Karate – Kata talk – Bassai Dai

Back in training now for a couple of weeks, a young man’s thought naturally turn to karate in most his ev’ry waking moment. I thought I’d start a little series on the different Shotokan kata that I know and am learning.

For them as don’t know and might be half interested, I blathered on for a bit about kata in general in a previous post. For them as don’t want to take the time to follow the link, kata are pre-set patterns or forms, sequences of techniques performed against imaginary opponents. Learning the sequence is one thing; mastering the kata is quite another. It’s like anything – the more you learn the more you realise how little you know.

There are 26 Shotokan kata. I’ve learned eight, so I’ve got a long way to go.

Anyhoo, Bassai Dai is the one I’ll start with. This kata is a common requirement for the first-degree black belt test. Cory Searcy has an excellent technical description of it and for the more visually minded, here’s a neat little video (scroll down).

The name “Bassai Dai” I’ve heard translated variously as “to penetrate a fortress” or “to remove an obstruction.” I don’t speak Japanese, so I can’t say if these, or any other translation is right, but these two connote power, strength and solidity, qualities which are evident in the kata itself.

Karate historians have often classified kata as deriving from one of two styles of traditional Okinawan karate. The one was characterised by powerful, low stances and solid, crushing blows, whilst the other exhibited lighter, faster movements and higher stances.

Bassai Dai is clearly from the solid school. It contains deep, long stances with powerful techniques rooted in the firm connection of the karateka to the floor.  Remember the first few moves from the video?  They’re performed with the karateka turning in place, but generating every ounce of power he can muster from the floor to the hip twist, finally to the snap of the arms and wrists.

This kata presents a challenge to someone of my build.  I’m fairly lightly built (read – scrawny) and it can be hard for a small person to create the sense of imposing strength that Bassai Dai is supposed to convey in the minds of the viewers.  Someone with larger physical mass can project that in a certain degree just by virtue of their size.  I have to do it mentally by envisioning myself filling a larger space than I do and more importantly, by trying to demonstrate with timing, commitment and precision of technique a sense of larger presence.

Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t.  And of course, a large fella with timing, commitment and precision’s going to look better anyway.

But that’s okay.  I’ve got Kanku Dai.  It is my friend.  More on that later.

Karate – Back in Training

Ouch.  Tonight, I went back to karate at the MUN Shotokan dojo for the first time since the car accident.  A two-hour class taught me that I wasn’t nearly as rusty as I thought and that I can get through such a thing with “used muscle” feelings as opposed to “oh holy jesus” feelings.

I remembered the basic kata, and while techniques were nowhere near as crisp as they should be, my timing is terrible and my reflexes non-existent, this is one black belt who feels that things will improve rapidly.

More importantly, I feel as I haven’t felt in a long time.  Relaxed and calm, with the sensation that everything’s going to be okay.  I started training in shotokan karate in 1992, nearly fifteen years ago and every belt I earned under the eye of Sensei David Bell.  He’s still there and while there are new faces, there are also old familiar ones.

I will recover from this injury and be able to do everything that I used to do.

Now I’m going to take a hot bath.

Book Review – The Lions of Al-Rassan

This is the latest Thing I Have Read.  Guy Gavriel Kay is Canadian (Yay!) and author of The Finoavar Tapestry, a fantasy trilogy which I first read in early university. I found it profoundly affecting, and actually avoided anything further by him, because I didn’t think that anything else could be as good.

I was wrong. Lions is an historical fantasy novel (no magic or dragons) based upon mediaeval Spain shortly before the Reconquista (wiki). Basically, the northern Christian states of the Iberian peninsula conquered the Moorish and Muslim states to the south.

The story focuses on the complicated relations between the Jaddite (Christian), Asharite (Islamic) and Kindath (Jewish) religions and cultures, as experienced through the equally complex interactions between the three main characters, one from each tradition.  Rodrigo Belmonte is Jaddite a exemplary military commander and a devoted father and husband.  Ammar ibn Khairan is an Asharite, poet, diplomat and mercenary who moves alone through the world.  Jehane bet Ishak is a female Kindath physician and healer, at once respected and reviled due to her gender and religion.

As these three step around and between each other in an intricate personal dance of conflict and accord, Kay weaves the larger-scale, political events about them in a multilayered web in which they are at once eventful and event-making.  They affect and are affected by the happenings around them.  His characters are tragic, yet indomitable, at once trapped by and masters of their own fates.

Kay’s writing is polychromatic and lyrical, capable of portraying deep emotion in his characters whilst evoking a profound response in his reader.  He connects character and reader with a skill I’ve seldom encountered in a writer.  His books should not be lightly picked up and cannot be lightly put down.

