Hula today, and Kung Fu gives me issues
Aug. 24th, 2005 11:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
la_belle_laideToday's Hula show was mostly awesome. It was just Claudine and I, and it was at a senior community center. Not an assisted living kind of place, but just a place for old people to get together and do activities and have parties. Well, today was one of their parties. It was pretty big, we had a decent crowd, and I swear, they were lots more active and into it than even some parties we've done with younger people. We've had some rude audiences in the past, but these people were really nice. During the Tahitian section, we even had spontaneous mad applause during the songs. Dude, I love that, it makes me just dance that much harder.
It mostly went off without a hitch. The one hitch was kind of a big one, though: the CD skipped like mad and finally died on the second verse of Ka'ano'i. It wasn't the CD that was the problem, but the system. Yet, when I ran backstage to get the replacement CD (I always bring one,) that one played fine and we finished the entire show without anymore skipping.
And I didn't make a single mistake during the entire set. That might be a first. I did my quiet Laka chant before we went on, for myself and to myself, and I think that today I lived up to it in some way. Hula wise, it was an awesome show.
Then I came home, fed and cleaned the birds, took care of the aviary, had dinner, and ran back out to Kung Fu.
I should learn to stay away from Kung Fu when I'm hormonal, seriously. Although, staying away from it for any amount of time seems to be becoming less and less of an option. Maybe even a few months ago I might have stayed home tonight, because hey, all kinds of busy today, Hula show, already beat and could wring myself out, not a hell of a lot of time to get back out the door, but I went anyway. In full makeup, no less.
Actually, Kung Fu was also great tonight. Well, we did self defense, which doesn't usually work up a sweat or anything (although the half hour warmup always does,) and can get kind of tedious once in a while with all the repetition. I understand the repetition of course--we drill these things so we can actually use them--but it can still be frustrating. But the cool thing is that I sent the video we all made to Lao Shir yesterday, and she emailed me saying that she loved it. But I hadn't figured that she had loved it enough to send to everyone in the world, which she did! I was so thrilled! Everyone was talking about the music video tonight. Sifu was there, and as I was scanning my card in he was asking Erica who had done the video. Then he was amazed that I had taped it all on the teeny, itty bitty camera he'd seen me carrying. (My digital camera is the eensiest thing ever; I can close the entire thing in my two hands.) He also thought it was really cool! Which made me just about glow. Then he turned to Chris (green belt) and said that he was in it (Chris: "I am?") and told him, "That crescent kick you did in that video? Beautiful." I wanted to say, "Sifu, that was nothing; I've seen him do much more awesome crescent kicks than that!" but that would have been stupid and so I kept my mouth shut.
But the thing is, Kung Fu seems to bring out lots of weird feelings that are floating around in here, some of which surprise me. (Although some don't, honestly.) It does all tend to happen when I'm really hormonal, and god help me, I so totally am this week. Between wanting to kill people who cut me off while driving and then crying over things like puppies and feathers and the fact that Advent Children is getting pushed back two and a half months, it gets a little overwhelming. This carries over into Kung Fu, for some reason.
So there's this thing in Kung Fu--and maybe in all martial arts, I wouldn't know--where, if your sparring partner hurts you or you need them to stop what they're doing, you slap out. That just means you slap your leg or, if you're on the floor, slap the floor. So Sifu is demonstrating these wickedly brutal self defense moves, and he always, without fail, chooses green belt Chris for demonstrations. The reason is clear: everything this young man does, he does with grace. So Sifu chooses him and at first I'm just watching the entire thing and being impressed by both of them and by the people who thought this stuff up and passed it down. And then he demonstrates this thing, something like a sleeper hold, only he does it with excrutiating gentleness, and very slowly, because you know, that stuff's totally dangerous. Just as he begins he tells us, "When you start to feel pain or if you run out of air, slap out immediately." Only before he's even got half the sentence out, Chris is slapping his leg sort of frantically. Then Sifu says, "Okay, one more time." And Chris, as always, gets back up without making a sound or even changing his expression and does exactly as he's told.
