go the other way around.

i don’t mind. when i first joined TKD, i was filled with anxiety. it was so terrifying to spar, or to even suit up. i was dealing with a lot of things in myself, and with a big change. but i’ve spent time on this since then. i don’t see sparring or training the same way i did then. it is not an unknown. it is not street fighting. it is not fighting for your life, tho it may be fine to work it that way if it helps you strive high. i see it…as training to improve against myself. other people provide good challenges to me, good tools for my betterment. even if they come bearing a grudge. also, i have a decent feel for my relative strengths as compared to other fighters. and one thing i always bring is a lightness of the feet and (allow me to say) uncommon speed. he, with his bearish lumbering kicks doesn’t worry me toooo much—though believe me, i have a healthy respect for any rank when it comes to kicks. certainly one a couple ranks above me. after all, i’ve seen yellow belts knock each other out cold with uncontrolled crescent kicks. these are powerful tools you learn. which is why it is troubling to see a mind or heart that does not yet possess the same grace and wisdom and solidity as needed to wield them properly.

plus…dude should really think it over carefully. if you challenge someone two belts your junior, it is damn well expected you can best them. at best, you meet expectations. but if that lower rank were to get the better of that senior rank—even a little—this might embarrass a bit. it’s sort of a proposition stacked in my favor. but at least it keeps everything interesting.

so. there’s your first subplot to this new book in the story of nez.

sijak!

when i came to the booth this morning i saw dude
didn’t like the way he was walking so i kept him in my view
he was headed to the booth
i cut wide, so that i could come up behind him without him knowing it
just in case he had any bad intentions in mind
i figured i could fall on him like batman
well, not like batman, more like felix cuz i’m one lithe cat so light on my feet you’ll never hear me coming
a fluid five foot six, suited in a black and gilded silver mix and i step on shadows softly like i’m melding music with my midnight mind, a single harmony woven nine notes at a time
so i walked up and stopped about ten feet behind him
just letting him do his thing at the booth
looked kosher
finally he turned around
feeling my energy coiling up and down
and saw me standing there
i smiled but i don’t know if that did anything to smooth the moment over
he felt he had to mutter and grumble at me
but the mutter don’t matter, i wasn’t there to please him

i was there for my Shot in the Dark and just to keep an eye on the coffeegirl
even if she never knows it
you can count on me to be felix the espresso chugging guardian angel of la noche

while the world was warming up and spring was laying down enough fancy footwork to let everyone in the town (funny how some cities just refuse to be assigned the word “city” in my mind) know without a doubt that winter has passed us by again, my computer was locking up, freezing up and in general freaking me out. it took hours to figure out that it was one of my hard drives. i have three external hard drives. that’s what happens when your in-computer HD is 250G (not too bad, tho) but you deal regularly in video and music. video especially takes up TONS of room. (another reason why i lust after the mac pro (tower); it has like four bays for HDs that are 750 each? wow….i turn to jelly just thinking about it. meanwhile, that’s en el futuro.) of course the more connections/drives/layers of software etc you have, the more possibility for conflict and problems.

i wont go into an even longer and more boring story, but suffice it to say that for most of the day, i was worried (this is a polite term) i was going to lose every single file on my largest drive (750G). now granted, some of it is backed up on DVDs. after all, there is everything from my first daughters’ phone messages five years ago, to pictures of my second daughter’s home birth, to master recordings of albums i wrote and recorded fifteen years ago, to finished but unpublished books on that drive. to lose that drive would (almost) be like losing your childhood home in a fire. in terms of (virtual) boxes of precious history and memorabilia and documentation and creative work, that drive is my personal and professional homestead, and carries decades of valuable information on it. so i’ve made sure to back up a few things, a few times. the oldest files. but not everything is backed up on DVD and in fact, nothing from the last three years. 

i did that Time Machine thing which mac has built in to the OS (mirrors your drive, backs it up on the regular), but the problem with that is i had to stop it, because my Time Machine drive ran out of room! after all, how does one HD backup three others? (counting my internal HD, i have four). it can’t. not until it is as big as all of them, and that would require a drive larger than is now on the market (not for much lonter, tho). or actually, it may be on the market, but i can’t afford it right now. 