Wifely comments

Vicky has fallen asleep with her glasses on.  I reach over to gently lift from her face and she wakes up, sits bolt upright and says, “Don’t take them off!  I’ll dream fuzzy!”

It’s the geeky wheel that gets the grease.

I’m not the biggest geek out there. Not even close. In my web wanderings through the online AD&D community, I’ve found several star sites whose commitment to the World of the Geek is truly phenomenal.

In celebration:

The Acaeum. This is a site devoted to the collector of old (pre-1990) D&D materials. Its knowledge base is both broad and deep,with the tiniest details of the differences between the print runs of a single product recorded. It’s an amazing place. Betcha didn’t know that the reference charts in the back of the first edition Player’s Handbook didn’t have intermittent shading until the fourth print run. They’ve even got four articles on mould.

The TSR Archive. Another massive effort to provide cover scans and transcriptions of the back-cover text of every D&D product ever. In-depth, exhaustive and awe-inspiring.

Dragonsfoot.  These folks are the guardians of1st Edition AD&D.  Adventures, utilities, character sheets, nary a nonweapon proficiency to be seen and you better run from the bards if you piss ‘em off.

Dave Arneson.  Co-creator of D&D.  The site’s a little old, but still fascinating for the D&D history enthusiast.  Please tell me there’s more than one D&D history enthusiast.  Please?

Candlekeep.  Everything, and I mean Everything, about the Forgotten Realms.

The Oerth Journal.  Long-running and super-cool periodical all about Greyhawk.

And finally, the current D&D gurus, Wizards of the Coast.  They have a little thingamajig on their site that displays a different slogan every time you visit.  My personal favourite, reflecting as it a standard geek stereotype: “We’ll be your girlfriend.”  We geeks who have wives/girlfriends/partners/etc. can snicker.

Book review – The Hickory Staff

Just recently finished reading. . . .

As far as I can tell, The Hickory Staff is the first novel for these authors and they pull off a sterling job. It’s a portal-to-another-world story, in which three folks from our world – Idaho Springs, Colorado, USA, to be precise – get dumped headlong into the magical, war-torn world of Eldarn.

The first impression is of wearisome familiarity, after all, it’s a story that’s been told time and again, ever Mark Twain made it famous with A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court. Two elements, however, separate it from its brethren: vivid, fascinating characters from this world, richly drawn and imagined and the lively setting of Idaho Springs, a small mountain town in the Rockies. One of our heroes is the self-conscious assistant manager of a local bank with a flair for math. Another is an athletic, self-confident history teacher(!), while the third is a young (female) antiques dealer, with whom the banker falls touchingly in love.

As for place, it turns out that Idaho Springs is a real town. How accurately portrayed I’ve no idea, but it’s written convincingly and authoritatively – the characters move through a well-conceived landscape.

Equally important is the world into which the protagonists are dropped. Eldarn’s had its up and downs, suffering a coup and widespread messiness. Our heroes, of course, end up with the Resistance and chase about the countryside pursued by Forces Vastly Greater Than They. It’s entertainingly told and while it has its drawbacks, such as a slightly hackneyed Elder Wizard figure and a Lovely Assassin with a Secret Heart of Gold, these are more than offset by the legends, critters and escapades with which the book overflows.

Best bit – the way in which the visitors from our world become contributing, useful members of the Resistance, tapping skills possessed by ordinary people of our world, such as mountaineering and mathematics.

There’s a sequel, Lessek’s Key, which I’ve not yet read. Stay tuned. . .

Slightly off-season

Today was a hint of That Which Is To Come.  Spring!  There.  I said it.  Hah!  And I’m not afraid of the Big Bad Winter Gods.  Nope. Not me.  No sir.

Okay, maybe a little afraid. But the snowmobiles roaring around outside make it still winter.  I’ll know it’s really spring when they start breaking through the ice down in the wetland.

But anyway, it was warm and sunny with an actual warm wind.  Very strange.  The snow was soft and a little squooshy.

So what does Katherine decide?  That she’d like a snow tunnel.

So off I set with shovel in hand to make make my child’s wish come true.  We’ve got a nice deep drift in the backyard that’s perfect for this sort of thing and I busily started excavating.

Got about five feet in, up to my waist in the tunnel when Katherine discovers why I’d been telling her to stay off the tunnel roof.

She now has a snow trench.

They’ve got me figured out

Katherine enters the kitchen with a piece of construction paper rolled up into a tube.  She puts it to my ear, peers in and then puts her mouth to it:

K:  “Hello, hello?  Anyone in there?”

