Tuesday

I saw "Snakes on a Plane," and it's more of a social experience than a cinematic one. You go to be part of the audience and to take in the rush of mutual fandom rather than watch a story of quality. It's actually lower than a B grade movie and would probably be something you'd skip over if you came across it on cable. Going to see this movie was like trying to avoid the event horizon of a black hole. I was safe for a while, but as more and more of my friends added their mass to the opening night wave, eventually no amount of resistance could help me escape.

Learning martial arts can be like this too. People fall into a kind of group-think about how things work, and they march ahead confident that the dogma they subscribe to is the correct answer. Take the sword fingers in Gim for example. Text after text and teacher after teacher will tell you that the postures are for balancing out your chi. Since your sword hand is manifesting all of the chi when you fight, your empty hand needs something to do to even out the flow of chi. Maybe this is true, yet it seems few people seem to ask if this is just mumbo jumbo to explain something that never really existed?

[insert more sword stuff here :)]