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Children of Men"
Truth in fiction? With articles about decreased sperm count in men living in industrialized countries, hormone-laden food affecting our kids' development, and now inadvertent cocktails of every drug ever administered forming from human bodily waste that filters into our water supply... One figures that whatever eventually happens in reality will defy and exceed even the extreme speculation in movies like this one.
Really, really good movie. Nihilistic as hell (until the 'morrow at the end), but very accurate depictions of human reactions under stress.
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I have become lazy. I feel as though everything that needs to be said has been said.
But just as with the 14 archetypal stories, there is an infinitude of ways to express what I believe. And I’m newly reminded of this.
I *am* on a PK kick right now, I’ll freely admit. But just as with ba gua and swordsmanship, capoeira and cooking, I will eventually settle parkour into its proper niche in my life.
I believe in finding depth behind any activity. Karl invited me over for a small dinner party last week. After half the group left, Karl, Xander, and I got deeper into all manner of topics. Xander and I talked about being in the moment of an activity — snowboarding in his case, and fencing in mine. Zenshin and mushin came up, not because I brought them up, but because Xander described that state first and I just put a fancy name to it.
Now Blane Hinckley has mentioned it, in something equally unrelated yet physical. Aardvark, a fellow aspiring traceur, pointed these articles out to me:http://blane-parkour.blogspot.com/2007/11/when-worlds-collide.html
http://blane-parkour.blogspot.com/2007/10/how-often-do-you-train.html
http://blane-parkour.blogspot.com/2007/06/descent.html
And if you’ve read this far (and perhaps even read the very well-written entries linked above) without immediately dismissing this as Dakao’s latest flight of fancy, then you already understand. But I like to hear myself talk. The reader doesn’t have to indulge me; instead, go read Blane’s articles if you haven’t already. His writing style is considerably more refined than mine.
Take out the word “parkour” in the first two articles. Replace them with “crochet”, “wine tasting”, “juggling”, “network administration”, or any other activity for which you have a passion.
The third article is a bit more specialized, but has personal relevancy to my other interests, as well as immediate relevancy to my recent near-miss incident.
These, and other PK articles, are rediscovering and exploring anew the same topics that previous generations of actively engaged people have discovered in the course of living their lives. In order to more fully realize your potential, discover zenshin in everything from moving the mouse cursor to pay your online bills, to presenting an analysis report, to putting the dishes away. It’s the montage of daily village life in The Last Samurai. It’s me closing my car door with a nudge instead of a slam. It’s slipping through a crowd.
In order to preserve your well-being, you must be aware of not only your surroundings at all times, but also of your physical ability to respond. If you cannot or should not run and hide, shoot. If you cannot shoot, fight. If any of these are deficient, reconsider your priorities and goals, and train for them as you see fit.
Training can be as subtle as never putting your hands in your pockets, to keep them free in case of a fall or a fight.
Do you ever maneuver through your house with all the lights off?
When someone bags on you for something entirely true, have you honestly and fully worked to prove them wrong? Then thanked them?
The danger, as with the contemplation of the angel food cake in the total perspective machine, is that you can lose yourself in the leaves of the tree. I see it in myself, and have to remind myself that one of my larger goals is, in fact, to make a difference socially and environmentally (while making funky mad $$$), to use my MBA for something other than a dart target. Otherwise, I’d just end up committing omphaloskepsis (which itself defeats the idea of engaged living). B/c when big things go wrong, it’s very easy to retreat into enjoying or recalling those things that still work for me.
I’ve referred for a few years to an idea I call the Grand Unification Theory of Martial Arts. But even though I first realized it over wine and cheese, I never acknowledged the non-martial art component. It could as easily be called the GUT of art, skill, spiritualism, philosophy, or just plain life. Oh, wait. Someone already beat me to it — Daoism. In a cosmic way, this forms the yin to the yang of the real GUT.
I hadn’t realized it until I tallied up weekly / monthly hours, but I’ve actually kept my workout hours mostly level around 6-7 hrs / wk all semester (with some dips to 2-3 hrs). Ever since I had to give up SCA practices due to class / work training, I subbed in 1-2 hrs every 2-3 weeks for ba gua / kung fu, and now time with the Rice folks for longsword.
My solo workouts only come roughly every 1 - 1.5 weeks — not as much as I’d like, but enough to preserve sanity. Which is funny, b/c Charles L. says in the past three weeks German longsword has become his new preferred form of mental recentering when he’s stressed with classes. Charles B. and Donna also say they were ultra-disappointed they had work commitments this weekend.
It was only this week, once the bulk of my last project was done on Sat, that I’m looking at reaching 10 hrs. A chunk of that has always been pull-ups and other in-place exercises in my room — I crank out a couple when my computer boots up, as 5-minute study breaks, etc.
On Sat morning, I’ll be putting in some hours at the shop. Only enough time to tie up some loose ends for now and clean up, but it’ll get me back in the flow of it. I figure to limit it to 5-6 hrs / wk, and won’t be taking commissions.
