between the rock and the cold, cold sea

Χάρων

τίς εἰς ἀναπαύλας ἐκ κακῶν καὶ πραγμάτων; [185]
τίς ἐς τὸ Λήθης πεδίον, ἢ σ᾽ Ὄνου πόκας,
ἢ σ᾽ Κερβερίους, ἢ σ᾽ κόρακας, ἢ 'πὶ Ταίναρον;

Διόνυσος

ἐγώ.

Χάρων
ταχέως ἔμβαινε.

Διόνυσος
ποῖ σχήσειν δοκεῖς;
ἐς κόρακας ὄντως;

Χάρων
ναὶ μὰ Δία σοῦ γ᾽ οὕνεκα.
ἔσβαινε δή. [190]

Διόνυσος
παῖ δεῦρο.

Χάρων
δοῦλον οὐκ ἄγω,
εἰ μὴ νεναυμάχηκε τὴν περὶ τῶν κρεῶν.

Ξανθίας

μὰ τὸν Δί᾽ οὐ γὰρ ἀλλ᾽ ἔτυχον ὀφθαλμιῶν.

Χάρων

οὔκουν περιθρέξει δῆτα τὴν λίμνην κύκλῳ;

Ξανθίας

ποῦ δῆτ᾽ ἀναμενῶ;

Χάρων
παρὰ τὸν Αὑαίνου λίθον
ἐπὶ ταῖς ἀναπαύλαις. [195]

Διόνυσος
μανθάνεις;

Ξανθίας
πάνυ μανθάνω.
οἴμοι κακοδαίμων, τῷ ξυνέτυχον ἐξιών;

Χάρων

κάθιζ᾽ ἐπὶ κώπην. εἴ τις ἔτι πλεῖ, σπευδέτω.
οὗτος τί ποιεῖς;

Διόνυσος
ὅ τι ποιῶ; τί δ᾽ ἄλλο γ᾽ ἢ
ἵζω 'πὶ κώπην, οὗπερ ἐκέλευές με σύ;

Χάρων

οὔκουν καθεδεῖ δῆτ᾽ ἐνθαδὶ γάστρων;

Διόνυσος
ἰδού.

Χάρων

οὔκουν προβαλεῖ τὼ χεῖρε κἀκτενεῖς;

Διόνυσος
ἰδού.

Χάρων

οὐ μὴ φλυαρήσεις ἔχων ἀλλ᾽ ἀντιβὰς
ἐλᾷς προθύμως;


Kharon:
Who [wants] rest from evils and troubles?
Who [wants] to be among the Lethe-waters, or go to an ass-shearing,
or to Kerberos, or to the crows, or to Tainaros?

Dionysos:
Me.

Kharon:
Quickly, get in.

Dionysos:
Where do you think you'll steer?
To the crows, really?

Kharon:
By Zeus, yes, you on your account.
Get in already.

Dionysos:
How, here.

Kharon:
I'm not bringing a slave.
Not unless he's fought in the sea-battle about the kings.

Xanthias:
By Zeus, not but for I met with eye-disease.

Kharon:
So you'll walk in a circle around the lake, then?

Xanthias:
Where should I wait, then?

Kharon:
Beside the stone of wasting,
on the resting places.

Dionysos:
You understand?

Xanthias:
Certainly I understand.
Woe is me, ill-fated, [how could] I have fallen in with it?

Kharon:
Sit down at an oar. If someone else is sailing still, let them hurry up.
Hey, what are you doing?

Dionysos:
What am I doing? What other than
sitting on an oar, just as you told me.

Kharon:
You're not sitting like that, pot-belly?

Dionysos:
Look.

Kharon:
So you're putting forth your hands, you stretch out.

Dionysos:
Look.

Kharon:
Don't talk nonsense, but holding, you pull stoutly,
you set us readily in motion.

---

Karate today. Technique and application, which is where I always get confused with jujutsu these days. (Jujutsu: get close in and hit. Shotokan: stay at a distance and hit.) Interesting, although I'm responsible for a black eye, alas.

I'm now officially a black belt in Shotokan karate.

An odd and belated milestone, that.

The sensei suggested to me this afternoon that a)there might be an Introduction to Coaching course coming up, and oh, by the way, since one needs to be a black belt to do said course, b)he'll probably be holding a grading in a few weeks in which I should expect to test up.

Considering that way back when I stopped training regularly, I was only 3rd kyu, this would be kind of... unexpected.

But I have the kihon and the kumite. All I need to do is blow the rust off my heian kata - and, of course, teki shodan. If I have a few weeks and go train with the karate club in college two or three days a week, this should be plenty feasible. (I do not want to be an embarrassment at my dan grading. That would be bad.)

On the other hand, it's not something I imagined doing. I hadn't expected to grade again soon - or, really, at all: I'm training once a week if that, and while karate makes me happy, I don't exactly practise outside of that once-a-week training. (I much prefer jujutsu. Or climbing.)

If I go for my dan grade... well. The kyu-dan system might be a relatively modern invention, but it deserves my respect. And reaching shodan signifies a basic understanding of and commitment to the discipline of Shotokan. It's supposed to signify a new beginning in learning: Hey, look! You have the basics, now we can learn the tricky stuff.

Which means, damnit, I ought to commit a little more time to being a good karateka.

(At least if I have a basic coaching qual, I won't feel quite so bad about not being able to pay for the training. Sensei is a good bloke, is all I can say.)

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 2010: 48


48. Anthony Price, War Games.

The past is a different country, and they do things differently there.

