1. Starting Posture

A confluence of influences has finally tipped the scale in favor of starting a blog. I've been wanting to start one for months to explain to my friends why I have decided to move to Ukraine to help in whatever way I can.

But how to begin. Where to begin. My dad spending his whole career in the defense industry during the Cold War? His being absent so much of my youth because the submarines he worked on demanded so much from him? My elation at the dissolution of the USSR in 1991? My growing alarm in the months preceding Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine? The horror, the absolute horror of the atrocities perpetrated by the retreating Russian soldiers in Bucha. They even booby-trapped kids' toys. That's when I decided I wanted to clear landmines in Ukraine, even though I don't have any background in that and no military experience at all. I just feel strongly that I need to continue my father's work. I have friends in Europe, including Ukraine, and my friends here in the US are my family. And I will defend my family from the beast rising from the ashes of the USSR.

But I've had all those thoughts for many months, nearly a year, and even thoughts of writing about the process of leaving my life in the US to be of whatever use I can be in Ukraine. Within four months of learning of the atrocities in Bucha, I had given away 90% of my belongings and moved from an apartment to a bedroom in a lady's home. I've started gently coaxing a couple of friends in my djembe community to take over the responsibility for the sound system that I run during our performances. I struggle to figure out how to obtain a visa to get into Ukraine and how to link up with volunteer groups doing the sorts of work I can help with.

But with all that, and with a longing to share my struggles with friends known and unknown through writing, I still could not bring myself to start until two things happened and they became entangled, which was just fascinating to me. First, several weeks ago, my friend David, a PhD candidate in psychology, shared a summary he had written for his advisor in which he proposes to write his thesis on his experience of learning a particular ninjutsu kata. I met David about nine years ago in the martial arts school we both attended. He has continued studying various dimensions of the martial art and philosophy of the ninja and has found ways to weave that study into his psychology program. Upon reading his proposal, I responded that I completely understood his desire to write a detailed examination of his experience of a single kata because I myself feel like I could fill a book with all I have learned about Grasp The Sparrow's Tail, a short segment from the taijiquan form I have been learning and refining for the past three years. So that was thing number one that helped launch this blog.

Thing number two was that I started learning the Yang taiji jian (sword) form three days ago. Yesterday I asked one of my teachers, Lee, for the names of the first three movements we had learned in class and he offered a marvelous document that he has written and makes available under a Creative Commons license. You can download the document here: Yang Taiji Jian by Lee Fife. This document explains the names of the movements (postures) in the form and I was fascinated by his explanation (pp. 6-7) of the very first posture, helpfully named Starting Posture. For it turns out that the Chinese character translated as "posture" has a whole host of meanings, chief among which is "advantage." I just read that this morning and became excited since it adds a whole new dimension to my practice of taijiquan, not to mention to my beginning study of the sword form. In addition, it resonated with the idea of kamae I had learned in martial arts training, a Japanese word that means posture but can be extended beyond the physical bodily sense into the realm of heart-mind and psycho-spiritual, which gets back to David since he and I experienced together those discussions about kamae with our teachers when we trained together, and now he is deeply into the psycho-spiritual in his PhD program, and I am –– what? 

One of my friends, JJ, took exception to my description of my current activity as "winding down my life." He thought it sounded suspiciously like a life-shortening thing, so I explained it better: "What I mean by winding down my life is becoming unencumbered. So I might call it 'emergence.' I'm winding down the Western ideal of life in the sense of having things and transitioning to a way of being that is more consonant with enabling the climax of my life." JJ thought that was a much better explanation.

"Climax of my life" sounds exciting but I struggle with dread. Mainly I dread the loneliness. I'm learning Ukrainian but it will be years before I'm good enough to understand the excellent Ukrainian humor and to really be able to bond with people in their own language. Of course, many Ukrainians speak excellent English, including my teacher who lives southeast of Lviv, but I'm trying to prepare myself for having to work without the benefit of excellent spoken communication, so I feel some trepidation, especially at the end of a djembe orchestra rehearsal, or the frequent dinner out afterward. Anytime I say "Bye, see you next week" to my djembe friends, I feel like I'm rehearsing for "See you again sometime, I hope."

So I'm already struggling with some loss. Even as I face the east, the sun that is to rise on the climax of my life, I feel the tide of all that has sustained me going out: the physical closeness of friends, drumming together, practicing taijiquan together; my treasures, like my classical guitar that I was starting to learn to play when the Russian full-scale invasion happened. I haven't picked it up since. That's kind of heart-breaking but I tell myself that after the landmines are cleared and the bodies exhumed and the war crimes documented, I can get another guitar and find a great Ukrainian teacher.

So I have this tide of support going out, and I thought, "That's it: whatever I'm going to depend on in the future had better already be inside me." Until –– that first class in the taiji sword form. At first it was unnerving. The starting posture begins with the sword in the left hand, and I'm right-handed, so I felt a bit clumsy. And the very first movement is especially odd. Essentially you start with the sword not gripped in the left hand but merely balancing in the cup of your left hand, point up. A sinking motion that transfers weight to your right leg is enough to topple the sword –– yes, topple –– it falls in front of you, then a precisely timed rising motion, still weight on the right leg, arrests the fall, and the sword ends up point down, still held by the left land, very gently. What a way to begin a sword form.

Then came this morning, when I read Lee's explanation of the names of the postures/movements, and I realized that even as the tide I'm accustomed to is rushing out, another kind of tide is rushing in to take its place. I'm at a loss to describe it now but I know it has ignited this writing venture. Something is growing even as something else decreases. That's what I will write about as I learn the Yang taiji jian form. I told David his proposal had inspired me. If you want to follow along, download Lee's document linked above. And if you want to see the form, check out this YouTube video: Sword Form. In my next post, I will try to explain why I chose Great Peng Spreads Wing as the title of this blog.