57,000 Words
Japan trip pics!

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Spiral Staircase
"As the beginner knows nothing about either his body posture or the positioning of his sword, neither does his mind stop anywhere within him. If a man strikes at him with a sword, he simply meets the attack without anything in mind.

As he studies various things and is taught the diverse ways of how to take a stance, the manner of grasping his sword and where to put his mind, his mind stops in many places. Now if he wants to strike at an opponent, he is extraordinarily discomforted. Later, as days pass and time piles up, in accordance with his practice, neither the postures of the body nor the ways of grasping the sword are weighed in his mind. His mind simply becomes as it was in the beginning when he knew nothing and had yet to be taught anything at all.

In this sense one sees the sense of the beginning being the same as the end, as when one counts from one to ten, and the first and last numbers become adjacent."

--Takuan Soho, The Mysterious Record of Immovable Wisdom


At the Iaido testing in Ayase on Saturday, many of the sandan and yondan candidates were visibly scared as they performed. I didn't see many shodan or nidan candidates that looked scared, though. So while the sandans and yondans displayed a much higher level of technical skill than their juniors, they didn't necessarily give a more beautiful performance.

There was, however, one yondan candidate who really caught my eye, an older gentleman in a cream-colored uniform, who was utterly unperturbed and unhurried in his movements, and yet clearly very technically proficient. He had a small, calm, and very sincere-looking hint of a smile on his face the whole time, and his iai was very beautiful.

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Creature of habit

Originally published at Hans Christian Andersen V's Blog. You can comment here or there.

it’ isn’t all new and undiscovered music in my little 110-square-foot hi-fi shrine.  In fact, most of the time I’m just endlessly cycling through a handful of recordings.  Especially whenever I change something about the layout of listening room (read: frequently, on account of an acute case of audiophilia nervosa), or when I’m sitting in the aftermath of a bad day at work, or when I’m sitting in the after glow of a good day at work, or… well, it doesn’t take much to send me scurrying for my favorites.

If you were Angyl, newly moved in to the Greenhaus, you’d think that Hans’ music collection consists solely of:

• Kind Of Blue - Miles Davis
• Side A of Somethin’ Else - Cannonball Adderley
• Side A of In San Francisco - Cannonball Adderley
• Rook - Shearwater
• Side B of Who’s Next - The Who
• Schubert’s Death & The Maiden String Quartet- Lindsay String Quartet
• Beethoven’s Fifth - Carlos Kleiber
• Rachmaninoff’s Variations on a Theme of Paganninni - Vladimir Ashkenazy

Two observations: Except for KoB and Rook, these are all single-sides or half-CDs.  I find myself wanting complete chunks of music that are small enough to fit within the window of time it takes Png to devour a fresh twisty nom-stick.

Also, except for the three classical selections, they’re all on vinyl.  I’m sure that if I could get the rest on LP, I would certainly do so.

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More.

Originally published at Hans Christian Andersen V's Blog. You can comment here or there.

Tiempo Libre / Bach In Havana

Last time I was at Barnes & Noble I was waylayed by a classical music sale in the music department, and as I approached the register I was constantly distracted by the piped-in music, which was obviously Bach, yet riding on top of an infectious Cuban rhythm section. Seemed brilliant on first glance, it was ultimately disappointing. In most tracks, the Bach itself is either too deeply buried in the arrangements, or Cuban timba elements feel too slick and overproduced, too studio-sounding.

It’s too bad, really; I really like Classical/Dance mixes when done well - think Classical Mushroom, or even ‘A Night on Disco Mountain’. But aside from a few standout tracks, the album itself just didn’t pan out.

Fleischer / Mozart Piano Concertos

Leon Fleischer, backed by the Stuttgarter Kammerorchester.

This album has and incredibly intimate quality, like he’s playing for you alone. Or maybe for himself alone. Nothing even remotely showy, and yet it’s vividly human and alive. The impression is one of someone sitting in his study, reflecting on his life and playing utterly unselfconsciously. It’s a warm room with a rich, inviting, relaxed sound; thick carpets and walls of worn leatherbound books. The impression is so overwhelming that I almost feel like I’m tresspassing, as if I’m intruding on someone else’s private space. While Two Hands and The Journey both had the same intimate quality, they were both solo piano works albums and that somehow makes an important difference. In those albums, I could imagine eavesdropping on Fleischer in his study, lingering a while to hear him play. In this album, I imagine accidently tresspassing into his very counsciousness as he in turn plays his piano to an imagined, spectral orchestra.

