How It Is

 

Before Karate

With Karate

After Karate

How it is.

If anyone is truly literate,

you will understand that I ripped off Samuel Beckett

from his play of the same name.

 

 

From Wikipedia - The title is Beckett's literal translation of the French phrase, comment c'est (how it is), a pun on the French verb commencer or 'to begin'.

 

The text is divided into three parts:

 

"before Pim" - the solitary narrator journeys in the mud-dark until he encounters another creature like himself thereby forming a "couple". His journey is abundant with recollections from his life above, including reminiscences of a woman and of his parents.

"with Pim" - the narrator is motionless in the mud-dark until he is abandoned by Pim.

"after Pim" - the narrator returns to his earlier solitude but without motion in the mud-dark. He postulates that there must be several others like him and Pim. As the attempted explanation however requires a constant accumulation of ad hoc hypotheses, he acknowledges the wish for a simpler explanation. Only the mud and the obscurity remain certainties.

 

In a letter (April 6, 1960) to Donald McWhinnie of the BBC Radio Drama Company, Beckett explained his strange text as the product of a " 'man' lying panting in the mud and dark murmuring his 'life' as he hears it obscurely uttered by a voice inside him... The noise of his panting fills his ears and it is only when this abates that he can catch and murmur forth a fragment of what is being stated within... It is in the third part that occurs the so-called voice 'quaqua', its interiorisation and murmuring forth when the panting stops. That is to say the 'I' is from the outset in the third part and the first and second, though stated as heard in the present, already over." ^[3]

And art does imitate reality

 

Before Karate

 

I grew up in a small town, attended high school and then went to university.

Learned many things such as linguistic philosophy and studies in rhetoric.

The term karate entered my awareness from comic book ads,

From a Bruce Tegner paperback, from Black Belt Magazine

And from my university room mate Richard Durich who studied

Shotokan at Temple under Okazaksi Sensei.

 

Then chose not to graduate as I did not want to be a rhetoric teacher,

Held various jobs even digging ditches and managing shoe stores

And moved around the states.

 

Somewhere along the way I began an appreciation of Kung Fu movies.

 

With Karate

 

With Karate correctly being when  I became the least talented of Tom Lewis’ students.

But I did not know enough that it probably be better for me if I quit.

So I didn’t and in time I learned a few things.

Then I had to leave Salisbury for a new job.

But Charles Murray eventually entered the picture and forced the rest of Isshinryu

As he expressed in in to me.

I became a Sho dan and almost immediately after was on my own.

 

So I practiced, eventually started a youth program at the Boys Club,

Began to visit anywhere I could find to train with adults

And I also used competition to keep pushing myself.

 

Once when being judged by Ron Martin, who clearly did not care much for my form,

Answered truthfully when later questioned, “It was because your stances sucked.”

I then watched his students and their stances most definitely did not suck.

Then on a visit to Salisbury watched Tom Lewis working on his kata.

His stances did most definitely not suck.

 

So I began to concentrate on my stances more and more.

Over time stances became a key focus for my students.

 

I also learned something else,  that I could continue to learn from my instructors,

Even when not being trained by them.

Just by simply watching them, observing and remembering.

 

I trained with many people in many styles.

More time with Ernest Rothrock in a whole variety of Chinese Art studies.

More time with Tris Sutrisno in his family Shotokan, Aikdo, tjimande and Kobudo.

Not so much I became an expert, but learn I did.

 

 

Less time with other people in other arts;

Carl Long Shorin Ryu, Ed Savage Goj Ryu, Dave Brojack Kempo Goju,

Tang Soo So, Washin Ryu, Goshin Ryu and many more.

Beside learning as much as I could, it gave me more scale of what other did.

 

I kept notes continually, practiced continually.

 

When moving to New Hampshire I began my youth program again through the Boys and Girls Club there.

I even began my own small adult program there.

I no longer traveled to other schools to traing, but maintained many friendships I had made.

