Fenix sensei walks around, Fenix sensei talks. We hear.
It has been said that you should not talk to a dragon. Their voice will seduce you. You will forget that they are, actually, forged in fire that earth has not seen in a very long time. You will forget that they can convey that fire at will, and incinerate you in the blink of a moment. It is dangerous to talk to a dragon, they say.
Yet a fenix is not a dragon, isn’t it?
We hear Fenix sensei and we try to learn. His voice seems to come from far away, from those 82 years old he is. We have not seen him in four years, and time has not passed in vain. He walks around, and we follow his figure, still straight but fray. Time has no mercy, taking power and pride away, chipping endlessly at what we believe we are. Time, like the water that cuts the rock. Time.
But how could this possibly happens to our Fenix sensei? Isn’t that what a fenix is, after all? Would he not be reborn again, to teach us for ever? Was that not the bargain that we entered? Is time is the great equalizer, even for fenixes?
Perhaps.
Fenix sensei curls his old fingers around his sword and draws it. Something happens and nor me nor anybody else here today fully understands. Is this what the reborn of a fenix looks like? Where is the old man that has been talking to us and how has he transformed himself in this, in this bird of prey, in this untouchable pillar of fire? I believe, perhaps, that he is reborn through his sword, but of course I’m wrong. Fenix sensei has always been there, charming us away with his long years, with his kind grandfather figure, with the long knowledge that he talks into us. But now, now we can see him whole, when his sword is drawn, when he takes the form that has come through a long long line of japanese samurai. We aren’t looking at the frailty of age no more, we are not hearing remote words. The old man that teaches us is there, but then again, he isn’t. Fenix sensei in here and now, Fenix sensei moves and slices the air and his katana describes a curve infinite and endless, and also finalized in the sheat of the katana.
The bird of fire that Fenix sensei is looks at us through his old, and still sharp, eyes. Fenix sensei smiles, softly, to us. And he ask us to copy.
“One more?” he asks.