Let's Find Better Words

3 of the tritest maxims that make me cringe:

"Fake it 'til you make it."

No, I'm so tired of this one. You learn, and continue learning, until you're doing and setting an example. Then you learn the next thing. Faking something makes you a disengenuous mimic, not a curious student.

"90% of success is just showing up." Or something to that effect.

I'm so tired of this one. No, 90% is clocked field time spent in determination and skill acquisition. 90% is failures and perseverence. 90% is experimenation and risk taking. 90% is asking for help. 90% is the sleepless nights we face the mistakes we made and search a universe of stars on how to be better. The last 10% is waking up and showing up to be accountable to all that hard work you put into it. By the way I believe this was Woody Allen, so not a terribly ideal example to follow.

"I'm self-made."

Bull. No one is self-made. We are all the result of those who helped us get here. We stand on the shoulders of those who came before (whether they know it or not, whether they like it or not), who inspired us through ages, pages or stages, who checked in when we were down, who saw something in us, who challenged our flaws, and refused to reaffirm our insecurities.

There are countless more for me. What are your cringeworthy lines?

My point is, let's find better words.

Earth Shattering Revelation: Find Better Words

Music: Heartbreak Anniversary [Giveon]

You Were Your First Student

Today, I had the honor and privilege to be evaluated for the next step, at the endorsement of so many in support of this journey in the martial arts. It was a culmination and testament of our work as students and teachers in the Art of Tang Soo Do, as well as the many unprecedented challenges of these strange times and circumstances. I tested alone in a room, but when this uniform is on, there’s no alone. I rediscovered today when and from whom each artifact of my training came from. Each mechanic had an origin beyond me, each, with permission to make my own, and all of these old conversations starting pushing out the nerves and feeding me energy. There was vacancy in the dojang, but it’s the same floor I teach and learned on, and felt the presence of every student and instructor who’ve ever stepped foot here, and that was unique and special. Every moment of these 23 years of training has been an assessment of character, always has, by those who’ve pushed me forward, and most importantly by myself, and I get that now. The day I remember walking shyly onto the North Athletic Club floor in State College, a timid 13-yr old, nervous and anxious in life, in school, in my own skin. I remember so badly wanting to do something about it. We are, and always will be, our first student.

My teacher, Master

Scott Merrill

(thank you sir) constantly reminds me, “Be who you are.” That can be the most difficult thing in our busy, distracted lives, but there’s no peace in being anything otherwise. That’s the real, true bottom line, the big lesson I'm crossing this threshold with. Tang Soo Do’s ultimate goal is to 'be one with nature,' and can prove to be a lofty and nebulous enterprise, but in recent years, it started taking shape for me. We often look outward, around, projecting and superimposing ourselves on our multitude of environments and the rules of the world in struggle, and forget to trust the nature within. I began to interpret that goal as accepting one’s own humanity to be whole, regardless of all the broken ways you may be or see yourself. Social media is a strange landscape that may or may not be appropriate for this personal reflection, but I know there are individuals out there who this might resonate with, both martial art practitioners and non, alike. Because I learned this through you, with you, in, and beyond the dojang.

This was an amazing way to celebrate the first anniversary of

Summit Mist Martial Arts

. A special thanks to Master

Roy Uttech

for his encouragement and crucial guidance through this year’s sessions, for Master

Becky Wolverton

for her continued mentorship and endorsement, and of course Master Susan Strohm for her continued lessons on life and instructorship. Thank you Kwan Chang Nim

Strong

for the opportunity to demonstrate for you who I am as a student, and who I still strive to be as a teacher of this art.

Soo!

The Price of the Plague

The string of doomsday movies on Netflix serve as a foreshadowing of an event we never thought we would live through: the world on its knees, bowing once again to the wrath of nature.  As business slowed instantly, and workers sauntered out of the Hobart Building with boxes of work to take home during a forecast quarantine, I felt a chill in the air.

Covid-19 [Coronovirus 2019] has hit the Bay Area, bringing the city to the decision to stop business and halt life as we know it, in order to keep this new menace at bay and reach some sort of damage control.

