Grammar and Aikido

This Saturday morning I was the only uke at Aikido -- just me and three instructors, all black belts.

"You look a little nervous, delagar," said the head sensei cheerfully, as he was strapping on his hakama.

"A bit," I said, doing my stretches. "I was just thinking, all three of you black belts, me over here with my lonely black stripe." (I'm a white belt, one stripe, nearly as low a rank as you can get.)

They all laughed. The lowest rank of them just got his black belt last month. Also, as I think I have mentioned from time to time, I am not an Aikido genius, and all three of these guys are -- the sensei who just got his black belt (we'll call him New Sensi) is one of the most gifted students I've ever seen. (I've been watching Aikido for about eight years now, since the kid started in it at five, so I watched him go from a white belt to a black belt.)

Over the past four months, New Sensei has been struggling to teach me, who is probably the least gifted of all his students. My brain may be very clever, but my body is an idiot. It won't remember how to do anything, and it certainly can't do anything twice in a row, or learn any sequence of events. Worse, when I have learned to do something with my right hand or right foot, frequently then in Aikido we have to do the same thing with the left hand or the left foot. And this is just impossible for me. I can't seem to transfer knowledge from one side of my body to the other.

Well! Especially for New Sensei, who finds learning sequences of events natural, who can do everything the first time he sees it, who can transfer physical sequences not just from one side of his body to the other but backwards and forwards and probably, for all I know, upside down and standing on his head, this was frustrating for him, trying to teach me (and Head Sensei made him spend a lot of time teaching me, Idiot Student, because that is how Aikido works -- my kid is spending a lot of time teaching the five year olds, down in kids' class).

Anyway! Saturday! I could see he had made a breakthrough. He has figured out how to teach me. He broke the steps of each throw and pin and body movement into micro-steps, and fed them to me one tiny bit at a time. Do this. Do this. Now this. He let me practice each one sixty times if I needed to, before we moved on to something else. He gave me a lot of reinforcement at each step. He didn't add anything new before I got that step. He treated me like the Aikido special needs kid I was, in other words, and it absolutely worked.

I recognized this, because this is what I do in grammar classes -- I mean, I have a few students, maybe eight or ten, each time I teach grammar, who are absolutely gifted, who grasp grammar on an instinctual level. But the rest just can't get it, their brains don't see the connections. They're grammar idiots. So I break it down: I go one steps at a time, I break the explanation into microsteps, I give them lots of reinforcement, I explain fifty different ways, I show them, from various angles, why they're having trouble with this point. And I practice, practice, practice with them.

And I don't assume they're idiots, just because they're idiots at this.

We're all idiots at something. That's a fact. You should hear my father the rocket scientist talk about movies.

What I Did On My Summer Vacation

So I've been doing Aikido for, what, three weeks now? Maybe a bit more.

It's a salutary experience.

Aside from physics, aerobics, and that logic class when I was 20, I don't think I've ever actually done anything I've been bad at. I don't mean a little bad, either: I mean as in astoundingly bad, wincingly bad, OMG worst in the class you gotta be kidding bad. I really suck.

And physics, aerobics, and that logic class I all quit, like, at once. As soon as I realized I was hopeless, I was fucking out of there. Yeah, no, okay, let's not, I said, and that was that.

But aikido, it's kind of like the algebra and finite math classes I took when I was 19. See, I wanted to do those (I also kind of had to, if I was going to get a degree) so I stuck it out; and also I started getting better at them almost at once, which helped a lot.

With aikido, I'm not getting better very much faster. Maybe a little better, which is nice. I mean, I'm not the worst person in the class anymore. (Only because a newer worser student has added. But still!)

The salutary part! For the very first time in my life, I can see what it is like for someone to want to be able to do something, to be actually trying to do something, and to not be able to do it.

Yeah, I know, smack me with a clue stick. And I've got it coming. Especially given I'm a fucking teacher, I should know better. And I have always tried to give my students the benefit of believing they were trying. But that's different, of course, from this: knowing what's like on the other side. I just can't do any better than I am doing.

Well, okay, maybe this is what it is like for my students who write me those sad emails, saying, I don't know what you mean by write an essay explaining how to fix a specific problem in my life -- how do I do that? What problem in my life?

Maybe that's just exactly like me saying to sensei I don't know what you mean by katatori ichio. What do I do with my feet exactly? Where do I grab? Turn which way now? I don't get it...

My friend Zelda used to talk about all kinds of literacy. This is what she meant.

Living In the Climate Change

So I've started Aikido, as I think I probably mentioned. And I love it to bits, it's probably the most interesting physical activity I have ever done. But (you heard a but coming, didn't you?) my shit is it exhausting.

We meet four times a week for two hours each session. The entire two hours, except for a brief bit at the beginning, where we stretch, is spent either throwing people or being thrown. Once you're thrown -- getting thrown doesn't really hurt much when you're a white belt, which I am -- but once you're thrown, you have to get up from the mat. Now that sounds easy enough, until you have done it like 75 times. I come home from each session so exhausted I am loopy. And my muscles haven't stopped aching yet, though sensei promises me eventually they will. After I'm dead, maybe he means?

Anyway! The point of the post! It's been 100 degree or over that for nearly a month here, and will be a hundred degree or over that for the next ten days at least, and sensei likes to turn off the AC in the dojo after the kid's session is over. Yesterday, Thursday, it was 102 when we set out for Aikido (I always check) and even after the sun set it was still frakking hot. By the time we're done, we're all soaked with sweat. But during the session, interestingly, though you're sweating, of course, you don't notice the heat. Too busy working I guess. "Didn't get above 90 in here," sensei noted, after the session. The giant thermostat on the wall said 89 degrees.

Now this is not true of mental labor, I can assure you. When I'm writing or or editing or reading for class, if the tempature gets above 75, I stop being functional. Which is adding up to some huge electric bills at chez delagar, may I mention. Because this is the hottest June/July I can remember, and no end to it in sight.

I guess this is also living in the future. But not one I like.

Oh Boy!

I have finished grading!

Normally this is a big deal, since it signals the start of the between-semester break, or several weeks of pure uninterrupted writing time.

However: in the summer sessions, between-semesters equals three days, so, well, big deal.

In other news! I have started Aikido. My kid, as long term readers know, has been doing Aikido since she was five. Recently she has begun transitioning into the adult class, which seemed a good time for me to join the dojo along with her. (Her in the kid's class and me in the adult class would be impossible, since I'd be going to four adult sessions and driving her to two separate kid sessions, basically ten hours a week on five separate days of the week, impossible in our already over-crowded schedule.)

Anyway! I love Aikido. But man, what a workout. I don't think I've ever done anything, not even during my brief stint of laying roof, that is this physically exhausting. Certainly running the five-K was not this tiring, or riding cross country, thirty miles a day, as I used to do in my prime. That was nothing compared to this.

Sensei Greg says I'll get used to it soon, though. And I believe him.