Didn’t want to say anything until I’d proven to myself I could do it. So given what my car is (’96 Chevy Blazer), I’m not exactly high up on the green list. I try to switch off with my parents’ old ‘94 Toyota Previa as much as I can (4-cyl, gets 23 mpg vs. my 19 mpg). My latest microvictory has been to retrain my driving style. Being impatient and high-strung, I tend to carry it over into my driving. Only when I’m agitated, though. My car redlines at 5500 rpm, matches 18-wheelers at 1500 rpm, and seems to be most efficient between 1700-2100 rpm. It’s really easy to go to 2500 rpm, though.
So in an effort to moderate my excesses, all throughout this past finals period, I managed to keep it to 2100 rpm or under, except for a couple times one day when I was looking to beat some lights and make it to a meeting on time. I used to play the coasting game all the time when I first started driving, and I’ve started it up again.
Late at night, I can often coast for an entire block or two and time several of the lights on Richmond or Westpark. They have a couple intersections (notably Briarpark) that are completely retarded and out of sync, but everything else lets me get through at +/- 10 mph of the speed limit. Voss isn’t so kind — there’s a light where I have to either aggressively reach 45 mph (10 mph over), or more sedately hit 50 mph. And on the downside, I have to go about 22 mph to time it on the green light (which causes a different kind of driving hazard given other Houston drivers).
But who cares about all that shite? Those who know probably want to hear about commencement. Back when I finished undergrad, I promised myself I’d work for several years, figure out what I wanted to do, then get an MBA. My uncles and some other people all warned me that it’s easy to get distracted in those working years with a significant other, a house, marriage, kids, and etc. I told them and my parents at the time that I do what I say I’ll do. The universal response I got was, “Yeah, sure. (We’ll believe it when we see it.)”
Well, sometimes we experience project setbacks, the timetable gets pushed back, etc. I started getting a clue only this past year and a half, but I’m done now. Took 3.5 yrs and some time off, but it got done — and done right. I learned things during the course of things that changed what I had initially planned. But market research and sustainable / green business practices are both things that I want to remain involved with and learn more about, going forward in life.
The next big step, of course, is to spend 5-7 years building that career track.
[speaking of things I will do, I still have plans to run a playing of the prize, but where / when / how remain TBD.]
Graduation itself was fairly painless — barely an hour from start to finish. Knew a few people, but I’ve never really stuck with anyone other than Brockmeier and Jen, and they graduated a couple years ago.
Welcome Wilson, Sr., the chairman of the board of regents, was pretty fun. He was a much older man — related a story about how he stayed in some Army housing dorms on the site of the current business school, back in ‘47, and it was a good place, except for the latrines being a block away. He acknowledged we’d all be successful, but emphasized that we need to regularly take stock of what’s important, and always remember to pay attention to our families.
The keynote speaker was from Spectra Energy. He was all over the map, hitting business ethics, building the community, constantly improving, helping make the world a better place through socially responsible capitalism, etc. Basically, a capitalist spin on the Wiccan notion of “do what ye will, an’ it harm none.” Which, when you think about it, is a *very* challenging rule to live by. Me, I like that wording better than the Golden Rule — “do unto others as you would have them do unto you” — though the two are definitely related.
Anyway, it’s done, and I think I’m even going to get away with Dean’s List by the skin of my teeth. I had a couple rough weeks in one of my classes, but one of my profs seemed to be hinting tonight that one of the other guys and I (who thought that we two would be feeling the B or C stick on our hides) had done a fine job. He usually shoots pretty straight, so I don’t think it was just to spare our feelings on this particular night.
Speaking of which, my parents and sisters got their shot at pictures, then we left. I skipped out on the reception in favor of working out at Rice. I had been pretty morose going into commencement, but a couple hours of light working out cleared things up. Didn’t want to push too hard, b/c I’ll be meeting the PK crew at Tranquility Park tomorrow after I do an observation for Kaplan.