Words can't express the what-ifs that drift into my head, the focus of which goes to the top.  We had warning signs, we had statistics, we had science, and it was ignored by the person [people] who had the power to do something about it.  After such a terrible year and an already morbid perspective on the leadership of the free world, I can't help but reflect on the light at the end of the tunnels I was already careening through; the fires I tried to put out for the better part of two years were beginning to be quelled, and both the political and natural world stepped in to simply say, no.

And all I see as we move into a quiet, unsettling and uncertain new normal, is just how distant I am getting from the people that taught me that a man like THAT should NEVER be someone you look up to.  At at time when a support system is not something to take for granted.

Strange also to stumble in the ER for the first time in a very long time in the middle of a pandemic.  But it was quiet.  Clean. Pleasant.  Except for the birthing pains emanating from my insides as I suffered from my first case of kidney stones, a humbling reminder to take care of myself and that there's always time to slow down and watch my health.  Worst pain in life EVER and been up all night.

Welcome thee, to another apocalypse.  I wish the best for everyone, and I wish that the freefall I'm enduring didn't deter me so much from being an important kind of help to someone else.

I miss being able to do that.

Cider

And then there was Cider.  A little baby frenchie we often puppsat, who now calls our home, his.  We couldn't be happier.  He's an absolute gentleman, explorer, sweetheart and cuddler...

...and he's going to be responsible for tempering a lot of me.  Which I know I need.

Woven In the Fabric

It's strange calling it a white uniform, when it is clearly stained and denatured to such off a white.

But every time I make these creases, every fold and bind, the lessons come flooding back in.  The ones that hurt, the ones that helped me put myself back together, the ones I missed, the ones I wish I could teach, the ones that changed my life.  Even reminds me of the ones that I may never learn.  I’m so desperate to pass all that on and mirror that as a teacher, but this art is meant to be experiential and not rote, most ESPECIALLY in a world that is no longer familiar with the practice of barefoot and unarmed combat.  That’s the beauty and the reality of the practice: that in the meticulously shaped and synchronized swing of arm and thrust of leg, there are a thousand worlds being explored.

A dream I didn't know I had, but really always had, came to pass today.  And I wish to god that it didn't come at the end of such an ordeal, a separation anxiety from a decade of real work and denial of need, from being neglected and taken for granted in the trenches of teaching the next generation.

My favorite teachers, and the ones I try to emulate, are the ones enlightened in understanding that they didn't have the answers to everything, and had the humility to admit that to their students with an honest and self-self-depracating sense of humor.  They were curious, investigative, communicative, and humble.  They knew how to teach because they knew how to keep learning.

The teachers we become fundamentally stem from the students always we strive to be.  Here's to the hope that I can live up to my own expectations, put away the past and become something better.

Earth-Shattering Revelation: Don't be surprised by your students' success and constantly exalt them in that.  Expect achievement and make accolades commonplace.

Honestly

2019 left me physically and emotionally drained. I've had to wear a lot of hats and not any of them particularly well, I don't think. The one that I've struggled most to keep on at my (quite unstable) core is the one labeled 'artist,' which serves to center me and still drives much of my thought and action.

An artist's life is one of pure, unapologetic passion. A thing, whether a message or a feeling, burns from within to manifest in some hopefully tangible, meaningful and always HONEST way. The only thing we must apologize for is that not everyone gets to have a voice so free, so loud. I've unleashed that voice this past year; many honest, uncomfortable conversations navigated a difficult 365 days, but offered the benefit of real solutions to problems seemingly beyond control. Many defeats, and much acceptance of both change, and tragic lack thereof, alike in the fallout. But all honest.

In this new year, new decade, let's step fully into our interactions and speak up, free of the rehearsals we often have in our heads, especially in the digital age, with tendency to edit, delete and delay. Be fearless and curious, debate, explore conflict, understand alternative viewpoints by having them (and accepting they exist for a reason) in every arena of life, and not silencing them. Many are mouthing off about our freedoms in limited, self-serving ways. The obscene twisting of their interpretations from every side has been rampant and a shameful, toxic betrayal to all who have fought for them, regardless the arena in which it may have been fought for (battlefield or not). But all's not beyond repair. 

