How much damage can you do with a pen?

It's interesting to me how different people react to the discovery of this online journal. Some people act as though they were ashamed that they read it, as though I meant for it to remain private, even though I post it for the world to see. I try to explain that it's public, and that I like it that way, but they still feel as though they've been 'naughty' somehow.

Other people use this journal to get to know me better, and turn out to be closer friends because of it. I'm not good at sharing things face to face. "Ow, my knee really fucking hurts" just doesn't come up in regular conversation for me. I'm a tough girl, I don't like to complain.

At the same time, I feel that it's nice when people know what's going on with me, good or bad.

It all reminds me of that phrase, though, about the pen being mightier than the sword. A journal which has the power to bring people closer together, to make them happy, or inspire them, also has the capability of causing great hurt. Do I hurt people who are included in these pages? Do I hurt people by omission?

I don't think I will be changing the way that I write, but I am at least giving the matter a back-burner simmer of thought.

This has been a very busy time for me at work, complicated by the fact that my lunch hours have been replaced by physical therapy appointments. I miss having that time to write my journal entry, read a book, or see my sweety. Ah, well. After today it's only 10 more sessions, right?

I fail to see how these exercises are going to do me a lot of good, though. Every day I do the little motions, repetitions, and stretches the therapist recommended, and every day I think, "My knee makes this same movement a hundred more times if I just do my forms." And forms are a lot more fun.

Still, I'm sticking with it, even though it makes little sense to me. My knee is less painful now, and hopefully that means it's healing. In this case I guess I will just have to do the exercises even though my brain says otherwise. I can't always be right, you know.

This weekend was an interesting experience. I have mixed feelings about the tournament Forest and I attended on Saturday. We met a lot of really great, nice, friendly martial artists there. There were about two dozen masters there, representing at least that many schools, and I'd say there were over 200 competitors there.

You can learn a lot about a Master by watching him at a tournament. The really great ones are there with thier kids, coaching them along. They are pleasant in demeanor, and display real affection toward their students, whether they win or lose. I saw one great master kneeling in front of a five-year-old, holding his hands, and telling him how proud he was that the boy had taken third place. Soon, the child was smiling, hugging his master, and had just learned a valuable lesson in life. Another master had a little girl in his lap after she had a difficult round of sparring, and was drying her tears and comforting her as she dealt with a bout of fear. (We are all afraid to spar sometimes.)

Those are great masters. Some of the other masters, though, spend the entire tournament schmoozing other masters. They are making business contacts, or sizing up the competition. In a way, they remind me of used car salesmen; they are out there to make an impression. One master took 20 minutes to come over and check on a student who had been knocked down in the ring, and was bleeding. 20 minutes. What the hell?

Anyhow, there was one specific school which didn't impress me in the least as masters. Grand Master Rose, and his son Master Rose were both at the tournament. The father was at the judging tables, and the son was competing. They also had a number of students in competition, who I think they were trying to keep tabs on.

I am not comfortable in the first place with Grand Master Rose being the top official in a competition in which his son is competing. That's the first thing. I put that idea behind me at the time, though, hoping that he would have a level of personal integrity which would allow him to be a fair judge despite his relationship to the competitor. I think I was wrong. Master Rose Jr. was Forest's first match. He is a 5th degree to Forest's 2nd, which equates to probably 8 years more experience; Forest didn't expect that he would win the match, however he expected to learn a lot from it.

The competitors had been instructed to keep the contact light; no blood, no knockouts, and no hard contact to the head. Forest went out to play by those rules. Master Rose, however, startedout by kicking him in the face twice in the first minute of the match. Forest almost blacked out on one of them, as he heard his nose breaking; but he managed to get a few good kicks and a nice punch in on his opponent. I was impressed that he did as well as he did. The ref called "Time" for the 1-minute break, and Forest started to break away, but Master Rose kicked him again. The ref called it again, and they went to their corners. We didn't think anything of it; normally a Master will stop immediately when the ref calls it, but sometimes the headgear gets in the way, and makes it hard to hear. We were busy focusing on what to do next.

I was Forest's coach, and he confided in me that he was seeing two or four of his opponent at various times since getting kicked in the face. I advised him that if he was going to continue, he should stay in close, since Rose wasn't looking for punches, and use his fists nd half-spinning sidekicks as much as he could.

Forest went back in the ring, and chose to forfeit shortly thereafter, since he couldn't guess which kick he ought to block out of the four he could see at the same time.

In the next match, a student of Rose's was in the ring, against a nice guy we had been talking and joking around with all day. Rose's student threw a full-force spinning reverse roundkick in the air, straight at his opponent's head. By no means do I consider that light contact. That's the most powerful kick I can think of. Period. This guy was a third-degree black belt, and should know to control himself better than that. The recipient of the kick ended up dropping flat on his face, instantly unconscious. He turned terrible colors, and alarmed everyone by not breathing for a minute. Elizabeth went up to prepare for CPR, and I assigned two different people with cel phones to call 911. The 'medics' at this tournament weren't doctors or nurses; they were just guys with ice packs. I was not impressed.

20 minutes later the nice guy left the ring on a stretcher in a neckbrace. I really hope he's okay.

At any rate, I don't consider that to be light contact. As much as the 3rd degree kicker in this situation cried and was full of remorse for kicking the guy's head off, he should not be a third degree black belt without knowing better.

The next match was young Master Rose Jr. versus a really cool african american guy, with whom Forest and I had also been hanging out. It wasn't an even match; once again, Master Rose outranked his opponent by 4 degrees; but this guy was a quick fighter, and an excellent tactician. Forest and I have seen him spar before, and thought he might stand a chance. Indeed, he landed a couple of really nice kicks, and actually knocked Master Rose back out of the ring with one.

