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And a grand time was had by all.
I realize I will not be able to describe everybody, simply because I didn't
interact equally with everybody. I didn't meet many of the Ki society people. I
didn't get to play with Yoshinkan Scott, with Maria on the mat, with the quiet
guy that Chuck brought (the gal wailed on me). I never got to work out with any
of the Alex Rushinko people. Alex came over at one point to show me some kind
of old country treatment he likes to do the wrist, but as my wrist wasn't
hurting and I always go by "If it ain't broke, don't fix it," I declined, and
shortly after that he was gone, I didn't know he was about to get out of there.
I'm sorry, Alex, but I am always nervous about having people demonstrate
healing methods on parts of me that aren't broken. Maybe on another uke
sometime?
Let's see, impressions:
I had completely the wrong mental voice for Dave Liebriech. I had him mentally
pegged as kind of like Sean who belongs to Susi. He is a solid guy who brings
to mind the words "tubular construction". He is much less insecure and much
funnier than I would somehow expect. My apologies, Dave. You can run an awards
ceremony or a Furby contest for my seminar any time. I also had some
interesting times with his longtime roommate, Jeff Boylan, who belongs right in
the middle of that Irish versus Irish war scene in "Braveheart", and who says
thoughtfully that he doesn't know if he could ever carry through and kill
somebody. You just wait until someone you love is endangered, Jeff. The
genes'll carry you right through. Jeff and Dave are both people who keep coming
up with insanely unlikely past history facts about themselves, like, "Well,
when I was a firefighter..." "When I drove an ambulance..." "When I used to
(fill in the blank with anything you wouldn't have believed)"... which is
astonishing and quite entertaining. You get the feeling that if the world were
destroyed by Kohoutek, and all we had left were the people at the Aikido-L
seminar, we could do a decent job of putting civilization back together, as
well as reconstructing all the major aikido ryus, although possibly without
going on with all the traditional squabbling. At one point during the open mat
time, we had a kind of Grab him if you want him randori, which was
exhilaratingly different from all the other randori I have ever been in in that
not only could anyone of any rank from gokyu to godan be grabbing you, but they
came from five major ryus and a couple of minor ones. Wild. Lots of fun.
Peter Boylan is thinner, smaller, blonder, and more obsessed than he comes
across on the Net. Yes, more obsessed, if that's possible. Thank you for all
the Japanese language lessons, Peter, including the one in which you explained
the names of four-word nine-syllable koryu that no one outside Japan has ever
seen, the one in which you kindly told me what "shihan" means, but most of all,
the one in which you translated for Philip Akin and myself the Japanese woman's
in-bed equivalent of "Ooh, baby, ooh, baby". I feel my life would not have been
complete had I not been told that.
Jun is made of space age materials that have not been invented yet. I think
Scotty sent him back here from Stardate 2454.2 to try to get the aikido world
together on computer. He can do ukemi that doesn't exist in this century or
this dimension. Venusian ukemi. He has bad hangnails, and now his forearm
hurts, too, since he entrusted it to me. I'd mention his nose, but I don't want
Peter Boylan to be embarrassed. Be of good cheer, Jun (like he ever wouldn't be
of good cheer): we figure your nose got damaged only because it doesn't have a
joint in it, but maybe, now it does, so you're cool, right? I was teasing Jun
during the forearm work and I said, "It's not pain, it's just a good stretch to
the joints,": and he said with a straight face, "How would I know?" (I believe
his father was a pretzel.) Jun has a permanent grin that I think was probably
tattooed on his face. This seems to me to be a good way of getting technical
support staff to smile.
Kjartan is an atypical computer geek. He has pretty eyes that are a little
hyperteloristic (Go look it up), a bad attitude, is kind of strange to friend
and foe alike, makes pointed threats about people who can't pronounce Kj, and
is sweetly and lovingly attentive to Maria, who has been surgically attached to
him at the hip. He walks around in a hakama as if the garment were personally
invented for him. "Born to Wear Black and Blue". Many of us would like to
change that to "Born to Be Black and Blue", but the trouble is he's really
rather quite good. Better than I am, anyhow. But I noticed he did not give any
lip to George. Or Philip. Or Chuck or Jim.