There is no answer.

Vicky: “I’ve been looking in there for years trying to find something.  Did you see anything when you looked?”

K: “No.  Maybe we should look somewhere else.”

Book meme

The Lovely and Talented Wife completed it, Sarai got it out of the Internet snoozepond from whence it had been resting, so away we go like a turd of hurtles.

The rules are:

Look at the list of (100) books below.
Bold the ones you’ve read.
Italicize the ones you want to read.
leave blank the ones that you aren’t interested in.
Movies don’t count.

1.The Da Vinci Code (Dan Brown) – more cliffhangers than an border collie has neuroses

2. Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austen) – who-hoo! Best dialogue!

3. To Kill A Mockingbird (Harper Lee) – wish I’d read it years ago so I could have been enjoying it for longer.

4. Gone With The Wind (Margaret Mitchell) – ack. thpppft.

5. The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King (Tolkien) – once a year for the last fifteen+ years. Several times aloud. Including the appendices.

6. The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring (Tolkien) - my favourite of the three. You can sing “All that is gold does not glitter” to the tune of “All Things Bright and Beautiful. Try it!

7. The Lord of the Rings: Two Towers (Tolkien) - Go Rohan!

8. Anne of Green Gables (L.M. Montgomery) – PEI as we all want it to be.

9. Outlander (Diana Gabaldon) - and everything else she’s written. I want a Ferguson plaid tie.

10. A Fine Balance (Rohinton Mistry)
11. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Rowling) - My name is Mort. Voldy Mort.

12. Angels and Demons (Dan Brown) – better than The Da Vinci Code in certain ways. Not that that’s hard.

13. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Rowling) – first part’s dull, but it picks up in the latter half.

14. A Prayer for Owen Meany (John Irving)

15. Memoirs of a Geisha (Arthur Golden)

16. Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (Rowling) - Magic. Pure magic.

17. Fall on Your Knees(Ann-Marie MacDonald)

18. The Stand (Stephen King) - read it once. Very disturbing, but highly cool.

19. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban(Rowling) - possibly the best so far.

20. Jane Eyre (Charlotte Bronte)

21. The Hobbit (Tolkien) – See LOTR above. Many many many times.

22. The Catcher in the Rye (J.D. Salinger) – started it.

23. Little Women (Louisa May Alcott)

24. The Lovely Bones (Alice Sebold)

25 . Life of Pi (Yann Martel)

26. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Douglas Adams) – Here I am, brain the size of a planet and I’m sitting around filling out memes.

27. Wuthering Heights (Emily Bronte) – read it for school. Loved it!

28. The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe (C. S. Lewis) – I’ve worn out 2 copies.
29. East of Eden (John Steinbeck) – you mean Stein-yech, right?

30. Tuesdays with Morrie(Mitch Albom)

31. Dune (Frank Herbert) – just to see what all the fuss is about.

32. The Notebook (Nicholas Sparks)

33. Atlas Shrugged (Ayn Rand)

34. 1984 (Orwell) – I read Animal Farm before I’d heard of Communism. Does that count?

35. The Mists of Avalon (Marion Zimmer Bradley) - New Age Druid babes! Gotta love ‘em!

36. The Pillars of the Earth (Ken Follett) – aka How to Build a Big Stone Thing.

37. The Power of One (Bryce Courtenay)

38. I Know This Much is True (Wally Lamb)

39. The Red Tent (Anita Diamant)

40. The Alchemist (Paulo Coelho)

41. The Clan of the Cave Bear (Jean M. Auel) - Woo-hoo! Neanderthal psychic-inventing-everything lust!

42. The Kite Runner (Khaled Hosseini)
43. Confessions of a Shopaholic (Sophie Kinsella)

44. The Five People You Meet In Heaven (Mitch Albom)

45. Bible King James and RSV. Do I get double credit?

46. Anna Karenina (Tolstoy)

47. The Count of Monte Cristo (Alexandre Dumas) - I liked the movie better.

48. Angela’s Ashes (Frank McCourt)

49. The Grapes of Wrath (John Steinbeck) – see East of Eden, above.

50. She’s Come Undone (Wally Lamb)

51. The Poisonwood Bible (Barbara Kingsolver)

52. A Tale of Two Cities (Dickens) – cool!

53. Ender’s Game (Orson Scott Card)

54. Great Expectations (Dickens)

55. The Great Gatsby (Fitzgerald)

56. The Stone Angel (Margaret Laurence) – oh, God, kill me now.

57. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (Rowling) – Snakes. Big ones.

