I'm reading By the Sword: A History of Gladiators, Musketeers, Samurai, Swashbucklers and Olympic Champions, which dracosphynx sent me, and it's been delightful... I'm usually a slow reader of nonfiction, but this one's been pleasurable.

Anyway, there's a chapter on the mystique of the "secret thrust," the one winning move that will always get your opponent, wherein we hear of Egerton Castle, who wrote in the 1860s or so:

Castle lived by his pen, turning his hand to any topic from English bookplates to landscape gardening. He wrote plays for Sir Henry Irving, for nearly a decade was on the staff of the Saturday Review, and together with his wife, Agnes Sweetman, penned more than twenty historical romances, several of which became best-sellers. Some had splendid titles—his last, posthumous novel was Pamela Pounce: A Tale of Tempestuous Petticoats—and several drew upon his love of swordplay, one dealing explictly with the botte secrete. At the climax of his short story "The Great Todescan's Secret Thrust" its hero confronts the evil Todescan: "Never, for the smallest breathing-space, did the provost's terrible long blade release his own. He felt it gliding, seeking to bind, fiercely caressing; felt the deadly spring behind a tiger's crouch; felt the invincible, unknown thrust ready against his first weakening."

The book goes on to discuss whether the secret thrust described in this short story was actually very secretive, or even very effective... but as you can imagine, the rest of the discussion was totally lost on me.


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Tags: fencing, humor, writing
Current Mood: !

For various reasons, Baby Wigglet hasn't been sleeping through the night, so I'm only managing maybe two hours of fencing a week, less than I want. Plus, last week was rather demoralizing because the three adults who usually show up for group practice didn't. I was surrounded by energetic, athletic and aggressive teenaged boys and girls. Let me tell you, there's nothing like having a little Asian girl—who's still taller than you—giving you pitying looks because your short legs don't let you lunge as far as her to make you feel old and decrepit.

Anyway, hyanan's offered to teach me iaido, so I took her up on it and we started this weekend. While I often feel like an inadequate mother (no matter how many times people assure me otherwise), I have to believe I get cool points for entertaining the baby while practicing cutting up a rival daimyo's samurai on my lanai. Wigglet sat in her blue chair and chewed on her tiny stuffed whale toy and was quiet throughout, so it must have been interesting to watch.

After that we packed her up and went to get food and groceries while still dressed in practice outfits (this is the point where I note that hakama look much better on guys). I joked while we were walking through the frozen section that we were like some bad intersection of an anime series and a cheesy 80s movie ("Two Samurai and a Baby!"). hyanan rolled her eyes, maybe, but she's used to me by now. Poor woman.

I have by now forgotten almost all the nuances of my first lesson and am left only with some bizarre specifics, such as the belief that if I don't hide my thumbs some ninja will come cut them off. But I find that there are a lot of similarities between fencing and iaido, at the fundamental level: there's a shared emphasis in balance and its seat in your hips, in the notion of threat and implied threat, and in the emphasis on situational awareness. Learning is the same also, in that both instructors echo each other: "Do it slow and learn it well, speed will come later."

When I think about what I'm learning from all this, I keep coming back to one thing: I need to write more fight scenes.

No, wait, that's not it. What I'm really learning is that in high school I should have joined the fencing club, because that's were all the athletic boys who were still into knights and dragons and geekstuff were.

No, that's not it either. (Though I'll share that bit of wisdom with my daughter when she's old enough.)

Um, when I figure out what I've learned, I'll share it with you. Count on that. Just keep your thumbs tucked in or you'll have to use base eight.


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Tags: fencing, health, iaido, mom in spots
Current Mood: loopy

I just got an email inviting me to the grand opening of the Academy's new salle, where there will be (I quote), "Appetizers, pizza, beer and fencing."

Um....

o_O


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Tags: fencing, humor
Current Mood: one of these things does not go together....

I am tense, mask under one arm. "Forgive me," I say, quiet but without hedging. "It's been over a year. I have forgotten all that I know."

"Let us see," he says. We salute one another and then he says, "Let's start with a simple exercise. En garde. Keep your distance, now."

