Yesterday while In line I noticed one of the turtles working hard to hauuuuuuuuul himself out of the water onto the sun rock. He was moving sloooowly, (he is a turtle after all) and was about to make it when I guess his legs got too tired and he fell back into the water. I really wanted him to go back and try again and make it so I could have a metaphor-tastic post about success after failure and training harder and all that. But he (or is it she? Mo?) decided the rock wasn't worth it and spent the rest of class swimming around with his buddies. So no symbolic inspiration from the turtle today. Or maybe it's not-so-subtly symbolic of my need for a metaphor in order to post.
I guess I wanted something to be representative of what a great class we had last night. After a period of pain/struggling/lost xuanzis, I really felt good and had a lot of fun. Han was teaching and set the tone by starting us off with forward rolls instead of caijiaos. The rest of class was all mixed around with different combos (one a xuanzi into zuopan into kip up) that really shook off any lingering brooding. My legs felt light again, my kicks not only didn't hurt but felt stronger than they have in ages, and even doing the dreaded mopan saotui didn't kill my spirit. At the end of class Han blazed us through some more xiaohongquan which helped me realize we are a lot closer to the end than I thought. All in all, it was a very affirming bit of training; if only the turtle could have co-operated then I could have had a nicely packaged metaphor to boot. But I guess one can't have everything.... :D
I guess I wanted something to be representative of what a great class we had last night. After a period of pain/struggling/lost xuanzis, I really felt good and had a lot of fun. Han was teaching and set the tone by starting us off with forward rolls instead of caijiaos. The rest of class was all mixed around with different combos (one a xuanzi into zuopan into kip up) that really shook off any lingering brooding. My legs felt light again, my kicks not only didn't hurt but felt stronger than they have in ages, and even doing the dreaded mopan saotui didn't kill my spirit. At the end of class Han blazed us through some more xiaohongquan which helped me realize we are a lot closer to the end than I thought. All in all, it was a very affirming bit of training; if only the turtle could have co-operated then I could have had a nicely packaged metaphor to boot. But I guess one can't have everything.... :D
those turtles are funny when they were on that sun rock
ReplyDeleteis it really called sun rock? whats its purpose?
mo?
Those turtles have chi. Shifu fake-punched one and he/she didn't flinch at all. Most of us probably would have jumped back a mile.
ReplyDeleteMaybe the turtle didn't give up. Maybe he knows that he is stuck in a small god-forsaken fake world where all of his choices have been taken away and now relies on his masters to provide even the most basic of necessities. His daily desires have been reduced to whether or not to climb on that little sun dock and get some UV rays pretending to be the sun in a big blue sky. Maybe he realized that what he was trying to do no longer mattered. He'll never be free. He'll never breathe the air as he was supposed to, hear the sounds of his forefathers, or taste what freedom really is. He will always be a prisoner.
But, he never gave up because he doesn't know what giving up means. He is just living in the moment. On the dock one minute. Swimming the next. An enlightened practitioner of Chan.