Beethoven / Piano Concerto no. 4 In G Major, Piano Concerto No. 5 In E Flat Major

Oh goodness. The Fifth is really an impressive piece, especially the first movement that constantly tugs at my memory, with call-outs to a dozen of other half-remembered pieces.

Ashkenazy’s playing is, as on the Rachmaninov album that I’m constantly referencing, sublime. There’s a splendid sense of conversation between the piano and orchestra, a sinuous quality as they dance around each other and braid through each other, although the piano never loses its identity as a separate entity from the rest of the ensemble.

The sonics on the CD aren’t terribly inspiring, with a strident mid-90’s DDD sound and a thin bottom end. But I’ll gladly tolerate

U2 / No Line On The Horizon

The last couple of U2 albums have been easy to pin down; All That You Can’t Leave Behind was fluffy pop, How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb was gnostic/charismatic pop. And before either of those, Pop was Eurotrash pop. The first LP feels like a culmination of the ATYCLB/HTDAAB radio-friendly arc, tweaking and refining the pop formula. I might like it better than either of those albums, I’m not sure. The reason I’m not sure is that Side 3 arrives and blows the first slab out of the water by taking sonic elements from Achtung! Baby and The Unforgettable Fire, layering them on top of chunkier, harder-rocking guitar riffs than I expect out of U2, and rechanneling them into something that sounds somehow forward-looking. Plus, Bono finally seems to grok that his voice doesn’t have the range it used to be, and he ditched the swooping and soaring of his younger years for some rather effective syncopation. He’s left the horn section and joined the rhythm section.

Mendelssohn / Incidental Music to "A Midsummer Night’s Dream", Schubert / Incidental Music to "Rosamunde"

George Szell and the Cleveland Orchestra. Note to self: Need more Szell - I like his style, it’s like a Solti but with more laser-tight focus. Further note to self: Need more Mendelssohn - I continue to like what I hear, especially as I stray away from the symphonies, which are fine but are taking a while to grow on my. Additional further note to self: There’s not such thing as too much Schubert.

The Midsummer piece keeps throwing me for a loop because it has a phrase in it that is straight out of Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade. (Wikipedia points out that the similarity is there, but my ordering is backward - the Mendelssohn was written some 63 years prior.) When my brain expects one musical line and I get another, I have to either focus my full attention to listening, or turn the music off entirely. I chose to focus, which put me in a state of mind to be utterly enchanted (fitting, given the subject matter) byt the third movement, the Nocturne, which was so unspeakably lovely it nearly moved me to tears.

I know the Rosamunde can sound wonderful - I’ve heard several lovely renderings of the string quartet version - but the few versions I have of the original orchestral "incidental music" were wishy-washy at best. But surely Szell/Cleveland can do better? $4 bargain bin vinyl FTW.

Also, hot on the heels of seeing The Marriage of Figaro last weekend, I made sure to turn down the volume - live orchestral music is typically much quieter than the volumes I like to blast away at.

Brahms / The 3 Violin Sonatas

Itzhak Perlman on the violin, Daniel Barenboim on piano. What a shame that so many great recordings were done circa 1990 on DDD toolschains, they’re always a little underwhelming. Still, better that than a whole generation of Telarc classical SACDs that are impeccably recorded and musically uninteresting.

The third sonata is the most interesting of the three here, like listening to a pair of old friends have an interesting and wide-ranging conversation, until you realize nearly half-an-hour has slipped by.

Thanks To Gravity / Avogadro’s Number

The first full-length album from my favorite neurotic 90’s pop/rock/alternative/whatever band that never went anywhere.

Heavier on the syncopation than I’m used to… is this a different drummer? (The band’s website mentions that their next album is the first to use electric guitars, maybe that’s what I’m hearing here, layers of rhythm guitar) This must have been a heck of a fun small-venue live show; who needs studio polish when you’ve got this kind of energy on display? (Which also may explain the band’s utter flameout after their first major-label record.

This may be the first Happel/TtG record I’ve heard where Andy’s violin sounds really well integrated with the rest of the group. Aside from the violin-heavy track, and the pair of tracks with funk and flamenco influences, respectively, there’s a lot of sameness to the rest of the album. I didn’t do it any favors by listening to it immediately after a re-play of Toad’s Fear, which does a much better job of traversing the same sonic terrain.

