Tag: 稽古

She works her will

Walking to the dojo as night falls in tall, uneven stripes, observing myself observing myself, performing for an audience of one, of many. Hiking up the straps of my bag, feeling the churn, thresh and patter inside my body. The moon, a hard and tinny disc, covered, uncovered, and then covered again by clouds. Hers is a show of provocation, then modesty, followed by provocation again. A performance, either way, just like mine. Oh, but it must be blasphemy to find fakeness, if not fault, in the moon. It must be even more absurd to pretend at similarity. I imagine her hissing, spit like shooting stars: Who do you think you are?

I am trying to remember to take deep but unexaggerated and minimally obtrusive breaths, following an online technique that promised to “hijack my nervous system,” though I am not sure that fighting with my own self is something I desire. Well, I do desire it, but not so obviously. Discreteness, subtlety, these are the cornerstones of artful behavior. And anyway, desires—in time, they will come, or they won’t. If I know anything at this point, it is that nothing can be forced. Funnel-shaped freesia, growing from the groin. Failed flowers, but we’re all autodidacts in love. We learn by doing, though we pass no exam and graduate into a world lacking in mercies.

But there is always fortune to be found. It’s a close call, when you cold-call me at the crossroads. At night, in a dream, you reach for me but never make it there. Piercing the cold air with my name. Battle lance, vermillion border. I watch a live camera of the river as the rain falls for the thirtieth consecutive day. I know you have to leave and I know you will only leave behind your frame. I promise to stare at the empty place where the painting was forever.

Once, Strawberry said to me, my first reaction is often an overreaction. But that doesn’t mean it’s the wrong reaction. A question of scale rather than accuracy. A question of magnitude rather than intent. Hitting an individual petal on the frangipani, but hitting it with a ballpeen hammer. Striking a tiny fiber meant for the scalpel with a chainsaw. A fragrant, bloody, sticky situation. But how to ease up on the machine, how to turn down the dial, how to get my foot off the pedal, when I have so little time before Hecate arrives with her incantation?

Intent but not intention / 合宿 / 顔色

Give me a little more credit. Big clouds, wave skimming with easy light. You don’t let me finish my thought. You don’t let me process the feeling.

Telling Alvin I’m trying. Feeling lost. Streaks on my calves from the knee-high grass, pebbles under my nails from the charcoal in the sand. Flashlights, dark sides, crossing the road to the wettish purple against the rocky cliffside. Performing for an audience and selling it, until I don’t. Choosing you, over and over, until you won’t. Soaked through my shirt, in different formulations.

Crying on the train, because I’m happy. Fluid blisters on both big toes, under the skin. Sorting through a bag of fireworks on the front steps. Laughing out loud as they explode, briefly explore the columns, and then die. Overexerted, overtested blades of light, their spluttering waking up the shades of heaven. Four meals, cold-hearted. Can’t find a balance. Don’t want one. Pale, sparse cornflower blue from the windows, and there it is, dreamless, seamless, already living in the mourning. Sorry, but I insist on having a life. Sorry, but this is enough. Sorry, but this is what I want. However ruinous. However overdetermined.

Hard to write anything but fragments, these days. The bigger the feeling, the sharper, the smaller the shard. Digging painfully into my body when you put out your left hand and I don’t take it. Or did I imagine that? How much have I imagined out of the convenience of desire? Only the torched rings in the sand know.

Ears ringing when the master approaches. He looks into my face and I am not sure what he sees. Sit down, he says, which I guess answers that question. Later, Alvin finds me.

Come to dinner / 合宿

At the low, chestnut-colored table, trying to philosophize in my broken Japanese, I realize that eventually you get old enough that your goals become memories. You didn’t mean to leave them behind, on the rusted road, but there they are in the rearview: monkey masks on monkey faces, the missing left leg of Christ of Nazareth. The knotted rope that could have been undone, with the right application of pressure. But then again, there’s always the sword.

Alvin says, “Everything takes reps.” I have received this revelation before. Habit, the bloodiest and (therefore?) truest God. Alvin says, “The point is to do two things simultaneously.” Ah, there it is. Nothing is one thing. At minimum, two; usually, a hundred billion. Alvin comes out when I’m on the bench in the blue afternoon by the white and yellow irises and asks, “aren’t you cold?” and I reply, cheerfully, in the negative. I’ve been tracking one puffy cloud in the sky all hour, all my life.

