between the rock and the cold, cold sea

Post-jujutsu, pre-journey home, status of me: I hurt.

But either the class wasn't as tough as normal, or I'm finally growing some fitness back, because it didn't leave me in a soggy heap on the floor.

Also, there is a post by me about a TV show up at Tor. Don't say I never did nothing for you.

I'm trying to write a post about Barbara Hambly's Sun Wolf and Starhawk series (hopefully for Tor.com), and thinking about the training that goes on in The Ladies of Mandrigyn is making me think a good bit harder than usual about my own experience with martial arts training.

I'm not a good martial artist. I lack the discipline - and, to be honest, the ambition - that lifts a student from average to good. The kind of discipline that puts in fifty situps and fifty pushups before breakfast and ten katas before bed, that's what gets you to good. You have to repeat everything until you're exhausted, until it's your muscles that remember, not your brain. Because your brain is actually kinda stupid, when it comes to getting your body out of harm's way.

When I was seventeen or so, I took up Shotokan karate. For about three years I trained regularly, twice and three times a week: I have my brown belt license around here somewhere, if I were to go look for it. It was a fairly relaxed kind of training: M. was serious about getting kata flawless and training for the right techniques to win competition sparring, which occasionally got a little intense (I've walked into one or two punches that rattled my brain, and I never want to get a sidekick to the gut again). But despite his own history as a bouncer, very little of what we did had much application outside training.

Oh, there's some. Ridge hand strike (which is bloody dangerous to your hand if you miss your target) and hammerfist strike, as well elbow strike, sidekick, and downward stamping kick. But we never learned to integrate the strikes and defensive techniques in a way that really made sense for real-world application, and we never trained for conditioning. (Although my muscles still remember a bunch of techniques I hope I never have cause to use outside a dojo.) But mostly, I remember training to make kata look elegant and to score points, not to work through pain and exhaustion.

Compare this to German Jujutsu, which I've taken up in college since the spring (and hopefully the Mad German will be sticking around to teach it for a good while longer). It's all about application, about being able to take what you've learned and use it immediately - and a single class led by our Mad German is in itself some of the most intense conditioning training I've ever had the misfortune to be subject to. I can count on getting dizzy and nauseous at least once every other session. Also, bruised and sore.

The training scenes in The Ladies of Mandrigyn feel like training with our Mad German. They feel real and solid. And that's kind of brilliant, really.

Running tonight: 2 miles in 20:20, which is pretty close to a personal best for the last two years. (If I were desirous of precision, I'd check my "running" tag on here and be more specific, but I haven't managed 2 miles in under 20:00 since 2008 at least.) 2.5 miles in 27:40.

Jujutsu tonight was stick drills and forty minutes of Intro to Knife-Fighting. I now know - theoretically - how to avoid being stabbed.

In practice - well, it's a good thing we were using rubber knives, is all I can say. That shit is hard. Hack, trap, slap, slice, with a mad German (okay, so he's not mad, but he's entirely too gleeful when talking about slicing people open) telling us Three seconds! You want the fight to be over in three seconds!

Bruised now.

Apparently there's a multi-discipline martial arts club up by Magennis Place, so I might have to look into that if Kali-influenced weapon work goes away during term time. I like the stick drill lots. It has a peculiar brutal elegance, like nothing else I've ever done. But it's definitely designed more for slashing weapons - like machetes, or scimitars - than stabbing ones.

I still hate groundwork, passionately. Years of Shotokan-trained instinct screams at me that being that close in, being down, is just like being dead. Except more painful.

That's a feeling that it's hard to argue with. I still want to fight with basic oi-zuki & gyaku-zuki combinations, with a front snap kick to the knee or a side snap kick to the belly for variety: hit fast and hard, and get the hell out of range.

This is not a very effective strategy for fighting people who are faster and better able to get inside your guard. Alas, I keep having to remind myself that I'm not really allowed to kidney-punch people who get inside my guard and go straight for the grapple in sparring: back when I trained in karate, our sensei emphasised maintaining the sphere of personal space, being able to break contact and use distance as defence, over takedowns and Massive Damage.

Shotokan. Beautiful and elegant, but not that much use if someone's really trying to hurt you Real Bad For Serious in a spot where you can't duck back and run away.

Anyway.

I climbed yesterday. I'm a fairly irregular climber these days, and consequently back to being terrible at sending 6As, and without the stamina to lead for very long. Saturday, I colonised the empty Common Room with a friend to watch The Lion in Winter for the first time. The film is carried entirely on dialogue and the actors' performances - and man, Anthony Hopkins and Timothy Dalton were pretty when they were young - and the contrast between the intense intelligence of The Lion in Winter and the last few more recent films I've seen - Captain America, HP7.2, The Mummy - is shocking.

In case you're wondering, I loved The Lion in Winter. More! Now!

("Hush, dear. Mummy's fighting.")

Books 2011: 93-94


93. The Táin: A New Translation of The Táin Bó Cúailnge. Translated by Ciaran Carson. Penguin Classics, Penguin, London, 2008.

