A Friends Watch

My competition ended. I was in a mental haze. I was too hungover to be able to speak properly. I had also done the best I had ever done. It was weird. A few people came up to me and asked me my name, my club, and talked about my techniques. It was not an experience I was used to. For my grading requirements, I had to go around and record my wins on a small piece of card. Depending on the grading; if you want to grade up you need evidence of the required amount of competition wins. So I walked around and found most of my opponents sitting together at a table. I was too strung out to easily ask them what I needed or why; but one of them saw the card; saw what was written on it and said he would sort it out for me.

I went and sat down. People were speaking around me; through me; at me. Most of it washed over my head. I still didn't really believe what happened. I was also feeling pretty sick. My last round was in the open division; I went against a maybe 100, 110, 120kg player. I tried my usual approach after being told by one of my coaches that the only way I could expect to do well is if I played intelligently, efficiently, and made him work to get me. So during my competition with him I went straight up to him and tried to get him in the overhand grip. I was held out pretty quickly.

I got my point card returned back to me. They had found everyone I had beaten and wrote their details down. Amongst the information on the card, each of the players had written nicknames for themselves, like a list of villains from an 80's action movie. I remember one guy calling himself "El Chapo" and getting a name myself; "Shotgun". I came very close to having a "Dobby" in the start of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets moment. They had given each other nicknames and they had given me one too, as their equal. I smiled outwardly; but very nearly broke down internally. I had worked my arse off for years, and felt an outsider to everyone I had trained with. I did not perceive myself as equal to them. Something as simple as getting a nickname like anyone else made me dangerously emotional. I folded it up quickly and put it in my bag. I left soon after.

I went home and explained to my roommates my win. They seemed incredulous. I didn't really believe it either when I explained to them that I was probably the most hungover I had ever been during a judo competition and also did the best I had ever done. I took the trophy I won out of my bag and put it on the table. It was a relatively cheap plastic figurine of one judoka throwing another. One of my roommates was playing with it; and found out that it was held together by one central screw in the center. He dismantled it and couldn't put it back together again. I didn't care.

One of my favorite martial arts books explains some Japanese concept called "breaking the mirror". No actual mirrors are destroyed. Martial arts halls often have wall to wall mirrors. You need to be able to look at yourself when you move to see if you are doing a technique right. I am not really sure what the concept of "breaking the mirror" means and most likely I have put more weight on it than the idea can support. Once a year at one of the more central Aikido halls in Tokyo there is a small ceremony where they figuratively "break" mirrors.  This ceremony exists as a way to detach people mentally from their prior performance. It's a metaphor for discarding too heavy a reliance on the past to found an opinion of yourself in the present and future. The ceremony requires you to turn your mind to a concept that probably looks something like this.

"Stop looking behind yourself in the mirror; what you are looking at is not yourself but your reflection. It is just an image of yourself, in the past. It has happened already and it is gone. Break the mirror; stop using old information about yourself then, to found your beliefs in yourself now. You have the future to be responsible for; focus on developing that; not on looking backward". I think the basic premise of the idea is this.

And so I watched one of my roommates destroy my trophy. Had he not done that; I would have thrown it away the next day anyway. I have a personal rule where I only keep my judo awards for one day before I discard them. I wouldn't feel comfortable being the sort of person that would use such a thing to fortify his perception of himself. I did not win that trophy. Some other person did; and that person is now gone. I want to create a better version of myself in the future; and to do that I need to let go of the past. The past won't help you develop your self; it will only provide a convenient resting spot for your excuses or your vanity or your ego. Focusing on the future is what you need to do if you want to develop; forget the past; it is no longer relevant.

..................................

Some weeks after this, on my last day in Australia, my room-mates held a "housecolding" party (there is no antonym for "housewarming" but please indulge me). Everyone I lived with were moving away to different cities. I had left my packing to the absolute last minute. I had a lot of errands to run; borrowed favors to reciprocate; possessions to stack away in friends' houses. I was running around my city stressed and unsure if I could get everything ready in time. I got to the party some hours after it formally started, feeling completely relieved that I had managed to do everything that I needed to. There were a just a few remaining odds and ends scattered around that I needed to pack. I packed up the last things that I needed. Everything else was rubbish and could be discarded. In terms of physical things; I had completely erased any evidence of my existence in my city.

And so I looked at everything I was going to bring; stuffed into 2 backpacks. I had told anyone who would listen at the party that I was going to Japan to do the closest thing to a religious pilgrimage I would ever do in my life. Someone put on Eminem's "Lose yourself", I guess in tribute to my rantings. Personally I am more into metal music; so my bias is that I don't believe other forms of music are capable of the same level of sincerity. However; I heard this song as if for the first time.

Look, if you had, one shot, or one opportunity
To seize everything you ever wanted, one moment
Would you capture it?
Or just let it slip?

