Comfortably Sore

November 9, 2008

We got our shipment of martial art equipment in from Taiwan a couple days ago and I bought a Kwan Dao. I had talked to Master Brinker about getting a Kwan Dao, he has a really nice (but expensive one), so he helped me order one in. I was concerned about the weight of the weapon. I did not want Wushu steel; a real Kwan Dao should be heavy and solid. I hate those flimsy, wobbly Wushu weapons. They look flashy but there’s no realism behind them. The catalogue we ordered from didn’t have the weight listed so I didn’t really know what I was going to get. I got lucky though because my Kwan Dao is awesome! Its heavy (12 pounds), solid, a good length and I like the butt end design.

Yesterday I played around with it for an hour trying to get a feel for the weapon and I can say I have never been so enthusiastic about a weapon before. It has so much potential! I already have a bunch of ideas and cannot wait to come up with a form for it. It’s a heck of a lot of fun swinging around the huge, heavy blade. Swinging it around is a major upper body workout; my arms, back and chest are really sore just from an hour of practice. I’m looking forward to the muscle I should build up from using it. I was interested in the weapon from the beginning because I wanted to see if I could come up with a cool form where I swing it quickly and smoothly. I want to see how close I can get, using my heavy weapon, to what the Wushu guys are doing with a fake light weapon. Obviously I will move slower but my goal is to make it look quick and uncumbersome. Personally I would be much more impressed with a medium speed realistic based form with a real Kwan Dao than a fast, unrealistic form with a light one.

One another note my reading is going well. I believe I am now on my 11^th book on the list. Since my last update I finished “To the light house”, “Lord Jim”, “As I Lay Dying” and catch-22. I absolutely loved Catch-22! It’s a fantastic satire of the U.S. army during the Second World War. I love the constant contradictions, paradoxes and absurdity that oppose the protagonist Yossarian at every turn. It’s fantastically dark humored, silly, absurd, terrifying, and at times frighteningly realistic. I laughed out loud and often reading this book, I can’t say the same for anything else I’ve ever read. The ending was great and lifted my spirits for the rest of my day, somehow giving me a little bit for faith in the common man. The preface inspired me to leave little, “Yossarian Lives” notes lying around like John Chancellor did. I Think I might write them on random P-Can walls present on some of the construction sites I work at.