Otherwise, late dinner from the fridge, a little reading, and the usual evening at home. Just the way it should be. :)
On Saturday afternoon, we gradually collected at Rice’s front sally port. Directions (mine) were apparently a little difficult, but everyone interested managed to get there. Ultimately, we had 9 people participating. The cool / warm afternoon was gorgeously clear, with that special teatime lighting — golden on green grass, clear air, long and sharply slanting rays of sunlight.
We stretched for a good 20 minutes or so, using a mixture of methods from running, kung fu, theater, and yoga. From an early point, we established a comfortable peer dynamic, with knowledgeable people chiming in and easily trading in and out of the practice leader role.
Then we went into shoulder rolls, both forward and backward. The quad is a great place to do it — with large, open grassy spaces. We went back and forth along one of the four main stretches. I think we easily averaged 80-100 rolls. unggoy was a huge help here — he made reference to Dr. Masaaki Hatsumi, describing the roll position as a comfortably bouncing ball. Personally, I started to learn how to bring my knees in to my chest. This allowed me to more safely land on my feet and flow up / forward into a run (you don’t want to land with your rear leg flat in a typical martial art fashion, b/c from 6+ feet up, the extra shock of the landing can potentially break / injure the ankle if you fail to land on at least the edge of the foot).
I also found that throwing oneself into a nonstop series of rolls either forward or backward results in entertainingly incapacitating doses of dizziness after about 5-8 repetitions.
unggoy took the lead a lot, from this point on, but Aardvark also contributed a lot. I just occasionally prodded people to keep them in constant motion, which didn’t take much effort. People were really good about pausing only to catch their breath, drink water, or wait their turn to vault whatever the current obstacle(s) were.
And that’s something I really appreciate about the Texas parkour community I’ve encountered. Like Johnny Depp says, “Are you a Mexi-*can*, or a Mexi-*can’t*?”
unggoy was recuperating from a sprained ankle, while Aardvark was still nursing an incompletely recovered sprained wrist. In both cases, they carefully and intelligently worked with and around their injuries as much as they could. I joked that Aardvark was going to end up like a male crab, with an overdeveloped right arm from all the one-sided vaults.
They didn’t allow one marginally injured part to sideline them completely. Sort of a zero-tolerance attitude toward excuses. It’s so easy to say, “Oh, my left wrist is killing me. I guess I’ll stay home and read a book.” But as Blane suggests, there is always a way to practice some aspect of PK (or any other activity) — even something as simple as walking can exercise mental and physical aspects of planning out efficiency and responsiveness. So I’m sure unggoy and Aardvark would have found a way to safely practice, even if they’d had two broken limbs.
But at the same time, they were both very careful to only do as much as they felt they could handle. Traceurs understand better than most people that pain is the body’s way of saying, “Stop that, you dumb sonofabitch.” But at the same time, pushing to the limit (and not beyond) is good, because exercise for hale or healing body parts is really just putting near-maximum-tolerance levels of stress on them. Doing so expands those limits over time. Exceeding those limits *will* irrevocably damage your body and diminish the capacity for stress in the long run. Intelligent athletes understand that, and it seems that these traceurs have an uncommonly good grasp of the concept, for having only been at it for 3-15 months.
The contradiction is so simple yet fascinating:
The more you work out, the more fit and able yet damaged you become. For a while, throughout most of an adult lifetime, the upside outraces the downside. But eventually, the body’s natural and exercise-induced rate of decline accelerates past the ability to increase at first, then past even that of merely maintaining fitness. And sometimes (not always!) working an injured part in exactly the same way that caused injury, albeit in a controlled and metered fashion, is exactly what’s needed to preserve and promote flexibility and strength — first recovering, then protecting against further injury.
unggoy then showed us how to do basic monkey and speed vaults on a low bench. After a while, we moved to the Will Rice quad, where we got to use the benches, low walls, and picnic table for higher or longer jumps / vaults. Along the way to WRC, we threw in some simple hops, inverted press-ups, and whatever else seemed to fit the objects found along the way.
unggoy and Chester had a couple goes at diving kong vaults (or saut de chat) over the length of the picnic table. Really impressive. The terminology is a bit awkward, since monkeys and kongs are both types of saut de chat vaults, but in English usage, the saut de chat has become confused / conflated with the saut de bras.