I had wildly ambitious goals. I wanted to be able to train at Tokai University. I didn't know if they would let me. I didn't know if I would be capable of training there. But I had only one shot at trying; and it was now; while I was still at uni and could smuggle in a exchange to stay there. The reality of what I was trying to do hit me then. I was going to the strongest Judo University that I was aware of. It would not be easy. I was going to attempt something that most people would call me insane for. And deep down I knew I was insane for wanting to go there to train. But I felt that if I turned this opportunity down then I would always live in regret. I decided then and there that I would rather break myself in the name of my goals then live comfortably because of a fear to pursue them.

I had thrown away all the rubbish I did not need; except for one thing. My Judo points card. I no longer needed it; I had been graded already. Any points you accumulate are only valid for one belt change to the next one above it. And so this piece of paper no longer had any formal relevance to me; it was just a piece of scrap paper. And yet; I couldn't part with it. It had everyones name on it that I had beaten; and all of them had nicknames. They had given me a name, a name that wasn't derogatory. They had identified me as their equal. I was premeditated-"shotgun"-midlifecrisis. At that point in my life I had done the best Judo I had ever done. I had done well, and my opponents respected me in that moment.

I played rugby for several years and I felt that my team-mates wouldn't let me have that. I had several names and all of them were bad. I used to row and I was always the social scapegoat. This point card was evidence of the first time I had ever felt anything like a sense of camaraderie in a sport. I didn't know when the next time would be. I didn't know if there would be a next time. I was incredibly lucky to have won the way I did; and I had no way of knowing if I could do it again. 

My father is a farmer in an area that sometimes has terrible droughts. Every time it rains enough; he goes to a bridge to watch the water flow in. He watches the creek rise and flow into the water hole where the livestock drink. He has explained to me why he does this. He said that no matter how many times he has seen it rain; every time he does he feels that it is the last time it ever will. And so when the water flows in; when it brings the kiss of life to the environment and his land; he always makes a point of watching it so that he can frame it in his mind; and draw strength from it should times turn worse later. The seasons are unpredictable in that part of the world; you can never presume when the next time it will rain; when you will see water flow in again.

I came out over one of my blogs, and received nothing but support. And so what I write next I know now to be untrue; but at the time I didn't know this. I didn't want to lean too heavily on the experience of my judo competition. I considered it dangerous for my ego, it would distract me from my motivation to train hard. I didn't want to presume if I could ever do Judo like this again. I had no idea if I could ever again be recognized by other Judoka as worthy of being treated like an equal. I wanted to rest on this achievement; I wanted to let it become part of how I thought about myself. But I knew if I relied on it too heavily I could be dangerously weakened when I went to my host university. It would take everything I had to deal with the experience of Tokai Uni, and so I didn't want to waste mental energy on anything that had passed and was no longer relevant. My future was going to take all of my attention; I needed to stop looking into the past; all it would do is make me weaker. 

I have thrown away medals like they were chewing gum wrappers. Sometimes I give them to friends as a joke. In one way or another I make sure that I get rid of them. I feel that it helps me mentally look to the future instead of leaning on the past. This points card; a mere scrap of paper; was the hardest Judo thing for me to discard. I was giving up on this experience; I was giving up on the time when I did Judo so well that people joked with me as friends do to one another. I was going to throw it away knowing that a repeat performance might not ever happen again.  In my mind I didn't know if i would be considered an equal again. I stood; and shook slightly, with the card in my left hand. I didn't move for about 5 seconds. Then I crushed it, and threw it into the bin in one rushed movement. In one movement I dismissed my highest sporting experience as a weakness and something to be ignored.

Again, I came very close to having a "Dobby" moment. I knew that I had to leave immediately because otherwise I might lose it emotionally. I said goodbye to everyone; while trying to keep myself contained. I left without saying goodbye to one of my room-mates; I couldn't hang around for long enough to wait for him to get out of the bathroom. I was wearing my backpacks; together they probably weighed around 30kg. One of my friends was quite drunk. He hugged me and hooked his leg behind mine. Even through my stress and emotion I couldn't help being impressed at how he had perfectly loaded my balance into Ko Soto Gari. I truly believe that drunks are better at Judo then sober people are; even if they don't know Judo. But I was also just about emotionally incontinent. I said to him "You really wanna do this, now?" I will forever regret that.

As I left; another of my friends asked if he could walk me to my car. I explained to him that I was catching the train. He made an impulse decision. He took his watch off and gave it to me. He said goodbye to me; and asked me to give it back to him when I returned. I screwed my face up; whimpered something out; and shuffled out of his view. It took all of my self control to avoid crying in that moment.

"...When you return" I hadn't even thought about the other end of my exchange. It was going to take all of my mental fortitude to get through the front door of my training hall. I had gone through some ridiculous interpretation of an eastern martial arts philosophy in order to prepare myself for this. But I wasn't prepared for the fact that one of my friends would just casually lend me his watch and remind me that I was going to come back, alive. Excuse me if this is melodramatic. But I am doing my best to explain how I felt as accurately as I can.

