Bearded Dragon

In the most famous tango ever, Gardel sings to us that “twenty years are nothing”, surely when we are going back home. It is never too late and maybe… maybe we never left. Yet I know of no straight comeback.

It is now a couple of years ago that brother Bearded Dragon showed up as a kendo beginner. Well, not quite like another beginner. Long before kendokas joined Yushinkan, he learned iaido. Life and work and who knows what else took him away and then again, life and work brought him back. This time to learn some kendo with us. And learn kendo he did, sharing some of his lightness and also some of his intensity. A bearded dragon is the fastest of them all, well able to out run any of us. As fast as his legs his sense of humor, fast and frequently breaking in that great and friendly smile of his. Yet ask brother Bearded Dragon about his beliefs and convictions and be prepared to be the focus of those big black eyes, freezing you in place meanwhile brother considered what to answer. Perhaps that’s why other dragons are considered to be silver tongued, enchanters of the word. Perhaps because they could fix you with their stare and only then charm, or scare, you. Perhaps.

Anyway one day brother Bearded Dragon stopped kendo, to our surprise and to our distress. When I asked, he told me straight, unblinkingly. I know what passion is, he said. I was passionate about iaido, I was. Now that life brought me back, I thought that I could find that passion again here, in kendo, but I haven’t. So I’ll be back some other day, he said. And he was gone, as fast as he came.

And yet, in the here and the now, just like any other day, he was back. It was one of those iaido practices where we are asked to refresh our theory, where Mother Falcon asked again and again about concepts and ideas that we should know. And there he was, that bearded dragon of us back from ten and more years of not using a katana, reminding us why tenouchi matters, or how a straight posture is what gives you a good cut.

Maybe we never leave, indeed.

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