During my favorite kata, there’s a moment in the middle when the practitioners all stomp their foot in perfect unison and it stops my heart every time. How to describe this in a way that will land? Brined in seed oil, chicken tender. Step on the face of the pietà and break your faith but prove it at the same time. Scar the knife with blood, knife the scar with intent. Two things, human and divine. Two things, soft and strong.

Pain has been my teacher, but could love be my teacher too?

Pain has been my teacher, but could love be my teacher too? Oh, it hurts but I’ll say it again: Pain has been my teacher, but could love be my teacher too? Relentless, the disappointment of expectations rendered to fatty string. Fruitless, yellow moon hanging limply from the vine. Telephone cables in the purple night. I look up and feel a churning in my chest like crying. Is forgiveness friend or foe? Based on how she feels inside me, I hardly know. Surrounded by black leather sandbags and broken wreaths of laurel, at the center of my soul, where she rests in the toilet bowl.

Truth was not able to set me free, so will fantasy work instead? I cannot make the right turn—foot across the body, scraping the floor—without trembling. (I pray that Alvin doesn’t notice but he meets my eyes and I see that he does.) The next time I try it, I hold my face in my hands and I say: Your body is a pillar of iron, you cannot falter because it is not in your nature. Then, when I make the turn, I do not fall. Oh, shock of faith, a psalm dutifully read though not even fully believed. Sashimi in the display case, red fish blood pooled at the green plastic corners. Remix me, run to me. To think that the scene of the crime is also a place of light.

I have always been a problem but I did not realize I could be my own solution. I took myself for what I was for so long that I forgot I could be something else entirely. I am closer to the Great than he was to the pyramids, but I cannot know if I am closer to my death than to my birth. History in the amniotic fluid, the future, the gilled girl in its belly. When my name came out bare, neither of us flinched. (Now I realize that every lesson pain taught me, love would have willingly taught me three times over—)

Detrás de ti voy / Yo, que siempre espero que vengan a mí

True, that my spirit is broken in fourteen places; true, that my macros are excellent; true, that I like blood sport; true, that I have fallen in love. Fast-walking my Tokyo neighborhood, arms out like an exiled penguin, I ascend a puke-green bridge to admire the cars, their red lights at ash-strewn dusk like divine intervention, or at least divine warning. Chasing a high that is tragedy on tragedy on tragedy on tragedy on tragedy.

In my house, there are many rooms.

Don’t let your guard down. Don’t get your guard down. Above all else, don’t let your guard down. Feet and hands arrive together, in a lockstep that is almost intimate. Distance into overzealous touch and then back into distance. Fists like keys. Right leg, a pillar; left leg, sweeping for mines. Hand extended, pitifully. Come over here and let me hold you. Oh, but don’t let your guard down. Briefly blinded by flesh and rags. Lose your time, your eyes, your every single gilded treasure, but don’t let your guard down. A lanky, long-tongued dog appears in the corner of the room, scratching up the tatami, and oh my fucking God, I’ve just been hit in the face. The four brocaded walls of my cranium, rattling cylindrically. I said, don’t let your guard down! But struck once, a sequel is inevitable, and I receive this second blow dutifully, like a child at communion. Better than expected, worse than hoped. The shelter where I was hiding last night, under the moon in the black copse, collapses in one terrific go. You retrieve the bricks to then build the house I will die in.

In my house, there are many rooms.

I don’t have the moral courage to end this. Hamartia will groan from underneath me, sweaty on the bedsheets, and rise to devour me whole. Saturn and his son, you and my pearl. I take you with me always. Staring at the shy light bleeding out from under the edge of a dark rain cloud. Blue of a contusion, gold in scattered ribbons. Light stretching out, like a cat or goddess, onto the bedspread. I am filled with frightening joy, and not because this reminds me of anything or because it is symbolic of something or because I can craft a metaphor or story from its raw material. I am filled with joy at the observation, the sensation. Action of the sky, equal and opposite reaction of the heart. Translucent, eternal becomes, in me, dense, momentary. So much tender and idle beauty. Don’t push your punches. Don’t let your guard down.