And then--

--I remember. Everything I thought I'd forgotten. How to stand. How to move. How far away I have to be for a lunge to succeed. How to parry. All my fancy disengages. I even remember obscure rules--"That wasn't my point, was it." "No... you're right. I attacked first and you didn't parry."

But there are things I'd forgotten--

--the smell of sweat and steel and nylon. The way five minutes of this has me working harder than twenty minutes of jogging. How good it feels to make no excuses for aggression or cunning. How much you laugh when you fail... how much you crow when you score the unexpected point.

An hour later, I am ready for another hour. For another two hours. I am perched on the concrete ledge just off the strip, sucking down a bottle of water and panting like a wolf in the summer sun, watching other people assemble for the group practice I can't stay for tonight... and I feel at home... as if I'd never left. I never want to leave.

There is exhiliration in running. Solitude has its pleasures, and you should know who you are when no one's around. But it's nothing to this. This is a fierceness of joy I wish I'd known about as a teenage girl, when I misspent my youth's most resilient years hiding in dark libraries, thinking that flesh was a cage I had to rise above in order to reach more spiritual aims. How I wish I could go back and tell myself that you can't rise above your body by ignoring it. Like a crack in a dam, the longer you neglect the flesh the more power it has over you, until at last it is your master and you drown in the tide of its demands.

"Are you staying?" one of the other fencers asks.

"Not tonight. Next time, though," I say. And grin. "You'll have to be nice to me, though. I just got back from being pregnant. Hey, coach!"

"Yes?"

My eyes have caught on their uniforms. "Do I get a patch now? I have my own gear."

"Ah! Of course." He hands it to me. "You didn't forget so much as you thought, eh?"

"No!" I say. "No."

"It's hard to forget these things," he says. "The body remembers. And of course, it helps when you have an excellent teacher!"

I laugh. One foot behind the other, plié into a curtsey, hands folded over the grip of the foil I hold against my chest. "It is the truth." I straighten. "I will see you Saturday."

"Very good."

Once I get home I assemble all the necessary tools and sit, light gleaming on the needle as I stitch. Fleetingly I think of getting this done by a professional seamstress, because it's no small work to sew a patch onto the arm of a jacket... but only fleetingly. I will do it myself as a commitment, written in cloth, sealed in steel. I will not be that girl again.

As I work, I sing.


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Tags: fencing, health, life
Current Mood: fierce

Because the Zalitraeq setting was All About the Cheese, the first plotline was about the abduction of the princess and her bodyguard by the evil Sky Wolves, there to be left to languish as decorations with the other women of conquered nations. The angst of Princess Qethryn involved being torn from her country and throne. Naturally, the bodyguard was upset over having failed to protect her charge from harm.

But there was an interesting secondary thread to Mazalaen's angst, and it was all about how she felt while watching her body atrophy from a warrior's physique to something weak and soft. I always thought this particular thread a bit of minor color.

...until I went back to fencing yesterday after a month and a half. Oh, I had good reasons to be away, between my grandmother, my urgent job hunt and acclimating to the job I found. But the fact of the matter is that my eating's been erratic, my exercise even more so and I don't even want to discuss my sleep hygiene. I went to the salle directly from work, worried that I would have forgotten everything. I didn't feel rusty, I felt positively immobile. Nicely there were two new students waiting there, convenient witnesses to my embarrassment. I dress, salute and steel myself for the inevitable.

...but I find that the habits are still there. I remember how to maintain my distance. I remember how to parry--I remember more than one kind of parry!--I even remember to riposte, which was always a hit-or-miss thing with me (literally). I remember change-of-line, I remember check-backs and check-forwards and step-lunges. I remember them all well enough that Coach uses my reactions to explain some basic fencing responses to the newbies.

After they've left, though...

"Your balance is gone," Coach says the fourth time I stumble. He doesn't whack me on the helmet for this offense, the way he does when he's playfully correcting me. For once, he's disappointed. "No matter how long you're away, you should always be working on the foot-work. There's no reason not to. You don't need another fencer to do that."

