Fenix sensei

“Body in”, said Fenix sensei. And he said it again, and again. He showed us too, his small body wholly committed into the space of the opponent. No matter how sharp a sharp sword is, how powerful the arms of a person are, a cut is good only when it combines many muscles and articulations. Legs bringing us from here to there, tandem stabilizing our stances, shoulder blades bringing the sword in arches, fingers and forearms lending its speed. A cut executed with only arms is a poor one. It is our whole that must be in it, just as Fenix sensei say, again and again. 

Few times in my life I have received a scarier command.

Even if our battles are against ourselves, Iai is violent. Even when our blocks and cuts are made against an imaginary enemy, we are still parrying the blade of the other, cutting him or her through. We do mean to have our swords ripping another person, we mean to destroy. There is where Fenix sensei commanded our body, right there in the moment of ultimate violence and destruction. We are asked to commit to the destruction of the other and in doing so destroy myself. Scary. What can I possibly become after that? How can I survive untouched? Perhaps there is no surviving unscathed, after all. Perhaps it is so that after destroying the self, even a little piece of it, there is no going back to being the same. Perhaps. Because we did not only heard sensei Fenix commanding our bodies into destruction, we also saw him doing so. 

And we saw him emerge from the flames, anew. 

I have said before that I write about what I don’t know. I am not sure if Iai is comprehensible at all, but I know for sure that I don’t know Iai. And yet, here and there, now and again I believe to have recognized a shadow behind that curtain, a piece of something that is yet to be grasped whole. Fenix sensei emerged from it all with chiburi and noto, Fenix sensei attained those last kamaes and stayed there, immobile and yet changed. Winner and yet changed by his defeat. Conqueror and yet humbled.

In our days of terror and destruction, I keep of thinking in commitment, and renewal.