My odd thing is that, during these demonstrations, I start to feel weirdly over-protective. I'm watching all of this going on, fascinated, but in the back of my mind there's a voice going, "Stop hurting that boy!" Which is ridiculous I know, Chris, of all people, can take care of himself and knows exactly what he's doing, and certainly Sifu would never hurt anyone. ("Pain is a state of mind," he says, and "There's no pain you can give me that I don't already have," and "Pain can be a good teacher" and "Pain can be a positive thing." This is the man who can break a spear with his neck while someone hits a cinder block on his back with a sledgehammer.) I mean, when Sifu demonstrates something on you, you totally do feel it. But you should feel it. We can't all be a bunch of wimps afraid of getting bruised. There's a difference between getting hurt and getting injured, and I think everyone in the class is hyper aware of it.
So anyway, I start to feel weirdly protective and wishing that Sifu could demonstrate these things on someone else once in a while. And then when he demonstrates something on me, my only feeling is something like "Heehee! He picked me! How cool!" Along with a semi-euphoric, "Wow, this is so intense!"
Isn't that weird?
Oh, gosh, I haven't even mentioned how the last few days have been going. Well, it's been a pretty cool week, actually. Meghan's been here since the party Sunday, but she's got to leave tomorrow. Sunday till Monday, Branden slept over here too. (Branden is my cousin Celie's 7 year old kid.) To my surprise, Branden was mostly very well behaved. On Monday, I took him and Meghan out shopping with me and then to Friendly's for lunch. We all tried our hand at drawing Link and Navi on the kids' menus while we waited over an hour for our food. Afterward, I took them home and they both went swimming. Branden was enamoured of Meghan--I mean, come on! A full-on teenager!--and they spent the rest of the day in the pool doing impersonations of their favorite video game characters as they repeatedly jumped into the water. ("Falcon PUNCH!" "PikaPika!" And Link's spin attack battle cry.) It was funny, because when Chrissie and Celie and I used to spend the whole day jumping into the pool, we used to do the same thing, only with our favorite movie quotes. ("Children of the night! Shut up!") Anyway, he was mostly very good, except for the fact that he's got a swearing habit. Obviously he gets this from Wayne, Celie's boyfriend, and from the TV shows he's allowed to watch (I mean, Family Guy? At seven years old?) but no one is correcting him on it so he does it a lot. And I'm one of these people who hates to hear kids curse. I wouldn't let him do it around me. I can't stand that.
Last night I had a dream that I had a baby, and I had to carry her onto a ferry that was swaying wildly and I was afraid that I would drop her. Eventually I sat down with her on my lap and held on to a pole that was holding the upper deck up. Some woman asked me if my baby was bi-racial and who the father was, and I told her that the father was a turkey baster. Then I woke up.
Whatever is wrong with me is no small thing.
It mostly went off without a hitch. The one hitch was kind of a big one, though: the CD skipped like mad and finally died on the second verse of Ka'ano'i. It wasn't the CD that was the problem, but the system. Yet, when I ran backstage to get the replacement CD (I always bring one,) that one played fine and we finished the entire show without anymore skipping.
And I didn't make a single mistake during the entire set. That might be a first. I did my quiet Laka chant before we went on, for myself and to myself, and I think that today I lived up to it in some way. Hula wise, it was an awesome show.
Then I came home, fed and cleaned the birds, took care of the aviary, had dinner, and ran back out to Kung Fu.
I should learn to stay away from Kung Fu when I'm hormonal, seriously. Although, staying away from it for any amount of time seems to be becoming less and less of an option. Maybe even a few months ago I might have stayed home tonight, because hey, all kinds of busy today, Hula show, already beat and could wring myself out, not a hell of a lot of time to get back out the door, but I went anyway. In full makeup, no less.
Actually, Kung Fu was also great tonight. Well, we did self defense, which doesn't usually work up a sweat or anything (although the half hour warmup always does,) and can get kind of tedious once in a while with all the repetition. I understand the repetition of course--we drill these things so we can actually use them--but it can still be frustrating. But the cool thing is that I sent the video we all made to Lao Shir yesterday, and she emailed me saying that she loved it. But I hadn't figured that she had loved it enough to send to everyone in the world, which she did! I was so thrilled! Everyone was talking about the music video tonight. Sifu was there, and as I was scanning my card in he was asking Erica who had done the video. Then he was amazed that I had taped it all on the teeny, itty bitty camera he'd seen me carrying. (My digital camera is the eensiest thing ever; I can close the entire thing in my two hands.) He also thought it was really cool! Which made me just about glow. Then he turned to Chris (green belt) and said that he was in it (Chris: "I am?") and told him, "That crescent kick you did in that video? Beautiful." I wanted to say, "Sifu, that was nothing; I've seen him do much more awesome crescent kicks than that!" but that would have been stupid and so I kept my mouth shut.