I am more than chastened. I am horrified. That nascent sense of my center-of-self that I worked so hard to develop over the past six months has slipped back out of reach. I spent the rest of the hour trying to find it again, trying to feel my weight-in-motion. I know where I am in space, but I can no longer control it.

On the way home in the car, I suddenly think of Mazalaen. Not so small a thing, that loss of body discipline. It can be remedied, of course... but oh, that moment of realization, when you see the width of the gulf between what you were and where you've coasted to a halt.

I have work to do.

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Tags: fencing, health
Current Location: cube, storming outside
Current Mood: determined
Current Music: Alphaville - Summer in Berlin

"Pocky?" I say, offering the box.

"Thanks," she says and takes one. She glances at the window. "I hope he doesn't come."

Even if there was only one boy who comes regularly for open fencing, I would know who "he" is just from her scowl. "I hope he does," I say. "I love fencing against him, even though I always lose. He's so much fun. I feel like I'm in a video game, he's so showy."

"That's what frustrates me!" she exclaims. "I never know what to do when he starts with all that... that swaying, and when he puts the point down, or off to the side or... I mean, what am I supposed to do against that stuff?"

"You do the same stuff that he does to you," I say. "If he wants to waltz, then waltz with him. If he wants to be a swashbuckler, be a pirate. But you can't, you absolutely can't take him seriously. Because he's doing all that stuff to fluster you, and that's why he wins most of the time."

She munches on the Pocky, staring at the opposite wall without seeing it. "Yeah," she says. "The last time we fenced, I was so angry after he scored the first time that he just kept me angry and he scored the next four times because I was too frustrated to think."

"Exactly," I say. "He's good, you know. Very fast. But he's trying to mess with your head. Just play along. Enjoy it. Then he doesn't have the advantage anymore."

"Hmm," she says. "You're right. I think I'll try that next time."

I offer her another Pocky and she takes it, and we watch the two girls on the strip. They finish, salute and shake hands, and she's up next.

I watch her hook up and think: Ah me! What the? Now I'm the old player sitting on the sidelines, the one the young players with the fire in their guts come to when they need to slam their fist against a locker and vent. And then I say something about the game and it's really about the meaning of life and they think about it and there's usually some theme music about now...

I start laughing. Me, a sports movie trope. Whoddathunk it.

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Tags: fencing, humor
Current Mood: laconic and archetypical

You know, when I was taking Sports Massage I never in my wildest dreams though I would need to apply any of those principles to myself.

But yow...! Not only is my arm swollen and stiff, but I have a cute series of little rosette-shaped bruises. Not just on my hips; one on my upper arm and one on my ribs, both of which had to penetrate two layers of canvas in order to make an impression. Rrf!

Still, worth it for the amusement value alone. Me with athletic-related stiffness! Ha!

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Tags: fencing, health, humor, massage therapy
Current Mood: amused
Current Music: Opeth - Windowpane

"Put on the electric gear," Coach says when I walk in. "Today we're going to fence."

"Okay," I say cheerfully. I'm glad I came early; I have time to dress and still watch the last few minutes of the lesson before mine. And then I'm up, and instead of walking onto the strip with me, Coach points at the teenager. "The two of you together."

Right: the first time I've done this officially. This should be interesting.

"Ready? Fence!"

And this kid, who's already been at it for half an hour before I came, almost knocks me over his lunge is so enthusiastic. Clumsy but very very fast and with no little power behind it. His mother cheers.

"Point right. Again!"

...and again, and again. Very fast, very strong, not very accurate, the kid; I, on the other hand, am much older, much less in shape and chronically underslept; there's no way I'm going to be able to move faster than him. But I'm also less attached to winning. And less embarrassed by my losses. And watching him, I can tell he's not thinking: he's reacting. His eyes dart, his mouth is twisted in unconscious effort and his entire body is one long exclamation point on a single sentence: ATTACK!

And he is predictable.

He likes to whack my blade out of the way before diving for me, so I just wait for him to do it and move out of his way and let him impale himself on my point.

He misses a lot, so I don't expect him to hit and let him lunge into my extended arm.