Carson's translation of the Táin Bó Cúailgne, the Irish epic also known as the Cattle Raid of Cooley, first appeared in print in 2007, making it several decades younger than the previous standard translation by Thomas Kinsella. Carson is a poet by profession, and his facility with language is reflected in a graceful, striking translation that alternates prose with rhymed and unrhymed verse as appropriate to the original sensibilities of the text.

The text of the Táin is not unitary, as Carson acknowledges. The text as transmitted exists in two recensions, possessed of significant discrepancies. In his own words, "There is no canonical Táin, and every translation of it is of necessity another version or recension."

But the main thrust of the story is well known. How Medb of Connacht was jealous of her husband Ailill's prize bull, Finnbennach; how they set out to acquire the only bull in Ireland to match Finnbennach, the Donn Cúailgne (the Brown Bull of Cooley), from the lands of Ulster; how the men of Ulster are laid low by their periodic curse, and the armies of Medb and Ailill are opposed by the young hero Cú Chulainn, who kills many in feats of bloody and extravagant violence, including his foster-brother, Fer Diad.

How in the end the two bulls meet in battle and kill each other, rendering the whole tale an exercise in gory irony.

There's pathos and humour in the tale, particularly when it comes to Fergus Mac Rossa Roích, leader of the Ulster exiles in Medb's service and Cú Chulainn's foster father. (He was driven from Ulster because he stood surety for the sons of Uisne, and Conchobar dishonoured his sureties by killing them.) Some of the best banter in the whole thing involves Fergus, and his chess game with Ailill (after Ailill steals his sword, because he is lying with Medb) is a thing of beauty.

I'd forgotten how much I actually enjoy the Táin, and as literature, Carson's translation more than does it justice.


94. Plutarch, On Sparta. Translated with an introduction and notes by Richard J.A. Talbert. Penguin Classics, Penguin, London, 2005.

Talbert's translation of those of Plutarch's writings that deal with Spartan things was first published in 1988. This edition includes a new translation of the Life of Agesilaus in addition to the Lives of Lycurgus, Agis, and Cleomenes, the Sayings of Spartans and the Sayings of Spartan Women. It also includes, as an appendix, (pseudo-)Xenophon's Spartan Society.

With the exception of the Life of Lycurgus, the semi-mythical Spartan lawgiver, the Lives included here essentially chart the decline of Spartan society, after the apex of its power during the Peloponnesian Wars. Agesilaus presided over Sparta's defeat by Thebes and the loss of a great deal of territory; Agis attempted to reform Spartan society and was condemned to death by his own people; and Cleomenes ended his life by suicide after exile and house arrest in the Alexandria of King Ptolemy.

Sparta's decline is an interesting one, though one somewhat obscured by the so-called 'Spartan mirage' in which the state's heyday has been shrouded since antiquity. Plutarch is a reliable source for events, though not, perhaps, for motivations. He, too, is somewhat dazzled by the glare of Sparta's 'Lycurgan constitution,' which may make his description of the antiquity of some Spartan institutions a little suspect. Nonetheless, it makes for fascinating reading.

The Sayings comprise a relatively short section of the volume, and consist of the kind of pithy wit for which Spartans were famous throughout Greece. Sayings along the line of: "Leotychidas the son of Ariston said to the man who mentioned that Demaratus' sons were spreading bad reports about him: "By the gods, I'm not surprised, since none of them could ever find a good word to say."

An interesting volume, and a very readable translation.

---

Gym today. 2.5 miles in 28:40, treadmill; 8K in 32:30, exercise bike. Jujutsu.

Jujutsu was mostly full of Kali stick drills again. Stick drills are getting complicated. Where last week we were doing a single basic 1-1-2 drill, this week we were stringing three combinations together.

And damn, but that was confusing. And tiring. Especially what with the footwork and all.

The bare-handed strike-counterstrike-takedown drills for the last twenty minutes came as quite the relief, I tell you true.

Gym today. Running, 1.5 miles in 15:00 minutes, 2 miles in 21:50. Cycling, 7.25km in 32 minutes.

Jujutsu.

Rolling around on the mats with boys who are bigger, fitter, and more experienced in the ways of wrestling does much to reconfirm me in my belief that in a real fight? I'm a lot more likely to get killed or seriously injured if I get taken to the ground than if I stay on my feet.

The more I learn, the less likely I am to get maimed or dead in such a situation. Also, it's fun. Sweaty, wet, disgusting, exhausting - but fun.

For the record, I am mighty.

This afternoon, after photocopying (oh, photocopying, so necessary and yet so dull), I hied me to the gym, and proved my mightiness upon the bodies of my foes the treadmill and the exercise bike.

1.2 miles in 11:10 on said treadmill. Seven (7) kilometers in under 30 minutes on the exercise bike.

It's not a triathlon, but I had to head to a two-hour jujutsu session afterwards, and I also succeeded in not being completely dead by the time I got home. So I think that counts as a win all around. Jujutsu involved a lot of rolling around on the floor with pretty boys.

I believe that painkillers and sleeping are now called for, though. So I'll get right on that.