Lord, I have rested. I have watched my cells leak charred fluid and have felt the burden of confronting demons despite my withered state. I understand now that we weren’t meant to overcome mortality but to embrace it. So, I have rested. I have stemmed the flow and have bandaged my soul and am ready.
But what of the world? The affairs of mankind continued but I was left ignored, Lord. Repaired and rested I visit places and see that I am being forgotten and overtaken by a new breed. Yet, they do not understand, Lord.
Darkness falls, which readies me the same way mortals are readied at dawn. Invigorated.
This is a great interview in regards to how Geoff started his business:
“This is really where it begins, in a room with your feet up with your dudes. Too young to shave, dreaming about the big body Benzes you’re gonna push. Obviously for me, it’s in Marcy, but this could be anywhere – a basement in the midwest, a backyard in Cali, an Oldsmobile somewhere down South. The danger is that it’s just talk; then again, the danger is that it’s not. I believe you can speak things into existence.” – Jay-Z; footnote from the first three lines of American Dreamin’, taken from his book Decoded given to me for Christmas by my wonderful wife.
“Even if you’re lying flat on your back, you can work on your mind. And it says something about the character of the individual, if he sits out on the sidelines the moment he gets an injury. It’s like he’s looking for an excuse to bail out. That guy won’t go very far. If you’re starting out with a disadvantage due to health, this gives you an opportunity to find ways to get round the problem, or strengthen those areas that aren’t affected, and it builds character to take this route rather than to just say, ‘I quit.’” Steve Morris
“Make techniques as simple as possible, avoid complexity for the sake of looking good and constantly look for ways to perform a technique with less movement.” Jesse Glover
Weekend Dubstep Track
Peace, CTK
Between His Dark Side and CTKWingChun
HDS said:
One thing you should think about is that we have given certain things in WC power simply because they are labelled. If YJKYM wasnt called YJKYM – we would just call it ‘standing’ causing it to become something natural. Instead we worship YJKYM as possessing some inherent truth. This is the same with centreline – if we just pointed at your middle – you would think of it as something referring to you/personal, intimate, frame, core of your being, etc.
CTK said:
You speak of something almost abstract when you say centreline is frame/core, etc. I almost feel like I’ve been brainwashed due to terminology and drills…
HDS said:
I’ve learnt the technical aspects online and through other lines. My own line was physical without terminology, as was Jesse Glover’s stuff. I cant remember hearing Jesse call Tan a Tan. Instead he would do it and say “do this.” This is what i am trying to cultivate in you – to change the attention away from it and more to the self. This is where WC rightly belongs.
I also didnt learn drills like one arm chi sau, lap sau, etc. So hopefully am not weighed down by those things. WC was meant to be crude. Not the over-refined bullshit that we are fed these days. Crude works, or more rather, crude forces the individual to think. Refined makes us concentrate on the minutiae. Waste of time. It is regimented, drill upon drill upon drill
and using those drills, we can be fooled into thinking that those people are effective. Not to say they arent but the way to demonstrate it is not in a lab. The way to demonstrate it is in the chaos of the real world represented by a reasonably skilled opponent.
This goes out to everyone traveling to see someone over the holidays.
Peace, CTK
“I will not die, it is the world that will end” -Ayn Rand
Watch this video: http://public.youtranscript.com/zs/882.html
“When you guess, you are guessing and uncertain. When your instructor teaches his guess, it becomes fact and an article of faith. My beef with traditional martial arts is rarely with the techniques, but with the training methods. Sometimes it seems like a committee was assembled to come up with the worst possible way to teach combat survival and that became the martial arts.”
From: http://chirontraining.blogspot.com/2010/12/insights-and-news.html
Life is grand.
16 years ago, I started at the (infamous) Temple Kung-Fu chain. While by the end of it all it would leave a bad taste in my mouth, I can now look back and realize that it all came at the perfect time.
Temple Kung-Fu (TKF) was (as far as I know it is now defunct) a group of chain Kenpo Karate / Kung-Fu mish-mash schools laden through BC, AB, MB and one in Seattle. Shrouded in mystery in its origins, it was brought to light by His Holiness, The Dalai Seng Shi, Grandmaster Simon.
A sophisticated way to fund the building of his acreage in British Columbia (employing many times over the years the super-secret Pai Hu Shi club members within the TKF structure), Simon would grace us with his presence twice a year to teach meditation and secret Kung-Fu techniques. One of his favourite sayings at these functions, only available to Kung-Fu Club members (another club within the school that would guarantee to carry you to brown belt level), was, “The masses are asses!” Oh, the irony.
But apart from the bad business practices, the chain of schools and the fact that a karate-kung-fu-mish-mash had been chopped up into little tiny (profitable) pieces, there was a huge upside to all of this.
Funny thing is, after 12 years or so I met an old acquaintance. He moved to a small town outside where I live now. Dave Jurzynek came over to watch UFC 124 this past Saturday. The minute he walked through the door, I recognized the old acquaintance from the TKF kids class days. Small world.
Dave and I sat down and he asked me a couple of questions about TKF. He lamented a bit about how bad things were…I told him different.
TKF came at a perfect time in my life: teenage years. Instructors like A. Thistleton pushed me to my limits and showed me that a hard work ethic paid off. When it came to smoking pot, my passion for Kung-Fu won hand over fist. So for all that, I am very grateful for those 8 years I spent there.
Peace, CTK
PS – This post also goes out to the Rose brothers who are studying Judaism in Israel. Your friendship and passion for the martial arts will never be forgotten.
The world conspires against us, dumbing us down. It shackles us via comfortable routine and plays on our insecurities and addictive natures. I enter my home and immediately my mind is filled with distractions that take me deeper down into a state of mundanity. My computer takes me to facebook effortlessly where I invest time learning about people who aspire to be nothing other than average. This is not to decry the notion of technology or connecting, but purely allows me to beg a personal question of whether such things enrich my life, or whether such distractions steal time, slowly, like an asphyxial death.
If there is one thing that I encourage people to do, it is to raise their heads, throw up their hands and aspire to greatness.
“Man, the living creature, the creating individual, is always more important than any established style or system.” Bruce Lee
“For me the true test of a (martial) method is if ordinary people can develop and put it to good use. This makes it a valid approach that can make the average person a more functional fighter.” Jesse Glover
I find it so funny how people talk about life or society like it’s separate from themselves.
“Oh, I hate life. It‘s so unfair.”
I guess it has to do with letting go of control. Throwing in the towel involving a battle with an energy too large and too powerful.
But life is actually all about the person. The individual. So I guess the person is afraid an energy too large and too powerful within themselves.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wG6seogAnFo
Peace, CTK
HIS DARK SIDE 
