Watching a black belt exam

[pegkerr]

Tonight, the head instructor of the girls' karate school, Mr. Sidner, was testing for his fourth degree black belt, so Rob and I and the girls went to watch the exam. It was the first time we've seen a black belt exam, for all the black belts testing region-wide. The whole thing lasted about three hours. I found it fascinating (the girls were interested, for the most part, although Delia did get restless toward the end). In the defensive section, Mr. Sidner did one of defenses from a wheel chair, taking out his attacker using only his arms. Quite convincingly, too.

As I watched the students kick and punch, I thought about something kijjohnson said once, that the practice of writing should become like the practice of karate: if you want to become good, you have to practice your forms every day. I want to study karate, but I will have to wait until the girls are out of daycare, and so we have a little more margin in the budget. I thought about discipline, watching those intricate forms, the jumps, the kicks, the looks of intensity on faces, young and old. My discipline in terms of my writing life has been nonexistent for the last several years. I am not sure whether motherhood is a sufficient excuse or not. In my blacker moments, I think it is not, that I am flunking being a writer. But I have been trying, to get my life back to the point where I can give the writing the discipline I need, by cutting other extraneous stuff out of my life. I'm almost there--but I sit down in front of the keyboard and . . . .nothing.

Architecture intimidates me. It intimidates the hell out of me. For my first book, I had to learn about jewelry making. I don't know why that didn't seem quite so scary. Perhaps because I was describing Renaissance jewelry making, and I didn't think there would be scads of people who knew enough about the subject to tsk tsk if I got it wrong. The second book got more intimidating: I was trying to get into the mindset of gay Manhattan subculture, and what the hell did I know about that? I worried incessantly whether or not I got it right, but . . . I dunno . . . there didn't seem to me to be anything technical about it.

Architecture, now. Mathematical and precise, with an engineering mindset which is foreign to me--is that what's paralyzing me? Or is it simply Jack the mysterious who is the problem, Jack the maddening, the elusive, who in my low moments I have started to dub Jack-the-jerk?

What is my beginning form here? What is my target to kick and punch? And should I have been acting as if I have been testing for my belt all along, and I haven't even known it? When are they going to inform me that they're kicking me out of the writer's karate school for lack of progress?

Or for self-absorbed navel-gazing instead of writing, for that matter. Yeesh.

Comments

[chance88088.livejournal.com]

hiya. I am not an architectural scholar, however it is the biz I work in, if you have any question, please feel free to ask at chance at cmorrison.com because I do know some stuff.