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.