It is something you might like to try within your own environment and with your own 'images'.
Tai Sai is an event of celebration of the founder of Aikido, O-Sensei's life and what he and others that have also passed away have left for us as a legacy. What we do with that gift is up to us and to be fair, some do nothing with it. Organised by a good friend this event was led by a high ranking teacher (I mention no names here). The teacher could see the effort that had been put in to the 'little altar' at the front of the training hall and so that the students realised the importance of connecting with the spirit of O-Sensei (you can read into that what you will) asked students to look into the eyes of the image and ask a silent question. We looked into the eyes of O-Sensei and asked our questions. It is not surprising to me that we also hear answers. They are usually right too!
It is something you might like to try within your own environment and with your own 'images'.
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Not quite what you expected? Well this is a bridge, an old one, with little refuges that you can stand in while the horses pull the carts across, or perhaps the mail coach. It is the Tamar too, closer to its source than its mouth. A delightful clear stream that flows through fine Cornish countryside on its way to the sea. Sometimes we don't find exactly what we want in life but it can still be worthwhile. I thought so when I stood here.
I'm sure there are many things we could write about gloves in boots . . . a sequel to puss in boots perhaps.
But today I'd like to remember a good fire officer colleague who has not been with us for many a year now. We all had fire kit; Boots, Helmet, Tunic and over trousers ... oh and gloves too. We worked in the fire/smoke house where temperatures would often be over 100 degrees Centigrade. In consequence your gloves would be soaked in sweat. Now that's not such a bad thing if the sweat is yours, but John had the habit of borrowing other people's gloves, it didn't matter whose, anyone's would do. Nothing much seemed worse to us when we were next to enter the fire building for an exercise and discover cold damp gloves on our hands ... soaked in John's sweat. You cannot deny he was a hard worker, diligent, long serving, honest and reliable. You could rely on him to have used your gloves ! What some of the other officers did was find an old pair of gloves and join them together with a long piece of string to each, then thread the string through the sleeves of John's tunic. So when he went to pick up his tunic, a pair of gloves hung from his sleeves . . . just like a mother does for a very young child. It was a good day that day of gloves in sleeves. After 30 years, no doubt they are still hanging there today, petrified; those dear little creatures that once had life. The life invented by a child. . . the little bears would have talked and walked, laughed and played. Now that life is confined in a grip of stone, an imprisonment that is insidiously strengthening its grip day by day. Yet deep inside the stone perhaps that little bear is happy, because it will live forever.
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AuthorMmmm, I think you know too much already, but what the hell. . . retired firefighter, martial artist and self thought philosopher, some say cynic, some say skeptic, some know the truth. . . . most never will. Archives
January 2020
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