Still Life, or,
this must still be life.
this must still be life.
Again, I'm not sure what to make of this. It may drag on, as there are many voices to be heard.
For the seventeen years I have been training, since the current California Aikido Association was called the Aikido Association of Northern California, the third degree black belt (sandan) is the last level of advancement for which a test is required. I took that test exactly four years ago and, though I thought I did a sub-par job, was congratulated and promoted. People offer sublime and less deserving demonstrations from time to time, get promoted regardless, and training moves on unhindered by the vagaries of human potential and realization.
There are the same number of years of training required between tests as corresponds to the advanced belt level. For fourth degree black belt (yondan) the student is expected to train over 800 days over four years. When you are ready your 6th degree black belt instructor, in my case Kayla Feder Sensei, recommends you for promotion, you give a demonstration, and begin training for your godan, or fifth degree black belt. There are a wide range of skill levels in all advancement processes but, as no one is asked to test before they are ready, any outcome but congratulations is an extreme rarity. Of late Japan seems to be desiring more than the minimum duration to pass before promotions and some others are also receiving promotion but having to wait for it to go through Hombu Dojo. Usually no big deal.
Many moons ago Kayla Sensei asked me to begin preparing in earnest for my demo and let all the powers that be know our dojo would be appearing en masse at this years group training (Gasshuku) which traditionally happens in San Diego on Memorial Day Weekend. I began preparing, making lists of techniques, writing my essay, recruiting partners, etc.
Then Aidan died.
Then we chose to leave everything and wander and go see family and finish the dissertation and...
Sensei asked if I still intended to demonstrate. I decided to forge ahead and, in addition, restructured the demo at Sensei's very wise request. I had certainly made it too complex and rehearsal intensive and she wanted our most dynamic lower ranked folks with beautiful ukemi (taking falls) to participate more centrally. I scheduled days of demo training and a week of living at the dojo and training with Sensei to prepare before driving to San Diego. When Sensei accepted a wonderful invitation to go to New York with her mother for precisely that week I agreed to teach every class and act as sensei in her absence. One of our good friends checked herself in to emergency psychiatric care and I visited her every day before we left as she was prevented from attempting suicide by a 27x7 guard. At the same time Lisa and I were completely moving out of our home of almost a decade, into three storage areas, I was preparing the final modifications to Serenity (our van) and Lisa lead the charge to completely re-paint our new apartment so it can be sublet.
WE all live in a yellow submarine. Get ready to come as your favorite provocative Beatles song to our "dig our digs" party in the Fall.
Moving was a crazy-busy and extremely stress and tearful couple of weeks. I am ashamed to admit I made Lisa and Iris wait through HOURS of my agonizing over which books to take and how to store them in the van. As always we had lots of wonderful help from friends, family, and community without which we could not have survived.When Sensei returned we who had been hard at work in her absence performed the demo for all to see and received enthusiastic approval. The next day Lisa and I drove southward, not to return until Fall, and spent over twelve hours the second day alone sitting in Memorial Day Weekend traffic trying to get to San Diego. Pat Sensei spoke eloquently about there being no "right" Aikido but many entirely valid paths in this Way. If it works, it works - no matter what it looks like outside. Three of Bernice Sensei's students took beautiful, solid, more or less identical sandan tests.
On Saturday May 26th, 2007, Larry Bardach and I both skipped a class I would very much rather have enjoyed in order to nap and be ready for our respective yondan demos. After lunch I gave what by most accounts was a wonderful demo. It wasn't as good at it had been in Berkeley but, against common practice, I actually felt pretty satisfied. I had successfully avoided breaking or burying anybody, illustrated advanced technique with an appropriate level of subtlety, and Aikido of the required level was had by all.
The board didn't seem to think so and chose not to accept Kayla Sensei's recommendation for my promotion. apparently they wanted to see the more exaggerated extension and visible hip movement and spacious pauses associated with Iwama Style, rather than the more advanced movement I had presented. After over an hour and a half of closed door deliberations they promoted every other candidate that day, asked me to do it again next year, and closed the issue. Profoundly conflicted, Kayla Sensei presented the board's decision to me as I sat before them, and through later tears realized she had missed the moment to insist on the outcome she preferred and new was Right. Courageously she returned, insisted on reconvening the group during the evening party, watched the footage of the demo, and the decision has upheld. It became clear to her that many of the group continued to cling to and labor under persistent misunderstandings that she agreed with the decision. There were many tears of remorse and anger. Needless to say, the deshi who had all come in support from Aikido of Berkeley did not party as we had intended that night. I haven't actually seen the video footage yet. When I do I'll probably YouTube it and post it on my blog. I'll decide that later, I guess.