Speaking of which—

In my house, there are no rooms. I’ll wait for you tonight instead at the park, perched on the rusty rungs leading up to the red plastic slide. You say jump, I say how high. Come and meet me and let us fight and draw only a little blood.

The test

A band of purple clouds moves over the sun and floods the room in blue. I whip the sheets off and hit the floor. I haven’t slept in three weeks. I’m emotional but I’m cool about it. God, I’m so cool about it. I could bottle this feeling up and peddle it as antifreeze. Would you buy it from me? Would you buy anything, from me?

The air takes an ovoid shape around me. Veined petals of gritty blood, wet on my forehead and on my greenish chicken claws. I close my eyes and wait. Soon, I know, the bells will chime. The pounding will begin. This speckled eggshell will crack into shards, and many calloused angel hands will clamp around my waist and chuck me unceremoniously, like a poorly pitched ball, into the current of current affairs, the flood of the flood.

I try my best, I do. I try my best until I don’t.

My thoughts of you are a talisman from a temple. Your hand on the handle, and then into the wound of the conventional. My thoughts of you are so replete with terrifying potential that I think I could summon you, as though through a pentagram. You emerge, head first, from the center of this star.

You shadow me through the banality of the light and you have been everywhere I have been. You were there when I skipped an afternoon meeting to walk the beach, feeling my heart fall to my feet and surge and break like the surf. Both baby-blue sneakers hanging from the fingers of one hand. At the bridge, you sent your messenger, a brown-eyed stray, poised, pert, expectant. Seeing him there, I trembled and returned the way I came. Humidity dripping in tears down my back at Rama IX Park. Under the tulipwoods, you were there, cast in shadow, pressing play on one song over and over, rubbing its chords into my brain like marinade until every strip of lace in me ripped with agony.

Enough is enough!

In a moment of bravery or cowardice, I bite you back. But you bubble up again like fat off a broth, foam off a fountain and suddenly I am shit-scared and three seconds from breaking down at the Linjiang Street Night Market. Light glancing off the water of the bay like a blow. The sunset over the rail line, pinking the wrinkled silk of my emotions. Your breath, hot at my back as I wander the market. I whirl around but I am alone in the maze of stalls, surrounded by strangers in the purple twilight, only a girl of two-hundred bones cast haphazard on an altar.

What’s the lesson at the end of this story? I bust a blood vessel in my finger and find blue, fig-shaped, under the skin. Tape the middle and index together in a white cross. Tongue-tied, you cross my mind. Cross my heart, hope to die. Body heat so hot off me, I could boil the ocean. I say nothing but I radiate this pain like a belt of moonlight. Meteorites pinballing a path through my stomach, knocking hard against the pulp of my hips. I am as proud and as ignorant as ever. I look up at the suffering of a shooting star and try my best to sympathize.

Truth or dare

I am seeing pilgrims constantly at practice. Butterflies racing through the air. A beetle, hopeless on the tatami. Briefly, a wasp. On my knees, wiping down the floor, I notice a segmented copper coin with two twitching antenna. Tonight, I am come to your rescue, agent of the swarm. Tonight, even I am foreign here, though I am not a third as holy as you.

When I am not at practice, I am thinking about practice. In my heart, a constant and painful double-take. Everything reminds me of moves, stances, positions. Feet forward, backward. Hands up, then down. Soul, on and off. Going for a run in the rain, I start to dream again. Blood in my roots, down my chest, I can feel shame grow petals in my shadow. For God’s sake, hold it together. You must have a life outside of practice. But could I?

At night, along you come, red messenger. You have taken a new form this time but of course I recognize you. You emerge from the foamy surf with rusted hands. Trailing rubies from the dagger between your fingers. Over the sand, I will follow you, half-frantic, first running and then falling to crawl on hands and knees. I will fight, mouth filled with gold dust, to pick up the necessary speed to match your stride though I know I cannot catch up. Only when you reach the top of the dune do you take pity. You turn to look down at me through the mirage and you declare, with a laugh: Truth or dare?

