Illuminati

 

There are one hundred and eight beads in a Buddhist’s mala.

I am told there are no coincidences. I am told this as proof of the Reptilians, and of their plans for world domination as revealed by the writings of that old prophet, Robert E. Howard.

I am Illuminatus.

This is the Law of Threes. My sensei tells me that there are one hundred and eight pressure points in the human body. So far, I have found only nine: the square of the third prime number. Nine is a potent number, but not completion. One hundred and eight reduces numerologically to nine.

In German, nine is a negation. Buddha had a hundred and eight statements of negation, and Jesus had twelve disciples. Jesus was a Buddha. Nine times twelve is a hundred and eight, so I know it is true.

I am told there are no coincidences.

This is the Law of Fives. There are seven letters in the name Axl Rose. Axl Rose is an anagram for Oral Sex. That means sixteen-year-old Sharon E. looked down on him and thought of cunnilingus. Sixteen reduces numerologically to seven, the fifth prime number. 

Sixteen is also the square of four… which, times forty-five, is a hundred and eight. Forty-five is nine times five. Robert E. Howard was first published at the age of twenty-three, which reduces numerologically to five.

I am told there are no coincidences.

There are one hundred and eight cards in the ancient Greek card game, Uno. This is because all the ancient Greeks were Buddhists. Penelope had one hundred and eight suitors, until the day that Odysseus returned and reduced them numerologically to zero. If we had only stuck to cunnilingus, we wouldn’t be in the boat we’re in now, and we would all be illuminated.

 

Lotus, Tree, and Little Dragon

(This is a post I initially put up last year while I was taking Karate classes at Wossamotta U.  While I don't usually repeat myself in this fashion, this is something I feel very strongly about and it has come up recently in several conversations.  Though my major is no longer in Physical Therapy, training damage is still a serious and widespread problem.  I hope one day to be in a position to address it.)

There are advantages and disadvantages to having Karate class right after dance.  The advantage, of course, is that I don't have to go anywhere right after dancing.  Class actually comes to me.  The disadvantage is that I just finished a dance class and now Sensei wants to make sure everyone works out.

Lauren told me once how she was in a Writing class, and the people there were talking about how great it was to be back in a classroom setting, so they could get writing done again.  “It always seems to make it easier, don’t you think?”  I imagine Lauren doing her best to not look at them all as if they had just grown extra heads.  If you love to write, you’ll write.  Classwork gets in the way – rather than writing your own ideas, you’re working on someone else’s.

Which is how I feel about the first part of almost any Karate class I’ve ever taken.

Please don’t misunderstand me.  I love the martial arts.  It’s part of my life.  I’ve been passionate about it since . . .

Okay, let’s just say a long time.

But it seems that just about every martial arts instructor in the US is absolutely convinced that the only time his or her students exercise is in class, and so Sensei needs to make you sweat blood in the dojo.  Which would be bad enough (and for some students, at least, this may be true), but the philosophy of the workouts seems to revolve around the whole “no pain no gain” mentality.  And the idea that you have to be built like a weightlifter and do a hundred pushups every day in order to be a good martial artist is complete bullrush.

I’ll say that again.

The very idea that you can measure a martial artist’s prowess by his or her washboard abs and the number of crunches they can do is a tragic fallacy.  Moreover, it is a fallacy that results in time being lost that could be spent training in class.  Learning new moves and footwork, fine-tuning old ones, endlessly working on the synthesis between body and mind in motion.

In one of his books I read (I think it was Basic Training, but don’t quote me), Bruce Lee mourned that most of the martial artists focused too much on technique, and not enough on physical conditioning.  He set about to correct this imbalance.  And that is admirable.  He not only brought the Eastern martial arts to the west in a very accessible way, but he contributed the philosophy of Jeet Kune Do, a new dedication to physical health in the martial way, and through his experimentation established a connection between fitness and diet that was years ahead of anyone else.

I maintain that Bruce Lee should be considered a polymath.  Lee was a linguist, an historian, an actor, a writer (text and screen), a martial artist, and a teacher (plenty of martial artists cannot teach).  He had a piercing wit and a highly analytical mind.  So don’t think that I do not have a high opinion of the man.  I respect him a very great deal.

But just as Einstein denounced an entire field of theoretical physics, saying it was impossible because “God does not play with dice,” so too has Mr. Lee held back some ideas, and done damage in the process.