He likes to get in close and fast, so I invite him to do that, knowing I'm going to back out of reach so he can over-extend himself.

As the minutes drag on, I stop being uncertain and start watching and thinking, until halfway through the match I reach a point where everything I'm doing, I'm doing because I'm planning for what he's about to do. He's still reacting to me, and he can afford to: he's quick. But I'm conniving, deceiving, defending and being tricksy, very tricksy. I couldn't get a point on him in the beginning. By the middle, every five times he put the point on me, I got my touch.

By the end we were both so tired we were lucky to put the blades up at all... we were at it for an hour and fifteen minutes.

Stripping out of my gear and listening to him talk to the incoming open-fencers, I hear he's been doing this since August. I am pleased that I even got any points at all, and I begin to understand how this is as much a sport of the head as it is of the body. Granted, my woeful lack in the body department needs remedy...

...but not quite as much as his point control. I have five square red welts on my hips, in the little tender hollows below the bones. Where's my plate mail bikini when I need one?? Yowch!

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Tags: fencing, health
Current Mood: thoughtful
Current Music: Opeth - Windowpane

The only thing that annoys me about fencing is that armor is not fashionable. My World of Warcraft characters can wear four strips of leather in a cross pattern over their torsos and turn back dragonfire, flaming arrows and giant cleavers, but I need to spend several minutes dragging on successive layers of canvas and plastic until by the time I'm done not only could you mistake me for a boy, but also for every other person in the salle--horrors! No individuality at all!

Obviously, dracosphynx, you and I must design a fencing corset. After all, if men could duel in waistcoats and vests, we should be able to manage armor-plated bodices, right? I'll even wear pants, if I must. So long as they are tucked into high boots with turned-down flaps.

Where did I put my velvet pirate hat, I wonder?

Edit: quille's beautiful picture in the comments reminded me of this drawing I did of Blackadder Micah! Hmm. I see I've been done this road before. ;)

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Tags: fencing, humor
Current Mood: aesthetically offended
Current Music: Tears for Fears - Pale Shelter

Invitation. Mock surprise. Deception. Betrayal.

The beginning was mechanics; as it must be, as it should be. Hold the sword thusly. Stand so. Move in this way. The name of this parry is as I say it; this act is called so. Recalcitrant, ignorant muscles shown their first lessons. Unlettered mind groping with new terminology.

Flirtation. Cold shoulder. A surprise attack.

But slowly, casually, this new thing entered the equation. Deception. Betrayal. Invitation. A sly smirk of an expression. A false flutter of the blade. A pulled step; a calculated opening, left just for you to make a fool of yourself in.

"Trick me," he says. "But you have to convince me or I won't fall for it."

Manipulation. Falsehood. Little white lies told with tensed muscles and limp wrists.

Something older than me rises to the surface with a predator's growl and a courtier's facile laugh. In my veins courses the blood of knights and admirals from two different streams... conquerers who fought the Moors and carved themselves land grants and titles, men of the sea, men of war. I've never felt any affinity for them. Never had any feel for tactics... until fencing made it visceral. Made it about lying with your body, flirting with your shoulders and a glance, about controlling things by using other people's perceptions against them.

Von Clausewitz. Sun Tzu. Things I'd read that were abstractions now made as concrete as sweat, the panic of over-reaching yourself and the triumph of closing a trap.

I feel the weight of my ancestors in the slam of my heart against my chest. Invitation. Refusal. Attack. Do we ever leave them behind? Or do they sleep forever in our genes, just waiting for the right stimulus to lift blood-encoded wings, to make something new familiar? A DNA deja vu. A seance with the most primitive of proteins.

"Trick me," he says. "Because if you can trick me, if you can narrow my choices, if you can make it so that I do what you want me to do, then you win."

I play a game of conquerers and kings, older than my body, as fresh as my untutored mind. I play and wonder what, centuries from now, my descendents will get from me. Bard and Healer. Guardian and Priest. Jaguar Poet-Queen, fierce as Mayan sunlight.

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Tags: culture, fencing
Current Music: Wolfsheim - I Don't Love You Anymore