One of those days.

It’s been one of those. Long, frustrating, not particularly frustrating. Full of scary things and big things and things that throw big shadows.

A real estate agent came through the house today do give me opinions of whether I could rent it out furnished or partially furnished or unfurnished. She left me handfuls of paper explaining this, and encouraging that, and mentioned that I would need to outlay rather more money than I want on some repairs and possibly some modifications. I will have to engage with the opaque mortgage documentation, and front up to the bank, and squeeze it all into the middles of working days.

Meanwhile I still have a ridiculous amount of packing and purging to do, a mountain of day-to-day housework, a garden which has gone completely feral.

My new work computer is very fast, but the missing instructions for installing all the working environment meant that I spent the whole day repeatedly finding out that it was still stuffed up, vey quickly. The urgent issues may or may not have been urgent, and were political, and messy, and people are flailing and everything has to be done right now.

But here at the end of an overlong day I’m sitting on a train, and the middle-aged hippy across from me has taken out her guitar and is quietly noodling away. It’s an old guitar with a great wide strap made of dark brown crocodile skin. Her fingernails are short, and her fingers calloused from playing, and I can barely hear the guitar over the train noise even though we are sitting knee-to-knee. And that’s what I need right at this moment, and it makes the day ok.

Only if my hair is on fire.

I think I need to educate, or re-educate, my cow-orkers to understand what it means when I put on headphones while working. And there are one or two that I really need to tell that I cannot hear them if they come up behind me and speak softly to attract my attention. On the other hand, most of the reason is that I have run out of attention to spare.

There are certain classes of IT problems that end up occupying my entire consciousness and are extremely difficult to let go of when I walk out the door, particularly if they take several days to resolve. Maybe physicists and philosophers have better mental work benches, and can put the work down to re-emerge from their deep congnitive dives without the bends. I can’t.

If the nature of the problem is both time-bound and space-bound, I need to disappear inside my own head. What I mean is when the symptoms of the problem and the behaviour of possible contributors is spread across human-scale rather than machine-scale time, and where more than one thread of operation is in play, where computation is smeared across the possibility space.

I really have no perfect tool for disecting these sorts of problems. My workbench is scattered with a variety of tools for working on different parts of the problem. If you looked over my shoulder you would usually see that I have a text file open called “notes” or “defect xyz”, which is a mix of apparently context-free reminders to myself and a scantily sketched monologue as I propose and reject different theories. You would usually see a paper notepad with faint pencil scribbles, and a variety of abstract diagrams, mostly scratched out. I would probably have an IDE open with code highlighted, and a terminal window showing logs. What you cannot see is what’s in my head: elaborate mental models of what I believe to be the space-like computational state smeared across the problem time. The visible symbols are just reminders, annotations, histories of abandoned models.

There are two implications of this. First, I can’t put it down when I go home, or to eat, or to sleep. A sufficiently complex set of models will take up all my thoughts, there’s just no room in my head for any other sensible responses or rational thoughts. I become a dreamwalking zombie. Second, and possibly most pertinently: if you ask me to take my headphones off and pay attention to you, there’s a very high probability that the mental model currently being constructed will collapse, and I have to start from the beginning again. Your five minute interruption will probably blow an hour or more’s work.

So please. If I’ve got my headphones on, please, please don’t ask me to emerge from my fugue state even if the room is on fire. Only if it has spread far enough that my hair is burning.

Cass Vs Rob

You can see in these two bits of video from the Glenn Lachlan boys what I meant about me not being patient and letting Cassian come to me – you can see the points where in my head I decide that I need to force the issue because it’s getting boring. Which is very silly of me:

This was the initial 4 minute bout

and the “sudden death” because we were even on points

Swordplay ’11

So. Last weekend was the Swordplay ’11 event, over three days. A quick summary of the weekend:

Friday – catching up with folk I’d not seen for a while, and having some fun play bouts – sword and targe versus sword and buckler with Tim was particularly amusing as I found it nigh impossible to either get around the targe or trick him into doing something silly. We trotted off to lunch at the Flying Nun, during which the heavens opened up and dumped a considerable amount of rain while we tried to convince Puck Curtis that it never rains at this time of year. Through the afternoon I had the distinct pleasure of an impromptu Destreza-101 from Puck, where he dumped about six months of lessons into us in a few hours. The guy is not only a really good swordsman, he’s an outstanding teacher.