Bruce had me up to three miles a day, really at a good pace. We’d run the three miles in twenty-one or twenty-tow minutes. Just under eight minutes a mile [Note: when running on his own in 1968, Lee would get his time down to six-and-a-half minutes per mile].
So this morning he said to me “We’re going to go five.”
I said, “Bruce, I can’t go five. I’m a helluva lot older than you are, and I can’t do five.”
He said, “When we get to three, we’ll shift gears and it’s only two more and you’ll do it.”
I said “Okay, hell, I’ll go for it.”
So we get to three, we go into the fourth mile and I’m okay for three or four minutes, and then I really begin to give out.
I’m tired, my heart’s pounding, I can’t go any more and so I say to him, “Bruce if I run any more,” — and we’re still running — “if I run any more I’m liable to have a heart attack and die.” He said, “Then die.” It made me so mad that I went the full five miles.
Afterward I went to the shower and then I wanted to talk to him about it. I said, you know, “Why did you say that?” He said, “Because you might as well be dead. Seriously, if you always put limits on what you can do, physical or anything else, it’ll spread over into the rest of your life. It’ll spread into your work, into your morality, into your entire being. There are no limits. There are plateaus, but you must not stay there, you must go beyond them. If it kills you, it kills you. A man must constantly exceed his level.

          from Bruce Lee: The Art of Expressing the Human Body by John Little (1998)

Bruce Lee believed in forcing the body to exceed all limitations, in hammering at the limitations of life until something broke.  And in many ways, that's exactly what he did.  And he hammered at his body, making it stronger, faster, and more painful . . . until it broke.

Many people forget that Mr. Lee really started writing while he was flat on his back after training improperly.  He was an innovator, and not all his ideas worked.

"Tut, tut, tut," the doctors said.  "Your back is torn completely.  You may walk again if you're careful, but you will never be active again, and the martial arts will be closed to you forever."

"Watch me," Bruce may have said, and proceeded to force himself out from his bedridden state and back into circuit training and the Art in a matter of months.

Of course, he had chronic back pain and headaches that would kill a wooly mammoth at a hundred yards, but who cares - he'd bulldozed through the injury.  He spent the rest of his life on a variety of painkillers, some for background pain, and the others for the breakthrough pain, and kept on going.

Bruce Lee died at the age of 32 from an accident with painkillers.

When you use your will like a hammer, your body becomes a nail.

Nails are disposable construction devices.  Your body is not.

Or, to put it another way . . .

I started practicing yoga, as I have stated before, at around the age of eight.  I am not in danger of becoming a master yogi – that’s not my goal.  But I couldn’t afford martial arts classes as a child, and yoga was a tool for self-mastery I could learn out of books.

Some time ago, I started finally taking lessons in karate.

Aftersome time in training (who keeps track?), I was sparring with the lead student.  By which I mean I was learning a lot and getting intimate with the mats on a regular basis.  I got a few good licks in, and I like to think that it was at least as much from my being a good student as his being a good teacher.

Now, my Sempai was a huge man, and built like a tank.  He worked out on the weights, and he hit them hard.  And then he'd come straight from working out to the dojo.  And he'd take all comers.  He held fast to the opinion that yoga weakened the body, and that meditation was falling asleep while sitting on your ass.  Work hard, play hard, resting is for pussies and force is the way to the martial arts.  So we both held back enough to avoid serious injury, but we both enjoyed being able to open up on one another at least a little.  And we disagreed on almost everything else.  Good, fine times.

After a while, I bowed out.  I was tired, and by neddy-jingo I knew my body well enough to know when to take a break.  And after a bit of good-natured teasing, he let me go.  I grabbed some water and wandered over to the bench, and started to sit when he shouted, "Coyote!  Don't sit down!"

I froze.  What the hell? I thought, is the paint wet?

"Don't sit down," he continued.  "You'll freeze up."

I blinked.  "I beg your pardon?"

"No, trust me.  You've been moving around a lot, and if you stop now you'll freeze up, you'll lock up.  Hell, I have to warm up and stretch in the mornings just to get moving, and again when I get off my bike.  Trust me.  When you get to be my age, you'll know what I'm talking about."

He did have a higher rank than I.  His belt was brown, mine at the time was blue.  So you may think he knew far better than I.

He was also, at the time, about twenty-seven years old.

I was thirty-nine.

I am now forty-two.  I have continued my studies of the martial art.  And I have yet to experience what he was describing.

If Bruce Lee had lived into his eighties, the US might have a more well-rounded approach to physical training in the martial arts of today.  I cannot speak for the rest of the world, but around here, just about every martial artist I've met is an exercise fanatic.  They run, do reps, do weights, and force their bodies to do more and more of the most creative techniques to strain the human form imaginable.  And it's amazing how many of them habitually take pain medication before they are thirty.

