Rory Miller's Blog, page 56

Update

Even more tired, but also sore and happy. There have been some developments in the last week:
A seminar in Portland, OR with KJ is coming up on May Day. Information is here.
I've been invited down to do a seminar in San Francisco May 9th. San Francisco is a fun town. The seminar is on a Sunday and I should have that Saturday free for private lessons or just wandering around.
My first web-based class for writers starts June 7th. I started writing the first lesson and it is turning into a...

Need Some Sleep

Played with some good people with good skills today. My biological clock says I've been up since 0300 and local time is almost 2300. Only 2200 back home, though. Still very tired.
Weird images today. Flying into Austin and looking out the window it looked like flat and scrub and swampy. I got flashes (maybe of refueling in Panama?) it looked familiar. Odd.
Lots of talking. This crew plays hard and they don't need a lot in the physical skills department. I could teach them stuff, maybe t...

Reading

FictionSome friends have put unfair pressure on me to give fiction another stab. Grrrr. There are some authors I can tolerate- George MacDonald Fraser, for instance. But he's done so much research it might as well be a textbook. Only more fun. The series my friends have recommended (read, "insisted on") are classics in the speculative literature field.It's been a hard plow. One of my gripes about fiction in general and the fantasy/SF subgenre in particular is that the things that...

Some Teaching Thoughts...

I've had time to read, re-read and somewhat digest the comments (both here and e-mail) on Toning Down. Time for some philosophy.
I have no evidence that I'm better than any of you. There is nothing to say that I'm stronger or smarter or quicker or tougher or wiser or more sensitive or any of a hundred of the things that people sometimes use to differentiate themselves. Any difference that exists is that I have done things that many people think about. People who firewalk are no different t...

I've had time to read, re-read and somewhat digest the co...

I've had time to read, re-read and somewhat digest the comments (both here and e-mail) on Toning Down. Time for some philosophy.
I have no evidence that I'm better than any of you. There is nothing to say that I'm stronger or smarter or quicker or tougher or wiser or more sensitive or any of a hundred of the things that people sometimes use to differentiate themselves. Any difference that exists is that I have done things that many people think about. People who firewalk are no different t...

Connections

At the risk of inundating myself with e-mails:
There are seminars or potential seminars coming up in Austin TX, Rochester NY, and Portland, OR. I'm also going to try to arrange something for Boston and/or Montreal in early August.
If you are interested in being on a regional-specific contact list, e-mail me rory@easystreet.net and be sure to include what areas/states you would be willing to travel to. If you're thinking about hosting something, let me know that as well.

It's All About Power

Sounds harsh, but there it is. In a predator/prey dynamic the ideal, for the predator, is for the prey to be powerless. Helpless. If the power shifts too far in any relationship it only avoids being abusive by the choice of the powerful. There is nothing the weak can do, no level of reason or pleading that can prevent those in power abusing the weak. Influence, maybe. Prevent? No.
From that perspective martial arts and self-defense training is all about pushing the power to the...

Perfect Karma

If I were going to invent a religion...
Okay, huge caveat here: I am extremely enamored of my concept of free will and absolutely reject the idea that the world is pre-ordained. If there were no such thing as free will, I would create it if heaven and earth were to fall by the action. Enough hyperbole.
Imagine that the universe is not only preordained, but it is already a finished object. That time appears to flow from our dimension, but is solid and finished from the next one up. It could ...

Toning Down

I received an e-mail from someone I really respect as a friend, a martial artist, and a mentor. He advised me to teach less material at seminars. The e-mail was sparse, he is one of those people who often teaches with a single word, but he seemed to imply that trying to cover it all every time would hurt my longevity (business-wise, I assume) and it made it hard to describe what the seminar was about.
So I'm kicking it out to get some more thoughts. My gut feeling is that I don't teach...

Record Snow

The locals tell me that the snow last night broke the annual record for Missouri. It's a cold, biting snow: like dry sleet crystals on your neck, wet on the ground. Eric says, "This feels like a winter Storm.
It's the first day of Spring. It has been snowing all day. Yesterday, I got taken for a ride in a buckboard wagon through an historic area. The buildings, the dates, the stories were interesting. More interesting was the emotion. Historical figures that I had always been taught...