I could see Master Rose lose it at that point. He turned and started to pound his opponent with kick after kick. The ref called "time" for the break, and Master Rose ignored him, kicking his opponent again. The ref called "Time" again, more loudly, and still Master Rose kept kicking. His opponent also tried to tell him to stop, but to no avail. Finally, the opponent put up his fists to defend himself, and Master Rose was pulled back to his chair for the break.

The referees didn't call any penalties on Master Rose. I was stunned. I would have disqualified him for that kind of thing. The coach in the opponent's corner stood up, and demanded to know why Rose wasn't penalized.

Grand Master Rose slapped that coach with a point deduction for his player, and proceeded with the break. Master Rose still didn't get any penalty for his unsportsmanly activities.

In the end, Master Rose won the trophy, although at that point, I don't think anyone cared. I thought the whole situation reeked of favoritism. I thought Grand Master Rose's son and their other student were out of control, and not worthy of their ranks. A Master should not behave that way. People like them give the whole sport of taekwondo a bad name.

Forest and I really liked a lot of the other people at that tournament, but neither one of us wants to go again if we know the Rose's school will be attending. We don't want to see people being beaten senseless; that's not the nature of the sport. We also don't care to see poor sportsmanship and family members being allowed to judge one another. That's ridiculous.

Forest has said that he doesn't think he will go in the ring with Rose again. Not so much because he got his face kicked, but because he doesn't trust Rose as an ethical artist with control. I agree. When you bow onto a martial arts mat, you agree to a level of personal integrity and control. When you violate that agreement, you've violated your opponent's trust. It's not right.

The fact that I took first in forms doesn't make me terribly happy in light of the circumstances of the tournament. In fact, all four of the people from our school (Forest, Elizabeth, Scott, and I) placed well in the tournament, but we all walked out with a sour feeling in our stomachs. Forest got a third place in the forms competition, and Elizabeth took first in sparring. Scott got a third in the heavyweight sparring division, and made a good effort.

I was also irritated with how this tournament was set up. The only scheduling information we were given said that forms competition would begin at noon. We have all been to enough tournaments to know that you shouldn't warm up too early; it leaves your muscles cooling for too long before your performance. Hence, at 11:30 we got up and started to stretch a little bit, with plans to do some kicking drills and run some forms to warm up. At 11:35, though, the organizer of the event hollered at us all to get into our assigned rings so that we could 'be organized'. Well, pardon me, but I think that with very little effort, you could 'organize me' based on my written registration slip, without having my bottom sitting on your cold gym floor for a half hour doing nothing. I could have been up, stretching, and warming up, but instead, a woman with a high-pitched voice continually shouted at us over the PA to get us to sit in our assigned rings.

I wasn't given permission to get up again until I was called upon by the judges in my ring to perform my poomse. (Forms.)

I was on a strange surface; a rubber basketball court. I was standing on my cold muscles with my sore knee, which rightfully should have been stretched for at least 3 reps of 30 seconds in a standing position before I started. I tossed the form I had been planning to do out the window, because it had spinning sidekicks in it, and I didn't know whether or not my feet would turn easily on the rubber floor. I started out doing taeguk 6, instead, since I knew I could show off some nice roundkicks.

As soon as I finished the first rightlegged frontkick in taeguk 6, I knew I couldn't do another one. It hurt a lot. Unfortunately, taeguk 6 has one more set of front kicks beyond the first one. As I muscled my way through the first couple of parts of the form, all I was thinking was, "What am I going to do when I get to the top?"

I think I downblocked once instead of upperblocking, while I was thinking about it. When I got to the top, I put in a couple of punches instead of front kicks, and then tried to 'sell' the rest of the form by beaming confidence and having nice dual-knife blocks.

The judges liked it. *I* was not happy, though. If I had been allowed to stretch and warm up properly, this wouldn't have been a problem.

The way that the tournament was run also meant that I didn't get to see Forest, Scott, or Elizabeth compete in poomse, because they were in different rings. Bygones.

I hate to rant on about this tournament so much; I don't want you all to think tae kwon do is some terrible thing. I love the art and the sport of it. It is a lot of fun. Like every other sport, though, it all depends on fair judges, event organization, and good sportsmanship. It bothers me that just a few people there had to ruin the fun for so many others. I have some nice pictures which I hope to scan in soon!

Sunday was very nice. Forest and I got to spend the entire day together, making plans as we went. It was nice for neither of us to have to work, or go anywhere in particular. We started the day by sleeping in, then sitting around in our jammies together.

Then we went to Okemos, and browsed around the mall while we got our photos of the tournament developed. I managed to find a pair of shoes to replace my holy ones. They were on the clearance rack at Hudson's, and so far they are fairly comfortable, though they are not a style I'm used to wearing. I bought them because they were cheap and felt like slippers. I guess that's a good thing. Kirstin will be impressed that I varied my style. I usually just stick to a pair of loafers.

Anyhow, our pictures came out fairly nicely, though I am still getting used to the new camera. Forest and I rushed back to Lansing, and showed them to his dad over lunch at Aldaco's. It was a beautiful day, and after much thought, we all piled in the van and went golfing. Well, they golfed, I hobbled and took photos. I really enjoyed the couple of hours that we spent outside.

The weekend ended with a silly movie (Charlie's Angels, which was a hoot) and gratuitous amounts of cuddling and smiling. Forest and I revelled in each other's company, and marvelled at how lucky we are to be together. Words fail to describe how happy we are!