"No pain, no gain."

The world is full of competitive martial artists and athletes who must retire in their thirties, who must leave what they love behind before they even reach old age, just because of the damage done by their training.  Coaches and teachers who want the "win," students who think it's the only way to succeed.  And it's not.  In the short run you may do some impressive things.  But there are women who, as softball pitchers, blew out their arms because their coaches did not have them rest.  There are men who have to be careful of their legs or their shoulders from highschool football training.  There are retired pro baseball pitchers and football stars who cannot throw a ball to their kids or grandkids without pain. 

So, when I take karate classes, yes, I do the workouts.  And, like Lauren, I find it does interfere with my own regimen.  Tired after class, it's harder to focus on my asana, and I can feel my agility and balance suffer despite my best efforts.  But I do my four hundred various crunches, my two hundred squats, my hundred leg lifts, and my significantly less than one hundred push-ups.  I do the drills.  Not my dojo, not my rules.  But my body is my own.  I and I alone decide when I will cry, "hold, enough."  And I wait for the lessons in techniques that come after. 

Because the pendulum has swung the other way now.  The dojos of America, at least, are obsessed with their forceful approach to physical fitness training, and value it over the techniques of the Art.  And I will need credentials and greater knowledge than I have now, in physical health and martial arts both, before I can push that tired old counterweight the other way.

Non serviam,

--Coyote

 

(Ranma Saotome and Genma Saotome are (c) Rumiko Takahashi; the movie Quest for Fire was written by Gerard Brach, based on the book by J.H. Rosney; Bruce Lee poster from motifake.com; "no pain no gain" image from mumstheboss.co.uk; yoga pose courtesy ofmindovermatternyc.com)

Gods of the Curriculae II: Fall of 2012

This has been one hell of a semester.

Greetings, all.  Yes, this post is a day late.  My apologies.  I had been going to post yesterday as is my custom, but when I finally made my way home . . .

Lo, the wages of finals week.

So instead it will be today, Tuesday December 11, that I reveal at long last the secret identities of my various professors, this twisted pantheon at which I have been studying on bended knee, for lo these many months.  And as this identification is so late, I will also give my customary summary of the shrines they haunt as I go.

Jazz Ballet (or: "Keeping up With the Birds")

In retrospect, I should have called this one “Keeping up With the Seelie.”  Gad.  Not that my dance instructor is flighty, exactly.  But I asked her once if there were sites or dancers on YouTube I might examine, to help with my dancing.  Alas, no.

“I make up a lot of this as I go,” she explained.  “You’ll just need to practice.”  And then we would flit on to another move, this one having been covered twice – which should be enough for anyone to master, it seems.  For me, trying to “practice” under these conditions was an exercise in frustration.  Her advice was to take notes, but as aforementioned, I don’t have a background in dance.  

Just the same, I did take her advice once, or at least I tried: I sat out of class and watched, notebook in hand.  What I learned that day was that taking notes on individual moves in an ongoing dance is like watching a Black Ops tournament and trying to jot down weapon serial numbers.

Below is an excerpt from such an attempt:

Mincing about to the right

Something tribal

Lop sau from the hip 8 count or so

Then a miracle happens

On to floor work

Spin somehow

More miracles

Kick like a ballet mule

Groucho Marx with steps

. . . and so on.  Mercifully, two of my class mates saw my distress and were willing to help.  Otherwise, the final performance would have been an even darker comedy than it was.

Happy only when dancing, she has been dancing so long I think she has forgotten what it was like to do anything else.  In class, I was surrounded by Seelie revelers, dancing their dreams made flesh.  And in giving birth to such dreams, she is the fairies' midwife, and she comes in shape no bigger than an agate stone on the forefinger of an alderman, drawn with a team of little atomies over men's noses as they lie asleep.

Her wagon spokes made of long spinners' legs, the cover, of the wings of grasshoppers; her traces, of the smallest spider web; her collars, of the moonshine's wat'ry beams; her whip, of cricket's bone; the lash, of film . . . her chariot is an empty hazelnut, made by the joiner squirrel . . .

Yes, she is Professor Mab, Goddess of the Demi-Fey and the Mistress of Dreams.  And for all that her class was an experience of frustration, so too was it one of learning, and I tip my hat to her in salute.

Karate for Grownups (or: "Conan, What is Best in Life?")

Right after Jazz Ballet was Karate for Grownups.  Fortunately, both were in the same room.  Gad, I am such a genius.  But perhaps I should have noted the room number more closely.  When your classes are held in Room 007, it can be either very good or very bad . . .

