This week, it was time to use my bo to offer blows--first to the teacher, then to the assistant. As though to crack them over the head. This process is done in a slow, safe way--one partner strikes from overhead, the other stops the strike with the bo.

I froze, resistance throughout my body. The teacher was mildly impatient and so I made a very slow offensive contact against her defensive posture, and then another. I could see that acting without hesitation made the whole process safer, so I tried to get a more assertive rhythm with the assistant.

The teacher is taller than me, the assistant shorter. I still see the assistant’s face beneath the cross of our bos. I have no grasp of this yet.

I watched a yahoo! amateur video clip yesterday of a man doing a very impressive kata in a martial arts competition. There was no visible opponent, just the man cutting air with his hands and the edges of his feet. Perhaps ten blows within a second!

I thought about him, the pouring of himself into this one minute, the beauty of his concentration, precision and fire.

He was shattering his own devils, breaking through an invisible web.

During a class last Saturday, the other students did a partner exercise that involved accepting a running blow--not deflecting it--but turning into it--and traveling with the blow--helping the opponent travel where he needed to go with this aggression without causing harm.