A peaceful walk

Its funny how random and often fleeting moments of absolute peace can be.  For me, these moments occur every now and again but I can never tell when or how long it will be.  Its one of those moments when you are in you're in your body and you're not at the same time.  You feel somewhat disconnected and yet feel like part of the larger scheme of things.  I guess you can say its like being on auto-pilot and thus being allowed to look out of the windows to the world below.  I had one of these moments while I was walking to my car from a lively session of Cuban Salsa.

After dancing for the last few hours (on top of exercising before hand) my body was tired, although not tired enough to make me sleepy.  It was just the right amount of fatigue that made me subdued and allowed me to assume the auto-pilot mode if you will.  Despite it being dark outside, I was still warm enough walk out in my tank top and not freeze immediately.  I also embraced my solitude which I normally don't when I'm walking alone in the dark.  But everything seemed to fit together and I was able to feel everything and really enjoy the moment like I'm seldom able to do.  All the evening sounds and my foot falls were muffled due to the tiny hairs in my ears being over worked by loud music, but instead of being uncomfortable it only made it more peaceful.  Remember in my first post when I was talking about the peace of being underwater? This was walk in the evening was somewhat similar.  So there I was, walking by myself in my tank top on my campus at 9 at night.

It was a wonderful feeling.  My body felt light, the world around me was quiet in a relaxed way and I was able to feel the slight chill of night embrace me.  Walking this way allowed many different thoughts to drift in and out of my mind without the normal intensity, but lightly, as if they were small down feathers dancing on a gentle breeze.  One of these thoughts that played around my mind was thoughts of someone very dear to me whom had earlier unwittingly answered my feelings yet again.  I don't want to say much more but thinking about this someone was like laying in a soft blanket on a rainy day.  A warm cuddly feeling of knowing that you are safe from the rain outside.  I miss this person, and to this person: Du weißt, wer du bist, It seems like I have a hard time letting go of you.

Kendo

Here I am after 10 years returning to the wonderful sport Kendo.  For those of you who don't know, its a martial art that is based off of the sword play of the Samurai of Japan.

But before you get excited, kendo does not look like this and you will not see anything even remotely close to the Tom Cruise movie the last Samurai.

(*Small Rant* I'm so glad I had the dignity to put an actual picture of Samurai warriors up here instead of something from the last Samurai.  Sorry Ken Watanabe, I think you are the coolest, but I can't get over the fact that Tom Cruise had to become a Samurai of all people and that this movie was in fact filmed in New Zealand and NOT Japan.  This made that movie a lot less cool and therefore merits no pictures on this particular blog)

Instead, Kendo today looks like this:

So they may not use real katanas (the traditional Japanese sword) but come on, it looks cool doesn't it?  I mean look at that bogu (armor)!  They also wear these protective mask/helmets (men) that also makes them pretty intimidating.  If that wasn't enough, it is required that they yell, no not say, yell exactly what it is they are going to hit. I have found that when guys ki-ai (yell) it makes them sound very angry, not to mention a little scary.  As you can see, although kendo is not as, I guess romantic as its roots suggest, it still is an awesome sport.  Gnarly on the arms, let me tell you!

Anyway, I mostly wanted to talk about the concept of the Ki-ai or the yell of kendo.  Its not unique to kendo as it is also done in karate and I think in Aikido as well.  I'm not entirely sure of the function in karate but I imagine it would be similar to the function in Kendo, that of controlling your breathing.  On a more metaphoric note the ki-ai, as I was just told tonight, is also a representation of your spirit.  When you are fighting you are supposed to demonstrate your skill of the sword, your discipline and your spirit.  This is the reason I'm assuming that in the katas of kendo you will nearly always see yelling at the opponent.

Its funny because as simple as it is to yell I think its one of the most difficult parts of kendo that I have encountered thus far.  When I first started at 10 years old I didn't get far enough to learn the proper ki-ais that the other members were doing and so now that I'm not at all used to the concept of the ki-ai.  It shouldn't be so hard, all I have to do is open my mouth, reach deep inside myself and let out a fearsome roar.  Unfortunately every time I have tried to do this I get tongue-tied.  All the noise deep inside me that wants to show itself is being held back by a brick wall it seems.  Its not like it is not there either, I know I have it but for some reason there is a mental block preventing me from making the belly roar ki-ai that would make even a black belt in kendo shudder.

Over the past couple of months I've been under a great deal of stress and that stress built up a lot of anger and frustration.  Usually what I do to cope with this is to exercise a lot and listen to angry music.  When I'm the most upset I listen to Linkin Park because for some reason their music just matches what I'm feeling completely.  Their lyrics resonate with my anger and frustration and Chester Bennington (lead singer) has THE BEST scream ever.  Its so good in my opinion that I wished that thats how I would sound when I yelled.