Moving through forms on the mat, I again fantasize about being stabbed, because then I would have proof of a body, proof of sacrifice. The symmetry on both sides of the photograph tells a terrifying story. The passion I am holding in my chest like a poison pill. The faith that lies in the fallow field, featureless only on the surface. The belt, tightening around me. Truth or dare? Either way, just tell me your name. I know your future already; I saw it as I closed the door, crossing my path. Hand on the hilt, fever in my face coiled like a snake, I met your eyes in the mirrored glass. Never before have I been so chained to a single blade of grass.

I cry for no reason. No, there’s a reason. I feel like the Little Mermaid. No voice, only tears that bead on my face and then evaporate on the sand. Truth or dare? If truth, machete open your mind and kneel for me so I can stand on tiptoes to peer inside. If dare, forgo the blow and tell me everything yourself.

Blister the night / 合宿

Two streaks of red on my white boxing gloves. I check my body for damage but other than the rift in my chest, from which every piece of broken silver has already been plundered, I am disturbingly whole.

To be uninjured is such a disappointment. I’d love to lift my arm up and show you all the blood gushing from me. Geyser from the armpit, lava lacquering the snow fields and olive trees of Mount Olympus, sticky plasma gunking my hair, clogging the joints, flooding the mechanism. Alkaline red pooling at my feet until I am bled dry. Maybe then I could stop trying to prove how much I am trying.

The heat, an intrusion. I am afraid by what’s in front of and behind me, so I look up. Green and aquamarine, blessing of a breeze and call of the cicada on the staggered stone steps. I imagine turning on a dime, splitting from the group, sprinting out of the parking lot, my plastic flip-flops loud on the hot asphalt. I imagine disappearing into the siege of the trees. What version of me, what story of mine would follow me over that line?

The nighttime, a sweetness. After the typhoon, the evening clouds are pink and black. Store-bought fireworks by the seaside. The dark sand, grit in my underwear. The moss on the cypress saying a prayer and the waves joining in. I wait by the pillar and, though I have never had faith, I look down to find that I am pressing my hands together. As the air trembles and cools, I watch the shadows race one another across the upper floor. Horrifyingly, I reexamine my hands to find that the little courage I first mustered has grown by itself into a bonfire. What am I supposed to do with all this new bravery? Where do I put it?

When the light moves, I don’t see where it goes. Alvin comes out and asks me what I’m doing and dumbly I say, “I wanted to see the sky.” Later I realize that though this was not the truth, it was no lie.

Sitting in rows to eat. Eye contact from across the room. Riding the bus down the bridge that spans the bay. So steep, it’s like flying. Water like a sheet of pressed steel. Hammer me down so I remember who I am, so I can stop this longing for a place I have never been. From the window, mountains, denuded. Sweat on me as though I were clothed in it. Sparring is a relationship and I get dumped each time. Every breath, a live wire. Every look, a cardinal direction and I follow it obediently until I am knee-deep in endless salt flats. I don’t think. Me, not think? But I have never been more myself. A beckoning hand and I die inside. But I go down with no bitterness. Every single soft spot is dear to me now. Where is that girl who nursed every cut so vindictively, who held every grudge against her chest like a phantom limb, like Kali chucking her skulls with four arms? Has it always been so easy for her to step aside?

Clear your mind like a rag over a blackboard. Stand in stance. Power through. Hit hard. Head swims. Briefly, I meet God at the meat market and tell him it hurts to breathe. He is unimpressed, but I hardly expected or wanted more. Fish in a net. Fluid blister on my foot. Blood on my gloves, from a wound no one can see. From the open doorway, a butterfly and then a crow. Aim true. Clear your mind. Close the distance.

I thought you should know that the ice in the set of your frame has the tightest possible grip on me. It wakes me like a thump in the night. It pushes me to a place beyond the orange-barked cedars. When the ice returns home, like a green-scaled salmon upriver, to the delta of your jaw, it fists the moonlight in me and cracks it hard, robin’s-egg blue. It melts me down to the clay.

Two streaks of red on my white boxing gloves. Where’d that come from? You won’t hold my hands so, when you tell me, meet my eyes instead. Where’d that come from?