Having a free voice means two very important things: speak (draw, paint, sing, act, move, love) wholly and HONESTLY for everything you're worth and everything you understand to be true and right. And then, more importantly, LISTEN.

Thank you for LISTENING (or more accurately, reading). Happy New Year, and yes, to many in this world, "yet another revolution around the sun", is an important unit of measure for another set of chances at doing all this better; some need that structure to operate: a green light, a form of subconscious permission. Let them have that. Whether or not that means anything to the rest, does not make today (or tomorrow or the next day) any less of an opportunity for anyone to do just that.

Earth-Shattering Revelation:  There is no levity in knowing.  There is just the burden of truth.

A Will and a Way

The Ballad of the Paper Rose continues on, as I welcome Will, officially into my life.

I've never been with someone so cool, calm, silent and who understands me.  Someone who's understood pain and knows how to set that aside to do what's needed.  Someone who gracefully welcomes every aspect of me into his life.  Someone who selflessly takes care of me with no reciprocity demanded.

This is new and frustrating and sublime; I think that paper rose has withered away, and left in its stead, acceptance and peace.

Every. Small. Victory.

Today did not go as planned.  As much, if not more than, usual.  Yoga really helped, teaching me how to breathe and all.

I'm sorry that I haven't written in a long while, but I think, seeing as how I'm on the verge of burnout, the very possibility of me writing but at all is dissipating with every passing day.

Let's just say, in the desperation of all that needed to be done, with very little promise of output or a light at the end of the tunnel, none of the pieces of my week's jigsaw puzzle fit.  Instead, apparently, I was playing a very wrong hand of the domino effect, as one piece knocked down the next.  And then the next and the next after that.

In my defeat, I sat timidly in my Uber Express Pool (much to the disapproval of many friends who would never do discount public transportation).  And having taken my attention off my filling inbox on the screen smeared with pho stains (I had gotten to soften the blow of the day) and crumbs from my messy bag (remnants of the fortune cookie that promised the opposite of what this day brought), I found myself in the middle of a conversation between the other passenger, a middle-aged woman who in Pakistan was an MD and now a formidable social worker in San Francisco, and the driver, an Angolan from SoCal who was an esteemed history professor in his home country.  Both, happy go lucky as you can be in a shitshow of an administration that disapproves of either of them as immigrants formidable in their own right, education and station in life, and yet humbled and content with the freedoms they had in this country.

"Merci," I said to him as I reached my destination, to which I also added, "bon chance."  And he gave me an even bigger smile that reminded me, I am lucky to have a day like this.  A day that could be fixed in the next one or the one after.  Because I am lucky to be able to create the opportunity for, and celebrate, every small victory.

Earth-Shattering Revelation #36:  Need heroes now more than ever.  And as life imitates art, they're often no longer in the places we naturally tend to look.

Current Music: Otis Redding - “I’ve Got Dreams to Remember”

The Hand We're Dealt

It’s been three and half years since I came to terms; three and a half humbling and amazing years of catching up with myself, in ways both positive and negative, but important and necessary just the same. Everyone’s story is different. And some stories, unfortunately, may never be told, thanks to a great many people in this country (and world) who will never understand that they don’t get to govern the lives of others or persecute them for their philosophies, genetics or upbringing. We know some of these close-minded people personally and some unfortunately hold high positions of power.  I fear that this dangerous aspect of free thought will always be at play in our global society.

Pride is about something different for everyone: it’s about celebrating the fact that it can be. It is NOT only about sexual preference. It is about acceptance and tolerance. It is about unconditional love. It's about identity and really knowing ourselves, but equally important and often forgotten, understanding one another.

It’s about the very freedom in our humanity.