Lauren once had a classmate in Composition ask her something along the lines of: “Don’t you love coming back to class?  It’s so hard to write without someone giving you an assignment, isn’t it?” 

And then I imagine Lauren looking at them as though they had just grown a second head, carefully not saying something along the lines of, “No.  Actually, these classes get in the way of the real writing.  I write on my own, constantly, thank you.”  I found myself in the same position regarding the workouts in this class. 

Sensei loves his physical drills.  I mean he loooooooooooves his physical drills.  Pain is good.  Yes, Sensei.  Pain is your friend.  Yes, Sensei.  Very good, I am proud of you.  And now, your reward: more push-ups!  Yes, Sensei.  Thank you, Sensei.  And then, at the end of class, he strikes you with his lightning.

Thank you for your grandmotherly kindness, Sensei. 

We would eventually get to stance and style, at least a little.  But for the most part each class focused on working out.  I am told that Professor Thor customarily uses the workouts to weed the class down to a manageable size, and then focuses on the style itself.

But that didn’t happen this time.  How could it?  Who can afford to drop a class in these times?  Drop a class and you could lose your funding – and then you’re out, with a fat, hungry college debt drooling at the door and no way to pay it.

So on we went, stamina drills and working out taking anywhere from half to four-fifths of the class, until only a few weeks were left.  Then we finally focused on moves.

The staff work was good, and so was the self-defense.  I did learn, never doubt.  He helped me find a hole in my punch, and a few other things, and told me how to fill it.  I am walking away richer for having taken his class.

But while the style of Karate that Professor Thor teaches is a good one, and while he is a fine and honourable fellow, his teaching style is very much the No Pain No Gain approach.  His hammer is mighty and his lightning always strikes true.  But while this is treasured by some martial artists, it is not for me. 

Study Smart Not Hard (or: "How to Take All Your Other Classes")

Study Smart Not Hard is taught by Professor Clockwork, from whom I had taken Dignified Gibberish before.  Everything online, pre-recorded, and at your own pace.  The angels were on hand to give guidance as always, the Prof himself could be reached via email as needed.

I sought out his class on purpose, and I was not disappointed.  I still believe in a clockwork god.

Still, it was a sobering experience.  For one thing, the text books assured me that memory was impossible without writing.  Wow.  Really?  I mean, really really?  What of the bards of old, what of the oral traditions of countless cultures, passed on generation after generation through the ages?  Apparently that never happened. 

Disappointing.  I liked Homer, too.  Oh, well.

Another point: while the class was brilliant for learning short term and test taking strategies, anything I wanted to apply to long term memory I had to figure out on my own.  Apparently, while going through the motions of learning is a carefully treasured art, long-term comprehension is simply not considered important.  This was a familiar realization, but no less chilling for that.

About half way through the class, I attended a seminar Professor Clockwork was holding.  After not twenty minutes, there was a kind of moaning that rose up around me.  Strangely discoloured, my fellow colligates were looking around, blank-eyed, mouths open.  Flesh peeled down, soft, revealing muscle and in some places even bone.

A few had just started reaching towards me in a half-remembered hunger when Prof. Clockwork said, “I know, it’s okay.  Thinking hurts.  We’ll take a break and then come back to it.”  And then they were all nodding and slowly rising from their seats, some clutching their smoking cerebrums, others shambling blindly away for water, brains, or cable TV, just to take the edge off.

The angels were brilliant as always, and Professor Clockwork’s curriculum was excellent as I expected.  But looking about me, zombies of the Illiterati pressing in on all sides, I felt very much a stranger in a very strange land.  This was not the first time I had felt so.  I am sure it will not be the last.

Memory Tactics (or, “It Worked For the Romans.”)

A fitting companion to Prof. Clockwork’s class, Memory Tactics started almost the day that Study Smart Not Hard ended.  Sometimes my brilliance almost astounds even me. 

The class went in depth regarding techniques for memorizing data for tests.  It was small class, four people in all.  But the Professor used the small size of her class to all our advantages, going into depth regarding different things that the mind might seize upon – colours, images, and so forth – and how to use them in our studies.  Note cards, mnemonics, loci, interlocking visuals, all of these and more were covered on an individual level.

It was a short class, and the assignments were, quite simply, to use whatever she was teaching in studying for other classes.

The Professor is a bit ADHD, by her own admission, and she uses this as an asset in her teachings, weaving a loose-seeming tapestry of ideas and then drawing the net in tightly to show how everything truly does fit together, and her high energy was a driving force that was wonderful to see.