I struggled to cast off my points card because I felt that there was little probability that I would ever be able to reproduce such an experience, and once again feel like I was respected. But my friend showed me another way of conceiving it. I have traveled with this friend before. He knows well my alcoholism and immaturities. He did not lend me his watch because of any merit on my behalf to have it. He lent it to me because he wanted me to feel better. I did nothing to earn his empathy; and I never could do anything to earn his empathy. That is not how it works, if it is earned then it isn't empathy. Empathy is the ability to project your mind into the experience of another. The word "another" implies a sense of common humanity, or at least of some common sense of emotional foundation. He perceived in me a common sense of humanity and therefore he did something to make me feel better. I could never earn that; it is only something that he could give.

I have been training like a lunatic here. I have my own training goals; I have come up with and named some of my own techniques. They are all very unorthodox and unusual. It is embarrassing for me to be seen thrashing around like a dead fish when I do randoori with other players. But I can do so because I feel that my friend taught me something that day. There is nothing that any one person can do to earn the respect of another. It will only be given if those giving respect want to give it. He taught me that there is no point in working to change myself for the benefit of others. People choose what they want to respect in others because it suits them to do so.

And so I completely abandoned Japanese Judo as an ideal to train towards. Even if I could do it; I would only be respected by the other students if they wanted to respect it. I cannot intervene in what they want for themselves. Each of the other students individually; only they were free to give me their respect; it wasn't attached to or in any way connected to my actions. And so from a train of thought that came from being given my friends watch; I realized I have no part in, am truly separate, and completely free from what others want. So long as I don't intervene in what they want for themselves I can do what I want.

Weekdaily at lunchtime; I would go to an empty classroom in the martial arts building and do some conditioning exercises. Usually I would skip for 15 minutes, do 2x 25 pushups, 2x 4min bridging, 2x 30 leg situps. In conjunction with my yoga ball stuff; this has radically changed my Judo. I am capable of more than I used to be physically. I am also capable of doing more mentally than I used to be. I no longer try to achieve, hoping that others' respect might crystallize on my actions. Now I only do what I do because I want to, because I want to throw others. I can throw people now. I used not to be able to throw when I came here. Some people want to train with me; others do not. I am doing better at Judo for having abandoned the opinions of others. Some people feel too uncomfortable to want to train with me; because my style is bizarre. Others want to see what it is I can do.

And I feel that all of this would have been impossible unless my friend first gave me a token of his empathy. Otherwise I would have kept deluding myself of the fantasy that I had any control over what others thought of me. He showed me otherwise. Many people have complemented me on his watch. It is much too tasteful a thing for me to have bought on my own. I used it to time my conditioning exercises. It has been with me through some of the hardest experiences I have ever been through. It was just a small mechanism for telling the time; but it helped me release myself from my own misunderstandings and presumptions. And so I am incredibly thankful to him for it.

The same, but different. Indignant.

On the past Sunday I drank 4.5 liters of beer; and went to sleep around 5am. I woke up too late to catch my Japanese test in time; so I missed it. I figured I may as well be hung for a sheep as for a lamb; and so I skipped the whole day's classes. I used this time to write my last blog post. There were a lot of worms in it. These blogs are good for me; they help me articulate what goes on in my head; they give my personal demons names. My demons become much less terrifying when they take form under plain English.

I have too much money and not a lot of sense. I have been using my scholarship money mainly for drinking. It helps me talk to others. I am too introverted to take the initiative to try talking in Japanese without it. I wake up every second or third morning on a weekday with a hangover that prevents me from learning anything in Japanese class. Some of the other exchange students have become a bit cold toward me; they have identified me as a bad influence, an obstacle to their own goals.

I am in one of Japans most famous sporting universities; training as a guest in what is probably the most prestigious judo club in Japan. People work their ass off to be in my position. The way I am going; when I arrive back to Australia I will answer the question "so how was Japan?" with "yeah great, the beers at convenience stores are so cheap!". I did not come here for a international bar hop. I came to destroy my weaknesses and come back home someone different; someone stronger.

I drift through the day like a stale fart. I have been in this apathetic mindset before; I know it well. First you become indifferent to other people; then you become indifferent to life. Then you become a vegetable; you have no will to drag yourself out of bed. Once when I was 19 or so I vomited in my room after a heavy night of scotch and beer. I didn't clean it up for a week; because I couldn't summon the will to move my clothes off the floor and find what was making the smell. I slept in my own excrement much like swine do. I did not feel sorry for myself. I did not feel.

I worked for a homophobe in Australia; he joked with me how a colleague had torn pants; and was wanting to show some skin like a effeminate faggot (I am paraphrasing, but he definitely used the word faggot). I hear homophobic things often; it is because i do not look like what people think of when they think of homosexuality. I was talking with another exchange student the other week; he was explaining that he got lost and ended up in Shinjuku nichome. This area has the highest concentration of gay bars in the world. He told me he didn't like homosexuals. He shuddered as he said this; he was talking of subhuman beings. He said he was fine with them so long as they didn't touch him.

I had no intention of touching him. For a brief moment; I imagined doing terrible things to him. I think I can take a mans consciousness away from him in 10 seconds; depending on how much resistance I get, and what strangle I would use. I know how to castrate rams. I could make him my equal according to himself. It was only a brief indulgence; but was too much of a loss of control for me to feel comfortable with. I do not like feeling this way, but I feel it often. I feel this way at least once a month; when someone leans out of a speeding car and yells faggot at me; when I hear friends casually insult one another by calling each another my peer. I do not like wishing pure hatred on others. I did not like radiating hatred on this exchange student.