Gordon Wormser, the one who always has all the HTML rubbish attached to his
signature (Have I mentioned that annoys me, Gordo?), was there. I have known
Gordon for nine years, which is less than half the time he has been practicing
aikido. He had a black belt when I started aikido in 1990. I believe his sandan
in aikido is the lowest of his ranks in several martial arts. (This does not
take away from the fact that he can be very annoying. A true blue friend in
need, and a nudge in joy.) His luggage arrived late, and to get on the mat at
George's dojo Friday night, he borrowed a gi and white belt without a hakama.
Well, there's this young black belt there called Alexei, we pronounced his name
"Lexy" all weekend. Not bad, but he uses his arms and shoulders to end a
technique sometimes. He was throwing Gordon during a line technique, who was
landing effortlessly as is his wont, and I dunno, I just got the impression
that Lexy thought he was better than Gordon. So then they somehow ended up
working together one on one. I'm standing off to the side watching, and forgive
me, enjoying this. Gordon stopped Lexy whenever he wanted to, fell whenever he
thought it would help Lexy, and advised him from time to time on ukemi. Lexy
had a very puzzled expression, and I couldn't help feeling he was thinking,
"God damn, this is a good white belt!"
Steve was in that line, a real fine guy who does Ki Aikido and takes care of Ki
Society as chairman of the board or something, a fact you would never, ever,
ever guess from his quiet demeanor. As long as I'm praising Ki people let me
mention Mark and Andrea and Min, three of many I worked out with, who can come
to any party on the mat I'm ever at.
Maria is nicer than you would guess. She's cute, funny, and Brooklyny. Despite
the fact that she is a New Yorker and a budo babe, and can take care of herself
and two other people besides, she occasionally responds to a quick sally of
words with a lost look like a startled fawn, usually followed after a
computer-style delay ("Abort, Retry, Delete?) with a loud guffaw. Not Janet
loud, you understand. Mere human loud. Hey, Janet, we often mentioned you at
the seminar. You were present in spirit if absent in the flesh. We were
wondering, if you kiaied really loudly in San Francisco, if we would hear it in
Virginia. You should give a mini class in laughing and kiaiing next time.
I am nastier than you all guessed. I don't extend ki, I extend fingers that
feel to my ukes, er, patients, er, victims, like granite with steel rebar; and
I get those fingers all the way through the muscles into the exquisite pain
centers. I am responsible, pay me credit, for introducing the concept of
exquisite pain to the seminar, which won over "God love him!" (vide infra) and
"Good!" for best word of the weekend. How's your shoulders feel, Dave Shaw,
Yoshinkan Scott, Peter Boylan, Dave Liebriech? How about them forearms where
the extensors sit quietly radiating heat under the skin, Jun? I also was told
for some reason at the party that the tongue is the greatest weapon of them
all, because it never needs sharpening, or something to that effect; and then
some reference to my always having a scalpel with me. But them six-inch heels,
man! I never even showed off my best feature, which is the leg from calcaneus
to iliac crest. That gown of mine was positively restrained and reserved.
Right, listka? I *said*, "Right, listka?" I want an immediate chorus of "Yes,
Mistress Wendy!" That's better.
Chuck Gordon has an amazing capacity to absorb single malt Scotch without any
changes in his behavior. Of course, I was absorbing Bolla Valpolicella at the
time, so I may not have noticed minor behavioral changes. He is the only List
teacher who is willing to call pain "pain". He did not mention its
exquisiteness or lack thereof. Despite the fact that he taught weapons, the
incredible painful control pin from sankyo/sankajo named "circle, square,
triangle," the willingness of his student Leigh (Lee? the fierce little lady)
to eat live tigers for breakfast and maybe ukes if no live tigers were
available, and his rep as an aikijujitsu stylist, the two words he repeated
most often during his class were "Soft" and "Relax".
I have no impression of Jim because he's my Jim and I'm too close to see him.
Anyone?
George is all center. Being thrown by George is like being lifted gently by a
wave without a breaker at the tip that then deposits you on concrete. George
does not lead through his center because his center includes several square
feet around him, and I don't mean just under his hakama. We were muttering a
tribute to him under our breaths:
"George, George, George of the circle,
Spherical, you see:
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!
Watch out for his kiiiiii!"
and we don't even believe in ki, but we believe in it when George does it.
There are no atheists in foxmats.
Carol Shifflett has a center that might need dynamite to get it to move in
kokyudoza. When she is hurrying quietly across the wooden part of the floor off
the mat, in her hakama, she has a certain unnerving stillness to her twinkling
feet that made several persons think "Nuns! Aaugh! No!" But I think it was just
center.