But the thing is, Kung Fu seems to bring out lots of weird feelings that are floating around in here, some of which surprise me. (Although some don't, honestly.) It does all tend to happen when I'm really hormonal, and god help me, I so totally am this week. Between wanting to kill people who cut me off while driving and then crying over things like puppies and feathers and the fact that Advent Children is getting pushed back two and a half months, it gets a little overwhelming. This carries over into Kung Fu, for some reason.
So there's this thing in Kung Fu--and maybe in all martial arts, I wouldn't know--where, if your sparring partner hurts you or you need them to stop what they're doing, you slap out. That just means you slap your leg or, if you're on the floor, slap the floor. So Sifu is demonstrating these wickedly brutal self defense moves, and he always, without fail, chooses green belt Chris for demonstrations. The reason is clear: everything this young man does, he does with grace. So Sifu chooses him and at first I'm just watching the entire thing and being impressed by both of them and by the people who thought this stuff up and passed it down. And then he demonstrates this thing, something like a sleeper hold, only he does it with excrutiating gentleness, and very slowly, because you know, that stuff's totally dangerous. Just as he begins he tells us, "When you start to feel pain or if you run out of air, slap out immediately." Only before he's even got half the sentence out, Chris is slapping his leg sort of frantically. Then Sifu says, "Okay, one more time." And Chris, as always, gets back up without making a sound or even changing his expression and does exactly as he's told.
My odd thing is that, during these demonstrations, I start to feel weirdly over-protective. I'm watching all of this going on, fascinated, but in the back of my mind there's a voice going, "Stop hurting that boy!" Which is ridiculous I know, Chris, of all people, can take care of himself and knows exactly what he's doing, and certainly Sifu would never hurt anyone. ("Pain is a state of mind," he says, and "There's no pain you can give me that I don't already have," and "Pain can be a good teacher" and "Pain can be a positive thing." This is the man who can break a spear with his neck while someone hits a cinder block on his back with a sledgehammer.) I mean, when Sifu demonstrates something on you, you totally do feel it. But you should feel it. We can't all be a bunch of wimps afraid of getting bruised. There's a difference between getting hurt and getting injured, and I think everyone in the class is hyper aware of it.
So anyway, I start to feel weirdly protective and wishing that Sifu could demonstrate these things on someone else once in a while. And then when he demonstrates something on me, my only feeling is something like "Heehee! He picked me! How cool!" Along with a semi-euphoric, "Wow, this is so intense!"
Isn't that weird?
Oh, gosh, I haven't even mentioned how the last few days have been going. Well, it's been a pretty cool week, actually. Meghan's been here since the party Sunday, but she's got to leave tomorrow. Sunday till Monday, Branden slept over here too. (Branden is my cousin Celie's 7 year old kid.) To my surprise, Branden was mostly very well behaved. On Monday, I took him and Meghan out shopping with me and then to Friendly's for lunch. We all tried our hand at drawing Link and Navi on the kids' menus while we waited over an hour for our food. Afterward, I took them home and they both went swimming. Branden was enamoured of Meghan--I mean, come on! A full-on teenager!--and they spent the rest of the day in the pool doing impersonations of their favorite video game characters as they repeatedly jumped into the water. ("Falcon PUNCH!" "PikaPika!" And Link's spin attack battle cry.) It was funny, because when Chrissie and Celie and I used to spend the whole day jumping into the pool, we used to do the same thing, only with our favorite movie quotes. ("Children of the night! Shut up!") Anyway, he was mostly very good, except for the fact that he's got a swearing habit. Obviously he gets this from Wayne, Celie's boyfriend, and from the TV shows he's allowed to watch (I mean, Family Guy? At seven years old?) but no one is correcting him on it so he does it a lot. And I'm one of these people who hates to hear kids curse. I wouldn't let him do it around me. I can't stand that.
Last night I had a dream that I had a baby, and I had to carry her onto a ferry that was swaying wildly and I was afraid that I would drop her. Eventually I sat down with her on my lap and held on to a pole that was holding the upper deck up. Some woman asked me if my baby was bi-racial and who the father was, and I told her that the father was a turkey baster. Then I woke up.
Whatever is wrong with me is no small thing.