But at the same time; I want to thank him. He does not know of me; but I know of him. I know that a easily expressed truth would make him unwilling to talk to me any more. I have no uncertainty about how we will interact with one another in the future. I will be disinterested in anything he has to say; I will not confront him; but I will never seek to speak to him unless I need something from him. Most importantly; I want to thank him because he gave me a feeling. It cut through my indifference and reminded me of who I was; what my goals are; what I want from life. I do not want him to consider me his equal. I distrust in the concept of human empathy; at the best of times I think it is naive and at the worst of times I think it is willful self deception. I have no intention of becoming his equal. I want to surpass him in everything he has ever done, and I want to forget his name.

I got one of my tests back for Japanese. I failed it narrowly. I am in a class that is slightly too easy for my level of Japanese; it was a good fit for me when I was doing judo; because I didn't have the energy to study as much as i ought to. After my injury i used my freed time to drink. My marks suffered. I am falling short of my potential. After receiving my test score. I felt disgusted with myself. It was a feeling; I was no longer indifferent.

Bitter emotions are not positive experiences. But they bring a promise of better things. Feeling anger; loneliness; anything; is like the sweat that breaks a fever. Its uncomfortable; but it means your body is working for you again; fighting on your side. I drink to ameliorate my boredom. I am tired of living from drunken night to drunken night; treating alcohol as a palliative distraction. I am tired of hating people before I have spoken a single word to them. I am tired of losing my will to indifference.

I want to become the person I will be in the future. I have lived a long time in pessimism and fear. It has made me who I am. I distrust my friends and family; I distrust myself. I see enemies where there are none; I live in a dream world more terrible than any reality could be. I am tired of this person, I want this person to improve. Whoever this person could be; whatever they may be capable of; they have not reached their potential yet. Currently; they are in an embryonic state; imprisoned in my weaknesses. Their existence is not certain; I could fail and kill them before they get a chance to become me. I must remove my failings for this person to exist. Being indignantly angry at my own shortcomings helps; it means I want to improve and bring a better version of myself into existence.

I have quit alcohol before. I guess "quit" isn't really the right word if I still drink now. Maybe "hiatus" is a better word. For 2 1/2 years I didn't drink. My health improved quite a lot. I did not deal with stress well during that period. My social life withered and died. Sometimes when it got a bit much; I withdrew into my room. I couldn't smooth the edges off my life. People tried talking me into drinking; they did not understand why I was a teetotaller. I couldn't, or wouldn't express to them the life i wanted to put behind me.

I am thinking of doing so again. Quitting alcohol completely is easier than cutting back. This is because I usually don't drink with the intention of writing myself off; but the more inebriated I get, the more beers I want. The road to my vandalised liver will be paved with just one more drink. Its only ever just one more. Just one more is all it ever will be. Quitting entirely is cleaner and easier. I do not make the decision to quit lightly. Nor will I make this decision quickly. I have been thinking about it for about a week or so. I drank last night; and feel disgusted with myself. The same exchange student I was talking about before; he told me how red I looked last night. I am indignantly angry at the person he was talking about; that wastes his exchange by getting pissed every night in public. He gets out of bed hungover or still drunk; he doesn't study; his personal hygiene is poor. He must change.

The same, but different. Indifferent.

My knee has been cracking a lot in the morning. I have taken this as good news. It probably means that my tendon has tightened up. My tendon is starting to put enough tension on my knee joint to make sounds. For about a week after i hurt myself, my joint was just floating around loosely; and it felt very unstable. I felt like at any time my body would collapse sideways over my leg if I didn't take care to lean against the left side of my left knee every time i put weight on it.  Last night; in the train station; I tried walking up the stairs two at a time. It twinged a bit; but I could do it. I should be good for uchikomi this week; randoori by next.

I have been a bit listless this week. It has been 10 days since i got x-rayed. I've been to maybe two training sessions; just watching. My days feel empty. I sleep well. I'm eating the same amount of food; I kept the appetite but dropped the energy expenditure. My legs feel cramped from going back into my coffee habit; and hobbling around with a weird gait. It is interesting to watch the judo without being wasted tired; it gives me ideas.

I received the JASSO scolarship last week. I expected interviews; placement tests; character profiling. I got a letter to arrive at the office at a certain time, and I arrived. They gave me an envelope with a fistful of cash in it. I think I get it every month; but i am not sure. So far; I received around $800. It has taken an enormous weight off my mind; I kept fretting about scurvy; ethanol poisoning; or other consequences brought on by poor budgeting. It's not going to be an issue anymore. I am being sponsored by the Japanese government. I will most probably use it to study, drink and fight. I want to make sure they get what they pay for.

I'm not all that sure if long periods of physical inactivity or grueling training are harder for me. It's comparing apples with oranges. Either your body suffers; or your mind does. I feel useless at the moment. I cannot speak Japanese; I cannot make my study of the language useful to my degree using my current ability. I speak, but Japanese people cannot understand me because of my botched grammar and pronunciation.

