Free JOURNEY - on Mastering Ukemi by Daniel Linden

that until my dogs came into the room and insisted on getting in the middle of the big hug and then they got all the attention like they believed they should.
     
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    The airlines’ new security regulations make it both easier and harder to fly than it used to be. It’s harder because of all the lines and waiting and searches of your athletic bags and shoes. And easier because you say goodbye to your loved ones back at the curb or the ticket counter or the main concourse. Once you get over that hurdle, that saying goodbye, then your trip has really begun and everything takes on a different look and feel. You might still be right there in your hometown and be able to look out the window and see a building or a lake or a mountain range that tells you that you are at home, but you’re already gone. The momentum has begun. The rush of travel picks you up and gets the old adrenalin pumping and you feel a little giddy, your heart pounds a little harder and looking back is something you don’t even consider for a moment.
    I think that this has to do with commitment. The decision to engage in travel or any endeavor that moves you from one place to another (both literally and figuratively) is not one that is undertaken lightly by most people. We decide to do something or engage in something or undertake something and then plan, envision, anticipate, organize, worry, imagine, fear, long for and finally commit to it. But once the commitment is engaged we tend not to look back. Or at least those who are warriors try not to look back.
    Ukemi is attack and escape. The idea of attacking half-heartedly is dangerous at best and lethal at worst. In aikido we must temper the knowledge of what nage is going to do with us (and we usually know what this is) with the need to commit the attack with beginner’s mind. That is, we know we are going to be pinned, thrown or rolled; yet each time we attack we need to do it as if we are going to be victorious in our attack. We need to maintain the notion of suspended disbelief. To do otherwise we would be uncommitted. To be a proper uke , we need total commitment; otherwise nage cannot feel and experience the flow of ki and movement necessary to train to mastership. We need it for ourselves and therefore it must be reciprocal on the part of all who study aikido. Think about getting on an airplane.
    October rose up through the sweltering summer heat like mountains rising above Highway 70 heading west across Colorado. At first you don’t want to believe it, that it could be true, but then driving up across a small mesa you see that first clear sight of a huge fourteener rising high into the western sky and you finally give in and admit that those images aren’t a bank of clouds but the Rocky Mountains. In Florida you finally admit that the hint of coolness on the wind – that first hint of fall – is the harbinger of the end of summer’s heat. October arrives like that in Florida. At first it is just another sweltering hot summer day, but by the time you turn the calendar leaf the nineties are gone and the first good strong cold front has drifted through and you begin to believe that the long hot days are finally over and that reason has come into the world once again.
    So finally on the eve of our departure let me at last be completely honest. Let me say the thing that I have to say and that has bothered me like a hangnail for the last 60-odd pages. Okay, here goes.
    Christian could not take true ukemi if his life depended on it. There, it’s that simple. How a young, athletic guy with all his coordination and skill could be so bad at this thing, I don’t know, but there you are, and this is why I really want to go on this long-ass road trip with him; to see if I can turn him around.
    I want to see if I can get through to him, make the scales fall from his eyes, open his heart, show him the way and guide him down the tunnel to the light. Oh, he falls fine. He takes beautiful soundless rolls