She is Professor Luna, for she is the moon.  Ever changing, always in motion, yet she is always herself.  And her light is a guide through the dark and tangled wood.

Body Parts and Functions (or: "Thank the Gods for Dignified Gibberish")

I have spoken of this class before, an online class with lab.  It was this class to which I dedicated some thirty hours a week alone.  And were it not for my Dignified Gibberish class, times would have been much harder yet.

The lectures, though pre-recorded, were of another professor teaching to another class.  The study sheets were rather vague, and though the exams did get easier as we went along, that mostly meant that they got easier once our grade was all but set.

The Professor was always available to answer whatever question his students might have had, but, being a mostly online class, you had to know what question to ask.  He seemed to enjoy throwing us curves, actually, and his exams reflected this. 

In short, my experience with this class was the opposite of my other experiences with online classes.  But the Professor is by no means an evil man, and can be very funny and warm in person.

Still, there was a point in class, while taking an exam, I looked up at an inopportune moment and saw something I think I should not have seen.  I had been working on a question on the relationship between muscle neurons and a certain neurotransmitter.  Deep in thought, I raised my eyes, and beheld a sight I will not soon forget.  

As I watched in horror, the Professor’s face grew longer, more skeletal.  His eyes shrank slightly as his features protruded downward, beak-like.  Hunched over, his frame shrank in on itself as his fine shirt lengthened down over him, transforming into the tattered remains of robed finery.  His hands, dark and skeletal, clutched the hem of his garment as he met my gaze with his own, saying,

“You’re very lucky, slave – only the Emperor gets to drink your essence!”

I let loose a small cry - "Ack!" - but by then his glamour was back in place, and my fellow students were frowning at me for disrupting their concentration.  He went on as though nothing had happened, nothing at all.

But he knew that I knew.

I have come to the realization that medical classes are my own Dark Crystal: flawed, powerful, and corrupted by those who rule.  And, like the mirror in the Alchemist’s chamber, Professor Skeksis’ class reflected their light into me.  It was a soul-sucking experience, and only by calling upon my own gifts did I survive.

Head Shrinking 101 (or: "Jung Was a Dirty Old Genius")

This was by far my favorite class.  The quizzes were online, the textbook was fantastic (a rental, alas.  What boob thought up rental textbooks?), the tests were multiple choice.  All so that time could be properly spent on class discussion.

This is a professor who values the human mind and its inquisitive potential.  She reaches out and encourages her students to speak, question, and learn.  Yes, her tests are multiple choice.  But the questions are structured such that you must have comprehension to answer them, not mere memorization.  I treasure that.

She was very encouraging when I contemplated changing my major to Psych, and happy for me when I did.  The book review – the one paper for her class – revolved around thought and understanding of the material, and a willingness to ask questions.  Also a treasure.

All through the semester her class has been a light to look forward to at the end of the week.  I have watched her time and again seek to kindle the fires of imagination and analytic thought, encouraging her students to share those fires with others.  

She is Professor Prometheus, one of the Bringers of Light.  A true teacher, it is my hope she continues as she has for some time to come.  And if the time comes when she is, for her efforts, chained to a mountainside, I trust she will bear it with dignity.

And so my journey ends for the moment, and next month will be taken up again.  There are new shrines waiting, with new Powers within to guide and instruct.  And, no doubt, it will be an exciting time.  But for now, with my finals all but spent, I look forward to a brief respite in my travels.

Sometime again,

--Coyote.

(Night on Bald Mountain image is (c) Disney Studios; sleeping coyote photo courtesy of robandbee.com; the faerie ballet photo is courtesy of classacttutu.com; Queen Mab illustration is courtesy of romeoandjulietjanzen.wikispaces.com, and is credited to Ms. Amy Brown; Ranma ½ was created by Rumiko Takahashi, and you either get the cursed springs reference or you don’t; Thor in this incarnation is (c) Marvel Comics; the clockwork brain photo is from the Clockwork Man, a character from Dr. Who that is run and owned by BBC; Clockwork God is by a person called Romek and can be viewed at stripgenerator.com; Roman Dinner painting is by Neel Burton, courtesy of outre-monde.com; Luna picture courtesy of dailywicca.com; the Torture Chamber was painted by an unknown artist around 1736 CE; the Skeksis were created by Jim Henson Muppets, say thank ye; Carl Yung created himself, more power to him; Prometheus picture by Heinrich Friedrich Fuger.  All rights reserved by those who rightfully reserve them.  No intent is made or held to infringe upon those rights whatsoever.)