My university has a slogan; it was Shigeyoshi Matsumae's idea of what he thought education ought to be (the man who founded Tokai university).

Cultivate your thoughts in your early days
Nurture your body in your early days
Develop your intellect in your early days
Aim your hopes towards the stars in your early days.

I walk past the first two sentences written on a flag everyday, its outside the north entrance. I don't know if i am in my early days anymore. What i do know is that I always have an oppressive hangover when i read this. When i walk past it, I am usually limping; trying to feel the least amount of pain possible. I shuffle past this flag; and think about it.

I am dismissive of what i call the "my body is a temple" attitude. I automatically start to ignore people if I feel they have this attitude. I feel that they have a fundamental misunderstanding about life. My default opinion is that prioritizing mental and physical function, merely for a capitalised "Because" is meretricious. I think that your body and mind are tools; and they are useless to you if they cannot be used. In my opinion; people who don't understand why they want what they want, will never be able to justify the effort it takes to achieve their goals.

When I was a child; to get home from boarding school I would ride the bus for 16 hours. Every year I would do this maybe 7 or so times. My sister did this too; we spoke about it a few days ago. There would always be screaming babies on the bus. The adjacent passenger's fat, body odors, unsolicited opinions, would spill into your personal space. Recently; looking back on this experience, I realized that by pure accident, I taught myself an approach to overcome difficulty.

The key is to willingly induce a mindset similar to the one that i wrote about earlier. The steps were;

1. I know everything

2. It is all the same

3. I am experiencing all life can offer; right now

4. This will never change.

1. After doing it for a year; I felt that I had experienced everything that the trip could offer. I knew how acrid my neighbors BO would be; I knew at what point the driver would announce that the toilet was overflowing with excrement; and please don't track it back down the aisle. I knew how long it would take me to recover from the various airborne diseases that I would inevitably catch.

2. It was always the same. There was no reason to expect it to be any different. I would travel over a thousand kilometers or so before i could see any variation in the landscape. I would travel over a thousand kilometers before i could expect the bus to be unoccupied enough to be able to move away from the stink of the bathroom. The only interruption in the night would be a few thuds; a few kangaroo's lives ending at the end of the buses bull bar. The sound was predictable; it could only be heard after reaching a certain town.

3.There was no reason to compare this experience with any other experience. The amount of time I had to spend in that place was contextless. For most points during the trip, there was so much time left that i had to spend in this place; it may has well have been an eternity. This is my life now. My life entirely consists of;

The windows stained with the last passengers facial grease; 

The same movie being played on ambiguous; inaudible VHS; 

The same smell of bile coming off 5C. 

If i start to want for a better life; what is the point? I am imprisoned here; this will end when the driver decides to get to my home town. I know how long it takes. It will take exactly as long as it took for all the other times. This is my life; this is the standard of living i can expect.

4. And why should you hope for this to end? you'll be back here after the 2 week break. After, you'll do your term at school, and then you'll be back again. You have your 7 or so trips that you have to do each year; and you have several years left. There is no reason to hope for anything else. It is all the same; understand what it is that it is happening to you. It is a force, much like gravity; it will always be there to dictate how you live. You will always be in some way or another; transitioning into this place. School; working during holidays, talking to friends, outside life; it is but mere intermediary progression into the one constant in your life. This place.

At first I fought this mindset; but as the years went on I started to enter it willingly. It made the trip much better; because I lost all my impatience. After i accepted what was happening to me; there was no reason to want to arrive home. Home was only a transitional phase, i would be back on the bus again. The first 12 hours would fly past as if they were 30 minutes. the last four hours were the worst; that was when my hope to escape overrode this mindset. In the last four hours all I wanted was to be free; and I couldn't will myself into believing that the bus trip was perpetual. The last 30 minutes passed slower than the first 15 hours 30 minutes did.

During a judo training in Australia; I was hungover. I wasn't feeling very good about myself; about judo; about anything. I had a round of randoori with another player; who's skill is higher than mine. He is not a dan grade, but he is better than me. I was mentally soggy; I was struggling to find the motivation to get through the class. I willingly entered this mindset.

1. I know everything
I have fought this guy several times, for years. I know what will happen. He will throw me several times on my arse in uchi mata or o soto gari. I will be chastised by one of the teachers for being too passive; for having too unstable a stance; for standing with a bent back. I will leave this training feeling demoralised; wondering if the other students are laughing about me behind my back. I have experienced this process for years.

2. It is all the same.
It doesn't matter what throw he chooses. It doesn't matter what throw I choose. The same thing always happens. I will land on my arse. Next class will be the same. All of next weeks classes will be the same. All of this month; all of this year will be the same. My skill level will remain the same; his will improve with the training. He has been training at this club for less time than I have; and he is better than me at judo; just like all the other students. Over the coming years I will watch him progress and become more skillful; as I have watched at least 5 others.