Will and unggoy also scrambled up onto the WRC rooftops and down again, for the heck of it.
All in all, I think I must have performed at least 50 jumps and vaults of various kinds all afternoon. My glutes and a whole bunch of other muscles that I can’t quite identify (mostly inside and underside thigh) are still really sore this morning.
In the end, five of us finished up at Sid Richardson’s ramp for people with handicaps (I think that’s the current term en vogue). It has 2.5 switchbacks and awesome metal rails plus wooden rails on both sides. Several of us crabwalked in prone and supine positions up and down the rails.
unggoy and Chester tried a couple of different approaches to flow. We were all pretty beat by then. As twilight fell, we ended practice and walked over to the RMC (student center) to hit the restrooms and water fountains.
Patrick and unggoy talked a little bit about applications of parkour in evading pursuit and its role in a martial art / self-defense context. Since parkour is still new to me and initially had no martial connotations as I discovered it, it feels peculiar to talk about our harmless leaps and vaults in such a way. But it’s really no stranger than talking about using many martial art techniques in vanishingly unlikely circumstances. I doubt I will ever have the chance to use White Ape Offers Fruit in either its purported function as a headlock or my hypothesized root function as a neck break. And I’d like to keep it that way.
We all had a blast, and we plan to meet again this coming Saturday at Tranquility Park downtown (opposite the Hobby Performing Arts Center). Sugarland and Spring are potentially in the pipeline.
If you want to end on a good note, preserve the positive vibe, stop here. If you want to know my latest frame of mind (which is both good and grim), well, you’ve been warned.
Not sure where else to put this latest iteration of my recent soapbox on my personal unfitness:
So I was recently told at a dinner that a friend of mine looked a lot better ever since he “filled out” — that he used to be too skinny. Me, I estimate that he’s probably 15 lbs heavier than me (mostly not muscle), and I know I’m 60th percentile BMI. I’ve gotten similar comments as well. Such a comment coming from someone considerably heavier than either my friend or me could be construed as an attempt to paint over a personal insecurity.
What I cynically suspect such people are really saying is, “He looks good b/c he’s skinnier than me, but I feel better now that he’s not as lean as he used to be.” That sliding scale rationalization is very insidious — by those lights, an unfit 250-lb man could be favorably regarded from an unfit 325-lb man’s POV. It’s true, but it’s utterly relative and fails to acknowledge that both people would probably be healthier, happier, and marginally richer if they were 200 lbs. Bear in mind the incident I relate above was at a non-SCA gathering — I am not SCA-bashing. But Tristan and I do get it a fair bit at SCA practices as well. He’s made it clear that he’s not as lean as he’d like to be. Ditto for me.
I know this sounds brutal. I am not in any way criticizing other people’s weight b/c we are all behaviorally and genetically wired differently. I *am* criticizing the ways in which I suspect we, as an overweight society, are hiding our heads in the sand with such comments. What I *am* saying is that I’m overweight. Some other people are more so. Whether or not they are, my friends are still my friends. It’s good to be happy with who you are, but that does not preclude wanting to significantly improve yourself. And as I often try to emphasize (and somehow it gets lost in all my hectoring), I only expect to drive myself hard. (Though I am not an example of the ideal case. In many meaningful ways, I *am* happy with who I am, and I want to truly and positively change. But I am also fundamentally unhappy in a couple ways, and I tend to project that deep dissatisfaction in superficial ways — like desiring dynamic patterns in my life.)
Since fencing in various WMA styles (and kung fu, and sorta PK) can really use partners, I have been frustrated and have frustrated other people with my agitation for more constant physical activity. So to lessen the social tension and disjunction, I’m finding like-minded people who don’t find my attitude grating and in fact agree and welcome it — specifically for those activities.