Philip Akin is not an actor, but a character that somebody let loose from a
movie, and now can't get back. He's too funny and too quirky not to have been
written by a topnotch scriptwriter. I would guess Larry Gelbart but I can't be
sure. Somebody go rent a bunch of old movies and start looking for Philip, and
see if he disappears without reason halfway through one of them. There are some
interesting things about Philip as a sensei: one, he loves to throw Scott
around without mercy; two, he is willing to extend non mercy to anyone in the
class with a loud mouth; three, he loves to be thrown around, you get the
feeling he wanted to be let out to play; four, he tells wonderful stories after
mat time, and he is as willing to play slimeball during them as heroic leading
man. For instance: After midnight, when we started to let it all hang out, I
put my shoes with the six-inch heels on Monica. A couple of comments were made
when I was kneeling before her strapping the shoes on to the effect that some
people would pay for a film of this, to which I made no response, as accords
with my great reserve and medical dignity. Monica got up and started walking
around, and many eyeballs were collected from the carpet a minute later. She
waved Philip to his feet to compare heights, and in those heels (Monica is
rather snaky tall) she could look him just about in the eyeball. Philip said,
oh, something like "Ooh, baby, what are you doing later tonight?" Monica said
blandly "Sleeping," to giggles, and Philip capped her with the world's slimiest
"Perfect!" I believe we were home before we stopped laughing.
At one of the myriad restaurants, too, Philip explained to us about "God love
him," which is an all-purpose excuse to abuse someone. He said, "For instance,
you can get away completely with saying 'Such and so is a slime-sucking,
bottom-dwelling, low-down, evil, Furby-petting piece of electronic troll,' if
you just add, '- God love him.'" There was a long pause for all of us to finish
laughing (Philip knows to a tee when the audience will be done laughing) and he
went on, "Sensei, God love him " (I should add that he then went on to tell an
unexceptionable, completely acceptable, kind and respectful story about his
sensei, so if the Yoshinkan people are reading this, you understand Philip was
just going for a laugh, right? And that he can kick your ass any time, too,
right? Right, Scott?)
It should be mentioned that, after volunteering his time and paying his
airfare to Aikido-L, Philip brought beautiful gifts for his host, for Kjartan
and Jun the maintainers of the List, and for Carol because she worked so hard
on the seminar. Now that's a class act. I think we should all go thank his
scriptwriters for that.
Incidentally, Philip has as yet no sense of his value. He says he will come
give a seminar to any friendly dojo at this point for airfare. Grab him while
you got him, before he wakes up, or before his scriptwriters catch him and put
him back in the movie. He taught Thursday night at George's Ki dojo, by
George's gracious invitation. Carol told me they were all expecting a nasty
rough hard style because that's all they knew of Yoshinkan. He seems to have
spent the entire hour exhorting the Ki people to relax. He said, "When you grip
nage's wrist" (he calls nage sh'te, or something weird like that), "if your
fingernails change color at all, it's too hard." Wow.
There seems to be a weird rapprochement going on between Yoshinkan and Ki
Society. I can think of no two ryus of Aikido further apart, yet under the
careful guidance of George and Philip they appear to be making friends in a
gingerly fashion. Maybe they'll really get together, and combine into one
school, called "YoKinkan", and we can call them the Yo Kinks. Good name for a
band. Let's all promote this, friends, and see if we can climb on the
bandwagon. Could we get Aikido back together after all the splits? We, an
unimportant, splintered, argument-wracked, insignificant little branch of
electronic Aikido - God love us? Naah! Impossible! Of course, I like impossible
challenges. (Otherwise I wouldn't study Aikikai style.)
In closing, I would just like to say that Kjartan shouldn't have brought all
those poisonous snakes to the dinner party, but no harm was done after Norma
pinned them, because we were able to resuscitate the snakes. Also, that it's
really weird when you get the Texas Rose (mle the undefeatable), myself, and
Maria mudwrestling at a Chinese restaurant, to have four out of five senseis
standing around shouting at us to relax and control the center more. (I won't
repeat Akin Sensei's remarks because the computer screen would blush - God love
him.) And that you all missed the psilocybin cheesecake. Next year, anybody?
Wendy
Sultana of Slash
P.S. Oh, and Mike Bartman is really, really tall.
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