Where have you been, my blue-eyed son...

There's crap along the trail. Someone left a half-eaten sandwich--still in its sandwich baggie which I'm sure will frustrate the squirrels--tucked in behind a log. It was a beautiful warm weekend so I suppose it's to be expected, but I still don't understand it. Why dump garbage in a place that's so beautiful? What happened to those old admonitions: Cart it in, carry it out. Or, leave no trace. I suppose it could have just fallen out of someone's backpack. Or some ten-year-old didn't like it and tried to hide the evidence. There was an empty soda can a little further up the trail, along with a couple of cigarette butts and a gum wrapper. Highly suspicious and much less likely to suggest an innocent explanation.

Of course, some would say, it's not nearly as bad as walking around the city. Add to the litter, everything from buildings to bridges to mail boxes and trucks get tagged with cryptic symbols in spray paint, as ubiquitous as a dog marking its territory. But it sort of pisses me off more in the woods. And for some reason, it made me think of something Matayoshi sensei commented on one day in the dojo after I had done a kata. I had stepped back to execute a block, but I was trying to be particularly forceful and demonstrate strong technique--I was young--so I stomped the floor loudly. And I did it again on the other side of the kata, so there could be no mistaking my intention, though in retrospect I'm not at all sure what my intention was. After I finished, Matayoshi sensei told me that one should never be "loud" when executing a block. He said being loud was okay for an attack, but not for a block or when you were retreating. Your opponent would know where you were, he said. Hum...

Returning to the double-arm kamae
after the "punch" in Seisan kata.

I suppose when you think about it, it certainly has wider implications in the martial arts. The more force I put into my receiving technique or "block," the more my opponent can read my intentions. Better to be light. Better that my opponent can't tell where I am or how much force I'm using or what my next move is going to be...until I attack. To me this is one of the ways we can understand " Go and Ju," hard and soft. The receiving techniques (the "blocks" for lack of a better term) are generally soft and relaxed, generally accompanied by off-line or angular movement that doesn't, after all, necessitate a lot of strength. Of course, the attacks are relaxed as well, if you understand the whole idea of using your koshi. But immediately after the attack, again the idea is to disappear, to relax in order to be able to move in response to whatever the opponent does next, sort of like the fast "punches" at the beginning of Seisan kata--they immediately return to a relaxed, double-arm Sanchin posture.

Beginning of the fourth sequence in
Seipai kata.

Or like the beginning of the fourth sequence in Seipai kata, where you are advancing to the southeast corner of the kata with a left block and a right open-hand attack in renoji dachi. The circular forearm block (executed in a clockwise direction) intercepts the attacker's right punch (or grab) and merely moves around it until it ends in a down position. That's why so many see it as a block of a kick, because it ends in the down position. I recently came across a video of a teacher I have the utmost respect for demonstrating this technique against a front kick--blocking and hooking the kick and then grabbing the opponent, sweeping his supporting leg, and dropping him on the ground.

It's funny that most schools see this technique as the block and grab of an opponent's kick. The

Receiving the opponent's attack
 in the fourth sequence of Seipai.

kick would have to be at least at the level of the waist. There's an old saying in Okinawan karate that we never kick above the waist. In fact, the knees are a much better target and are harder to defend. Then there's the principle--seemingly borne out in kata--that we don't kick without having three feet on the ground--one of ours and two of the opponent's, meaning we are holding onto the opponent rather than initiating with a kick. And yet the interpretation of this technique as a block and hooking grab of a kick would seem to require the opponent to initiate an attack with a fairly high kick. Doesn't make a whole lot of sense, not to mention that it's really hard to grab someone's kick in a realistic situation.

But if you're intercepting the opponent's punch on the outside and moving to the inside with the circular motion of the "blocking" arm, it's sort of effortless. Then, without pausing, you step in with the right foot along the outside of the opponent's right leg (in the first of these Seipai techniques), carrying the head with the right hand, and do a sort of judo-like hip throw. And, done this way, it all requires very little physical strength, very little for your opponent to "read." So many of the receiving techniques of Goju-ryu are like this; they don't leave a trace for the opponent to sense where you've been or where you might be going...unlike some of the trails through the woods these days.