Most SCA events and people are not geared for what I want. When I’m in SCA full fig, *I* am not geared for what I want. After all, who wants to put some hardcore wear and tear on an attractive and historically accurate wardrobe? Not me.
I’ve danced around this idea before, but I hadn’t fully formed the thought or explicitly said it, so: I am very sorry that I’ve ever upset or annoyed others with my attitudes. I’ve only occasionally been called on it, but I can tell I sometimes (often?) offend people. Maybe it’s my overdeveloped sense of guilt, but I hope the relevant (and sometimes overweight) parts of the world accept my apology, and that we can more merrily continue upon our course henceforth. :D We can only hope I’ll become pleasant company in social circles once again.
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.
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.
The triangle’s still a little leaden, but I can’t complain, considering we were fo’c’sle and bowsprit below water just two weeks ago.
I admit I haven’t been great with my group, but it’s gone both ways. Even back when I was on top of things earlier in the semester, I’d be putting out ideas that kept getting shot down. Obviously, I was biased in thinking that they were straightforward and the correct course of action… But dammit, if you’re gonna put holes in my suggestions, then let’s see you put some of your own up in the shooting gallery.
Oh, whatever. I had this long diatribe about people who tell you to do one thing, then ream you out for not doing another.
I don’t know if any of my work in the past two weeks hasn’t been totally redone.
So I stopped by Rice and worked my way around campus pretty thoroughly for about 2.5 hrs. My grips are so sore I can barely hold a glass to drink right now. And my quads and whatever’s on the insides of the thighs are all wobbly. Mmm. :)
And I still can’t imagine myself jumping any railings. I’ve tested the approaches to a couple tables and walls and such, and … whoo-ee. :) I don’t need to try it to know I won’t clear it. Gonna be a couple more months’ crazy workouts before I’ll try killing myself by concrete faceplant.
And by midnight, most things were right with the world again. It was a damp, cool night. Gorgeous for working out. Also a bit ripe for melancholy as well, but one manages.
Visibility was down to about 300 feet on the way home, due to fog. All the world was rubbed out, swallowed up by the haze. The powerful, amber glow of Houston’s excessive streetlights seemed muted for once, and quickly faded to black overhead.
Very tranquil. Good for introspection.
<Club!>
Oh, wait. That’s seals.
The SCA isn’t dead, it’s just resting.
This is SSG / SCA / WMA:
http://www.scholasaintgeorge.org/coppermine/displayimage.php?album=random&cat=0&pos=-123
An SCA practice that ended up being all SSG? :D
Scott’s a chiv fighter with a real commitment to SSG. Awesome guy. Kinda wicked with I.33, too.
He (and others) are proof that not only can the SCA merge with WMA, but that the two together can make magic (like love bunnies in a nylon city).
[Stop reading if you don’t give a crap or are too cynical to tolerate my glass-is-half-full POV.]
Note that I am *not* talking about supplanting anyone with anything else.
I’ve recently added 6 new members to my WMA group’s roster. Added time spent beyond the normally allotted 3-4 hrs / wk of WMA was… 30-45 mins / wk? Initially, I just posted a few flyers in the student centers at UH and Rice. The big winner was walking through campus with a waster on my shoulder. That one gets a lot of interest and questions.
And when people asked me questions, I treated it seriously but briefly. Get the 10-second intro down, then deliver a tight 30-60 second overview if they continue indicating interest. *Back* *off* if the eyes start glazing or attention wanders. Keep it light and positive.
And *then* start getting into the 10-min, 60-min, 7-year discussions. :)
Make sure to portray the hobby as a serious pursuit, backed up by research and diligent study, with a well-established network and community.
Which is what the SCA is, after all. Too often, I hear members of the us joke about the game we play, or how it’s a good opportunity to wear silly costumes and hit each other with sticks and swords. I don’t do that around new prospectives. They can’t tell how serious our self-deprecating jokes are.