so. my day was spent in the garage. well, the virtual garage. the garage of my anxiety. and after about ten hours of stress and freakage and restarting and reading and trying everything from clicking my heels and wishing things were different to dusting off all my computer equipment, i finally serendipitously unchecked a checkbox that—as far as i know—had been checked since i first had the drive, and suddenly things worked. go figure. i still have no idea what happened or what fixed it. very comforting, of course. as is the fact that the drive is still not working perfectly. it will work for a while, but then do odd things and just stop copying. clearly, it is preparing to die at some point soon. at least that is how i am seeing it.

anyway, for now its working. and i am about 70% done manually backing up the entire thing. i cleared a drive (about 400G), and am copying over everything valuable (excluding backed up movies and such for now, i won’t be devastated if i lose my copy of Angelheart, though I do love it so.) now, if it crashes, i don’t have to contemplate leaping from a bridge. in a sense i feel like i’ve “wasted” my weekend—which is a serious charge when your work schedule is what mine is and keeps you moving from dark to dark each day—but in fact, i haven’t. because it was insane of me to be drifting along as if having only one copy of this drive was acceptable. it was not. i’ve just been forced into doing something i should have done already. and i am “lucky” enough that it’s not too late to do so, when i thought for a day that it was. 

in light of this, i declare this week Back That OS Up Week. (OS: Operating System, por supuesto). because you don’t know, can never be sure: next week your computer might go down for the count. and if it does (which they all do eventually) you’ll wish you could go back in time to copy that one (or two or ten) super-important files that you’ve been meaning to and without which you’d be very, very, very upset. in fact, perhaps it’s already happened—this crash and loss of data—and you were down on knees begging for a chance to go back in time and your wish was granted, and here you are reading this now. you don’t remember the past, but this is your second chance! so don’t waste it, peeples. back that OS up!

so this is the day! ay dios mio, the day i have to file my nails already and do laundry and get my papers ready. to fly, to fly. i fly en la mañana. damn that coffee smells good. but yeah. and we know how much i love to fly in this post nine-a-freakin-leven world. i always get this urge to cause a scene when they are xraying me and my stuff and making me walk under wands and threat of gun, like that urge when you are mountain climbing and walking next to a horrendous drop, that urge to suddenly find yourself flinging yourself from the edge? or that urge when you have a huge check in your hand or a big dollabillyall and you suddenly fear your arm might move itself and fling your prize into the fire? hmmm. no? you dont get that urge? why am i still sitting at this table? anyway, i get the urge to like freak out in the security line. just start screaming and waving and doing shit that i know will really bug everyone the fuck out. i dont know why. its not uncontrollable, by any means. i just feel the fearshackles and the air and the vibe in there and i want to just fart. and by “fart” i mean i want to throw up on the rug. i dont mean i feel nauseaus. i just feel bored and annoyed to the point of lunacy. what a joke, taking my shampoo from me. oooooooh the safeness is just coming down all over me, and its so warm and fuzzy. here, take my toothpaste too, please take it all take it all mAKE ME SAAAAFE!!!

yeah. so. anyway.

i have someone who will be administering the UMX blog, and if you are in the nyc area and one of my regular blogmigos, please email me (find button at left) and let me know! today. because i’m off the computer for a few days. i mean MTV is giving me a laptop…but i’m not counting on being able to get online with it right away. and i’m gleefully not part of the cell-phone world anymore. (tho if i ever came back, apple, you know i’m here for you, oh corporate giant lover of mine)

okay. i wanted to have short film of snow. last night it snowed here! wow! a couple inches stuck. just rare for oregon, for southern oregon, here. usually pura lluvia. but if i finished that, i’d be spending my today online, and i actually wanted to have my two posts (here and UMX) done by today so i could NOT be online at all. but you know. as my nana said, “man plans, god laughs.”

okay, people. i hope to see you in a few days. i should be back on the eleventh. be mexcellent to each other.