On the whole, I’m actually happier that I’ve reallocated time away from SCA practices. Practices are much more active and worthwhile for me. I spend a lot more time moving and swinging. This week, I’m actually pretty severely muscle-sore throughout the upper body. Good thing I’ve got 3 days to recover before this Saturday. So I mentioned 10 hrs — Saturday’s expected workout is what will bring the hours up to 10. I’ve met a couple guys online in the past week at www.texasparkour.com and we plan to meet near Rice at 2 p.m. From there, we’ll hit a neighborhood park between Hazard / Kent at Sunset, do some civil and courteous workouts on campus, hit Hermann Park, or some combo thereof. This first practice is to meet, vet character, and get a sense for skill / fitness levels. I think I personally need to be able to hammer out 50 pull-ups like it ain’t no thang before I can consider even a basic cat leap.
Parkour is one of those activities where you can’t hide your lack of fitness. Looking good means doing it well. Doing it well means being in shape, such that you’re only having to use 20-30% effort for 80% of your moves. If you’re having to scrounge up an exponentially more difficult 97% of your strength resources just to hang on to and kick off a railing, you sure hell aren’t going to get far.
(Not sure of the exact math term here, but I’m postulating that it’s something like twice as hard to put in 30% strength than 20% strength. I’d sure like to read up on the physiology side of it, but don’t know yet where to start reading.)
It’s like we covered in high school Economics — an economy producing goods at 100% of its industrial capacity is actually less efficient than one producing at 75% capacity. The slack capacity allows for the inevitable downtime for reasons like strikes, resource shortages, vendor holdups, equipment that needs maintenance, upgrades, repairs, replacement, etc.
Like Blane says on www.teamtraceur.com, typical training in many athletic disciplines is 4-to-1 fitness conditioning to skill development.
And after being mocked severely by Guy Windsor at WMAW 2006 (our entire class wussed out after 150 solo drill sword cuts), I’m increasingly embracing the notion that this fully applies to swordsmanship. As Guy said, you can’t focus on learning the swordsmanship if you’re fighting your body’s weakness and fatigue after 10 minutes.
Re: longsword WMA… The younger folks I’m training with are *very* good about drilling (as are my long-time practice partners on Sundays, to be fair!). One of them does dance and TKD, another was in football, lacrosse, and wrestling, a third does parkour and rock-climbing. I can start talking, and they’ll just keep on drilling against each other. Or they’ll talk, but they’ll keep doing repetitions. This totally puts the lie to the SCA notion that people don’t want to train (i.e. get decently good) at something before jumping into the fight.
Interactive, competitive exercises that require some creative thinking keeps people’s interest just as well — and they get better at fencing / fighting to boot! Of my many beefs, this is probably at the core of my feelings on the SCA practice culture I know. I hear about the chiv guys and other SCA groups that really work hard. Having been recently humbled by Matteo in rapier techniques, I think there are many good SCA cultural role models to follow.
I can’t wait to bring all my longsword people together. And I’m encouraging them to think about jumping in the SCA pool to further expand their fighting exposure.
Once / if I free up time again, I still want to get back to rapier fencing at least 1-2 times a month, though. Nothing quite like it.
As an aside, I found myself putting on the turn signal to enter a completely empty freeway. Strange how some habits get broken or picked up so readily.
Our consulting project client canceled the meeting (set a month in advance!) due to last-minute commitments. For obvious immediate business reasons, we’re not #1 on their priority list. Knowing doesn’t make it any less awkward, though.
Rescheduling is hell, the team’s going ape. Everyone’s saying, “I can’t make it on XYZ date.” Which rules out all of next week. So I’m focusing just on the presenters’ availability (b/c I caught some hell for alternatives, like repeating Farheen’s request that I sub in for her). Which still nearly rules out all of next week.
Steve *still* hasn’t gotten back to us for several days (understandable, b/c he’s hosting some client from Beijing), so we can only continue to assume that we can’t go past the 14th (that being graduation at 7 p.m.)
For that matter, my !@#$ advisor still hasn’t informed me of whether I am on track to do so or not. I can never reach her. I’ve filled out all the apps and forms I’ve known about. This is why I’ve avoided that woman for 3.5 years, and gone to the other, much more diligent, but alas overloaded, advisor. Unfortunately, she’s officially assigned to me, so … it is what it is. So long as I get that piece of paper and transcript record in the next 6 months, I’ll be fine.
In other news…
First run-through of the fight choreography went really well. Took about an hour, everyone was happy with it. Seems feasible within time / ability constraints. Good room for comedic elements. Director and producer were majorly psyched (bouncing up and down in chairs) for the two climaxes of the fight. So nothing major to change. Just fixing the blocking such that the singing actor (it’s a duet / fight scene) ends up facing audience for his lines.
Cool new link for my job hunting:
http://www.sustainablebusiness.com/jobs/
The Force is strong with this one…
Got a bunch of online training to do for Kaplan today. At least I could do them nude if I so chose, and no one would ever know.
But I shan’t — I’m going to be boring, and intersperse 15-minute workouts between each session. :P
One more edit to the paper / presentation for Thursday. 4 days until I can say to 4/7 of the team, “Sayonara, suckers!”
And we’re doing our Hello, Hamlet fight scene walkthrough tonight. It could blow some socks into orbit, or it might be an unmitigated disaster. Either way, it’ll be a first try and therefore rough. Details at 11.
Actually, no. Details at 1 a.m. since we’re starting at 10.
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