A few things that would need to be said if this system were not a traditional hierarchy designed to consolidate power and privilege:
During a particularly hard time in her life, Pat Sensei decided all kinds of things about me many years ago which led her to praise excessively my two years of service as her apprentice and then banish me from Aikido of San Leandro and state that "the universe requires it". I returned twice thereafter to investigate her state of mind and attempt to return to training and was rejected. Inexplicably, she began treating me like a long lost friend a few years after. During these more recent proceedings in San Diego she suggested that she thought I was near a psychotic break. After hearing the various fantasies circling me I realized how truly I don't want to carry these particular heavy projections for this group and these people any more. I also realized they don't strike me to the heart as did Pat Sensei's cutting me off from my family at Aikido of San Leandro. Their behavior is so bizarre that interest in what is going on under the surface at first easily trumped personal affront and feelings of injury. To the unanimously furious assembly of those who sought me out to offer congratulations I recommended the adoption of a martially neutral, wait-and-see position and enjoyment of training unless they knew something I didn't and could think of a way everyone could get what was needed.
I decided not to return the following morning and to consider if returning next year was of interest when it presented itself. Rankless training groups (including the Guardians of Peace idea) seem very attractive at the moment, but these kind of dynamics simply come up in different guises. People do ridiculous things to each other and cause great quantities of needless suffering. The question is how to create systems that expect and deal well with that. There are times for just smashing what doesn't work but, in the end, what's the point? I guess I've just never seen that come out well after the Revolution. I resolved to include it in my dissertation and went to bed.
I began to reflect as I awoke on Sunday morning. I knew when I began following Kayla Sensei that we would add to each others' burdens of being a bit marginalized due to insufficiently resembling narrow ideas of what "Iwama Style" means. We freely exhibit variations of flowing movement, light humor and joy while training (as written by O'Sensei), and depth of relational and community process which is regularly and traditionally discouraged in the ranks not having attained the heights in our division. I also reflected on the various ways to interact with a closed hierarchy and considered more direct forms of activism like the petition already begun by our apprentices and the sheaves of resignation letters already offered unsolicited by over a dozen deshi. Finally I reflected on what opportunities I would want if I were on that board and had participated in an injustice, and resolved to be the deshi I would respect most. Also because there was Aikido to be had with teachers I love to throw and be thrown by, after all, and that can hardly ever be a thing to miss, I went back.
On our final morning together I brought my best energy, methodically trained with each member of the board, released as much expectation as possible that anything would change, and informally reviewed the demo on the open mat between classes, emphasizing basic movement, extension, and solid stillness between techniques, silently making abundantly clear to everyone in the dojo that the qualities the board had missed were consistently in play as they have been throughout my black belt years. They are, after all, the reasons Kayla Sensei has me teach every Beginners' Class at Aikido of Berkeley as well as every Wednesday morning and every other Saturday. The morning training was a pleasure, I wore all the skin off the top of my toes, Louis Sensei called me up to take ukemi and mentioned later how strong I seem to him. Pat Sensei squinted and asked how I was. Bernice Sensei suggested I extend my fingers more so I left off being super-careful with her and gave her fragile frame another 10% after which she allowed "I knew you have it in you - we just didn't see it yesterday." All in all, as everyone grabbed and threw me around, tried and failed to resist me or disturb my balance, etc. it was extremely weird. And, of course, nothing changed.
Power systems can be so pathetic. I'm glad no more was at stake than the good feeling of everyone in our dojo toward the organization, income during our travels (a 4th dan makes more for demos and workshops than a 3rd dan), the integrity of a leadership who occasionally lay claim to being process-savvy, and the relationships of everybody involved. Under other circumstances the consequences of singling someone out who is struggling to recover from major tragedy and a huge project and transition to make an example of them for not conforming utterly could have been risky.
As is usual at public events, members of Aikido of Berkeley received various deshi from other places saying the equivalent of "with no disrespect intended to our teacher, we'd love to come train with you guys."
Then we left.
I am a bizarre and confusing mix of anger (blends into existential/targetless grief-anger) and sarcasm, as you no doubt have noticed, and exhausted, and proud to have been promoted to Yondan by Kayla Sensei, and determined to write a ton, and whelmed by the prospect before me, and powerless, and powerful, and good grief....
What do you do with a wealth of experiences all in one time frame which give the lie to the idea of Justice, cause a great deal of pain, and about which you can effectively do nothing? I'm getting to the point of just not wanting to talk about these things as they pile up, so I get uncharacteristically close to clamming up and hoping for the next hit to be a bit farther away.
Today I am in Oxnard writing with a professional research and writing coach. Tomorrow I will be too. I'm exhausted and demoralized and looking forward to some glimmer at the end of this pervasive dark I am hoping is at least as structured as a tunnel, even if the light is an oncoming train.
This scrap of prose is in the vein of what I am learning from Karen Koepp as we go through two days of intensive dissertation writing. Just write it down. Do something with it no matter what you feel like at the moment. Edit later.
Back to pounding away at the keys and then to bed.
The latter is that flat, rectangular, puffy thing without the To-do list.
Labels: Aikido, CAA, conflict, daily, injustice, video
| posted by Unknown @ 5/28/2007 08:35:00 PM
