I just got back a huge ass  document I’d been working on for a reasearch project.  The edits were done by an organisation I work for, and we mostly do the work via email. 

 

The edits are pretty good and will help me a lot.  But somehow, they must be using Microsoft Office 97 or some other strange version or something– they edited the document with track changes (which worked fine) but somehow, the copy they sent back stripped ALL the header formatting.  The result– the entire document is now unindexed (no more headings and subheadings), and the table of contents is totally fubared.

 

Arrrrrrrrrrrrrr

Halo 4 just came out, but my XBox 360 is still in Montreal.  Being in Sydney, that means that my XBox could not be geographically any further away.

Halo‘s always had a special place in my heart.  Aside from Duke Nukem 3d, the original Halo was the one where I enjoyed the most competitive success.  I played and beat Red Faction: Armageddon recently, which is a relatively new game.  However, I find that at the end of the day, gameplay wise, it is just a much nicer looking version of the original Halo, with a few ideas stiched in from Gears of War 2. 

 

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I think that in life, once you’ve done a few really great or memorable things, these things become your benchmarks by which everything else is compared.  Well, I guess it doesn’t need to be great or memorable– it just needs to be involving enough to really alter the mechanics of your thought process.  It has to be something that you need to get your brain into.

 

Your  past experiences become the vocabulary by which you describe the world.  The more engaging a particular subset of experiences, the more likely it is that your method of communicating to others is going to make use of that vocabulary and those benchmarks.

 

That’s why, even when classmates and I from law school go out after exams and try to talk about anything except law, it’s naturally impossible to a certain degree– even if we try to avoid talking about classes, we inevitably refer to it in discussing the news, and we joke about it instinctively.  [CM] has the same experience with med students.

 

It’s only natural I guess.

 

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The thing is, I have a sneaky suspicion that human interaction and the quality of our relationships is based on the things we have in common.  At the very least, if it’s not the things we have in common, it is the understanding of the attributes of experience that allow us to appreciate difference.  For example: maybe one person is into break dancing, and another is into tap dancing.  They’re very different uses of the human body, so these two people might not get along based on the connectivity of those two interests alone.  However, if the two people are willing to trace back along the branches to the common human roots in body mechanics, training, rhythm, etc, then perhaps the fact that the end results are the same can still be drawn to a simlarity somewhere along the line?

 

I was talking to CM about this a couple of weeks ago.  We were talking about the elections in US.  We’re not American, but as Canadians, it was still a significant issue for us because so much of American culture inevitably dictates the direction of Canadian culture as well.  Part of our discussion had to do with religion, and I was telling her how, despite my Catholic upbringing, if there was ever a religion I subscribed to, it’d probably be something more like some form of modified Taoism.

 

But really, what religion you have ultimately comes down to the basic principles that you believe are the best vocabulary for describing the world.

 

For me, the basic principles of Taoism are fluidity, and simply being.  In case you didn’t know, the basic premise of a yin yang sign is like a Star Ware parable– there’s the Light Side of the Force, and the Dark Side of the Force.  However, neither side exists without the other– there is a fluid transition between the white and the black, which is represented by the shape of the two elements “chasing” one another infinitely, kind of like an ourobouros.  In that way, Star Wars represents the conflict of the Jedi and the Sith as really the problems with extremes– and the real stories are about the people struggling to find some sort of balance in their lives.  The fact that you can never be pure in one way or the other is represented in the yinyang sign’s dot of the opposite colour within the main.  It means that no matter how great a source of light or darkness, there are necessarily elements of the opopsite within you.

 

To me, the biggest principal of the Taoism that most people overlook is where on that symbol you fit.  It’s not that you should be identifying with either the white piece or the black piece– in reality, you are the whole symbol.  You’re both at once, in a swirling, constant flux.  Separation and dissonance of your elements is what causes existential problems.

 

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As a bit of a tangent, that belief is important in terms of maintaining a proper “work-life-balance.”   I’ve been throwing that term around a lot lately because it’s one of those things that comes up in interviews a lot it seems, and I just two interviews in the last two weeks for law firms.  One of them is for a German law firm, where I got the job as to be office bitch (“junior paralegal”), and the other one is for a mid tier commercial law firm clerkship (which is the important one, because this will lead to a graduate job) which I get the results for on monday or tuesday.  

 

Anyway, as I was saying– it’s important because if you try and separate yourself from yourself for the wrong reasons, you’ll get all these bad feelings that will ultimately result in you not being able to get anywhere in life that will satisfy you.  it’s hard to explain, but put it this way– certain feelings like guilt, worry, and low self esteem– these, from personal experience, are more than often due somewhere to a conflict in internal vocabulary.  Somewhere along the line, you’ve experienced something that has profoundly affected the way that you frame the world– and it has been framed in a way which cannot be integrated with the world around you.

