500 hours( The Sharpie Cermony, and becoming a Hammer looking for a nail)

Folks can live in the same house for years and develop totally different memories and impressions.  Teachers can teach a lesson on things and a student will connect that to his life and background and worldview and learn something that the teacher didnt intend or every once in a bluemoon make a connection that advances his understanding past that of the teacher in a totally unrelated area. 

Teachers, unfortunately, have a shelf life.  Students don't.  Teachers eventually need to allow a student to draw their own take on things.  To test their own theories, to model things on their world, to find their own truth. 

Teachers need to give their students a sharpie and allow them to cross out things that dont do much for them.  At what rank should this ceremony happen?  Where you allow the student to separate the useful from the bullshit.  Good bye releases 5-8, good bye hiki otoshi,  good bye shiho nage.  Goodbye Big 10, hello Big 3.   koryu kata becomes the greatest hits. 

My take is that the useful things that can be gained from the martial arts can be counted on one hand.  The rest is supreme bullshit.  The problem is that usefulness and bullshit are highly subjective.

I've slowed down on Aikido to spend sometime with my family.  When you got a little one, five hundred hours is a huge gap, you miss out on a lot. with an hour of drive time to and from the dojo its a thousand hours.  I'll probably start again in the summer, maybe. and my emphasis will be going to visit folks that I've met.  soak in what they have, and form my own connections.  Find more buckets of bullshit to wade through.  More material for the sharpie ceremony.

I've found maybe 2 or 3 things that I find useful, and I think I'm only smart enough to count to five or six.   

You have to wade through ten buckets of bullshit, to find something that you can use.  After you can number the things on one hand that are useful, you wade through twenty buckets to count on the other hand. The Bullshit to useful ratio is an exponential relationship. 

I havent been a typical student.  If I think its bullshit, then I aint buying in to it.   I really never bought into the rank thing, its kind of juvenile.  I never bought into the lineage thing.  A lot of folks need that one important dude that they can say this shit comes from. Hopefully, he has a wikipedia article, and Youtube signiture.  Rank promotion standards are repositories of technical bullshit, lineages are full of philosophical and pedagogical bullshit. 

You don't have to certify or rank useful stuff.  You don't have to sell it.  It shouldn't take 500 hours to learn. The hours we log arent for practice, its to identify your systems bullshit.  Hopefully, you can spend the rest of your days practicing only things that you find personally useful. 

Most martial arts is a rigged game, collusion between two guys to make what is suppossed to happen, happen.  The bullshit.  And then its years of making the bullshit happen better.  Til the point you got folks in hakamas throwing people with a touch or no touch or all.  Guys in seiza flicking a dude accross the room. You cant put an inch into a guy and have him give you ten feet. 

Useful stuff doesnt need anybody playing along.  It's a hammer looking for a nail. 

That's why randori in competitive circles in both Judo and Aikido looks shitty.  Nobody wants to make what is suppossed to happen, happen.  and when it does happen, they dont want to make it happen better.  They are just glad it happened at all.  Like watching NASCAR for the wrecks. Its a story you can tell your buddy.  Because it sticks out of the ordinary.   

Shitty looking stuff is honest stuff.  But honesty doesnt sell like bullshit. 

Honestly, be prepared to get your ass kicked.  That's a motto to live by.   Look in the mirror and say that affirmation daily. Put it on the dojo wall in fancy looking Japan scrawl.    Bow to it. 

You may do something for ten years and still get your ass kicked by somebody or something.  If you dont have the courage to identify the bullshit in your martial art, then good luck.  If you think that every move in the belt ranking curriculum is of the same weight and substance, then good luck.  If you think everything is worth practice time, then good luck. 

You maybe a technical wizard, with a high dan ranking, and be a total asshole.  Some people need the certified assholes in their life, and reference them often.  But Assholes are good at making bullshit seem useful.  They need the bullshit.  Otherwise they could only keep folks around for six months tops. 

A teacher prepares his students for the sharpie ceremony.  Helps them find something useful to practice.  Something to be really good at. 

 Self-defense talk is a waste of time, because the bad guys dont think like you and me do.  So its pointless to theorize what some guy might do on the "street"  while you are dressed in canvas pajamas, on a foam mat, with someone who doesnt want to sweat or bend at the hip for anybody. And living in a system which thinks that hiki otoshi, or tenkai kote hineri, or shihonage are options to be considered. 

"...and then Jim Bob puts an offbalance on the ole boy, and the dumb sonofabitch walks himself into a shihonage."  

I don't live in a universe where things are kicked off with a hand grab.   I dont live in a universe with equal timing.  The lesson I have learned that if you are looking to make things equal then you just got hit.  You have to be a legitimate threat to hit and damage for that whole maai thing to work. 

 I know that if I ever used this stuff that I'd be afraid, then pissed.  And when I get really pissed,  my hands shake, and I'm not looking for feedback, or tactile invisibility, or offbalance, I'm not going to wait for a recovery step.  I'm just going to become a pissed off hammer looking for a nail, or a track star, or a pant shitting expert. I'm hard wired for all three options.

I wish that I could just do sport aikido, because it knows its bullshit.  It's okay with that.   You may be a top level Tomiki Shiai dude and still be no more dangerous than a badminton player.  The world needs more badminton players.  But if you aren't allowed to play badminton then you need to take out a sharpie and have the courage to mark out the bullshit.  Because you maybe a badminton player and think you are somebody else, you may think you have been given something useful, and it isn't.