11 August 2003: Memory

The Aiki Arts site is up and running!  Woot woot!  Finished it last night.  Well, not finished, really, since, like this site and like my approach to aikido and to life, it's always going to be a work in progress.  I hope to add a couple more essays to The Shusekai Papers in the next few months - right now the "How to Find a Good Dojo" essay (slightly revised for the new site) is up there all alone.  And I've got a lot to write about aikido, most of it likely to be controversial. 'Cause I'm like that.

Right now, I'm particularly pleased with the new Aikido Shusekai Statement of Intent.

Anyway, the site's at www.aikiarts.com.  This is the new online home of Aikido Shusekai; if you're one of those truly great people who has an Aikido Shusekai link on your own website, I'd be much obliged if you'd point it at the new site.

In other news... Taarna and Grace headed back to Kansas City yesterday.  They ended up spending two nights in my living room.  Good to see them.  Grace doesn't do sentences or phrases yet, but she does words.  She can say "shit" now, and sometimes does, at random, presumably because it gets such an entertaining reaction from the grownups.

At what point in their development do children grasp the concept that they are going to grow up and become big kids and then adults?  There must be a moment at which this is recognized, and I'd figure it must be a pretty mind-blowing revelation, on par with the revelation that everyone you know is going to die someday and not come back, or the revelation that grownups can be fooled.  But I don't remember it.  Do you?  I usually have a vivid memory of the circumstances surrounding any revelation that big.  Why not this one?  Are we born knowing it?  Do you remember?

"And the Joint Chiefs of Staff
And the brokers on Wall Street
Said don't make us laugh
You're a smart kid
Time is linear
Memory is a stranger
History's for fools
Man is a tool in the hands
Of the great God Almighty..."

- Roger Waters, Amused to Death

 

"I am not the enemy.  Do you know who is?"  - Bitter Pie

So Sherpa emailed me the complete text of Towards an Archeology of the Soul this morning, and I read some bits and pieces, including the segment about the Crux lab.  A little trip down Memory Lane there.  That lab was a turning point for me.  The crux (naturally) of one of the major chapters of my work, one of the major karmic threads in my life.  And how often does one get one of one's major spiritual breakthroughs recorded on film?  So I spent a while looking out the window at the north span of the Golden Gate Bridge (thanks, Ace), thinking about what a long strange trip it's been (sorry), and the work I've done since, and the work I'm doing now, and the work yet to come.

And then I started writing this journal entry, and I thought: August 11th?  Why does that date seem so familiar?  Why does it tease and tug at threads of memory, why does it seem so important? 

It took me a few minutes.  August 11th, 1999.  Today is the fourth anniversary of the Grand Fixed Cross, the final day of the Crux lab.