JOURNEY - on Mastering Ukemi Daniel Linden (feel good novels txt) 📖

despite all the differences we are remarkably alike. He will sometimes go off on a lecture about some subject in which we are in total agreement and I will have to stop him with a remark to the effect that he is preaching to the choir or, rather, teaching aikido to a teacher. Sometimes it is easier to just let him go on. I guess it should be noted that he does this with me as well, or so I assume.

“Art, how do you look at the difference between uke and nage?” I asked.

“That’s a strange question,” he said.

“Okay, I’m just trying to fill out the mind map. You know I do this exercise where I put down every quality and aspect of a thing I can think of on a huge piece of paper or a chalk board… anything, I don’t worry about what it is. I ask for input from anyone who knows something or I think can help. I ask anyone who might have insight. Then when everything is there I organize it by category and then by relative importance and then try and impose a time line. Analytical thought is applied and hopefully everything becomes clear. Not always. Sometimes you need more input and sometimes that input comes from places you least expect. I am trying to utilize every source I have. That’s it.”

We discussed his ideas about the relative differences in uke and nage in aikido and I soon realized it was something he had never put much thought into. Not unusual, it seems most teachers accept the obvious and since for most it is merely a necessary evil in the pursuit of true ‘aikido’ I wasn’t surprised. I dropped the subject as I felt a twitch of impatience with him. He is a 6thdan after all.

Art and I share that unfortunate relationship that so many aikido partners do. Since we are both 6th dan it is amplified, yet far more subtle. We never really attack fully. We always hold enough back so that we can counter each other’s moves. It’s silly and sad, yet I have seen it on and off the mat for almost forty years.

It starts with who began aikido first. I’ve actually heard Art tell someone that since he began training in July of 1975 he was senior to someone who started in September of 1975 with no regard to the other man’s intensity or quantity of training. It’s ridiculous. So when we train together there is never the pure quality of unrestrained ukemi, but rather a pretense of it, so that Art or I can then stop the technique and somehow prove we are superior. Honestly! And people seem to think nothing of this. I wish that everyone would stop this nonsense and concentrate on being the best that they can be and not worry about where anyone else is. Trust me, hamburgers cost the same no matter what rank you are in aikido. And no one thinks you are special except your own students.

The posturing goes on off the mat as well. There is always the apparent desire to best your partner. So there is always a subtle disregard for whatever another instructor says or teaches. When more than one master is present, see how many get on the mat together to actually train and see which ones go off to do something else. In front of students one master may praise and encourage another, but when it’s just the big dogs, the scratching and biting is monumental. Believe me.

“I think you might have a fish on your line,” he pointed.

I grabbed my rod and waited for a tug and when one didn’t come after a few minutes reeled in and re-baited the hook. We had set out after arriving in Key West and checking into our room. No time to lose when after big fish. Key West is the Mecca for fishermen who want to catch fish. They are everywhere, plentiful, large, medium or small and they are willing. There are so many species it is hard to believe. We were targeting grouper and snapper and had a great deal of success with smaller fish. We now were interested in much larger fish.

I felt a tug and caught a small snapper. It was much too small for keeping and I began to toss it overboard when I changed my mind, laid it under a damp cloth and dug into my tackle box for a larger hook. After changing the hook I carefully baited it with the small fish and tossed the sinker, live bait and hook over the side. I lowered it to the bottom and then reeled up two turns to wait and see. Art had caught three fish in the time it had taken me to re-rig and asked what I was doing.

“I’ve always had a suspicion that you could come out here with live bait and dig some big grouper and snapper out of this water. I don’t have anything to support that, really, but we have been catching so many small fish, well, there have to be large fish here as well. I’m going to eliminate all the smaller fish and use bait that only big fish will go after.”

“It sounds logical,” he said. “I’ll be interested in seeing if you get a…”

My rod snapped down and the weight of the strike turned the front end of the boat around. The fish was trying to get back to its hole in the rock and if it succeeded it would break my line on the rough coral. I pumped up and reeled going down, but my drag was letting too much line rip off the reel at the same time. I tried to thumb the spool to keep it from turning so easy but when I did that I was afraid the line would break. I wasn’t using heavy enough line and knew it, but had decided that I