The community college where I teach has closed down its fitness program for the summer. In the past, I just kept having training sessions, because there were always students around who wanted to train. This year, for various reasons (some known, some unknown), I do not find myself in that situation. So I have a weeknight free that I have not had free for the past almost four years.
Being myself, I wondered what to do with my newfound freedom (let's put it this way - there is never much on TV worth watching, but a free evening for me usually means coming home, making dinner, and veging out until I feel like crawling off to bed). Many ideas presented themselves, since, like most workers I never seem to have enough time for non-work projects. One of the things that has bummed me for the past couple of years is the dearth of budo colleagues that are closer than a plane ride or 4-hour drive. In addition to being mildly annoyed that the community college is not going through the summer (which is a schlep for me to get to, actually, but has been generally worth it), I was feeling sort of lonely for people who are kind of at my level to train with, hang out with, and swap stories with.
For years, in addition to training in the Old Country, I used to go to seminars in which we just trained together in various art forms of mutual interest. There was no pressure, no rank consideration - the teacher for one session would be alongside you as a beginner in another session. There was plenty of opportunity for informal discussion in addition to training. It's entirely true that we would never learn much about any particular art form in this kind of setting, but we did learn a little bit about a great number of different, traditional koryu over time. It was also true, generally speaking, that these sessions were lousy recruiting tools. I do not think anyone really gained any new students as a result, coming, as we did, from all over the place, departing a mere 3-4 days after we had arrived. But it was fun.
But it went away. At least one former organizer suggested that web entities like YouTube had squelched people's curiosity about other practices. Who needs to come to a seminar when you can just drive the couch? He also noted that the part that appealed so much to most of us - the no pressure, information-only nature of the practice sessions, were less appealing to the majority of people who were more interested in spending their precious time (the sessions were dirt-cheap, and so were the accommodations) testing for and acquiring rank. (I find this situation incredibly sad, but it's a topic for another post, some other time.)
So I was feeling a little wistful for that time, when practice was just for the hell of it, and a bunch of like-minded, though differently-trained, individuals could just come together and explore each other's ryuha. Then for some odd reason, I suddenly remembered a colleague in New Jersey whom I have not heard from for over a year and have not seen for almost ten. I checked out his web page for his current location and training schedule. Voila! Not far from my home, and held late enough in the evening that I could come home, eat, and get in the car for the short drive there. I shot him a quick email asking if I could just join his practice. He was delighted with the idea.
So we now have a mutual summer project going: he is showing me some kata that belong to an auxilliary practice to our mutual style (which I knew about but never had an opportunity to learn) and I am showing him some kata from a small style I am studying in return (and I hope in lieu of a mat fee). Both classes that I have gone to so far have run long because, in addition to training, we are both so busy telling each other stories about this and that. I get home at midnight. On a weeknight. But I don't care.
Generally speaking, I don't like summer in NYC. It's hot and humid and most of us just huddle in our air-conditioned cubicles until after the US Open. But this year, I get to learn something new.
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