Letting Chester scream for me was a good way to vent my anger.  I

When I've actually screamed myself I feel like I sound like this:

As you can imagine this is also why I've given a bit of resistance at Kendo practice towards doing the ki-ai with a technique.  I realize its important and its a good skill to practice correct breathing.  But if the Ki-ai is a representation of the spirit, then whatever my voice box is able to procure is not going to be adequate enough.  I have a disproportionate amount of spirit to vocal capabilities I guess.

Hopefully with practice I may find it within myself to remove the mental block I have against roaring.  I'm not sure how though since its not exactly socially acceptable, and I don't like drawing attention to myself.  There is also the argument of intimidating your opponent, but to me, just giving them a murderous stare would be enough.  I suppose this is all part of being a beginner at kendo, so hopefully I'll get better as time goes on.

My first post

I've never blogged before, so this is a little strange.

I guess I'll start with why I named my blog "bubbles from the deep".

It all started with the thought 'hey, I should start a blog'  not so that anyone in particular could read it, just because.  I thought that depending on the notice that my blog gets from people I know, I could use this as a diary of sorts, or just a place to spill my thoughts.  I can't say I'd care about how reads this, I don't have much to hide anyway, and the things that I do hide...well if just random people were visiting this blog and read it, what would I care?  They don't know me.  But I digress...

So I love the water, everything from Spongebob to playing in the pool.  One day I was swimming in the gym on campus and after I did my work out for an hour I decided to play in the deep pool which is usually frequented by aqua joggers and obnoxious frat boys who like to do somersaults off the diving board.  I love to free dive and so all I did was down to the bottom and hang out there until I needed a breath.  Its a wonderful feeling being suspended in the water, its so quiet and all you can hear is the gentle stir of the water moving in unison around you.  It makes me feel like a super hero sometimes too because it allows me to move in ways I can't on land.  I can test the limits of my flexibility by doing back flips, spins, somersaults, splits, handstands, anything.  As I am swimming around, surely acquiring many odd looks from the other people sharing the pool, I start to notice the amount of bubbles that my frolicking caused.  I swim to the bottom, exhaled slowly and gazed intently as they made their way up to the surface of the water.  I began to see how the bubbles contorted and changed their shape as if the air itself was dancing its way to the surface.  It looked like so much fun that I decided I wanted to play with them.  I shot up to the surface grabbed a fresh breath and descended back to the bottom.  After equalizing my ears I slowly exhaled a little bit of air and gave my bubbles a bit of a head start.  As they floated to the surface I pushed myself from the bottom of the pool and started my own ascent.  Before I passed them however I realized that I was indeed, under the bubbles and I wondered what it would feel like to touch a bubble underwater.  One of the larger bubbles contorted itself into the shape of a jellyfish and I felt compelled to tickle its underside since it was clearly devoid of stinging tentacles.  Just as I reached out and touched it the name for this blog came to me like a bolt of lightening!  I would name this blog, the UPSIDE DOWN BUBBLE!

Now I'm sure this doesn't make any sense since this blog is clearly not named "the upside down bubble", but allow me to continue.  After swimming that day I got a little excited because I thought I had come up with a brilliant name for my blog.  But as it turns out, my great idea was shot down by my friend's reality check.  As I was studying with my group of friends I became engaged in conversation with one of my girlfriends and blogging came up.  She told me about her blog which has such a cute title: to live, to laugh, to love.  It was so like her and I thought the name was so fitting.  Being the silly one that I am I acted overtly excited when I told her I had recently come up with a brilliant name for a blog.  When I enthusiastically exclaimed "THE UPSIDE DOWN BUBBLE" the look of engagement in the conversation melted into a look of pure confusion.  She told me that the name didn't make sense and it occurred to me as she was explaining her disbelief that bubbles are traditionally spherical and therefore couldn't physically be upside down, or even right side up for that matter.  I felt quite silly after that, it only occurred to me a few weeks later that I was referring to the bubbles that contorted their shapes when suspended in a fluid.  Even then, when people think of bubbles they don't tend to think of the contorted bubbles but of the more spherical ones.  So I sacked that idea.

For some reason though the idea of having bubbles in the title never left me.  I felt that bubbles had to be incorporated somewhere because their aqueous nature was a subtle nod to my love of the water.  Well back to square two, not square one because I at least had the bubbles as part of the title.  This title did not come to me in a flashy blaze of clarity like the other one did but I thought it was an elegant way to capture the same sentiments I felt in the pool, sitting at the bottom and watching the bubbles float up.  I was a little unsure about the title only because I felt that it might be misconstrued as being mellow dramatic when that was not really my intention.  But I suppose I can't do much about that now, I chose the title and my readers will have to make their own judgements about it or me.  At this point, I don't really care because I don't think anyone will read this for a while.

Thats the story and my first post on my blog.  Hurray for firsts!