I make the same jokes at times, so I’m not suggesting we stop being relaxed and fun. But it’s all about first impressions in those first 5-10 mins. Within 30 mins of meeting Will and Charles, I was ribbing them about smacking wooden heads with wooden implements. But in the first 5 mins, I used professional shock and awe on Jesse Chan, which is what got him to introduce me within 10 hrs by e-mail to Will and Charles. And I impressed upon W & C the awareness of a deep and thorough history / structure in the first 10 mins.
Then I left the big, weighty picture alone and I spent my usual 90 min workout time showing them 3 basic ways to hold and attack with a sword. I managed to keep us moving and swinging at least 2/3 of the time. At our second practice Tuesday night at 10 p.m. (I get out of job training at 9 p.m.), the 4 students spent easily 80% of our time swinging in drills. I was odd man out, so had to spend most of my time coaching instead. But we’ll get to where they’re sufficiently grounded to drill with me as peers on an increasingly expanded repertoire of techniques. I’m patient.
Charles (another Charles) and Donna have also been very interested, and Donna has actually repeatedly asked me for notes, pics, and anything else she can get.
So where’s the SCA tie-in? Non-Rice Charles is *made* for the SCA. He and Donna are ripe for the pageantry, the costumery (meant from a non-SCA POV, not to be derogatory), and the immersion of it. They’re constantly letting slip little “wouldn’t it be cool if” comments that would be fulfilled in the SCA.
So with them and the Rice folks, I’m pushing the SCA as a good destination once they’ve gotten their sea legs. Within a few months, they’ll know enough to not get swamped by the barrage of well-intentioned but often contradictory (and sometimes flat-out bad) advice that ended up driving me *away* from the SCA for 2 years, back in 2002.
Plus, those couple months will give me time to reinforce their inclinations to *do* and *drill* rather than to yak.
I can’t stop the yakking (b/c I enjoy it, and it’s a good thing after all, in small doses), but I can help to keep it under control. Whacking and smacking are what ultimately build the fencing skills, and seeing real personal growth is what will keep the valuable ones coming back. Yakking shares experience and stories, builds cameraderie, and is just fun, but that can be done during water breaks and afterwards at the local late night diner.
If this sounds like a typical martial arts school environment, should we be surprised? No, b/c I think the wide-eyed “Oh, I get it!” thrill is much more valuable than any long-winded stories (especially mine!). Will’s pretty level-headed (for a crane-climbing, sword-swinging, building-jumping traceur / rock-climber), and I 2x-checked with him afterwards — he said things never got long-winded, and practice was always in action.
And when Will and the two Charleses have asked about competitions and places to take this show on the road, I’ve briefly and enthusiastically driven home the best points of chiv, rapier, and C&T fighting — the large community, the frequency of events, the chance to mix it up constantly with lots of different people. Rules issues like no grappling, no punching, and etc. would just kill the excitement right now. They can learn to deal with that in a few months. Besides, it’s not like I’m allowing them to do any of that anyway.
And by the time they *can* do the zhogo stretto / Handarbeit stuff, they’ll also know how to achieve SCA-legal results with or without it. We don’t *have* to break the SCA rules of play to use it.
I *am* a little newly excited at the past few weeks’ turnout. But I see now that I am more right than I ever realized. We don’t need complicated or bothersome demos. We don’t need to make it difficult work. We just need to raise our exposure and make sure it’s positive and professional.
So, without going out of my way unduly, I will continue to responsibly wander in public with my gear. (Originally, I was headed to do some solo drills and practice in a quiet courtyard on campus, which I still do every other week or so.)
Oh, an important consideration:
Yesterday afternoon, while waiting to get into the machine shop, I was doing some slow and deliberate sequences with my aluminum waster on campus. After about ten minutes, an armed security guard came up to me. He asked to see the weapon, and I politely handed it over, saying very briefly that it was for stage combat (unspoken: and many other things! Muahahahaha!).
He immediately said, “Oh, it’s a prop. It’s not sharp.”