 

Traumatic experiences usually do that.

 

Until you can find a way to find some common ground between that you and the world around you, you’ll be like a broken yin-yang.  The dissonance will never allow it to spin like a proper circle.  And, looking at the pieces as separate parts, you’d be missing the whole point anyways– you’d be so concerned with the definition of this or that that you’d miss that you’re you’re an integral part of everything else, and everything else is a part of you– you’d miss the concept of connection that makes the human experience what it is.

 

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So, as far as “fixing” broken people go, I’m not saying this to look down on anyone.  I’ve been broken many times, and I’ve had to put the pieces back together.  And everytime it happens it’s a pain in the ass– but it’s an important catharsis that we routinely have to go through so that there isn’t too much calcification of the mechanisms that power our experiences.

 

The fixing is really about reconnecting the isolated pieces.

 

There are a few ways of doing that, as I mentioned.  You can find ways by which the vocabulary of that disconnected piece can connect to another person who has the same experience.  Or you can find ways to connect it to another piece of yourself.

 

The intrinsic problem is that whether or not we want to admit it, some of these isolated pieces are our pride.  I say pride because it’s shockingly misused here– pride could just be stubbornness, but it could also be something sacred.  I did say that the experiences that define our perspective are the most engaging ones, right?  That means that, for better or worse, the traumatic things that are the ‘problem pieces’ stay isolated and special because by design, we want to protect the core bits that define us, for fear of losing that which makes us unique.

 

But if we can only let that go, then we’ll connect with the whole world so much better.

 

Exams have come and gone and slowly, I’m reacclimatising myself to a normal, balanced pace of life.

 

Whenever exams come up, I fall out of my routine a bit– I’m in battle mode. I don’t sleep properly, and as a result, I can’t spare much energy for exercise. I tend to eat a bit worse as well, just because I get cravings for junk food, kind of as small rewards for all the hard work I put into school. Especially after classes are over (and there’s a week or two where I don’t have to school, because exams usually have a bit of a study break before them) and no longer have to commute (by bike), then my whole routine falls out of whack. Without the daily 20km commute, I’m suddenly the equivalent of a couch potato.

 

Usually, by the time I finish exams, I’m almost 5 kilograms (almost ten pounds) heavier than two weeks before.

 

Well, now that I’m done with exams, I’m on the slinghost– I’m done classes, so I have nothing to take up my day. In short order, I caught up on gaming. I actually finished Demon Souls (the “world’s hardest game”) during the exam period. The day after exams I started playing Red Faction: Armageddon, and the day after that, I finished that game. I’m rather glad I bought them used for 10 bucks a pop, because I’d feel like I’d been ripped off if I paid the full 60+ for something that only lasted me a day and a half.

 

I’ve started going back to judo again.

 

The truth is, I have no talent for this stuff whatsoever, and I’m really beginning to wonder if I’ll ever be good at this. A sense of balance has never been one of my fortes. Even in kickboxing and taekwondo, I was never the one who was great at spinning kicks or whatever aerial attacks. In badminton, my old style of fast-twitch counters worked for me, but by technical analysis, it was a compensation for lack of good balance with quickness, at the expense of efficiency.

 

Right now, this is the situation I’m in in judo. I’m a white belt– which is something that hasn’t happened to me in a long time. It’s different from starting at law school even, for one main reason– all of my classmates are beginners with me. I am learning with them, and we can make the same mistakes together.  In judo, I’m surrounded and often paired up against people who have years more experience than me.  At times, the experience gap is more than a decade or two.

 

I had long forgotten what it is like to be a rank beginner in something, not just in name, but in the reality of the activity itself. Of the white belts in the class with me, one of them has been doing judo for over a year and just hasn’t had the time to be certified. Another may be of roughly the same experience level as me, but he outweighs me by about 10 kilograms.

 

There is one thing that I have, which I think matches or exceeds that of my peers– it’s the willingness to take a beating, and keep getting up. It’s not just a Rocky Balboa cliche– in the end, I think that the willingness to endure hardship in pursuit of learning something new about yourself is one of the lasting things that I take from martial arts.

 

I’m sitting around typing this blog and I’ve got some damage to me– large bruises the size of tennis balls on my right leg from people trying to sweep me. They don’t hurt, I think I’m used to this kind of thing– however, the impact is different. In kickboxing, normally I’d be light on a deffending leg so that I can absorb an impact. When there is a shin to shin clash in a striking sport, the shins almost inadvertantly glance off eachother to diffuse some of the impact, because of the angles and the flex of the knees. However, in judo, a lot of the sweeping seems to be specifically attacking the leg that I have my weight on– thus, my foot is usually well planted on the floor, and my shin can’t escape or deflect any of the damage. The result of some sweeps is as if someone had used a shin kick on you, but you didn’t lift your foot off the ground to absorb some of the impact.