It’s about a great many other things that don’t come up for me, because elsewhere, someone is celebrating in other ways for other things I couldn't fathom because I wasn't dealt their hand in life. That rainbow flag is hoisted as a reminder that we’ll “keep fighting for a world that fears and hates us.” And for the rest of the world already enlightened enough to understand that there are bigger things to worry about and deserve our attention than who you get to love, thank you for your support and rare emotional intelligence.

Happy Pride Month everyone, Happy Pride Weekend San Francisco, and please be safe!

Love to all.

#xaviersdream #pridesf #happypride #mutantandproud

Earth-Shattering Revelation #35: Abandon the comforts of trying to be who you want to be, and embrace the danger in risking becoming who you really are.

Current Music: Hozier - "Like Real People Do"

Dance, Like No One's Watching

Nearly a decade since the founding members of Parangal Dance Company assembled to establish the mission of inspiring the preservation of Philippine culture in the Bay Area, our family of artists has significantly broadened its reach and resources to continue that mission along. We have set a standard for presentation, research methodology and dissemination of the cultural artifacts of music, attire, dance, and ritual practices. Our endeavors are encouraging audiences to hear the echo of the archipelago's past and heed its present struggle to remain relevant and unhindered by global forces that threaten the health of its multitude of sub-cultures. We strive to honor what has been and is already there, setting aside unnecessary and extraneous invention that comes easily to creatives in efforts at true preservation.

I still feel so new to it all even now, often reminiscing the day I first witnessed the company's performance under the dome in City Hall, excitedly emailing an inquiry regarding my eligibility to join almost immediately afterwards, too nervous to ask in person. I recall the palpable anxiety of standing in the back of a packed workshop on my first night, not knowing a single soul. We were thrown immediately into the sequence of moves (we all now recognize as the Maguindanao Kuntaw choreography), with me fully cognizant of the long decade between that moment and the last time I stood barefoot on a cultural performance floor, during my time with the Penn State Filipino Association. I remember the warmth and passion of the leaders that commanded that room. I remember the welcome that resonated with the members who stepped forward and made themselves available. I shuddered in fear of my inevitable debut performance at Pistahan (I had to carry the flags). But mostly, I recall the relief and elation that there was this home-base, this available source, for the practice of Filipino dance and music by a committed group of talented and experienced individuals who may or may not have ever known what the absence of that in the life of a Filipino-American like myself can do to our sense of identity, lost in the great melting pot.

I really only craved a new social scene and a place for consistent exercise when I signed on.

But that's just not how the company operates. The family aspect demolishes any pretense or misconception that this endeavor can be just simply 'something to do.' Little did I know that my involvement would then pervade other departments of my life that I didn't know needed bolstering: artistry and creative license, time management, social engagement, community activism, and the honoring of our heritage. Inspiration flowed freely from an adopted commitment to artistic excellence. Education about our culture came, not only from the company's repertoire, but from its involvement in the greater global dialogue, especially with the indigenous communities from which Eric derives and adapts our vocabulary and choreography. Preservation results from the continued passion and integrity of our leaders and artists, in practice and performance. Discovery is felt even in the moments right before we hit any stage; the revelation that we can echo the voices of those far away who are ignored or forgotten, to create and be a part of something greater than ourselves.

And now, the company is enjoying an inevitable phase of growth through its series of tours that have crossed numerous borders, both physically and figuratively, establishing a profile in the global scene as a formidable source of cultural education. We have to recognize, in the shock of stepping foot on major and prestigious stages the world over, that it doesn't only call for our continuation of that mission, but also signals us that the mission is, in fact, working.

And so is laid the foundation for the sophomore decade of Parangal we are preparing for. It will be an investigation into the generations that will follow strong footsteps, a true reflection on the longevity and perseverance of this important mission, and a rewarding effort to continue being an important and resounding voice, in a world filled with noise. Happy 9^th Anniversary to The Parangal Dance Company, and a special thanks to Eric Solano, the founding members and the executive board for giving us an avenue for our creativity and the space through which we can explore our people's rich heritage and share equally in their struggles and celebrations.

Earth Shattering Revelation #35: Get lost in your heritage.

Current Music: Lupa Sug