Using verbal fuhlen / sentimento di ferro, I matched my tone, tried to identify his concern, agreed with him and expanded just a hair, “Yes, that’s right. I’m the fight choreographer for the Wiess spring musical.”
He said, “That’s OK, then. I just wanted to make sure.” (that it was safe? That I wasn’t a loose cannon? That I had some legit reason to be on campus? Well, semi-legit anyway.)
People just want reassurance, is all.
If he’d been a bit more cagey, like the HPD cop at Hermann Park over Labor Day, I’d have politely agreed to stop swinging it around, emphasized that I was waiting to work with Will in the machine shop (citing the shop building’s name and etc. to let him know I had an insider student’s understanding of campus) to cut out our needfuls for the Wiess play, and reassured him I would discretely take the whole lot home.
And I suspect the HPD cop wouldn’t have batted an eye at us if we’d stuck to deliberate and slow technique drills. We’d been doing that all afternoon and were only stopped and lightly interrogated when Christian, Adam, and I started our round robin rapier free fencing. It was too dark to continue (we’d been thinking about stopping), but if we’d kept going, I would’ve wanted us to switch back to the more passable fare of slow drill.
And it’s another 20 years of people like me slowly rocking the boat in considerate and positive ways, that’ll eventually familiarize mainstream culture enough that one day they’ll see gambesons, doublets, rapiers, and longswords as normal martial arts gear.
It was only thirty years ago that people thought white pajamas were pretty weird.
You have to figure that someone whose first business e-mail to you refers to you as “cowboy” and himself as “snake” is a little flamboyant and laid back.
Sure enough, my client interview for the Project That Won’t End was pretty cool. Basically, the CIO and I should have gotten together and hammered things out 3 weeks ago. That’d have been nice. Then again, 3 weeks ago, we didn’t have what we have now. He and our team had already independently worked out almost all of the same conclusions. In fact, he took us further than we’ve gone, on a few points.
So as we’ve privately speculated, and he has now confirmed, we are effectively playing at pros from Dovers. He wants us to make our boldest pie-in-the-sky recommendations, and sell the client’s upper management on the deal. Then when they look at him and ask, “Can we do this?”, he’ll just sit there wearing a big, shit-eating grin. He admitted he wants to use us to prod upper management into making some bold moves. His IT boys have been just waiting for the word “go.”
If all self-professed redneck nerds are as easy to get along with as him, then the world is indeed a wonderful place.
And to further sweeten the deal today, both my Rice guys really came through for me, based on a mere week’s acquaintance.
Will arranged for some excellent shop time — he cut out 11 aluminum sword blanks on a heavy-duty bandsaw in Ryon Lab, in 25 minutes. That’s, I don’t know, probably 20% the time it would have taken me with what I have. And with cuts straight as an arrow, too.
Charles has taken to the longsword material like a Russian to vodka. He brought two new people, who both seemed to really dig it. Obviously, the 3-month milestone still looms far ahead, but for now, things are looking up.
Job training at Kaplan is proceeding apace. One more session, some paperwork and etc. to handle, one class observation, and then I should be starting forthwith. Saturday classes are not in short supply, so I think I’m set even if I get hired for a for-real position sooner than I expect.
After the final client presentation on 12/6, resources currently allocated to the Hell Project will be retasked to career planning / real job hunting.
And after Kaplan training ends, I’ll be able to go back to Tuesday UH practices. Woot.
When the hell will I find the 66 hours to finish up the 11 aluminum wasters? Uh.. Yeah. I don’t know. With higher priority issues on the table, it’ll probably be 3-4 months before I get through them all. Got some gauntlets and a helm to wrap up, first, anyway.
Oh, an interesting sidenote: The shop supervisor observed that 7075 is government-grade aircraft aluminum. He figured that 6061 would have been plenty good, and for easily half the price. But hey, the 7075 will rock out for a long time to come — if it’s good enough for the F-23, it’s good enough for us. :) So Shea and soon-to-be Conner have high-end aluminum waster blades, even if the hilts are despicably rough.