Also worth noting, Happel’s voice sounds shockingly different than on any of his other CDs, far more raw, far less nasal. (He has a really nasal voice for a rock frontman.)

Thanks To Gravity / Sonata Brutale

The nasal voice is back. The compositions sit halfway between Avogadro’s Number and Start, with less fury and more polish than its predecessor. It’s an uncomfortable middle-ground to occupy. And he’s still too neurotic and emo to be successful in his day and age.

TV On The Radio / Return to Cookie Mountain

Huh. Experimental. And I don’t mean that as a pejorative. It’s a sonic tapestry, layers upon layers upon layers, in strange and unintuitive combinations. There’s also a lot of 50-60Hz content, which in my office (10′x11′x8′) turns into a truly righteous set of standing waves that pressurizes the whole room. It’s also really cohesive and stimulating. While listening, I suddenly felt inspired to go bang out the answers to a pair of essay questions that I have to fill out for my upcoming iaido tests. I had them both done in the space of five tracks.

In fact, the only real complaint I can level against the album is that there is too much of it. It’s a bit overwhelming to let this run for an hour. And for the record, I’ve officially turned into one of those luddites who thinks 24 minutes per side, times two sides, is *just about right*.

Needs a second listen, perhaps in a week or two when this bout of allergies and stuff-ears has passed.

Better Than Ezra / Deluxe

Why do some groups hit the big time, big time - while others get relegated to the status of also-rans or too generic? This here is straight-up 90’s alt-rock with a little New Orleans southern vibe layered over it, and I can’t shake the feeling that the only thing that kept this band obscure while others thrived is the beating of a butterfly’s wings somewhere in Australia.

That, and the absence of a truly catchy single to build buzz on the airwaves.

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Renaissance Nerd

Originally published at Hans Christian Andersen V's Blog. You can comment here or there.

I’m eating a cheeseburger, listening to Ashkenazy & the VPO storm their way through Beethoven’s “Emperor” Piano Concerto #5, and reading Musashi’s Book of Five Rings.  All three are excellent and stimulating, but so far only two of the three are actually enjoyable.  I’ll leave it to you to guess which is the weakest link.

Here’s a hint: it’s not the cheeseburger.

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Huh, I do have a feed after all

Originally published at Hans Christian Andersen V's Blog. You can comment here or there.

This theme may not have a shiny orange RSS icon, but there is a feed.  Check the sidebar on the right for a link.

The feed may or may not actually give full-article content, it might instead just give a lame teaser.  If that’s the case, that’s lame, but will be fixed later.

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Other Blog
Angyl bought me a present a while back - the domain hca5.com. She's got it all set up with an instance of WordPress, and I'm going to start doing most future public posts over there, particularly any future music-listening writeups. I'm working on getting WP->LJ cross-posting working, but there are a few entries over there already - including an actual downloadable copy of my magnum opus RPG, Snow Day.

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Puppahsitters?
It looks like I might be attending an out-of-state wedding the first week of June. Is there anyone in F-List land who could be bribed into taking care of an adorable (read: housetrained) puppah from June 5-7? (Edit: not May 5-7. Needing a puppysitter yesterday would represent a serious act of FAIL.)

And on a lower-key note, we'd also love a puppahsitter on May 16th - it's the last opera of the year.

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Anyone going to Sakuracon?
Hey folks,

If any of you are planning on being at Sakuracon this afternoon, be sure to come to the "Tsubomi Dojo" presentation at 4pm. You'll get to see the dojo's resident black belts do formal demonstrations of various Muso Shinden Ryu Iaido forms. Plus, you'll get to watch me get killed off onstage! To be fair, Thomas is only going to kill me after I try to draw my sword against him twice. I never did know when to leave well enough alone...

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Long Island, day 2
They have sunlight here! Pale blue skies, cold wind, and sunlight! I'm a touch jealous.

New Yorkers seem to be natural born storytellers. The accent only helps matters.

The Yankees really are a religion out here. And it doesn't matter what coast you're on, it's always considered acceptable to harsh on the Mariners.

Long Island-style Italian food, served family style, is quite possibly the most perfect food for going out to dinner with your boss' boss, your boss' peers, and a bunch of architects. Also, alcohol seems to help fight jetlag - perhaps by dulling the part of the brain that thinks it knows what time it is.

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Coast to Coast
I'm in Long Island, NY. Thank heavens for GPS devices; I got lost three times trying to navigate JFK Airport's maze of permiter roads last night. Dunno how I would have found my way to the hotel without one. New York drivers are insane; they're always in a hurry and they're always in the wrong lane. But at least the bagels really *are* better here.

