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The Latest Entry from T. T. Brinkley's Diary Summer 2002 By T. T. Binkley |
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River run through Eve and Adams brings us by a
commodius vicus of recirculation back to the American East coast…. Thought I’d lounge around the Med for a few days more back in May and those few days turned into months. I won’t harp on about the disgusting behavior of the greasy nouveau-riches on their tacky bespangled yachts but to me Coney Island, in comparison, now reeks of class. Perhaps that’s going too far but it reeks of something. Why did I stay so long you might ask? Well, dear readers, two very good reasons; le mistral formidable et une femme extraordinaire. I digress. One of my topics of conversation during the ridiculous amount of time it took to get out of vacation mode was the effect it had on my body, it seems lack of training might be bad for one. So, stiff and achy, I fought myself back to the Land of the Free and plunged into a couple of karate weekends to reclaim my youth and rekindle my enthusiasm for my greatest passion. The first weekend was Mr. Mori’s SKdA Summer Camp in Connecticut where I found time to daydream my way through the entire class of Mr. Enoeda’s whilst reliving every moment I’d had in Europe. How on earth did I do that, you might ask? Well, it may have had something to do with the fact that I’d done similar classes with Enoeda since the late 60’s and found myself on automatic pilot. I suppose there is a comfortable familiarity and a reassurance about knowing exactly which comments are coming when (even down to the intonation of some of his favorite phrases), like watching re-runs of Cheers for the umpteenth time on TV and knowing the punch-lines. However, a fleeting doubt about being ripped off passes through the brain. One wonders if the TV networks have some psychological insight knowing that the viewer can be duped into believing he is enjoying the same show again and again. Does Enoeda (and, for that matter, Mori who’s even more shamelessly predictable) have an extraordinary perception of the gullibility of those attending year after year? Perhaps there is genius at work! We do the same classes and see the same faces who, like stupid puppies chasing a stick flung across the park, are so eager to join the camp, pay exorbitant fees and ask inane questions that everyone knows the answer to anyway. That misguided veteran who asked the breathtaking breathing question was surely joking during one of Osaka’s classes (which by the way were conspicuously superb – my rumba will never be the same!), but it took the biscuit when the interpreter said plainly that when the weekend was over we should go back to doing whatever we were doing before. This was said at the crucial moment when we had all succumbed to the idea that karate can be original, traditional, innovative, fun and damned hard work all at the same time. But no, we were reassured that we could go back to our armchairs and gaze at our navels another year knowing that there’d be nothing more to challenge us than the usual monotony. Magnifique! My other weekend was down in Miami for the Yahara KWF World Championship, apparently the 2nd one he’s had in as many years held in collaboration with a Mr. Saito. The usual suspects were there but I kept well clear as there appeared to be a desperation about the recruitment policy and I, for one, am not in need of a 6th dan certificate (or 8th dan for that matter) to be thrust in my hand in return for a sort of salivatory, nervous subservience. I’ll be the first to say that Mr. Yahara moves phenomenally well when he teaches (one’s inclined to forget this when training amongst mere mortals) but why on earth is he surrounded by such an inept posse of hangers-on? There were some good guys competing, though, and it became obvious that Edmund Otis can teach as his boys did extremely well against the Yahara favorites, although having said that, being a Yahara favorite more often means the rough end of the stick. I doubt if poor Kompier got more than a couple of hours sleep a night rushing around at Yahara’s beck and call. Trying to follow the competition was a bit tricky as there were two parts; a JKA based rule system and a non-contact one. Presumably this meant that the JKA rules were inclusive of contact although it was the latter group that got bloodied up, proving as I’ve always said that real danger makes ya’ block better. The middle of the 3 conspicuous and lanky Dorfmans won both kata and kumite adding a certain credibility to papa Dorfman’s claims of heading a karate dynasty - perhaps I’ll start reporting more on his boys so giving the old man a chance to rest what must surely be the most frenzied vocal chords in the karate world. All in all, over these two weekends I had a great time with the buddies I bump into from time to time all over the globe from California to Japan, sure, we bitch about stuff but the underlying love of the art remains. However, in truth, I didn’t quite reclaim my youth as I’d hoped (discounting the nostalgia of taping blistered feet) but the enthusiasm is still there, if only to know that there is a clever and talented generation snapping at the heels of the hackneyed originals. When will they move over?
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