Category: Daily

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Where to Write About Aikido?

I’ve been thinking about doing a regular post to sum up the week’s aikido practice. Recounting my experiences would give me a nice career log as well as an excellent forum to teach back to myself. (Is that the word ‘study’?).

Recording my progress now might give me useful perspective in the weeks and months and years to come. I’d read back to the first few weeks to see how far I’d come as well as to empathize with the newly joined white belts. Who knows, maybe such a collection turns into a book of sorts.

More immediately, such an effort would instill the principals and techniques I practiced that week. I like the idea of summarizing because it gives me a mechanism for organizing that the mat doesn’t. Right now I step into the dojo’s stream to let it carry me where it will or to let it wash over me as needed. If there is a weekly wrap up, I’ve not showed up on that day.

I’m just not sure where to write it. Which is a totally dumb reason to withhold, but it’s the reason most slowing my down at the moment. I’m not really inclined to create yet another subject themed blog, but I’m not sure using up one of my 1000 days each week to write about aikido is the best way to go. Sure I’ve got that main blog I keep ignoring I guess it could go there. When no one is looking, does it really matter?

Maybe I just write stuff up and save it till I’m ready?

Word count: 269
Day 219

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One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer

I belong to an online music club. I pay $7 a month to get a hardcopy CD mailed to me from my queue of chosen CDs. If my queue runs out they charge me anyway-I’m not this foolish. Initially I front loaded my queue with ten or so CDs I’d been wanting to get for the first time or replace in my current collection. Since that batch ran it’s course I’ve spottily kept barely ahead of the ‘nothing in your queue’ gotcha. Normally I’ll add a whole album based on a song I’ve heard recently on the radio or the Coverville podcast.

Somewhere I heard George Thorogood’s “Bad to the Bone” so I added his “Greatest Hits: 30 Years of Rock” CD. I recognized enough songs in the list of 16 that I had no trouble adding it to my queue and then bumping it to the top. I’ve never known what metric a label uses to determine greatness or hit-iosity, so I can’t say if something is obviously missing or erroneously included. I can only say I sing along to some more than others.

I first heard “One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer” on this album less than a month ago. I love it. I replay it immediately after it ends. I’ll skip back to it sometimes when “Willie and the Hand Jive” just isn’t cutting it for my driving pleasure. I’ve wondered if there are any good covers.

This song makes me feel like I’ve pushed the moldering newspapers off an old chest in the attic and found the storybook grandma read to me as a child. You know, the one about bourbon, scotch, and beer.

Word count: 278
Day 218

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Imbuers Local #451

Sadly, it’s taken me two days to write the following and three to post. I’ve taken that as a sign to let it simmer—or die—rather than to push it further.

A single voice intoned the chant.

Other voices joined the first in staggering succession as if each new singer required a sense more substantial than mere hearing to recognize the invitation. [expand here] As the number of singers grew others joined more quickly until the swell of the chant could not be ignored by the remaining few—save one, the chant’s initiator.

Thima, toak-Slay ceased chanting after several others took up the song. It waited silently but not unmovingly for the remaining Imbuers to join. Thima maneuvered the crowded dais to the edge and signaled for the next hoop to be lowered into place.

The unseen audience hushed to silence when they heard the

Word count: 115
Day 216 and 217