When I woke up this morning, there was a dead-tree copy of the local paper waiting outside my room. The "local paper" being the New York Times. My jetlag-addled brain thinks this is hi-larious.

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Perfect Saturday
Ye Gawds, it feels like forever since the last one.

Slept late, did some housecleaning, ate huevos rancheros with green sauce. Went to iaido, ran through the first jo kata something like twenty times in a row, nonstop (it ends right where it begins, so you can just keep on going), and then some slightly bleary sword kata practice. Rushed home, then to Angyl's, then back home again, doing prep-work for the rest of the day, after which Angyl and I had a leisurely dinner at Shiki Sushi (which was in unusually fine form, even by its usual standards). Renewed my season tickets to the opera, and then saw this season's second-to-last production, a pair of one-acts. Bluebeard’s Castle was a showstopper, one I’ll gladly seek out again. (Best. Lighting. EVAR.) Erwartung was nasty, brutish, and mercifully short, but I enjoyed it far more than I expected to, thanks to the imaginative staging. Then home again, with just enough snowfall to be confusing, and not enough to actually cause traffic peril. Took Png on a brisk late-nite trot to tire him out, which was only marginally successful, but I wouldn't discover that until well after midnight which means that it's a ding against Sunday, not Saturday.

A shout-out to my awesome friends who crashed my house and took care of Png so that Angyl and I could have our first real date night in quite a long time. They reschedule the start time of Saturday Exalted so I can make it to Iai, then they cancel it altogether because of events like this. And then they have the gall to say they're just happy to help out.

I love you guys.

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Looking for puppah-sitter
Is anyone interested in making a few bucks puppy-sitting for a few hours on Saturday night? It's an opera night for Angyl and myself, but our usual puppah-sitter is out of town.

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Level Up!
Last night I undertook the Tsubomi Seishin Kan Iaido Kai nikkyu test, along with fellow student John Morrow. Happily, we both passed.

The content of the test was straightforward; formal opening etiquette, two All-Japan Iai kata (ipponme mae and ropponme morote zuki), formal closing etiquette. Perhaps three minutes, tops. What's more interesting to me than the content is the context.

Right in front of me, there's sensei, and then there's the judges - Max, (who's nine years my junior and a third-degree black belt, and who helped me prepare for the test), James (third-degree, who just finished remodeling his house, and who's on the hook to help me prepare for the next test), Wendy (sensei's endlessly cheerful wife, third degree), and Cyd (Max's mom, who hopes to test for second-degree in Japan this summer.) They're all seated behind a big table, watching my every move, with intensely serious looks on their faces.

Behind me, there's John, and he's tremendously nervous. He's a fastidious older fellow, English, I think; a biotech scientist by occupation. Nikkyu is the first Iaido rank that the Tsubomi Dojo tests for, but John is actually a sankyu from his studies at a previous dojo. He's frowning at himself; I know he's worried about old habits from the previous dojo, and what impact they might have on his performance. He goes second, because candidates usually test from youngest to oldest.

To my left are the other mudansha - Thomas (who hopes to test for shodan in Japan this summer, and whose sword should arrive stateside real soon, in the same shipment as my new blade) and another John (who I usually give a ride home after class) and Stephanie (who is a practitioner of Tea Ceremony and who wears a brilliant red obi that sets her apart from the rest of the dojo like a robin in a flock of blackbirds) and Cody and Joey, two newcomers who are taking the class through Northshore Community College; they're in sweatpants and t-shirts, not being formal dojo members. I hope they don't mind that what would have been another lesson night is instead occupied by testing.

To the right, and behind me, are some very senior folks from the Aikido class who are hanging out by the door, watching. Further right, just outside my peripheral vision, there's David and Lukas; Angyl and Andy are on the floor in front of them with pocket videocams. I'm really happy that they could all make it to watch; as much as I've talked about or written about my iai training since October, it always feels a bit like "this strange thing I do when no-one's looking". Well, they're looking now. I'm standing in the middle, the only one dressed in blue; I'm still wearing my keikogi and hakama left over from my Kendo days in college. I spent the evening before sewing a dojo patch onto the jacket. It occurs to me that it's the first time that I've ever sewn anything, quite possibly ever. Is this what they mean when they say that martial arts builds valuable life skills?