Saturday was given over to a full day workshop with Puck, which he broke into two parts. Just over half the day was devoted to working through a set of 10 drills from Rada, and the rest to a flying trup through the basic principles of Destreza, built on top of the Rada drills. Chatting with Puck he mentioned that a translation of Rada is in progress and should be appearing online soon, something which I’m particularly looking forward to: not only are they a nice set of drills just for the sake of drilling, they are beautifully constructed from a didactic and pedagogical point of view. Each builds on the previous, they are self-correcting, and they each allow exploration of variations and subtelties. Touch wood I can turn them into a daily exercise next year.

Sunday was necessarily tied up with the tournament, which flowed very nicely. I’ve mentioned it elsewhere, but I was particularly struck by the high degree of courtesy and civility between all participants, by the good quality of the fencing, and came away convinced that the outcome of the tournament was an accurate reflection of the quality of the fencers and a quality of their play. The rules have been simplified and refined over the past few years, and this eliminated the ways in which the scoring system could be deliberately or inadvertently gamed.

The structure of the tournament was tinkered as well, with a “sword” tournament, a “longsword” tournament intended to encourage the Germanic schools to play, and a “mixed” or “open” tournament for the top few particpants in the other two to come together with their weapons of choice. Which pretty well resulted in a lot of longsword versus rapier and dagger, which was great fun for everyone. All in all a significant success for Scott MacDonald.

I’d entered the tournaments for the hell of it, and really didn’t care much about my personal outcomes. I had fun and learned things, and that was and is the only thing that matters to me. Having said that, I want to make some quick notes about my bouts while they are fresh in my mind, so that I can figure out how to improve.

My first longsword bout was with Cassian Humphries. Me in the longsword was a bit silly, as I’ve done very little serious longsword study, and tend to just bang around with a bit of PSSF stuff, a bit of Fiore-ish stuff, and a bit of German-ish stuff. And because we’d had the workshops on Saturday, a bit of Destreza. Cassian had done even less longsword than me, but he’s bigger than me, a lot faster, and a hell of a lot stronger. I did manage to take the bout to sudden-death using a variety of old-man-cunning tricks, but he kept cutting me across the stomach. It wasn’t until a lot later in the day that I could see what he was doing, with a techinque that he’d picked up somewhere and used repeatedly, and effectively: when he was ready to jump in and commit, he’d drop his sword down to the side a bit, do an enormously strong beat with the false edge on a rising cut, then bring it back in a screamingly fast horizontal cut across the belly. I just wish I’d spotted it earlier!

The second longsword bout was a bit of a cheat, as I played with Delia. The trouble with that is because we know each other so well, I was able to just rely on outreaching her, or outmuscling her by taking her sword high and swatting her as she released. All things I will not get away with again.

The way the tournament draw worked (there were an odd number of particpants, so the odd man out at each level fenced a randomly drawn loser from the previous round), I lucked out and went up with Cassian again. The result was fair and unambiguous: as Chris Slee said, I didn’t cover my belly and got hit across it repeatedly. My own sily damned fault. The ultimate reason for it though was interesting: each pass, I resolved to just hang out and wait for Cassian to come to me, to deal with him on my terms. And each time, after waiting a while, the PSSF instinct tickled my brain “hey, nothing’s happening, it’s boring for the audience, do something”, and in I would go, throwing something to draw out a response – which he ignored each time, did the false-edge beat, and cut me across the gut. So it goes.

My initial sword bout with Tim Harris was great fun. I think I had poor Tim at a disadvantage – we’d talked about what combination of weapons we might play with before hand, and I was encouraging him to use his targe, but he opted out of courtesy for the rules to use a borrowed buckler instead with his backsword. I’d also borrowed a sword, to fit in the weapons specification, and found it was a lovely little snakey thing that moved like lightning. Thus it felt like Tim was caught out by the buckler being smaller than he expected, and I was able to sneak shots over the top. For some reason we kept getting stuck in the corner – it could have been that’s where the shade was best!