So I’ve rolled a couple critical results in the past month, apparently. Some of the first items mentioned here may have gone into another entry somewhere, but I got caught up in some things around the beginning of Nov, and can’t keep straight what I did or didn’t do for a couple weeks around then.
I’ve been doing evening workouts on campus at UH and Rice, 1-3 times a week about 10 - midnight at best. Sometimes just an hour, but that’s better than 0 hours. Just b/c my job trainings have been Tuesdays 6-10 and classes / team meetings in the same timeframe doesn’t mean I should let them stop me from exercising, y’know?
Occasionally, I’ll take my longsword with me for some solo drills and to work through the coming week’s lessons. But 2 out of 3 times, I just want to run, push, pull, lift, or climb something.
So 2008’s coming up, and with it, Hello, Hamlet — the 30-year Wiess musical tradition. I was in the ‘96 show (playing a pompous ass), saw the 2000 show, and choreographed the fight in the 2004 show. So I was thinking it’d be cool to find a way to maybe get involved with the ‘08 show. Now that I have a better grasp of WMA, I wanted to work in some cooler moves, show people a more exciting and realistic fight. So I idly blocked out some sequence snippets based on what I could remember of the final scene’s fight song, which spoofs “Shall We Dance?”
So back around Halloween, I was headed to my usual courtyard spot. I detoured through the RMC (student center) to make sure my WMA flyer hadn’t been covered up by some ad for STD testing or Kaplan testing. :)
Some girl spotted me and called out, “He’s got a sword! Cool!” I ended up talking to her and two other guys for about 15 mins about that, Brazil’s zero-emissions CO2 output (achieved through planting boatloads of sugarcane; whether it does good, I’m not the one to ask), etc. Then she randomly invited me to a post-Halloween party at her house, and asked me to submit an article to a student magazine she’s editing.
I figured, what the heck, right? Sure.
So the party night rolls around, and I show up in full fig, with breastplate, cabasset, etc. I already know 3 of the people there, so things are cool. As soon as I walk in the door, though, this girl points at me and says, “I need to talk to you!”
I don’t know her from Eve (or Adam). Even more bemusingly, another girl, this one Asian, proceeds to rake me over some coals — asking things like, “Who are you? Why are you here? What martial art did you say you study?” I’m like, I just *got* here, how can I already be in trouble?
So I talk with Rachel and her friends a bit. It turns out the Asian girl is one of Rachel’s housemates. The girl who needed to talk to me is another housemate, Caitlin. And when Caitlin finishes bringing out refreshments, she tells me that she’s the director for Hello, Hamlet.
Aha. The picture grows clearer.
So she said that Rice now has a theater dept, and the quality of productions has really improved in the past few years. She wants to make sure that this production of Hello, Hamlet keeps up with the times. She said she really liked the way the action synced up with the music in the ‘04 show, and has been looking for a fight choreographer.
Oh, really.
So I told her *I* had done that scene.
How perfect.
She also said that she wanted to raise the bar a little on the fight scene — make it grittier and more engaging, more realistic.
Is that so?
I replied that I’d actually already blocked out some partial sequences for fun.
And so we exchanged contact info, said we’d follow up after Thanksgiving, during Dead Week. We’re supposed to meet sometime in the next two weeks, to do a rough walkthrough of my now-completed initial .. whatever you call it. Blocking, scene directions. I’ve never done *real* theater.
It couldn’t have been scripted better.
And just over two weeks ago, I was passing through again, when this guy, Jesse (Chinese-American), asked me about the sword. He must have thought it was pretty cool, b/c he very quickly e-mailed me and introduced me to Will and Charles shortly thereafter. I’ve already written about that previously, so I won’t go into details other than to say that we met up two weeks ago, had a great intro practice, and have not looked back yet.
| November 25, 2007 |
| 1:00 pm | to | 4:00 pm |
Ernesto’s in town for Thanksgiving, and we plan to meet up, fence, etc. He might do a run-through of his KWAR class, or we might poison pigeons in the park. Who knows?
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