3. So this is all it will ever be.
I have no reason to expect anything different from this randoori. I know what to expect. He will use sasae tsukuri komi ashi to loosen my balance ; and throw me in uchi mata. I will react to try and prevent it; but i will choose the wrong movement and will inevitably be thrown. It will be embarrassing to be thrown. It will be the exactly the same way I always get thrown. He will look at me; wearing an expression of dull incredulity that i fell for it again. And then he will do it again.

4. This will never change.
I will keep coming back. I will keep getting thrown like this. I will watch him progress and get graded; and maybe in a few years he will leave this place if his career changes. He will be replaced by another person; who will keep throwing me in exactly the same way. My teachers disappointed faces, my opponents strained patience at having too easy a training exercise to complete, my own clumsy movements; these may as well be frozen in time like in a photo. They are constant; all life can be is but an intermediary transition between these uniform things. They are nouns; not verbs; they are so constant; so reliably predictable that they are palpitable. There is no reason to expect anything different; no; expectation is the wrong word, the words connotation applies to a imagined future. This is not an opinion, it is fact; it is too solid to use such a subjective word as "expect".

This passed through my mind for about 5 seconds, and I entered the mindset. What it does is strips your mind of any emotion. You cannot feel fear, elation, or any emotion. You notice pain; but it does not frighten you. You lose an important part of your mind that makes you human. You become a calculator attached to a human body. I closed my eyes and lined my body up for ko uchi gari. I was completely indifferent to what would result after. I collapsed into him like a wet tissue. I opened my eyes and found him underneath me. I had thrown him.

I have done judo for years. I do not understand it. All i have is my own limited opinions of what it is and how it works. The best judo i have ever done has always been reactionary judo. I never bring the fight to my opponent, I let them bring it to me and try and engage them using my strange physique.When i do judo well, I use my body much as a chess player uses their side of the board. I invite my opponent to attempt to cross it and then i trap them with ambush tactics.

The mantra of judo is something like "yielding defeats strength". I have my own understanding of what this means. I cannot throw anyone. But what i can do, if i am lucky, is guide your energy against you. I cannot throw you; but we can throw you. If i successfully fool you into over committing into one position, I can guide your balance and use it for my own advantage. The better i do this; the less force i need to supply to yours. But i must have your participation to successfully throw you. I find doing judo like this very subtle; nuanced and difficult. It is worth the training to feel a throw like this once every six months. It feels amazing when you turn your wrists; your body; your legs; get the timing right; and for a brief period feel the cooperating strength of two people. You cannot command this strength. You can only let it flow through you. (It is almost exactly like The Last Airbender "Bitter Work". Please watch general Iro explain how to redivert lightning; a cartoon character expresses this concept better than I can.)

I want to learn how to do this inside my own mind. I want to learn how to take my mental imbalances, my apathy and indifference and guide it for my own advantage.

I have judo training this afternoon. My knee is still too unstable to do randoori. So instead i have been going out of the class after the warmup, and doing various balancing exercises on a yoga ball. Last week i pushed myself beyond my furthest balancing capabillity. For about 10 or 20 seconds; i stood on a yoga ball carrying a 10kg sack of sand. I want to learn how to carry more. I want to learn to be able to shift my balance with the weight of the sack; and move the sack around me like a hula hoop. This is crazy. People look at me like i am a circus animal. I fell off once; landed on my back painfully and had to stop. A guy started hysterically laughing.

I know how it is. I know I will fall short of my goal in front of everyone. It is all the same. Even if i succeeded; the exercise is so bizzare; it will not merit praise if i succeed. Falling; failing; succeeding; it won't make a difference. The feeling of being laughed at is reliable, certain ; it is whimsical to imagine a life without it. There is no reason to expect i will not be laughed at again this afternoon. I want to go in stripped of any anticipated unpleasantness. I want to learn how to summon this indifference at will.

The Same

I popped my knee ligament at training on Friday. It made a definite crack inside the joint.  I tried to throw a heavy weight player in a left ko-uchi gari with a right handed grip. I didn't get his balance loaded onto his leg right; so he countered with ura nage; it was pretty spectacular. I had my left foot buried behind his left heel; my body went over his shoulder; my leg didn't.

The second I landed it felt wrong. I felt a strong pop in my knee. It was very similar to a feeling I used to have every morning in the shower about two years ago; where i would deliberately put strain on the side of my knee to crack the joint. I stopped because my knees felt too sore for a while. This time; it felt exactly like that; but stronger and more painful. The issue was not that it hurt; but that my knee felt dangerously unstable. It felt like my upper and lower leg, at the kneecap, had become two pencils balancing on top of each other at the sharpened edges of graphite. It felt like any slight pressure from the right side of my left knee would make my knee bend inwards towards my other leg.

I finished the round, it took an extra minute. I couldn't leg sweep, so i went for hip throws. The pressure from hip throws puts pressure squarely down on your knees; so this did not make me feel too uncomfortable. I couldn't do anything with this throw; and i was grateful to finish. I tried stretching, it felt really wierd. I struggled to walk down the stairs after training. I figured my leg was too busted to train on for at least a fair while; so i decided to drink.