And Now For Something Completely Different

I’ve missed a few posts in recent times, and no doubt you are wondering what could drag me away, kicking and screaming, from my Adventures Underground.  And I am here to tell you, it has been a serious drag . . .

Ah, maybe not that serious.  Perhaps I should start from the beginning.

Months and months ago when I first began my trek though the trackless wilderness known as academia, I was in search of a career.  Something that I could get into relatively quickly, that I would be good at, and ideally would feed my soul as I did it.  Something that would fill a need within me for self-mastery, hopefully but not necessarily in dealing with the martial art, something that would allow me to explore the body-mind link and perhaps even allow me to help others learn how to make themselves stronger and healthier in the process.

So when becoming a Physical Therapy Assistant was suggested, it seemed a perfect choice.

I would learn the ways of the human body, and how to help it heal itself.  I would teach aspects of this understanding to others, train them in how to not only heal themselves, but how to avoid injury in the future.  This would allow me to become a more effective martial artist as well, and when the time came, a more effective martial arts trainer.  I have waxed poetic about how ridiculous I think it is that martial artists and athletes start to feel their bodies breaking down before they’re thirty.  I would use knowledge from PTA to help change that.  I could revolutionize the world.

I would take advantage of a cooperative program between Wossamotta U and Happy Valley, a fine campus just across the state line, to get my training at a price I could afford.  And so with this in mind, I have taken two semesters now of science-heavy classes and brain-scraping med-oriented curricula.

However comma this was before I was informed that I was categorically ineligible for the cooperative program because of my address.  Specifically, that I must live in a completely different (and more upscale) county than I do.  And I must prove that I have lived there for at least the last six months.

That sound you hear is not the sound of a large automobile screeching its tires and slamming into a brick wall.  That sound is my brain.

Like any campus, Wossamotta reserves the right to change the requirements of any of its programs without notice.  I had copied all the documentation when I was first preparing for the classes, and I double checked them now.  Nothing was mentioned about this then.  Based on the lack of this little detail in the information available Way Back When, and the hurry that the woman running the program was in to dismiss me and get me to stop wasting her time, it seems likely that yes indeed, the rules have changed.  I’m told that there was one, out-of-the way place it was mentioned, but that hardly matters now.  No one in either campus I’d talked to, including three councilors, had expected this.

So I have been busy dismissing thoughts of bell towers and high-powered rifles and focusing on changing gears in my academic career.  I have two semesters of classes and something over twenty thousand dollars in debt.  Not only do I still want a degree and a career option or two, I want to not waste what I’ve already done.

One of the draws for that particular PTA program had been guaranteed job placement upon graduation.  With that out of the way, all other options should be reconsidered.  And so, studying the system carefully, I think I will ultimately go into psychology. 

Now, to some of you that may seem like quite a change in paradigm.  So I'll ask you all to remember your Marcus Aurelius, and please consider the following:

Psychology is a study that has always fascinated me.  I am enough of a geek that I do in fact read papers written by friends taking psych courses, and I read old textbooks for fun.  Ultimately, I hope to get into research on the states of consciousness, find out more about the body-mind connection from the mind angle.  This is not to say that I would never do counseling, but I'm more interested in the experimentation angle.  Psychology by definition is a tool one can use to improve one’s understanding of one’s self, and I would also use it to improve my meditation techniques.  And, of course, better self-knowledge – and therefore self-mastery – can eventually mean being a better sensei.  Because at the end of the day, everything is training.

So, you see?  From physical therapy to psychology research, all as a martial art discipline.  Not that big a step, really.  It's all in how you look at it.

In the short run, I think I can apply some of the medical classes I’ve taken into science requirements, and the rest of them will go into electives.  With so many science courses, and life being as uncertain as it is, I will probably get an Associates’ of General Science Degree, choosing classes that will overlap into an Associates’ of Arts shortly thereafter.  From there I should be able to advance as I like.  It may be slow going, since after a while I’ll be working as well, but I have a new scheme in place and a forward to be going, so I am content.

Life continues to be a grand adventure.  And for all that there continue to be some rough times ahead, I’m still glad through it all to be spared a boring life.

Sometime again,

--Coyote.

(The character may be (c) some vast octopus-like company or other like 20th Century Fox, but Tim Curry will always be Frankie and no one can take that away; Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner are still (c) Warner Brothers last I heard; Revolutionary Girl Utena was written and created by Chiho Saito; Calvin was created by Bill Watterson; Carl Jung essentially created himself and more power to him.)

