rainy season

Rainy season May 27, 2008

Tough practice tonight, went to sword class, got nice improvements on tai ji jian no. 1 of Sha family. Then we took a break and I was unexpectedly called on to demo xingyi lianhuan tui, which I will perform Sunday for my debut at Setagaya Ku enbukai exhibition/ demo. A disaster, totally stuck in the middle, stiff, the works. Tomorrow is the last day of a three-week intensive training at work, no time to practice, then boom.

There is a move where you spear down low with the right palm as the left palm blocks up by the right ear (all this in a crossed-leg crouching stance). The same move shows up in this xingyi form as well as in the lianhuan 24 form of tongbei quan. I had just learned both these forms on a visit to the Sha family in Kunming, China earlier this spring.

But the subsequent move, rising up out of that crouch stance, is different in the two forms, and that is where I got stuck. Obviously hadn’t practiced deeply enough to separate the two…(The same spearing-down palm move – and yet another different subsequent rising move – also appear in Sha family taiji quan…)

But there are no excuses.

So first, do a round trip of bengquan (punch lower, punch lower) the long way down that big middle school gym. Of the five basic fists in xingyi, beng quan is the only one which does not alternate feet while advancing. My right calf muscle was burning at the half-way point of the trip down. I feared cramping up on the return, but survived.

Then five times through the form (with mini-reps inside), then extra work on my own, adding some zip while punching and kicking a stack of mats. I could have gone back to the much-needed sword work, but decided the extra time on this was more valuable at the moment.

Humid, covered in sweat, spilling drops across the wooden floor. Each punch spraying drops onto the window in front of me, each kick leaving a dark shadow of moisture on the mats…

The hardest Mr. T has pushed me physically in a long time and it felt good, need more of it.

All this on the heels of big progress in a Sun style taiji seminar with Li Sensei on Sunday, plunging further into that form….getting greedy these days, reaching for too much. You have to take the chances when they are offered, but the price of greed can be failure in front of all.

June 3, 2008
It has been raining the past several days but rainy season officially opened today. And it seems a good call, as the light rain continued throughout the day – in tandem with the passing of a distant typhoon, one too distant to affect us much here in this part of Tokyo.

Tonight the finest of mists tickled me in the chilly air (this is June, isn’t it?) as I at last returned to the Sha family taiji forms, 1 and 2, after reviewing Sun style.

The June 1 hyouenkai demo passed without major incident. Lots of good stuff to watch, my own to demo. I My performance was average (what I expected given the circumstances – a recently learned form, virtually no guidance once back in Tokyo from Kunming, scant time to practice due to work) – but then a point was deducted since I went out of bounds.

In one sense, it is a pretty simple form. A whole bunch of attacks (forward and to the diagonal) down a long straight line to the front, then different attacks on the long way back, and a little segment returning to the front. You just move forward, plowing through people, no thoughts of retreat or evasion.

I saw the red boundary line approaching on my way back down the long line, but didn’t restrain myself. There had been no forewarning about the gravity of going out of bounds. But more to the point, I didn’t know the form well enough, could not perfectly judge its length.

These are hard days for me as there is so much I want to practice and review but I have less time than ever now that I am working so much. Even tonight, I wish I could stay out in that chilly mist for much longer, but leftover work calls.

Early rainy season begins with a short and wonderful period of cool, breezy days with light, misty rain. Then it gets hotter, then cooler, and again through the cycle, until one time, the heat is followed by more heat. No coolness follows – only more heat and humidity.

The process escalates until it feels like you are walking through water outside. Sweat pours even when you are standing still. There is a brief respite each time rain approaches. The humidity swells, then the temperature drops just before the rain falls. But even before the rain lets up, the heat and humidity start to crank up again.

Kunming is famous for having wonderful spring-like weather all year long. But here in Japan, they take great pride in having four seasons and are often surprised at the concept of there being four seasons in other countries. Each year, rainy season is the hardest time for me. It wears you down, saps your energy and brings you to a halt. Yet there is nothing to do but move forward, work your way through it.