 

One significant change, I no longer went to tournaments for my students,

I took my program another way.

 

I began my own studies into Isshinryu kata application potential.

Then, later, met Sherman Harrill and for a decade learned as much as possible from him at varioun clinics.

Never was I his student, but I gained an incredible depth from his sharing's.

 

Encountered death along the way.

Good students, friends even an incredible instructor, Sherman Harrill.

 

Each left their mark.

When Sherman departed I was so distraught I spent 3 months buried in my notes and video tapes and cataloged what I saw, over 800 possible kata applications.

And those were only the piece he felt comfortable sharing in public when those people were not his students.

 

Almost at the same time one of my students left us in death, suddenly.

My entire group felt that in many ways. Among them most of my adult students made personal

Life decisions where it was time for them to leave training.

And for them that was the right decision.

And it was different for each of them.

 

“But you pick yourself off, dust yourself off and begin all over again”

Though for a year is was just my senior students and myself.

It never affected the youth program.

 

My own studies progresses. I made changes of supplemental kata to the training as time passed. I

t would be impossible to share everything I had seen,

but some things added flavor and strength to my students studies.

 

In time I was able to meet and train with John Kerker, the senior student of Sherman.

That filled in so many things Sherman had hinted at when I first saw John in action.

Then over the years I observed how John matured at how he would present what he had learned

Over the years with Sherman, very intelligent ways to continue to present the material.

 

Then slowly I felt what I thought was encroaching age.
I started to make adjustments, but other changes kept occurring.

Still I continues to study, research and teach.

Everything seemed to occur at once.

First Diabetes 2

Second Colon Cancer.

 

I made lifestyle changes to eating, began walking and training with greater intensity.

For the cancer surgery, chemo and radiation therapy.

It worked in that I was a cancer survivor and my diabetes 2 went into remission.

 

Third Disability

 

After years of testing they do not know what I have or a way to treat it.

Loss of much strength, even affecting my face and speech. I am very difficult to understand.

Loss of central balance and core stability.

 

At times I fell breaking ribs,

At times I fell indicating old blood was on my brain necessting brain surgery.

Each time I came back to continue walking, now using a walker.

My karate remained not vastly slower and weaker.

I now supervised the youth instruction, but still had much to share with the adults.

 

Then in time we moved to Arizona.

I had to leave karate class behind, but I could still walk and practice.

 

 

 

After Karate

 

I continue to walk 4 or 5 times a week, one to two hours a walk.

Adjusting when I walk to consider the brutal Arizona temperatures.

 

I work on some Chi Kung drills, a bit of my Tai Chi and most of my Karate kata.

Many changes of course.

Much slower and with even less power.

I retain what I retain.

 

But my time with my karate is even greater than before.

 

I continue my research, maintaining my blog for my students,

Writing even more in private missives for their choice to use on not.

 

I still have much to learn from my videos of Sherman and John.

And from everyone who taught me.

My own study into kata application potential continues

Along with my thoughts how to move those potentials into realization.

 

My life has not greatly changed.

Of course I have no students any longer, but as before no one visits either.

I get about 5 phone calls a year. It has been that way for the past 7 years or so.

Understandable because I am almost impossible to understand on the phone.

 

There are so many things to consider,

And never enough time to get to all of them.

 

You recognize the temporary goals, like tournaments of acquiring rank

Are far less important as the years pass.

 

Trophies gather dust and are discarded, because only you cared about them and that time has gone.

Rank is so very less important. Too many old certificates to hand anymore

And only I to see them.

 

In fact my wife just hung my last on the wall of my new bed room.

It was an amazing effort on her part.

Of course all the friends behind it mean everything.

But in the end it is just a piece of paper (a very nice piece of paper).

 

Now onto the next challenge

 

 

How it is.

 

Before Karate

With Karate

After Karate

 

How it is.

 

At least I got the "quaqau" down.