Lotus, Tree, and Little Dragon

There are advantages and disadvantages to having Karate class right after dance.  The advantage, of course, is that I don't have to go anywhere right after dancing.  Class actually comes to me.  The disadvantage is that I just finished a dance class and now Sensei wants to make sure everyone works out.

Lauren told me once how she was in a Writing class, and the people there were talking about how great it was to be back in a classroom setting, so they could get writing done again.  “It always seems to make it easier, don’t you think?”  I imagine Lauren doing her best to not look at them all as if they had just grown extra heads.  If you love to write, you’ll write.  Classwork gets in the way – rather than writing your own ideas, you’re working on someone else’s.

Which is how I feel about the first part of almost any Karate class I’ve ever taken.

Please don’t misunderstand me.  I love the martial arts.  It’s part of my life.  I’ve been passionate about it since . . .

Okay, let’s just say a long time.

But it seems that just about every martial arts instructor in the US is absolutely convinced that the only time his or her students exercise is in class, and so Sensei needs to make you sweat blood in the dojo.  Which would be bad enough (and for some students, at least, this may be true), but the philosophy of the workouts seems to revolve around the whole “no pain no gain” mentality.  And the idea that you have to be built like a weightlifter and do a hundred pushups every day in order to be a good martial artist is complete bullrush.

I’ll say that again.

The very idea that you can measure a martial artist’s prowess by his or her washboard abs and the number of crunches they can do is a tragic fallacy.  Moreover, it is a fallacy that results in time being lost that could be spent training in class.  Learning new moves and footwork, fine-tuning old ones, endlessly working on the synthesis between body and mind in motion.

In one of his books I read (I think it was Basic Training, but don’t quote me), Bruce Lee mourned that most of the martial artists focused too much on technique, and not enough on physical conditioning.  He set about to correct this imbalance.  And that is admirable.  He not only brought the Eastern martial arts to the west in a very accessible way, but he contributed the philosophy of Jeet Kune Do, a new dedication to physical health in the martial way, and through his experimentation established a connection between fitness and diet that was years ahead of anyone else.

I maintain that Bruce Lee should be considered a polymath.  Lee was a linguist, an historian, an actor, a writer (text and screen), a martial artist, and a teacher (plenty of martial artists cannot teach).  He had a piercing wit and a highly analytical mind.  So don’t think that I do not have a high opinion of the man.  I respect him a very great deal.

But just as Einstein denounced an entire field of theoretical physics, saying it was impossible because “God does not play with dice,” so too has Mr. Lee held back some ideas, and done damage in the process.

Bruce had me up to three miles a day, really at a good pace. We’d run the three miles in twenty-one or twenty-tow minutes. Just under eight minutes a mile [Note: when running on his own in 1968, Lee would get his time down to six-and-a-half minutes per mile].
So this morning he said to me “We’re going to go five.”
I said, “Bruce, I can’t go five. I’m a helluva lot older than you are, and I can’t do five.”
He said, “When we get to three, we’ll shift gears and it’s only two more and you’ll do it.”
I said “Okay, hell, I’ll go for it.”
So we get to three, we go into the fourth mile and I’m okay for three or four minutes, and then I really begin to give out.
I’m tired, my heart’s pounding, I can’t go any more and so I say to him, “Bruce if I run any more,” — and we’re still running — “if I run any more I’m liable to have a heart attack and die.” He said, “Then die.” It made me so mad that I went the full five miles.
Afterward I went to the shower and then I wanted to talk to him about it. I said, you know, “Why did you say that?” He said, “Because you might as well be dead. Seriously, if you always put limits on what you can do, physical or anything else, it’ll spread over into the rest of your life. It’ll spread into your work, into your morality, into your entire being. There are no limits. There are plateaus, but you must not stay there, you must go beyond them. If it kills you, it kills you. A man must constantly exceed his level.

          from Bruce Lee: The Art of Expressing the Human Body by John Little (1998)

Bruce Lee believed in forcing the body to exceed all limitations, in hammering at the limitations of life until something broke.  And in many ways, that's exactly what he did.  And he hammered at his body, making it stronger, faster, and more painful . . . until it broke.

Many people forget that Mr. Lee really started writing while he was flat on his back after training improperly.  He was an innovator, and not all his ideas worked.

"Tut, tut, tut," the doctors said.  "Your back is torn completely.  You may walk again if you're careful, but you will never be active again, and the martial arts will be closed to you forever."

"Watch me," Bruce may have said, and proceeded to force himself out from his bedridden state and back into circuit training and the Art in a matter of months.