I got an x ray the next day. An x ray, a medical opinion, and being shown how to tape up my knee cost less than the tape i bought. The medical insurance is pretty good here. I was told, (or at least i think i was, because it was all in Japanese), that I hadn't snapped anything. I was told to come back in a month for a check up. I have no idea how long i have to stay rested; but Im going to give it maybe a week or two.

Going from 3.5 hours or so of judo a day to nothing messed with me a bit. The first night; i was drunk; but not so drunk that i could sleep through the pain coming from my knee. I woke up at 4.30 and couldnt sleep after that. I got drunker the next night; that worked the ticket. I don't know what i need to do to rehabilitate it; i will go to my first training since it happened tomorrow and try asking some people.

There is a word; it gets thrown around a lot socially; i feel it isn't really understood all that well. I am not going to use it; because i don't know if my life experiences fit the meaning this word has. J.K. Rowling made the dementors in her books around this word. It is very unlike being "down in the dumps" or "sad". I do not want people thinking that i confuse sadness with this word. I am willing to accept that maybe this word doesn't apply to my circumstances. Its like calling the cold the flu. Colds irritate; influenza kills people, damages economies and threatens societies.

Throughout my life, i have had a few experiences that make me think that maybe i understand what this word means when it happens to someone. I will try and explain my personal opinion of it. For me, it progresses in steps; the more steps you progress into it; the stronger it gets; and the harder it is to extricate yourself out of it.

1. I know everything
>>>>>>>>. I have seen just about everything there is to see. I have been to just about everywhere there is to go. I have spoken to just about everyone that I can ever speak to. I have had just about every experience that a human being can have. I know everything about everything. What I have not seen or done, if later I did do or see it, would not change any opinion I have of anything. All it would do is provide more proof that the general principles that I understand apply to everything unknown as well.

2. It is all the same
>>>>>>>>>. All of these experiences blur into each other like mixed paint; and their distinctions are meaningless. These experiences are many; but they don't differ in any way. Mild irritation and excruciating pain differ only in a matter of degree, and that distinction is subjective and meaningless; they are the same. Life at the bottom of the marinara trench and life in the great barrier reef is all pretty much the same. There is nowhere on earth that anyone can go to where they might find anything different to everything else. If tomorrow intergalactic space travel were possible, and you went to a distant exotic planet; you would find it as you would find anywhere on earth; exactly the same. People on opposite ends of the earth have the same opinions; the same prejudices; and live and die identically. If this is true; then there is no reason why you too should not also be the same; just like everyone and everything else.

3. Therefore, i am experiencing everything right here, right now
>>>>>>>>. If you know everything; and it is all the same; then there is no point in going anywhere to experience anything else other than what you can see, feel or do right now. If you did go, it would all be the same; and you would waste effort in pursuing something that you could do from anywhere. There is no point in talking to anyone else; it would be exactly the same as having a conversation in your head with yourself, you are the same as them. Experiencing emotions from external sources is pointless, you already know how it will make you feel; what it will make you feel; when you will feel what you feel. Because you know everything; and it is all the same; you can experience everything life has to offer you from your own bedroom. There is no point in going outside; outside will not offer anything different to what you are experiencing now. There are no feelings; you cant feel anything because you already understand it all. You cannot have an emotional reaction to something you expect.

4. Nothing will ever change this.
>>>>>>>>>. If everything is understood; and it is all the same; which then makes going anywhere unnecessary; then one last step remains. You must then realize; if you understand it all; that it will always be like this. It will always be pointless to choose any action over another; because any choice anyone makes, ever, results in some kind of experience; all of which are the same. Sleeping 14 hours a day; socializing; or studying hard; there is no reason to choose any one of these above another because they all end up providing an experience; which is identical to any other experience. Lost opportunity means nothing, because how it makes you feel is identical to achieving your most ambitious goal. There will never be any reason to choose to do anything; because the result will always be the same.

In highschool, I used to go through 1 and 2 quite often during the holidays. I would go back to our family farm on central Queensland and feel that there was nothing new to do or feel there. 2 feels like a deep boredom. The feeling i have now, after being out of judo for a few days, is like this. It is not a sad feeling. It is an emptiness. The colour and vibrancy of your life start to bleed out after 3. After my contract A exam; I got to 3, and was pretty much bedridden for a week. I had studied my arse off; and now had vast expanses of time to think and analyse what i had done. I couldn't feel anything at all. If i failed and had to sit it again; or if i succeeded and became a lawyer; both paths would lead to difficulty; stress and hardship; which are the same. When every action leads to the same result; you start to become indifferent to life. You are not unhappy, you are emotionless, you cannot feel at all.

4 is the worst. That's when hope becomes impossible. I have not experienced this stage too often; if i had it would have stripped my of the parts in my mind that make me human. Drinking can help for 3 in the short term; it can artificially implant emotions into your mind if you cannot have them without it. In the long term; it makes it worse. Right now, i feel like i am at two. It isn't too worrying; i have been here before. But the problem is; if 3 develops, you get ill. You stop sleeping in a predicable pattern; your appetite evaporates, and you don't want to go outside. I did Judo for a week at 3, it seems to help fix my sleep cycle and get me back to 2 and further out of this problem. It was a struggle, and i couldn't make eye contact with anyone at training. I wasn't afraid of eye contact; it was that i felt that if people judged me negatively by not interacting properly; it would be exactly the same as if i maintained eye contact and came across better. I lost my fear that motivated me to socialize, to avoid being judged negatively. the main problem about 3 is that it removes your motivation; it bores you into a weakened mental state.

