Updates

I've begun training as a senior now, and I'm glad for it. I've rectified at least one issue - the issue of standing straight and not bending over. I tried maintaining it for the length of at least 2 free spars, and my back aches a lot less after training, so I must be doing something right.

I'm also learning more new drills, for which I'm very thankful. Lately, my attacks and defenses seem very much the variations of the same theme - long frontale, yield-to-counter, grab if they come close. Doing 5th drill and 1st drill for the first time opened my eyes to the possibility of strato deflects and pushes, along with fenestra "oh-shit" defenses.

I'm also very thankful for the fact that I'm alive and unhurt after a two-foot piece of steel hurtled past me. No further details needed.

I'm also glad for having spent time with my loved ones, friends and drinking buddies, ate like a pig, and for SAF's E-Mart purchases that comes with home delivery, so I don't have to skulk around Clementi Camp for the shit I need.

All in all, a wonderful and fruitful holiday season. I hope you've had the same.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year

Wishing my readers a merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

Training Issues

I made it past the recent evaluations but I felt like I didn't really deserve it.

My current complaints? A whole host. I feel like I know what the issues are but I haven't the faintest clue about how to get around them. I'll list them down - if anyone has any ideas from their own experience with martial arts and competitive sports, I'm very willing to listen.

1. I'm suffering from a power blockage at the hip area, where my leg joint connects to my hip bone. What I mean by "power blockage" is that when I rotate my hips, I am unable to transfer the power from my hips to my upper body smoothly. The end result is that I end up very reliant on shoulder and upper body strength. It gets me to a point, but I'm feeling the inadequacies of this technique already. I think this is a result of my extreme lack of flexibility but I'm not sure.
   
2. My footwork needs work. I tend to step from the heel rather than stepping from the balls of my feet. It's gotten slightly better but I'm still by no means consistent with that.
3. I can't help but to think I'm picking up bad form from stress training. I'm not sure what basis I have for this statement, but I feel it happening when I do drills - I tend to want to punch a guys face in rather than concentrate on what works for the drill. In short, I've not made the transition from connecting "executing proper form" to "winning" yet.
4. I tend to hunch my shoulders and lean forward to get those extra 2-3 inches of range, but at the cost of being able to balance well. It's a bad habit and I'm looking to break it because of the strain it causes my lower back and shoulders, not to mention wrecking havoc with my form. I think that it's a combination of breaking in new armour and my brain cross-firing saber and longsword techniques.
5. There's a point I get to where I'm VERY unwilling to go faster. I -think- I can go faster but I've never tried going faster. The reason for this is that I associate speed with losing control, and losing control with injuries. I'm deathly afraid of causing someone else injuries. This has related issues as well - I freak out mentally whenever I train techniques I -know- are meant to injure or kill, like drawing the sword across a human body. I'm not sure how I can get around that, or if it's just an issue of desensitization.
   

I think the focus for the new year for me should be (1) more flexibility exercises and stretching (2) more focus on form and less on stress training and (3) learning to stand up straight.

Word of the Day III

Convenience

1. the quality of being suitable, useful or convenient
2. anything that makes for an easier life
3. a convenient time, especially in the phrase at one's convenience
4. (mostly UK) a public toilet

Conversations with fellow corvidae lead to strange thoughts, especially when one speaks to others later in the week.

A conversation later in the week spun forth additional vectors of thought that I now seek to bind into runes. Context is everything in my craft, but I fear I may only present part-context in this case. Suffice it to say, the word of the day is in the context of romantic relationships.

For a word that is of fairly common usage, I find it damnably difficult to bind the various vectors in my thoughts into a useable form. The problem I face is that convenience is itself a mutable concept.

Would one enter into a relationship of convenience? The intuitive answer is both no and yes - "no" because no one wants to be the object of convenience, "yes" because, well, what else is a relationship but a coincidence of the right emotions, at the right place and time?

On further probing, I realise that the problem is not that the vectors cannot be bound, but just that the vectors are individual. I can abstract to the point where all individual concepts containing convenience can be bound, but in doing so, I bind a lot of non-related concepts alongside it. I can bind the vectors I am aware of individual, but that rune would only function for myself.

In short, I can bind them, but to do so would not be convenient.

Eternal Hoodlums

Warning: My apologies in advance. Unlike my usual musings, this is deliberately written to conceal the identities of those involved. My reasons are my own.

I lunched today with some old friends, Alchemist, Morningblade and Strider. I've lunched with them individually over the course of the year I was back, of course, but it's literally been decades since I've lunched with all of them at once.

Lunch conversation was surprisingly light on reminiscing, given that this was the group I've learnt virtually all of my knowledge of the mystical arts from. As Alchemist puts it, individually, we are already quite scary, but we also taught tricks to one another.

Among us, Alchemist is the master transmuter. He is entirely gifted in most forms of the Craft, but chief among his gifts are divination, synthesis and transformation. His skill in the transformation of other people's gifts to unexpected forms and functions is especially noteworthy.

Morningblade is a master enchanter. His skills lie in the art of beguilement, deception, illusion and truth. It sounds entirely contradictory until one understands that only through the mastery of truth for truth's sake can one start mastering his art. Like me, he too is a swordsman. Though I've often criticised his chosen sword form for the lack of dimension, the fact remains that he was once my teacher in the arts of the blade.

Strider, my brother, is a master nullifier and numeromancer. His art is to find truth through complex linear forms. Through such forms he is also able to resist, nullify, and curiously enough, enable through the nullification of nullification. Though we are blood, the directions our Craft has taken is completely different. Strider possesses the most curious ability to work his Craft without noise or motion, something I've never been able to master.

I am the master evoker and runesmith. My truth is intuitive, direct and often without form, and needs to be bound with the use of symbols. The effects of my truth often deal in extreme high or low energy states in geometric (not necessarily Euclidian) shapes. Mine is the power to impart, alter or cease motion vectors.

Four forms, but always one truth. How I missed them.