Of course, he had chronic back pain and headaches that would kill a wooly mammoth at a hundred yards, but who cares - he'd bulldozed through the injury.  He spent the rest of his life on a variety of painkillers, some for background pain, and the others for the breakthrough pain, and kept on going.

Bruce Lee died at the age of 32 from an accident with painkillers.

When you use your will like a hammer, your body becomes a nail.

Nails are disposable construction devices.  Your body is not.

Or, to put it another way . . .

I started practicing yoga, as I have stated before, at around the age of eight.  I am not in danger of becoming a master yogi – that’s not my goal.  But I couldn’t afford martial arts classes as a child, and yoga was a tool for self-mastery I could learn out of books.

Some time ago, I started finally taking lessons in karate.

Aftersome time in training (who keeps track?), I was sparring with the lead student.  By which I mean I was learning a lot and getting intimate with the mats on a regular basis.  I got a few good licks in, and I like to think that it was at least as much from my being a good student as his being a good teacher.

Now, my Sempai was a huge man, and built like a tank.  He worked out on the weights, and he hit them hard.  And then he'd come straight from working out to the dojo.  And he'd take all comers.  He held fast to the opinion that yoga weakened the body, and that meditation was falling asleep while sitting on your ass.  Work hard, play hard, resting is for pussies and force is the way to the martial arts.  So we both held back enough to avoid serious injury, but we both enjoyed being able to open up on one another at least a little.  And we disagreed on almost everything else.  Good, fine times.

After a while, I bowed out.  I was tired, and by neddy-jingo I knew my body well enough to know when to take a break.  And after a bit of good-natured teasing, he let me go.  I grabbed some water and wandered over to the bench, and started to sit when he shouted, "Coyote!  Don't sit down!"

I froze.  What the hell? I thought, is the paint wet?

"Don't sit down," he continued.  "You'll freeze up."

I blinked.  "I beg your pardon?"

"No, trust me.  You've been moving around a lot, and if you stop now you'll freeze up, you'll lock up.  Hell, I have to warm up and stretch in the mornings just to get moving, and again when I get off my bike.  Trust me.  When you get to be my age, you'll know what I'm talking about."

He did have a higher rank than I.  His belt was brown, mine at the time was blue.  So you may think he knew far better than I.

He was also, at the time, about twenty-seven years old.

I was thirty-nine.

I am now forty-two.  I have continued my studies of the martial art.  And I have yet to experience what he was describing.

If Bruce Lee had lived into his eighties, the US might have a more well-rounded approach to physical training in the martial arts of today.  I cannot speak for the rest of the world, but around here, just about every martial artist I've met is an exercise fanatic.  They run, do reps, do weights, and force their bodies to do more and more of the most creative techniques to strain the human form imaginable.  And it's amazing how many of them habitually take pain medication before they are thirty.

"No pain, no gain."

The world is full of competitive martial artists and athletes who must retire in their thirties, who must leave what they love behind before they even reach old age, just because of the damage done by their training.  Coaches and teachers who want the "win," students who think it's the only way to succeed.  And it's not.  In the short run you may do some impressive things.  But there are women who, as softball pitchers, blew out their arms because their coaches did not have them rest.  There are men who have to be careful of their legs or their shoulders from highschool football training.  There are retired pro baseball pitchers and football stars who cannot throw a ball to their kids or grandkids without pain. 

So, when I take karate classes, yes, I do the workouts.  And, like Lauren, I find it does interfere with my own regimen.  Tired after class, it's harder to fucus on my asana, and I can feel my agility and balance suffer despite my best efforts.  But I do my four hundred various crunches, my two hundred squats, my hundred leg lifts, and my significantly less than one hundred push-ups.  I do the drills.  Not my dojo, not my rules.  But my body is my own.  I and I alone decide when I will cry, "hold, enough."  And I wait for the lessons in techniques that come after. 

Because the pendulum has swung the other way now.  The dojos of America, at least, are obsessed with their forceful approach to physical fitness training, and value it over the techniques of the Art.  And I will need credentials and greater knowledge than I have now, in physical health and martial arts both, before I can push that tired old counterweight the other way.

Non serviam,

--Coyote

 

(Ranma Saotome and Genma Saotome are (c) Rumiko Takahashi; the movie Quest for Fire was written by Gerard Brach, based on the book by J.H. Rosney; Bruce Lee poster from motifake.com; "no pain no gain" image from mumstheboss.co.uk; yoga pose courtesy ofmindovermatternyc.com)