Ive found that keeping busy helps. Having goals that destroy your spare time does too. If i have too much time to be introspective; i go through 1 and 2 and end up at 3 pretty quickly. I hope my knee gets better soon. I feel frustrated, which means I feel, which means that now I am not yet at 3. Once I get back into the judo schedule and work towards my goal of getting better at judo, I will get out of 2 and 1. Repetitively thrashing my body and mind beyond its limits helps prevent 1 from ever developing. I got to 3 and maybe 4 once when i studied journalism. After I changed to a dual with law it really helped me get over the fact that i am not an enlightened super being. If i ever get comfortable with legal study i can see 1 becoming a problem again; so this is a good motivator to always push my degree in directions to prevent 1 from ever being a problem. Japanese helps. Meeting people from other cultures helps. I think i will never have the problem of knowing it all about law, so it helps me frame my limited understanding away from 1.

My knee will get better soon; I will be training again soon. I have an idea for a judo throw; i got it on the train. I don't know if it will work; which violates 1. I want to get into judo again to break this process.

Drinking around Tokai

So we went out, for the funzies. There was me, this Danish guy, a Spanish guy, and maybe 5 Russians.We had just sat our entrance exam; the results of which would indicate which class we would end up taking. I was stressed about it (i'm always stressed about something), and so afterwards i felt like a drink.

So we went looking around town for somewhere for a drink. We went to a place called Rabbit but it was full, so we tried another place. The place we ended up drinking in was a little bit pricey but was very good. It makes you feel really cool drinking and smoking inside a bar, it feels so indulgent. I guess doing this was normal in Australia 30 years ago, but to me it felt like knowingly breaking one of your parents rules as a child, and knowing that you would be excused for it. There was a point in my life where i wanted to be a journalist; if i ever become one i think i would have to chain smoke at my desk, just because that's what you do if you're a journalist in my mind.

We got talking, i remember the conversation turning from Chinese language to Russian literature. It struck me that everyone at the table was in Japan because some guiding passion had taken hold of them and dropped them here. After law for a few semesters; i had completely forgotten that people actually enjoy study. I still have nightmares about Torts A. We all did a self intro of why we were here and what we were doing. Japanese language came up a lot, as did literature, as did manga. I explained i was here for the judo. I think i instantly became that weird guy at the table; but after a few drinks i didn't really mind all that much. There's something about moving to another country; your reputation feels so disposable. I explained that Judo was probably one of the best things i had ever done, that it gave me a direction in life, and that the best judo i had ever done was when i was so hungover i could barely speak. They humored me.

After a few drinks the Russians and the Spanish guy went home. I stayed out with the Danish guy; we got talking back in the Rabbit bar/restaurant ( ? not really sure how to classify drinking places in Japan). It turned out he could speak several languages, amongst them Chinese, English, Danish, Icelandic, and Japanese. He'd probably forgotten more vocabulary in foreign languages than i was ever capable of learning. He told me of an economic concept called the "sunk cost fallacy" where when if you invest an amount of capital into something expecting returns, only to find that it doesn't pay off; often people conclude that the most optimal reaction is to keep investing more capital. This is because people feel a connection over the prior capital that they invested, and that by giving more they increase the chances of getting it back, as opposed to cutting their losses and running. In practice it doesnt make a lot of sense. The saying "the definition of insanity is doing the same thing multiple times expecting different results"encapsulates it nicely.

He was explaining to me that this concept helped him understand his attachment to his study of Russian. He could have cut his losses at any time, left and started devoting time to another language or pursuit; but continued on due to a feeling that somehow the more time he gave to his study the better he would be.

It summed up my Judo training pretty much perfectly. There has been several times where i have wanted to quit, but didn't because of the thought that all of my time that i had invested would be wasted if cut my losses now. I trained 1 throw for 6 months, and in that time probably got worse at it, but stuck at it out of a sense of entitlement to the rewards that must be proportionate to the effort expended.

Anyway, so we were drinking in Rabbit, and he got talking to three Japanese women in the booth next to us. The tables were tightly packed together to make space, and were separated by translucent curtains. It turned out his Japanese was pretty good, he had spent a year on exchange in Kyoto. I tried to follow the conversation as best i could, but it was properly beyond my level. Meanwhile, one of the women wasn't sitting on the bench, but was kneeling next to it, next to me. While this conversation was going on she kept staring at me. It was really unnerving, like being stared at by a dog that has reason to expect you might feed it. What made it all the more stranger was that her head height was underneath me because she was crouching. It really did feel like being stared at from an animal or something. It was very flattering and all, but caught me off guard.

And that was about it. We had a few more drinks and went home. There doesn't appear to be as many alcohol laws here as there are in Australia, so you can finish up whenever it suits you. Everywhere in our area was shut by 2 though, so we stumbled back to the dormitory.