I won’t bore you with cliché musings on the transience of beauty, but I saw the most amazing rainbow I’ve ever seen in my life yesterday. We were at the summit of a bald mountain just a bit west of Boulder. The sun was shattered over the snowfields of the continental divide to our backs and the plains, hills, and this enormous, brilliant, perfect rainbow was in front of us, drifting through the valley. Soon enough it dissolved into gray.
The videos on this page are worth watching.* Regardless of one’s opinion of Israel, the page’s author is quite right that journalism in the US is pablum, comparatively. (via del.icio.us/popular.)
The shihans at the aikido summer camp last week emphasized the ultimately “soft” nature of budo. They don’t mean lazy-soft but agile-soft, water-soft, receptive-soft, light-hearted-soft, and of course compassionate-soft. And then they throw some guy twice their size and half their age across the room to demonstrate.
It’s one of ‘em paradox things, I reckon: the idea is to be stone or water as appropriate, but with training I think you wind up being both at the same time. Know the yang but live in the yin, I think the Taoist saying went.
And then there’s this spirit thing they spoke of. It’s one of those things I think I see and understand to some extent, but typically can’t reproduce, myself.
In my own training I’m experimenting more with that lately: soft and receptive, light-hearted. It’s maybe not always appropriate to turn training into play, but it seems to work well for me. If nothing else it’s a lot more fun. The overthinker’s curse attempts to strengthen itself with failure, and this strategy sort of un-defines failure. If it’s all play, it doesn’t matter whether something “works” or not. There is no success or failure, there is only relationship.
Which potentially sort of opposes both Yoda’s and Mr. Miyagi’s advice. Though don’t get me wrong: I agree with them, too.
Still, I think there’s maybe something to the idea of transforming a grim attack/defense scenario into play.
Investigation suggests it likely that there is in fact no spoon, however the shihans did not address the topic directly, regrets.
I seem to be cursed when it comes to photographing living, moving subjects. My timing is impeccably bad. It reminds me of the feeling of foreboding I’d have when driving towards a goal in soccer: if I felt the terrible weight of needing to get the ball around the goalie and into the net, I would inevitably — inevitably — drive it directly to the goalie. Seriously: it was a not a shot on goal, it was pass to the other team’s goalie. Yeah, I was a star player.
If, on the other hand, I sort of light-heartedly bopped the ball without any real expectation, it would often, or at least occasionally, kinda get itself into the right place at the right time. My best shots were accidents.
I’m the same with the task of not running into people in the grocery store. If I actually try to not run into people walking towards me, I inevitably — inevitably — get caught in the little I’ll-go-left-no-right-no-left dance.
So when shooting people I’m probably just trying too hard, too. This shot of Marika (playing at the Walnut Room in Denver last night) represents a rarity for me: I felt I actually caught a moment.
