Musha Shugyo

Grandtots,

So it has been one month and one day since my return from New York. You know grandpa, he doesn't like ostentation or hyperbole, so I'm not going to say anything like it changed my life. But I have to be fair - my eyes were opened a bit.

First off let's just talk about the trip. Packing. The 86 to Kennedy. Kennedy station to Kipling station, right across Toronto. The 192 Airport Express - it's always strange being on a bus that goes on the highway. U.S. Departures at Pearson.

The winding lines. So much trouble, on account of 19 people who'd never live to see how much trouble they'd cause. 19 people who weren't really worth all the trouble. 19 hijackers and 10 years later I'm winding through a line. Keep moving, the impatient lady says. I come to the customs officer and he asks me what my business is. I tell him I'm going to a karate seminar in upstate New York. He asks me what belt I am. I say brown. More walking. I take off my boots and watch and put it in a basket at the security checkout. How long had it been since I was last on a plane? I don't remember any of this stuff. Then another long walk to the terminal lounge. All in all, it was relatively painless. I gave myself a pat on the back for my good execution: I felt like George Clooney in "Up in the Air", like I'd done this a dozen times.

We board. I sit by myself in a middle seat. I think to ask to move to a window seat and then the couple in front of me beat me to it. Shucks. I crane my neck to see out the window. LAN airlines is operated out of Chile. Everything is said in Spanish and then English. It makes me smile. I want to record the takeoff and then a beautiful stewardess with an awful expression on her face chastises me for turning on my cellphone. I apologize and turn my phone off. The seat belt light turns on and the plane backs away from the terminal.

The plane taxied for about 10 minutes. The flight was delayed an hour as it is and there seems to be a plane jam up for access to the runway. I see plane after plane escaping. I could die here in the next few minutes it occurred to me. The engine is going to generate an amount of force that humans aren't built to be around. But everything of worth involves risk. We finally reach the runway and the engine starts to power up. The rumbling is just on the verge of being troubling and we're accelerating. Faster and faster. Then faster still. The tarmac rushing past, the air whizzing by, the engine roaring, drawing more and more air, doing what it was designed to do. And then the rumbling vanishes and the seat is pushing up into me. The pressure in my ear quickly starts to build and the earth is falling away. Surreal.

How could this be old hat to the pilot and the staff? We're defying gravity, we're escaping the pull of the planet itself. Two hundred years ago, a journey from Toronto to New York would have taken what, a week? We'll land in 47 minutes. But I guess anything done enough becomes commonplace.

Only clouds out the window. I try to watch MacGruber on my phone. I look left and what the hell? - that's the Empire State Building. It's been too long. The plane banks and we're over the boroughs, over the marshland, and we're descending. We touch down with a bump and I thank God even though I know I probably shouldn't and I know I'm probably the only person on board that did. I thank the lady with the stern look as I disembark and walk up the ramp of the airport named in honor of the 35th American President.

Snazzy. Very high tech. I stop in the lounge and eat my first meal in the U.S.: A McDonald's Angus Burger with Bacon and Cheddar. Have to figure out how to get to the subway system from here. Need to get to Jamaica station. I also need to get my phone working, it isn't picking up the T-mobile network. I buy a phone card and talk to a Wind mobile operator but it didn't work. A nice lady at an info kiosk directs me to the Airport monorail which takes me to Jamaica Station.

http://www.sherdog.net/forums/f49/road-one-thousand-strength-muay-thai-1124538/

On the cover of Kenji Ushiro's book is a picture of a snow-capped mountain top. It is an old metaphor for success, but it is an apt one. If the top is your goal, there are a lot of ways to get there. But you have to pick your way and you have to stick with it. Going half way up the mountain and then going back down and trying another path...it would be better to tack to a new path from where you are. Oftentimes I feel as though I undertake things in the first way. I feel as though if I don't see something through from beginning to end then there's no point. I disregard the progress that I've made so far and don't use that progress to simply shift onto another path.

But I'm learning. I saw things in New York that at times disheartened me. That made me feel that my martial training so far has been a waste of time. But that's me thinking that I have to go back to the base of the mountain. When all I have to do is change routes.

The routes, the ways - they are very important. But they are many. Kenji Ushiro is one example of the way. But all over I'm seeing other names that are expressing this different kind of power. Different disciplines, different methods. Very similar precision and control and effortlessness and economy of movement. What Ushiro calls Zero Power. Akiro Hino's Budo Institute. Yoshinori Kono. Keishiro Shiroma's Ryufankai. Systema with Ryabko, Vasiliev and Secours. Minoru Akuzawa's Aunkai. Motion that acts on intention instead of reaction. Un/subconscious awareness instead of conscious analysis.

I felt like a fish out of water. I'm in my head so much. I only remember once doing a kata and thinking afterwards that I made no mistakes. That it felt right. It was Seisan. I remember it so clearly. Every other time I'm just thinking about how I did this wrong, how I did that wrong.

Karate is about living in the moment. Actually it's about living ahead of the moment, entering into the moment before the moment. But I'm nowhere near there, and the only way to get there is by feeling the present. Not shying away from it. Opening myself to it.

Everyday is both an end and a beginning.

tbc...