Penmanship.
Really. We actually had
inkwells built into our desks and used pens with removable heads which you
dipped into the ink! After class, we had to wash off the inkpen heads and
remove them from the stem (of the pen). It was just about one klik up
from using the old featherpens of the 19th century.
As lousy as my memory tends to be,
I clearly remember those boring classes. We had lined paper which
featured a thick, solid line and then a dotted line...then a solid line, then a
dotted line...all the way down. Upper-case (capital) letters had to touch
the top and bottom of the solid lines while the lower case letters touched only
the top of the dotted line.
We'd practice just making loops and
circles and wavy lines...I thought I had it down pat, but the teacher was
always at my side telling me that it was terribly sloppy and to start
again. I remember getting really frustrated. Then she demonstrated
what she meant and her circle and whirls were flawless. Really smooth and
beautiful. So I did my best to imitate that. We practiced how to
hold the pen correctly between the thumb and forefinger with the shaft resting
on the side of the middle finger. It had to rest at a specific
angle. They were very persnickety about all of this business. And
when you finished a few loops, you had to learn how to soak up the excess ink
with a "blotter."
Eventually, we got around to writing
individual letters. They had to be just so. The loops, dots, and
crosses had to be just right and pleasant to look at. We practiced every
day. For two years. Later, if you wrote something and the teacher
didn't like the handwriting, he'd give it back to you and tell you to do it
over! It didn't matter if the material was correct or not, if it looked
even mildly sloppy, you'd get to do it again.
Recently, I watched as a local
police officer (a good friend of mine) wrote out an incident report. I
could barely make out his writing. It was tiny and the letters weren't
clearly formed. I suppose you notice junk like this as you get
older. I never used to pay much attention to it... So I teased him about
it and he made reference to my personal hygiene and ancestry.
Later, I wrote a check at one of
the registers in a department store. The young lady looked at the writing
and remarked, "What pretty handwriting! I've never seen a man write
like that." Actually, I thought it was kind of sloppy, but compared
to my police officer friend, it was a work of art.
I have my paternal grandmother's high
school autograph book. Seriously. Some of the poems and autographs
in it are dated back as far as 1867. What is most incredible is the
magnificently beautiful handwriting in it. Even the boys had beautiful
writing and many must have used broad-tipped pens.
You don't see writing like that
anymore. It was just too much extra work, I suppose and nobody saw a need
for anyone to have to learn it. And that's my point.
The martial arts is exactly the
same thing. We used to do our best to imitate our teacher's flawless
movements. A lot of martial arts don't do that anymore; they have a kind
of 1970's "do your own thing" sort of approach...which doesn't
work. Your "own thing" will likely be wrong. Stick to the
things that have been proven to work over time. It may be boring, tedious
work, but it's worth it.
I have to admire the systems that
adhered so closely to their teacher's movements that they even imitated little
quirks. The founder of Isshin-ryu, Tatsuo Shimabuku, had a crippled leg
due to his getting rickets when he was very young. He could never execute
a proper kick with it (I think it was his right leg). He made a kind of
little short, jerking kick with it because that was the best he could do.
His American students (who didn't speak much Japanese or Okinawan dialect)
imitated it perfectly. To this day, their kick(s) in certain kata are
done just as he did them...but the kicks made with the other leg are different
because his left leg hadn't been so severely crippled.
Another Okinawan karate master (Asano, I
think), had had beriberi when he was a youth. He couldn't completely
straighten his fingers. When he formed a shuto (knife-hand), his little
and ring fingers bent inwards considerably. Consequently, his students
imitated that form and it has been carried through to this day. The
karate styles which descended from his teachings all use the same form of shuto.
Many years ago, one of my own
students noticed that the forefinger of my right hand did not flex fully when I
made a fist. It remained nearly straight at the first knuckle.
Knowing that some Okinawan karate styles use a similar form of fist, he figured
that that was what I was doing...and he formed his fists in the same manner.
I didn't notice it for years and then when I saw it, I asked WTH he was doing
making a geeky-looking fist like that. He told me that he was making his
fist in the same manner as I formed mine. I had to laugh and I told him
that when I was young, the flexor tendon of my right forefinger (first knuckle)
had been severed and I couldn't bend it! That was why I formed a fist the
way I do. But I have to give him credit; he was watching very closely for
the little things that might make a difference. Like how to make a smooth
and beautiful loop with an old inkpen.
The old and beautiful form of
handwriting that existed only four or five decades ago is now gone. Think
about that. People didn't see the need for it and stopped practicing and
teaching it. Now it's gone.
Let's not let that happen to the
real martial arts. It doesn't take long for things in this world to
disappear forever. Keep practicing those loops and learning how to
correctly dot your i's and cross your t's.
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