Friday, September 17, 2004

 
Gentlemen prefer blondes. And dumb ones at that, even if it's plain as day that they only want money. Brunettes, on the other hand, end up with poor detectives for the sake of love. This simple formula in Howard Hawks' movie engenders two of the most spectacular musical scenes I've seen: Jane Russell as Dorothy Shaw serenading a team of aloof Olympic athletes, asking them "Ain't There Anyone Here for Love?", and Marilyn Monroe as Lorelei Lee performing with a flock of admirers "Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend" in a Parisian cabaret. Disturbing.

posted by Open Mouth 1:52 AM

Tuesday, September 14, 2004

 
More from Terry Dobson, who founded the Bond Street Dojo in New York:

"Am I going to charm him? Am I going to tell him stories? Am I going to bring him sweets? No. There's no way I can get into him. I can only let him get into me." (31)

"I'm interested in learning how far away I am from being a warrior. Not how close I am, but how far." (65)

"Tact is the ability to do the right thing at the right time. How do we know how to do this? How to be tactful? You can't decide to be tactful. You can only do it intuitively, when you are fully engaged, when your spirit is collected or synchronous. Tact comes from the Latin word tangere, which means, 'to touch.' " (114)

"What is much more important than anything I say is that I touch you. Through me, through my touch, comes the touch of the founder of Aikido. There is no Bible you can buy that says, 'This is what Aikido is.' It is transferred from person to person. These vibrations pass among us." (95)

"There is a way in which you can blend with energy in such a way as to use it. That was his genius." (98)

"If you are centered, you will not act incorrectly." (102) "If you stay centered, you don't have to respond like you always do when those buttons are pushed. The best way to do that is to stay connected to the ground." (109)

"True Budo is the cultivation of attraction with which to draw the whole opponent to you." (119, quoting from Morihei Ueshiba Osensei)

"If I had one piece of advice for beginners, it would be to forgive yourself on the one hand, and to be strong enough on the other to accept your grace." (138)

"Maybe the reason you can't roll is because you can't leave your feet. You can't go for it. You can't trust enough to just jump the hell out into space. Ultimately no one can do that for you. If they kick you out of the airplane, it was not your decision to jump; you were robbed by allowing somebody to do that for you and you participated in your own robbery. Once you make the decision to go for it, it is dynamite." (153)

"You must throw another person in the context of love." (127) "When you end the technique, make sure that you remain totally present. Surround your partner with your presence. You want to ensure that he has not been injured. You are responsible for his well-being, you are his protector." (155)

posted by Open Mouth 1:34 AM

Monday, September 13, 2004

 
When I was in high school, around the same time when I learned about homeschooling and Buckminster Fuller, I first learned of aikido. That first encounter through a featurette in the Whole Earth Review gave me the idea that aikido is kinda cool and that it is a lot like dancing. Who knew at the time that about a decade later not only would I have practiced aikido but also be finally reading Terry Dobson's It's a lot like dancing...an aikido journey (Berkeley: Frog, Ltd., 1993)? Out of print and hard to find, the book was hidden at the University of Central Oklahoma's library.

"It's very good to be close to your opponent. When I'm close to him, I know exactly where he is, what he's thinking, what he's likely to do. I can control, direct, relax, quiet, and restore this person by being close to him." (39)

"You can't hide out on the mat. You can't pay somebody to do a roll. You can't use sophistry. When you're heading towards the mat at sixteen feet per second, you better do something if you want to come out of it all right, and that something is inevitably to relax. It's very easy to clutch up under pressure, but it's really the mark of you if you can relax under it." (16)

"I felt about Osensei in may ways like I feel about my dog, or how I feel about this hatchet. I like to chop wood with it. I don't know anything about it, all I know is that the hatchet better know how to chop wood, because I don't. I only know enough to pick it up. The rest is done by the hatchet. If the dog wants to go out, well, I can open the door, she's got to do the rest. I only know enough to put myself in Osensei's path; I don't know what I'm doing or how to do it. Let's hope he does. It's in between trust, love, and surrender." (28)

posted by Open Mouth 2:38 AM