In aikido, there's the person who throws and the person who is thrown. I've been working on being thrown better. It's called ukemi . It's mostly about listening to what the person who is throwing you is actually doing, and responding to that in a way that keeps you safe. You don't want to bail or throw yourself or anticipate--you want to just let the throw happen to you. You want to face your partner and look at them the whole time. You even want to look at them instead of looking at the mat, which is where you are going, and this is really hard to do. You want to keep being present and connected without resisting. You want to relax. A lot. But not so much that you lose your core strength or integrity. And you want to balance all this giving and allowing stuff with a lot of boundary and protection stuff. Definitely keep your mouth shut. Stay upright--don't lead with your face! Make your partner take your balance instead of just giving it to them. Don't leave any room between your face and something your partner can hit you with, like their arm or shoulder. Turn your head to protect your adam's apple. Look for openings. When it's time to go, get yourself low to the ground first. Keep your head off the mat. Once you are hitting the mat, the goal is to do it quietly, without slapping your feet or your legs (or kidneys) unnecessarily on the mat. There are people I train with who slide out of a throw like a snake sliding out of a tree. I am definitely not yet one of those people.
There are practical benefits to this focus. Fifty percent of each class is falling down, and the tiny injuries have been piling up. I've got sore knees, cricky-cracky elbows, pulled muscles in my ribs (ouch!) and legs, and the more conscious I am of how I am falling, the less old I feel later. But there's more to it than that. Being thrown well is a function of listening to what's actually happening, so that you can avoid throwing yourself harder than your partner intended, or worse, underestimate the force and leave part of your flesh behind.
There's a depth to that listening part, to understanding that there is a gap between what is actually happening and what I think is happening. And this depth is soothing because I am such a beginner and spazz, and am still often flummoxed. I feel like I am never going to stop being told that I am moving from my shoulders instead of from my center. I don't know when I will stop moving backwards on accident during this one technique that depends on moving consistently forward. I am getting really used to being told that I am sticking my butt out, and it's getting easier to laugh at the fact that the one technique I can't stick my butt out for is the one technique that requires it.
Training your body to do what your mind wants is a sometimes humiliating process in which what's most interesting are these disconnects--these gaps between what you know and what you do. I began making sculpture because I found so much comfort in the way the world outside your mind is unarguably what it is. The wall is bearing a load or it is not. The weld holds when you beat it with a hammer or it doesn't, and nothing you can say makes it otherwise. You can have an idea in your head, but you will make the sculpture that reality will allow you to create.
The limitations of thinking sculpturally have on this blog become a litany. Depending on the physical making of the physical world to tell you what's real creates artistic needs that nobody can sustain forever. Looking exclusively at the relationship between human and built object avoids all this meaty territory in which we really do make reality with words and ideas and interactions. The macho persona a sculptor (well… this sculptor anyway) creates is more about hiding and fear than it is about exploring. Strength is always a limited resource. Blah, blah blah.
But there is a doorway here. It's entirely possible that I am a better artist than I think, and that the kind of art I should be making hasn't happened to me yet. Not in a way that I've been able to listen to.
I just get all worked up , and I stew around!
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