The next sword bout was fun, but highlights my defects rather well. Bob Dodson is getting fast, and has developed good accuracy on the thrust. We had a yarn just before we went on and opted just to go for rapier alone, for the hell of it. The outcome was rather telling – any time I compromised my distance, Bob would pop in a thrust, usually to my right shoulder as I attempted one of the big open attacks we’re conditioned by PSSF to do. If I went far enough around to his right, I could get the cut or thrust over his sword into his head, but I found myself tired enough – and my right elbow was starting to really hurt again – that I couldn’t do that consistently, and he knocked me out of contention. And again, there’s no argument that the most martially correct fencing carried the day there.

Looking back over the notes above, which I’ve dribbled out through the day in gaps in my work, the word that sticks out is “fun”. I had fun in the competition bouts, and fun in the competition, which surprises me. I usually do not like or enjoy competition much, and very much prefer to play with swords in a context where I can just bash around and explore things, the sort of play where you can say “that was cool, do it again so I can figure it out”. On the other hand, I do agree with Scott MacDonald’s assertion: if you’re serious about studying these obsolete arts, you need to take it out and test drive your ideas.

The tournament component of Swordplay XX (and I really wish more people would remember that the tournament component is only a minor part of the event) is evolving into a really nice place to test yourself, and schools to test themselves. The atmosphere is collegiate and respectful, the stakes are low and abstract, and there’s no shame or loss in not coming out on top of the ladder.

Justin popped up to the top of all three bits of the tournament not because he’s fit, strong, fast, and tall. He’s taken in the sworplay ideas from his school, learned them well, and applied them with great technical competence. Next year he might do the same, or it might be someone else, and it doesn’t matter: the aim of the tournament is met, individuals and schools tested themselves, and everyone had fun doing it.

A final note though. It really saddened me that so few from PSSF came along on the Saturday, and to a lesser extent on the Friday. PSSF had a performance gig on Sunday, so it was understandable that people may not come to watch the tournament, and it is appreciable that folk may have trouble getting out of work on the Friday to take more advantage of the social fencing. But for folk to pass up the opportunity to attend a workshop with someone of Puck’s stature is inexplicable. For folk to pass up the opportunity to spend time with their peers and confreres from other states and schools is just sad. There’s nothing to lose in going out to have a bash around with other sword students, and much to gain. And the really silly thing? Once more people from other schools expressed disappointment that they couldn’t meet with and talk to PSSF students because they wanted to find out how PSSF achieves their fluidity and style.

The tongue-in-cheek motto that Scott has launched for Swordplay ’12 says it all: “If you’re not there, you’re not serious”.

Things I Won’t Miss: Item The Second

I was going to write a big rant about public transport in Brisbane, again, and even began writing one. But there’s really not much point. And I really should try to follow the dictum about remaining silent unless I have something nice to say. But I don’t.

So here it is. My message to Translink, and to Queensland Rail, and to Brisbane City Council and the Moreton Bay Regional Council: guys and gals, your transport system sucks. It’s broken, it’s annoying, it’s expensive, it’s slow, and it’s getting worse.

I’m pretty sure I’m going to be facing trains that are more crowded, probably more grubby, roads that are more packed, buses that are more rattly. But it won’t be in an environment where the service providers keep telling me that they’ve provided a great service, and that they mostly run to time and I shouldn’t expect perfection, and that the 15% fare increase so far this year is because I wanted it.

So no, I’m not going to miss any part of getting around Brisbane.

Things I will Miss: Item the First

Gum trees. And jacarandas, and leopard trees, and those sprawling shady ones with bright red flowers. And the trees in the neighbourhood – such that remain after the frenzy of tree lopping subsequent to the Big Storms before the Big Floods distracted the lopperatzi. But gum trees in particular. Not just the way they look, with their shaggy shambling foliage, and the startling diversity of textures in their bark. And not just the way they smell, although that will be part of it.

Have you ever stopped to notice how the smell of gums changes through the day, and through the year? In the cool morning air the eucalyptus scent is subtle, penetrating, ringing like a very faint chime in the distance. Under a summer sun as the cicadas ratchet up to electric intensity the scent boils out like a great soft heavy blanket. And as the sun sets the smell becomes dusty and smokey. I imagine there will be some other trees that take their place, and I know there are gums all over the world now – some of the oddest cognitive dissonance watching the continuing collapse of the old regime in Libya is seeing rows of gum trees along the street, presumably planted in the ’40s or ’50s. Maybe I will smell cypresses, or yews, or mountain-side conifers instead.