 

That’s a small detail that doesn’t really bother me– I just mention it because I never really thought about noticing the planting of a foot before. I mean, I’ve used leg kicks in the past– however, I don’t usually go for the shins. Usually I’ll go for a thigh. I find it fascinating how a different martial art makes use of a leg technique that is so similar, yet so different.

 

On the whole, what was I talking about? Oh right: I’m not very good at judo. I guess I shouldn’t expect to be, because I’ve never done it before– but somehow, I feel that because of my history in other fighting styles, I guess I just figured I’d have more talent for it.

 

I find that I am faring a bit better on the ground, but I’m still pretty bad at that. The other white belts and yellow belts can’t tap me out if it’s pure groundwork. However, the greens and oranges are really good with positioning, which is something that I was never great at when I was a mixed fighter.

 

The difference between mixed ground fighting and judo ground fighting is quite interesting.

 

In mixed, the main difference is that on the ground, there’s always the threat of punching. It’s the technique that made the Ultimate Fighting Championship so infamous when it first came out, because everyone was totally caught off guard by the brutality of it.

 

As a mixed fighter, I’ve always been someone who relied on strong roundhouses and jabs to deal damage. I learned enough grappling to be able to fight from a clinch with knees and elbows, and enough grappling to prevent getting tapped out on the ground long enough to make my space to go back to striking.

 

Judo is quite different.

 

For example– if I’m in a dominant position in a mixed fight on the ground, it’s almost certain that I’ll go for ground and pound right away. If I have mount, and my opponent’s hands get too passive in their guard, then I’ll take one of those hands, and arm bar the shit out of it, or something.

 

In judo– now what the heck am I supposed to do when someone goes on their stomach in the fetal position, covering their ears in a ‘turtle position’? In MMA, if you do that, that’s when you get the crap beaten out of you. In judo, I see my partner in front of me doing that, and I think to myself… “uh… so if I can’t use hammerfists, what am I supposed to do now?”

 

Similarly, when I’m in mount, and if they’re not offering their hands up as a byproduct of deffending ground and pounds, but rather, they’re actively trying to tie up my hands… what am I supposed to do?

 

These are all questions that have contextual answers of course, but right now, I don’t know any of these answers. I only have solutions from mixed, which don’t match the rules of this game.

 

But like I said– this is fair, and this is what I get. I think the decision to take up judo was a great one– it is exactly what I was looking for. What I’m wondering though is whether or not I really wanted to find what I was after. I was after an activity where I could feel like the underdog again– something where I would be learning from scratch. Where I could again feel the emotions of the activity, as something fresh.

Well, I feel it now. I feel myself being really enthused by the small victories I have. Before exams started, I paired up with an orange belt for randori– he’s probably at least 5 to 10 kilos lighter than me, but he was slamming the shit out of me for all 3 minutes of the sparring. This week? I went against him again, and he was STILL slamming the shit out of me, but he was having a noticiably hard time, and I almost managed to throw him twice. That kind of feeling? It’s delicious.

 

On the other hand, I’m starting to feel some physical limitations. I have a hip problem and a left ankle problem. These are among other old injuries, but these two in particular are things which I’m noticing are quite bothersome during some of the techniques. I’ve known about these problems for years, but I’ve always been able to work around them and the limits on my motion with those two joints has never bothered me in any other situation, mostly because I’m a right-leg-dominant kicker. However, in judo, it’s problematic, because I need to be flexible on both sides for rolls and breakfalls (I don’t get to chose which way my opponent throws me). The limitations are also apparent when I try certain throws at certain angles, and I feel a sharp electric pain from the joint telling me that it is not happy. That kind of thing, it’s the opposite of the deliciousness of progress: it’s the bitterness of realisation of limitation.

 

This is, however, everything I wanted– to get back in touch with myself.

 

At least for the moment, I’m maintaining my fighting spirit. I am still a hard-style fighter by nature, and my footwork is generally geared for linear forward attacks, or rotating out-fighter retreats. But this business of being constantly attached to my opponent, of changing the flow, of not being able to escape or hit and run– it’s all so new to me. When I succeed at a technique, I feel that I’m using 20 or 30 times the amount of power that I feel I should be using. When a technique is performed on me, I feel that I’m taking factors more damage than I should be as well. I just don’t have the reflexive flexibility for this kind of movement… and I sure as hell don’t have the experience to make me efficient. But I guess, I’m getting there slowly.

 

Until I get good at the techniques, I guess I’ll just have to rely on high vitality and endurance stats for deffense, and use low efficiency, high STR requirement methods for the attacks.