No one saw it, but it was still pretty embarrassing. 3” right-to-left hooking horizontal thrust into a straight-ahead rolling jab and scraped the knife-not necessarily the dulled but still potent edge-against the finger, the rolling left hand not having properly cleared the jabbing knife. It was a small laceration, a quarter-inch or so, probably done when I was transitioning from a “No.
So I was practicing drawing a folding training knife with my right hand out of my waistband, opening it and then going into a thrusting attack mode-and cut the index finger on my left hand. It’s something I’ve never worked on much-a conceivably fatal mistake, and one that I came close to making a few years ago. I think of this now looking back at Tuesday’s session at Five Points Academy-Simon’s martial arts gym, which specializes in Muay Thai kickboxing, of which he’s also a teacher–when I practiced the knife-draw techniques we started working on last week. This has been going on for probably 15 years at least.
And the perpetual frustration of having everyone start out with me showing them the basics, then a few weeks later, they’re showing me the baiscs. It takes me back to flunking out in high school for never understanding anything. Some people pick everything up naturally and quickly. As he said the other day- again-“You are the true test of my patience.” Probably 15 years ago now I found a teacher in Filipino Martial Arts (FMA)- Pekiti Tirsia Kali, to be specific–Simon Burgess. I was able to open it and close it without cutting myself, but could never do any of the fancy flips and twirls. The highly illegal (in New York) Filipino balisong, with the handles that swing out with the blade in truly menacing fashion. Then I fell in love at first sight with a butterfly knife. But I always wanted to get back into martial arts, just not in a formal wear-the-uniform, bow-to-the-flag-and-teacher kind of way. I’d done a couple years of tae kwon do in my twenties and made it to green belt in the system, and then I started writing and devoted every waking minute to it.
Martial arts, for me at least, have been particularly humbling.
0 kommentar(er)
