Eagle

As Steinbeck tells it, there is a crossroad in a forest where maidens meet errant knights and join their questing for a year’s length. Lady Lynne’s quest was to make her companions better warriors. After having taught sir Ewain for the best of a year, she made him face twin brothers that had ransomed a widow’s castle. Witnessing the two brothers butcher her pupil, Lynne cried. Yet no lament was her cry, but a piercing lance, a battle clarion. Ewain confused thoughts cleared just enough to remember who he was. Before defeating both brothers, he did look towards Lynne, his tired eyes only managing to make the shape of an eagle looking straight at him.  

So sister Eagle, facing any of us, shouts. We stagger, even if for a second, even if we knew it was going to happen. Maybe because her strikes -ever faster than ours- will follow. Maybe because to fence is to offer yourself, so the kiai of sister Eagle is her offer, her challenge. Most likely because, if only for a second, we are Ewain, pierced again by an eagle’s cry.. 

We go on fencing with sister Eagle. Stand your ground and lighten your grip, says her round eyes shinning through her bogu. Or says herself, when behind a beer we newcomers ask for roadmaps of kendo land. It is all about standing your ground and lightening your grip, she says. As it happens, Sister Eagle is also a newcomer in these Nether Lands of ours. So we also try to map things for her and we also say: stand your ground and lighten your grip, sister Eagle. Each might be ahead in one or another road, in knowing one or another country. But as brother Swan once said “in budo-land, we are all foreigners”.