expanding brains

[thanate]

This is a little weird-- it's something I've been thinking about for a while, and most of you aren't going to know the reference, but I'll see if I can explain it well enough to make sense...

So I recently re-read Lois McMaster Bujold's Paladin of Souls which is the second of a pair of books set in a fantasy world with a system of 5 gods who look after the spirit, but can't influence the world without people's free will allowing a god to work through them. Which mostly isn't needed, of course, but both this and The Curse of Chalion are about people who are needed as vessels of the gods, and there's this whole spiritual thing about to be an effective vessel for the gods you need a succession of experiences that break open the barriers of your soul, thus expanding it to encompass more than a normal human could manage. Weird and kind of poetic as a concept-- and you should read the books and then you'll know what I'm talking about. In fact, you should read all Bujold's books, because they're really good. But that's beside the point.

Anyway, thinking about the concept of expanding souls tied in a lot with a bunch of what I've been doing in my own life. I'm at a point, fencing-wise, where I need to take in a bunch of new concepts before I'll get much of anywhere more (things like remembering to move in angles, or being able to encompass the melee mindset of not just fencing, but paying attention to everything else at the same time and being able to process it fast enough to be useful... all the stuff that I'm rather bad at in real life) and then I'm trying to catch up with the years of dedication to the fencing community on the part of the people I hang out with (figuring out who's who both from my observation and to tie in with the stories I get from other people) and then there are a couple other things (rock climbing, keeping up with other people's mindsets-- I had a couple weird conversations with troyfish this weekend about his being annoyed by someone else's attitude and seeing it in things that I said and then spent too much effort trying to defend because I didn't mean them like that) that keep making me think in different directions. And so I'm going around rather a lot of the time feeling like my brain is being stretched out in all directions trying to accomodate all this new stuff. And a lot of it falls out again promptly, but I keep thinking about the expanding soul concept and reminding myself that this is a keep trying and eventually it *will* work sort of situation. I had Seamus' version of Troy's lecture on angles in fencing not too long ago, and it seemed to stick a bit better than the previous iterations.

And we went climbing yesterday, and I appear to have leveled up... I started doing 5.9 rated climbs instead of 5.8... although what I really need to work on is getting over ledges and walls that hang out backwards, which is more difficult as what with work I don't generally have the arm strength left over to do these things right now. So I haven't managed to get past the lingering terror of walls that don't behave nicely and make it easy to stay on yet. Phoey. (but no, troyfish, this is not actually me being pessimistic. This is me evaluating my performance with an eye to what I still need to work on for next time, and doesn't mean I'm dissatisfied with the parts I *can* do...)

Comments

[dante-di-pietro.livejournal.com]

Giacomo diGrassi said that firm footwork is the font from which springs all offense and defense, and I tend to agree with him. Work on your stance, balance, footwork, and range and you will find that a lot of the other stuff will get taken care of on their own. I've really only begun to perform cavazione (akin to disengages) and stringere in the last year (sad, I know), and I've won plenty of tournaments off more or less leaving my blade still and maneuvering around my opponent's defense with my feet and legs.

[thanate.livejournal.com]

yeah-- my problem is mostly that once I start attacking or whatnot, my footwork is virtually all beginning strip-fencer sort of stuff, so I forget about the other possible angles of motion. And I know this is something I don't do unless my opponent is coaching me into it (and occasionally not even then) but turning this into actually being able to use these things is... slow. It might be less so if I weren't so lazy and did some more practice on my own time, of course.

...and Troy was talking about teaching me some of the martial-arts style body moves (throws & stuff) so I can play with the big kids in more realistic combat demo sort of stuff. Which besides being terribly cool, will help with the range of motion mindset.

[dante-di-pietro.livejournal.com]

I'm going to be hosting historic combat workshops as soon as I get permission to do so under the auspices of SCA, Inc.. Part of that will be period grappling, which might be useful for you.

Try walking around in stance through your apartment or wherever. Practice slope steps, passing steps, girata, and lunge around until you get more comfortable with everything. Find your most balanced point (keep the knees bent and the butt low-- no, lower than that!) and do everything from there until you can stay there forever and be comfortable.

not that this is related or anything....

[heuchera.livejournal.com]

Um, so yeah, tangential to the main point of your post.... Next Bujold is out 5 weeks from today. Slaver, drool. And the library totally failed to have any of the books you mentioned, so it's Barnes and Noble or nothing.

[skittblink.livejournal.com]

Wow, SCA fencing sounds a lot different than sport fencing. But I agree with you on the soul expanding- It's why a lot of the time your fencing gets worse before it gets better- trying to sort all that new stuff out. At least that's how it works for me.

[thanate.livejournal.com]

It is. It's a lot of fun. You should try it sometime. :)