Sensei bellows "HAJIME!", and the test is on. My body was nervous, at a purely physiological level. I could feel my hand trembling, and my body was clearly flooded with adrenaline and other stress-response chemicals. At the same time, my mind was utterly, utterly relaxed. I was watching myself do iai, as if from a distance, and thinking to myself "Okay, I've done the techniques better in practice; this isn't my best. But wow! Look at me, I'm all alone in the center of the room, with a sword, and everyone is looking at me, and I'm not screwing it up! This is awesome!" Yes, I'm a drama queen.

And in the midst of all this, I did my kata. I really don't know how. My body was freaked out and my mind was free-floating, and some other part of me performed the waza. I can't recall another three minutes of my life where I stood in front of so many people - friends from inside and outside the dojo - and put myself ruthlessly, totally, honestly on display. I enjoyed it tremendously.

In fact, the only real scare during the whole test was at the conclusion of the first kata, before the start of the second. My entire body just locked up. I took a few breaths, which didn't do much, and then somehow overrode my leaden arms and legs through sheer force of will. I know what fear and stress are like. But the body being afraid while the mind is calm? That's new.

Then John tested; although he was visibly nervous, he had some stylistic touches that I really admire, and I want to figure out how to incorporate into my own practice. And then sensei speaks to the assembled students and visitors alike, explaining the how and why of the just-concluded tests, and how they fit into the overall preparation process for going to Japan to test for shodan. After letting us sweat a moment through the preamble, it's announced that we both passed. Huzzah! We receive our certificates, and after a round of applause from our fellows, that left a few minutes for shinai practice before we all went for pizza and beer.

I paired up with John again, and we did a variation of the Kendo exercise "kirigaeshi", where one person does a right, left, and right diagonal cuts against the other, who parries; the defender then turns the tables on the attacker and pushes them right back to the start by controlling the center and pushing forward. Lather, rinse, repeat. I must admit, I played a little psychological warfare against the still-nervous John when it was my turn to defend-and-counter; the loudest kiai in the room and a strong push forward had him scurrying across backward at speed. Sensei eventually stopped by and showed me the, erm, error of my ways, with zero effort at all. The best I could do when he blocked one of my strikes was to realize how utterly I had lost the center line, and take a careful step backward out of range. And that was only when he was feeling charitable enough to let me make that decision, instead of just stepping forward and taking out my wrist. I understand his point, that swordsmanship is far more important than a raw display of strength or spirit. And yet, and yet, I really liked reveling in being able to channel a degree of strength and spirit that I just didn't have available to me four months ago when I started.

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Hey Lukas...
...this one's for you: Scott Pilgrim gets a writeup in the New York Times

Now I just need to find a time to get down to the U-District to pick up a copy of Volume 5...

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Bulk update: 50DoD: Days 5-11
Days 5-7 fell during the dark days of January, which is invariably the most emotionally difficult time of year for me. I've got reams of notes about those sessions, and a handful of nearly-complete journal writeups that will never get posted. Doesn't really matter; the techniques will be the same a month or a year from now as they are today. Everything I heard from sensei will come back again and again even as I improve.

Day 8 got caught up in the inevitable late-January crisis, an annual tradition for me where something bad happens and my body unleashes all the stress and tension that it has been holding in since the weather first started getting dark back in October. This year's crisis involved a miserable night with Png, very little sleep, lots of barking and yelling, and an eventual rescue by Angyl. As January crises go, this was pretty small. But any morning where your first thought is "I want to lash out at the puppy", a useful second thought might be "I shouldn't be handling a sword today." So Day 8 was the last casualty of winter.

We're both doing much better now, thankfully.

Day 9 felt qualitatively different than its predecessors; January Meltdown always leaves me feeling relaxed and calm and open to new possibilities. I could practically feel the new muscle memories form as I tried to incorporate all of the suggestions and tips and admonishments of the last few weeks all at once.

Day 10 began with a really brutal drill where you take long, low strides while cutting, without letting your head or hips change elevation. It's hell on your legs, and two days later I'm still sore. But the soreness didn't prevent me from practicing the techniques, nor was I limping afterwards. Way back, I predicted that by the time I could do the first kata tolerably, my legs and lower back would be in terrific shape. Yes, yes they are. My legs feel like they belong to a different person. It's like someone tool my lanky, skinny, desk-bound geek legs, and replaced them with body parts taken from an alternate-universe version of me. I no longer dread seated waza. Crouching waza, that's a whole different story. With sensei's encouragement, I'm going to start doing kata number four from a standing position instead of seated; the initial rising action, before the pommel-strike, causes my left knee to make a horrible popping sound every time, and it's just not worth risking injury. Thankfully, there's only one crouching technique in the entire All-Japan set.