58. The Thorn Birds (Colleen McCullough) – oddly enough.

59. The Handmaid’s Tale (Margaret Atwood) – I always thought I’d hate Atwood. This confirmed it.

60. The Time Traveller’s Wife (Audrey Niffenegger)

61. Crime and Punishment (Fyodor Dostoyevsky)

62. The Fountainhead (Ayn Rand)

63. War and Peace (Tolstoy)

64. Interview With The Vampire (Anne Rice) – Vampires! Before they were trendy.

65. Fifth Business (Robertson Davis)

66. One Hundred Years Of Solitude (Gabriel Garcia Marquez)

67. The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants (Ann Brashares)

68. Catch-22 (Joseph Heller)

69. Les Miserables (Hugo) – the unabridged version, thank you.

70. The Little Prince (Antoine de Saint-Exupery)

71. Bridget Jones’ Diary (Fielding)

72. Love in the Time of Cholera (Marquez)

73. Shogun (James Clavell) - nifty. Has ninja.

74. The English Patient (Michael Ondaatje)

75. The Secret Garden (Frances Hodgson Burnett)

76. The Summer Tree (Guy Gavriel Kay) – one of the best books to read in university.

77. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (Betty Smith)

78. The World According To Garp (John Irving)

79. The Diviners (Margaret Laurence)

80. Charlotte’s Web (E.B. White) – chilhood friend

81. Not Wanted On The Voyage (Timothy Findley)

82. Of Mice And Men (Steinbeck)

83. Rebecca (Daphne DuMaurier)

84. Wizard’s First Rule (Terry Goodkind)

85. Emma (Jane Austen)

86. Watership Down(Richard Adams) - horrible. Why do people think this is a children’s book?

87. Brave New World (Aldous Huxley)

88. The Stone Diaries (Carol Shields)

89. Blindness (Jose Saramago)

90. Kane and Abel (Jeffrey Archer)

91. In The Skin Of A Lion (Ondaatje)

92. Lord of the Flies (Golding) – forced to read it in school. Yech.

93. The Good Earth (Pearl S. Buck)

94. The Secret Life of Bees (Sue Monk Kidd)

95. The Bourne Identity (Robert Ludlum) - best Ludlum

96. The Outsiders (S.E. Hinton)

97. White Oleander (Janet Fitch)

98. A Woman of Substance (Barbara Taylor Bradford)

99. The Celestine Prophecy (James Redfield)

100. Ulysses (James Joyce)

Forty-one. That’s pretty respecktabiggle. Lately, I’ve gotten into reading more Guy Gavriel Kay, as well as nineteenth-century adventure novels. I need a minimum of three books on the go at once or I get a little squirrelly.

Must try Rexton’s F&SF one soon.

Why I like the British

They’ve got clubs for everything and they participate in the niftiest activities. If it was done once in their long, long history, there’s a bunch of people somewhere on that mist-enshrouded isle doing their level best to re-create it. Here’s a sampling from around the Web:

The Scottish Combat Academy instructs students in traditional Scottish ways of beating each other up. Among their curriculum: “Pugilism, Shin-Kicking, Wrestling, Single-stick fighting, Dirk fencing and the Highland Dirk Dance.” I’d love to learn Shin-kicking.

As an aside, here’s an informative article on single-stick from 1898 by C. Phillips-Wolley as reproduced in the Journal of Manly Arts. Favourite quote: What the ordinary Englishman wants is a game with which he may fill up the hours during which he cannot play cricket and need not work; a game in which he may exercise those muscles with which good mother Nature meant him to earn his living, but which custom has condemned to rust, while his brain wears out; a game in which he may hurt some one else, is extremely likely to be hurt himself, and is certain to earn an appetite for dinner.

The British Quarterstaff Association. These folks will teach you how to baste the ribs of any overconfident archer-types that you happen to come across. They even tell you how to make your own equipment.

The British Long-Bow Society. Keeps the Robin Hoods of the world alive. Also nifty is the Worshipful Company of Bowyers, the present incarnation of the mediaeval guild of bow-makers. Richard Head Longbows actually makes the weapons. Looks like it’s a little bit harder than making a quarterstaff.

The National Society of Master Thatchers. Need a straw roof? These are the folks.

International Sheep Dog Society. They keep Border Collies from getting bored.  For centuries, these dogs have been used by shepherds to keep their sheep (and kids) organised.  Anything that gives them a job to do is a great idea by me. (I oughta know.  I’ve got two of them).

The Aran Islanders, although not having a club that I could find, have been knitting fantastic sweaters for a very very long time.  And they still do.

They’re an amazing people.