It's 1975 or so, roughly the same time the novel was written. David Audley is dragged away from a holiday to sort out the problem of a communist ideologue and newspaper publisher who may have murdered his brother to come into an inheritance of lost Civil War gold. Reenactors, Soviets, real history and false: one of the things that struck me very much in this book is conservative Home-Office-man Audley's - and by extension, I suppose, the author - real apprehension of violent political revolution on a scale comparable to the Civil War, if the homegrown Left is not kept in check.

It's an assumption - an element of the zeitgeist - that I find very foreign, especially as a moderate socialist-y type myself. (I don't vote for anyone to the right of Labour, except for the very rare moderate centrist woman on the ballot paper.)

Some of the writing is very elegant, and the element of suspense is well handled. I'm not entirely satisfied by the denouement, which feels somewhat rushed, but overall, a very decent book.

---

No doubt, O internets, you are wondering what I've been doing since last we spoke.

...Yeah, I didn't really think so, either.

The onset of summer appears to have driven me to exercise madness. I have not had a day off since last Thursday, and today -

Today I was crazy enough to climb in the afternoon, and go back, for the first time in a long while, to Shotokan training this evening.

I'd forgotten how much I enjoy karate. I'm rusty as hell, of course, but there are things the body remembers. Basic tai sabaki at least, and how to move from the hip. There's more that I've lost, in four-five years away, and certainty is one of those things. Maybe one day I'll have it again.

(I was a year and a half from a black belt when I stopped. I'd like to be there again.)

I think I'm going back to karate in earnest. Twice a week, 2.5 hours in total. I want my first dan by the end of next year: I'd forgotten how good it feels to go through a kata, to get it right, or nearly so.

Two and a half hours a week isn't hardcore by anyone's standards, I suppose, but if I'm climbing two to three times a week (two hours a session), running two to three times a week - and the physio recommended I take up swimming once a week in addition, to help keep my shoulder muscles limber - and weight training (two tricep exercises only) twice a week, on days I'm not climbing...

...Or at any rate, this is the plan, for college. Because I need to do something to justify my existence when I'm not in the library, and ain't no way nohow I can find a job with my patchy CV in this economy.

But I was talking about karate. Shotokan karate, with its wonderful slightly impractical long stances and kihon whose emphasis is primarily on power rather than finesse.

Strength isn't the same thing as power, and it was karate that taught me that. Strength helps. But power rests in the correct application of strength and technique and leverage, and you're always learning better technique. Moving closer to the unattainable perfect.

The sensei's a battered old fella in his sixties, former bouncer, still sometime plumber, with his third dan only a few years old still. He took up martial arts in his late thirties. He's not flashy, or particularly impressive, or even very flexible. The classes are usually full of kids - I'm generally the eldest person there, apart from him - and we tend to skimp on dojo etiquette.

But damn the man knows his kata. His kihon might not be as thorough as I've seen in the handful of classes I've been to at the college club, but his kata - and the standard of kata he demands from his students - makes theirs look slack by comparison.

It'll be a while before I'm back up to standard. Once I'm there, well, black belt isn't so far off.

---

I have a secret plan, you see. The plan is to upskill (corporatespeak is occasionally useful) myself to the point where I'm at least marginally qualified as a junior instructor in such things as karate, diving, and hopefully, eventually, climbing and a couple of other outdoorsy type things. (This requires money. Anyone want to employ me? I do good work cheap. :P ) So that should I flunk out of an academic career, I might have something non-officey to fall back on.

If I can manage to hang on to some college grant money and/or get a job this summer, I'm aiming for upskilling the diving. It's cheap in Lanzarote. Well, only half as expensive as here. Which means that relatively speaking, it's cheap, right?

I appear to be over the worst of the lack-of-energy motivation thing.

I got the laptop in to the computer people, and until they give me the horrible terrible news, I remain optimistic about getting my data back.

I went to karate this evening and actually remembered most of the kata for first kyu. Only another few months, and I might be performing them well enough not to be laughed out of retesting for that grade.

Vladimir ate something that disagreed with him and puked fishy brown vomit all over the kitchen floor. At least it wasn't the carpet.

I have confirmation of my college maintenance grant, finally, so odds are good I won't starve until spring. That is, if they actually pay up in a timely fashion, for which I won't hold my breath.

Today, I went to karate for the first time in over a year.

Then wasted the afternoon playing "Oblivion".

I don't know what's wrong with me, I really don't. I have no desire to work, or to talk to people. Maybe I need vitamins.

Karate today. A very enjoyable class, and empirical proof that I'm getting closer to fighting fit.

It didn't rain yesterday. It hasn't rained today, either. There is sunshine.

That seems really weird.

Karate today was kata. I haven't forgotten everything.

Just most things.

#

So I finally got tired of the giant desk and desktop that ate a third of my roomspace and was blocking the installation of more necessary shelving for me to store my ever-growing crap on. The desktop's practically obsolete at this point, anyway: ever since I got the laptop, I've only used it for games, but it's no longer capable of playing new ones. The desk? A scary overlarge dust-trap.

So I moved it out, and replaced it with a tiny table more suited to my space requirements. All that remains, now, is to acquire and install six wall-mounted shelves, and transfer crap from the overloaded shelves and boxes: perform triage on the crap (need to wait until after the exams for that, though) and downsize my life so that it fits again.

Not that it ever really did, but the current state of affairs, with the crap spread all over the place and me half-drowning in it, is a couple of steps beyond acceptable.

#

I have a headache now. Maybe I should nap. Or cook dinner (chicken and tarragon, with new potatoes, broccoli, green beans, carrots).

That's what I'll do. I'll make foods.