In the continuous strive that life -or kendo- is, sister Eagle went on fighting and creating, gaining a space for her own in this land of ours, centimeter by centimeter. Most of us tried to help, yet to help an Eagle you have to be an Eagle yourself, we thought. Until brother Tuqueque showed up, that is.
As it does happen with Tuqueques, not all of us were impressed right away. Plenty of us are still not impressed either. And that only goes to show how ignorant we are. It isn’t easy to see brother Tuqueque, since as soon as you think you know where he is, he is elsewhere. His lite self moves faster than the eyes of most of us, so most will stop seeing him. Yet that fast disappearing here to appear there is not what defines our brother. Not at all, actually.
Now and then, a tuqueque shows up in a Venezuelan house. He would seem a bit of a plague for the faint headed, appearing suddenly in a corner of your room and running along that impossible place where the ceiling joins the wall, to disappear seconds after into the next room, or out the window. All tuqueques do remind us of small dragons, so there is no shame in being suddenly scared. Yet old Venezuelan ladies will tell you that the house that welcomes a tuqueque is a happy house. Only a tuqueque will do that which few can and nobody wants, only a tuqueque will hunt and exterminate the smaller vermin that makes living in the tropics a real nightmare. Many wiser venezuelans welcome their humble, and small, presence.
Like in our dojo. Still hard to pinpoint, without a quite impressive presence, brother Tuqueque is also hard to miss, with his knack of materializing in the moment and place where something needs to be done. Perhaps some of us will shout or strike harder, surely some of us will talk longer and offer our loud opinions, frequently up to the point of uselessness. Brother Tuqueque, hanging in that high corner where we don’t expect anybody, will be looking our debating things that needs not to be debated, with that half smile that his family have. Eventually the ruckus will be over, when we’ll finally understand what sister Eagle was wanting us to do. Then and just then, before any of us start raising a hand to volunteer, then will be brother Tuqueque, always humble and always faster. To help us all.
