16 april

Brother Dolphin

The life’s of the dolphins, even when they are probably the most beloved animals from the sea, are mysterious. It is possible to spot a fin, a nose and some jumps, not to see them ever again, or perhaps tomorrow, or in few years from now. We do not know what they do when they are under, we know little about their enterprises and distresses, their love and their hatred, if they have any at all. 

But of course, they are dolphins and we do not expect them to hate anybody. Are they not always smiling? And so with our very own brother Dolphin. 

He did walked into our dojo with brother Red Fox a few years back. With a background in a different martial arts than ours, he started from the start, took a course, a few gradings and one or another seminar. We got to like him a lot, almost from the first time, just like we like brother Red Fox, both smiling, both friendly. Yet when the smiles of Red Fox might, or might not, have some more behind, the smiles of brother Dolphin are just that, smiles. Like a child that has found a new ball, and is, without much concern for anybody else, enjoying himself. And so partaking his pleasure, of better put, his amusement at that beautiful thing that we do, Iaido, with all of us. 

Just as dolphins do, without us knowing, one day we stopped seeing him. We asked, eventually we receive some answers, we send some signals and greetings and messages. But how do you really communicate with a dolphin when he is exploring the depths, his depths? How do you know what reaches him, what can reach him, even what should reach him? The answer is clear, you don’t. So with the pass of time we didn’t forget him, but we got accustomed to the idea that the time and the place of a next encounter was not for us to know. 

Until yesterday, that is. In yet another of our much needed and yet akward online trainings, just when Mother Falcon was explaining and trying to get through our thick skulls the idea that a japanese saber should be treated lightly, that a preparation for a cut is not a heavy lifting but more like the a throw of joy into the air, that was the lesson that our brother Dolphin choosed to reappear. And so he joined us, and we saw him, at least what we could see from him in our screen, throwing a ball to the air with great pleasure, and also skill. And so he laugh, and so we laugh too, all delighted by his rejoining us. 

PostScriptum

Since few years now I have been doing portraits of my teachers and fellow practitioners of Iaido and Kendo in a dedicated blog. I do that through animal metaphors. Here above the latest of that collection. If you would be interested in reading further, just give a visit to my Iaido-Kendo blog.