Playing catch with Priya, also known as random updates with some Proto-Indo-European tossed in just ‘cause

We must remember that music is more than sound and clamor; it is rest, the silence between notes. I suppose it’s a bit of a fallow time for me, creatively. I continue to plug away at my daily poems – and share them here, albeit not in order – and practice the sitar. I sing […]

Poem: Orbit

A starfield the snow and the black car rolled its brow cracked by trees as I whistled past hold fast, hold fast to friction’s strict blessing — I threw a man with my hip and a flick of my wrist over and over that force crumbling a car such joy in this, strict joy, a […]

The battlefield and the garden: Or, the can you kick eventually rebounds off an existential crisis

two hands grip the tsukaand two cradle the riflewhat gentle hand, then, tends the peony?What weary arm can hold the spade? I’m thinking about leaving martial arts, and it’s hurting my heart. Translation from Amhrán-ese: When I say things like “it’s hurting my heart,” that means that it’s upsetting me to the point that I […]

Fear not: What lames you and what makes you whole

In the end, it was a dream – plain, mundane, achingly domestic — that guided me to wholeness. I am cooking a large pot of curried rice on the stove for a party. Absent-mindedly, I turn on the vent hood timer, and then realize my error and try to turn it off. As I hit a button, […]

The living shrine: On not kicking ass and not taking names

Around two o’clock in the morning as I was performing ritual purification, I suddenly forgot every martial art technique I had ever learned. All of the techniques handed down from my teachers appeared completely anew. Now they were vehicles for the cultivation of life, knowledge, virtue, and good sense, not devices to throw and pin […]

Put down the peach and let’s suffer. It’s good for the soul, promise.

Life is pain, Highness. Anyone who says differently is selling something. – The Princess Bride There’s a particular sort of joy that comes with gathering your feet and just walking across the floor, the grass, the road – and having nothing bite. As in: No sensation of sharp teeth in my knee ligaments, no need […]

Poem: Tenshin

Draw you out: We needn’t always go blow to blow. Maintain a separation and the wind shall rush into the hole, the water, the dirt runneling its hourglass. I step back: a fish lure, a bear trap with innocent teeth bared in a smile. How the mighty press their advantage to find themselves defeated by […]

Rode hard and put up wet: My life in injury

Before class began, I made a wheel of myself over and over, throwing myself to the ground, feet spinning over my head. As I leaned over my injured left leg for the breakfall, I felt a pop behind my knee and audibly gasped. And that’s how I ended up with what’s probably a Grade 2 […]

What does it mean to be triggered? On phobias, fear and moving beyond

I’m not teaching you how to move your feet; I’m teaching you how to move your mind. ― Morihei Ueshiba, The Art of Peace On a Sunday, I went for my long run of seven-and-change, but my pace was slow. The next morning, after yoga, I felt some unseen hand pluck the back of my knee like a […]

In a dark time: On yearning, what breaks you and the inexpertly executed art of peace

What’s madness but nobility of soul At odds with circumstance? The day’s on fire! I know the purity of pure despair My shadow pinned against a sweating wall. That place among the rocks—is it a cave, Or winding path? The edge is what I have. — Theodore Roethke, “In a Dark Time” It’s strange how […]