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I have never really wanted, in any serious way, to be wealthy (there are always the little conversations one has when, having sprung for a lottery ticket, for a few hours you MIGHT be a winner; those are mostly centered on the joys of philanthropy and don't count).
The only time I have any regrets about opting for my way of life is when a really good art show opens on the other side of the country. There was Cezanne in Philly in 1996, Vermeer in DC in 1995...the list goes on. Currently I'm ruing not being able to see the Giorgio Morandi exhibit at the Met in NY.
It was in the early 1990s that Larry Morace introduced me to Morandi's work, telling me about him and his still life paintings during a conversation while Larry was gallery sitting at the SF Open Studio's show. He was so enthusiastic that I couldn't wait to get home and look it up!
Morandi is kind of an "artist's artist." There is handling of surface and medium that is at once painterly and austere, a really admirable achievement hit time and again. But what a lot of us are really attracted to is his large body of work comprising still lives done in his studio using the same small grouping of simple objects in varying relationships to each other.
Peter Schjeldahl, writing in the New Yorker, notes "It’s as if he had set out, time and again, to nail down the whatness of his objects but couldn’t get beyond the preliminary matter of their whereness." I don't normally like Schjedahl's writing, but his essay on this exhibit is superb; for me he nails what is so special about Morandi. Holland Cotter's piece for the NY Times is also worth reading (Is it a measure of the art that it brings out the best in the critical writing?).
It struck me, contemplating anew Morandi's work, that he had essentially created a kata for himself. By setting the limits, he could devote himself to refining and polishing his technique while exploring the possibilities inherent in the problem he had defined.
I'm not sure why I think this is wonderful, but I do.
Something came up. I was asked to stay the last half hour of the class, me and two high school age students, then close up for the night. Work on their yokomenuchi shihonage. And also on shomenuchi kokyunage (iriminage in an aikikai dojo): they are going backwards when they lead the turn.
They are young, a bit gawky and loose-limbed, with great "can do" attitudes. And I wear a brown belt and have around forty years on them, so they are willing to go into our half hour with open ears and eyes and full of trust.
I start by demonstrating shihonage on each of them, then receive technique from each of them and give some pointers, then sit back and watch them practice together. One can feel he is not taking uke's balance. His form looks good, but he's right. I show them how sensei likes us to do a wheel-like rotation by uke's elbow, rather than the lateral stretch some instructors use. I do that, then swing under into shihonage, and stand there, him on his tiptoes and a huge grin as he realizes I totally have his balance and haven't thrown him. Ain't aikido grand? They practice just the elbow thing for a couple of minutes, then integrate it into the technique.
They are too young to know it firsthand, so I describe the guy on the cover of Grateful Dead album with the ice cream cone plastered to his forehead. They laugh at the idea, and I tell them if they treat uke's hand like that ice cream cone, uke will never throw them backwards. I let my invisible ice cream cone get behind my head and one of the kids obligingly throws me backwards.
Fifteen minutes up. Time to move on. Kokyunage (maybe your iriminage). How to explain in a shorthand things I've explored for years on how to maintain forward energy while receiving, on how to find the irimi in a tenkan? Things I can't do consistently.
I try a combination of somatic exercise and then in-the-technique physics: We stand in a line and I have them do a simple tenshi stepping back with the focus on, yep, stepping back. What does it feel like? Like going backwards... Then I ask them to focus on the back leg and to imagine/feel that hip moving forward and, as that side of the body shifts forward in space, to simply allow the front leg to swing back. I suggest that, to me, it feels very much like I've entered towards the front, even though my formerly front foot has stepped back and I'm "off the line." They try it a few times. I don't know if it makes any sense to them.
I demo the technique on each of them, then have them each do it to me, then watch them. They are going backwards. I demo going backwards and they nod sagely.
We parse it out: Enter, get lined up properly: facing the same direction as uke, in shikaku. Don't know if they know shikaku, the blind spot. Demo how easy it is to imbalance uke a bunch of ways. Nice place to be. Be there before you move on to the next anything.
How to move forward when your whole body tells you you are kicking backwards? Extend the lead hand and, as sensei says, actually point your finger forward. I take it a little further, tell them extend forward. Even though that foot is going to feel like its going back, shift your weight onto the inside (back) foot, and let that become a weighted, forward oriented center while the front foot just kind of gets out of the way.
For the next few minutes, it works. All we can ask. We bow out and it feels like all of our "thank you"s are sincere.
