Heron hurt. That’s why instead of training with his shinken, sharp as the sharpest beak, for quite some time we saw him with a bokken. As it happen, Heron teared a ligament or two apart. Was that the reason we see herons standing long time on one, and then in another leg? hard to say. What we saw was Heron, and his bokken.
You could wonder, and certainly the lot of us did, how could it be that Heron from all people would make such a beginners mistake. Heron was way ahead the crowd, in many ways. It was enough to see the effortless expression in his face, at one or another kata. Not quite effortless, but with a sense of satisfaction, actually. At describing Sougiri, I remember a slight smile in his face at marking a cadence: step-cut, step-cut, step-cut… step-cut, step-cut. As when walking along the water, hunting for prey to be caught with a fast, perhaps not effortless, but certainly rhythmic movement.
And yet Heron teared apart a ligament or two. We wonder, and then wondered again. Was it an accident? was it perhaps excess of enthusiasm? It couldn’t have been the wrong tenouchi, could it now? Maybe an extraordinarily fast fish went away, just going away from an out of control beak, at last minute tearing apart the muscles that deployed the stab? Or was simply the day in and day out wear and tear of tendons and bones, grating each other? We didn’t know, and we wouldn’t ask. It is being said that even monkeys fall from the tree. We know that Heron teared apart a ligament, or two.