Day 11 was another private lesson, this one two weeks after the last. Two weeks is a magic interval right now: each day, I can't say I feel like I'm doing better than I did last week - but I definitely feel like I'm doing better than two weeks ago. I'm very, very happy about this - two weeks is not long at all to achieve noticeable improvement! I keep having to remind myself of the stakes - Assuming I don't miss a single session - not a safe assumption - I have only thirty-eight practices left before the make-or-break qualifying tests for going to Japan. Sensei said last year that I could do it, and I've been taking him on faith as I give it my best effort. But now I'm starting to actually believe him.

Also - mad props to graypawn for the awesomely appropriate custom icon - the first of two new swords I'm getting this year. The other one is coming in the next week or two...

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Thankful it wasn't me.
1400 co-workers got laid off today. No-one I work with now, but possibly including some folks I worked with in the past. There were various and sundry other disasters at work, of a technical nature. And somehow I ended up having a really good workday, got a lot done, helped a bunch of people, had some surprising insights about the next year's technical challenges, and I feel like I've hit a good, sustainable professional pace. No survivor's guilt for me, just a little bit of dissonance. I hope that the folks who lost their jobs can find their way through the fog and malaise of the current economy and find a place where they can thrive.

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Go figure.
Vampire Weekend makes Png hyper. I think it's the kickdrum that sets him on edge. Whatever the cause, it's pretty good "chase puppah around the haus" music.

Now, he's growling at his own reflection in the bedroom window.

Weirdo.

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50DoD: Day 4
One of the dojo's occasional aiki-ken days. Basic basic footwork, posture, and principles about holding the center lines. Some exercises that strike me as the bokken-vs-bokken equivalents of some basic western fencing drills I remember from college. Some other partner drills that are cousins to some of the Kendo Kata.

Halfway through, we were doing super-basic stuff; raise-sword, right-foot-forward, left foot-forward-and-cut. When you hit the wall of the gym, turn around and try again. Then go faster. And faster. And faster. Soon enough, my arms are getting tired from lifting and cutting over and over. And then a drill we did two months ago, a basic aikido ki exercise, clicked. I could raise the sword by yanking it up with my shoulders and upper arms, which is tiring - or I could do the same thing with my hips and fingers. When stepping forward, let the momentum carry into my arms, and gently squeeze the pinky fingers (see also: tenouchi), and watch as arms, hands, and sword shoot up into position with practically no muscle effort exerted. Suddenly each up-down required a third as much effort as before. A third! So even though I was tired, the drill suddenly got easier to do.

I distinctly recall seeing Buddha standing there, pointing and laughing, and saying "Your sensei taught you that months ago! Now don't you feel silly for wasting so much effort in the meantime?"

When I got home, I was still in my keikogi and hakama (Thursday classes end right as the Shoreline rec center is closing up for the night, so I drive home wearing my smelly uniform), so I decided to practice the first Iai kata in the open space in the upstairs bedroom. There's just enough room for the first (kneeling) kata, and when the lights are on, the windows that look out over Ballard act as full-length mirrors, great for watching myself and self-correcting. So, yeah, I'm tired and a bit sore, but still hopped up on endorphins from class, and I'm running through Ipponme Mae five or six times.

And in the process I suddenly figured out… well… strictly speaking, I "figured out" that if I "do what sensei told me to do", "magic" happens. Profound.

I'd noticed that pinching the spine of the blade on the draw, as instructed, makes the action much smoother. I now realize the reason why is that this prevents me from trying to grip the saya with my thumb and index finger, like I normally do. Instead, it makes me unconsciously grip the saya with my left pinky. That's right, it seems you grip the saya with the same principles as gripping the sword. So when time comes for the draw, I have all the leverage and control I need for sayabiki It's that damn tenouchi principle all over again, and suddenly my sword is singing as it leaps from the saya for the horizontal cut. Swoosh. Swoosh. Again, and again, and again. And resheathing was easier too. I didn't know whether to laugh or cry, I think I did a little of both.

For his part, Buddha was pointing and laughing. Again. Still.

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50DoD:Day 3
Private lesson, covering the first three kata with lots of specific technical pointers.

( Tonight"s notesCollapse )

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