But in the end there is nothing that says Australia, or Brisbane, more than a towering grey green white grey gum tree in the evening with cockatoos or galahs or rosellas hanging heavy on the branch like fruit ready to drop, or a gum tree in the early morning with a family of squabbling kookaburras or caroling magpies.

I think I will miss gum trees.

Things I won’t miss. Item the First

The weather. Really, anyone outside Brisbane must think we live in an idyllic sub-tropical paradise, featuring sunshine and palm trees and tall cool drinks. In point of fact, the weather is a big contributor to my decision to Get The Hell Out Of Here.

Don’t get me wrong – April and October are glorious. Both are crisply cool at the right times of the day, and pleasantly warm at the others, and both have skies so clear that we can read the writing on the plaques on the moon. April in Brisbane invigorates, and October excites. I find the rest of the year alternately poisonous and irritating.

The long crawl into and through Summer is characterised by high temperatures and high humidity, and the violent storms bring no relief, only more water to saturate the air. It’s too hot not to be in the shade, and the still damp air in the shade requires scuba gear to breathe. Your skin feels sticky all the time, and your clothes cling to you like plastic wrap.

Winter is almost worse, and last weekend was a good example. We were camped out for a living history event, a most pleasant and fun weekend hosted by Condottieri. The nights were cool – not cold, it never gets that cold in Brisbane, only down to the point of needing a blanket or too, and a warm coat to go to the nearest tree when required – and the mornings were crisp. And the middle of the day was damned hot in the sun, too hot to really be wearing heavy 15th century clothes, let alone flailing around with swords and halberds. And on Sunday it rained. Now rain is ok. It was cool rain, and heavier than I enjoyed knowing that the tent was not going to be dry when I took it down, but not unpleasant. Until it stopped, and the day just turned sullen and warm and sodden and damp.

One or the other is pleasant. Hot and dry. Cold and dry. Even cold and damp, or cold and wet, can be borne and worked around. But Hot and Wet is awful, debilitating, draining, and inescapable.

So no, I won’t miss Brisbane weather. Except maybe a little bit in April and October.

Here we go

We’ve talked about this for a long time in general terms. We’ve talked about it for most of the year in specific terms. And now, having booked plane tickets to fly out of Brisbane at 3:00 AM on November 25th, we’re talking about it in absolutely concrete terms.

I’m not counting down. I’ve promised to not count down. But my goodness there’s a lot to get done.

I am surprised how complicated it is to clear the house out in preparation for renting it. I would have thought that I would be overrun by people wanting cheap or free Stuff, but that’s not proving the case. Oh, I listed a lot of tools for ridiculously low prices, and most of that has gone, or is going. I’ve passed along a few books (and there’s another 98 listed available for the taking in this list. There’s a few simple things that I’ve done, or can do. The filing cabinet has been purged, and is gone, and most of the should-retain paper is boxed up. I’ll take all the CDs out of their cases and put them in sleeves in a small box. And probably do the same with DVDs. I know where the computers are going, and where I can store things.

But good grief, every time I look in a cupboard I think “what on earth will I do with this”.

Perhaps we should have a garage/house/porch sale. Put everything on the floor and say “take it, it’s yours”

Listening for a voice that is gone

My cat has died, and my heart is aching. Miss Kitty is gone away forever, and I am shattered.

She was in the cattery over the weekend while I was away at Abbey, and as I drove out to get her on Monday afternoon they rang to tell me that she had passed away on Sunday night. I went to see her a last time, and she was curled up in a rug as though asleep. Gone.

They say that she was happy and content and comfortable when they left her on Sunday night, and that she looked to have just passed away quietly in her sleep. She is gone, and I am shattered.

She was my companion, my friend, a personality even though not a person, a mind and a soul, cat-shaped but present. I lived with her for over twenty years, longer than I lived with anyone, longer than I lived with my parents. My cat has died, and my heart is aching.

She was so tiny, even when she was plump, and sparklingly alive. Her ears were torn – once from having a go at a Boxer dog, once from chasing an irate pheasant hen. In her youth she was a ferocious mouser, a terror to grasshoppers, and once bought me a pigeon. She ate lemon grass, and pestered me for the freshest green tips. I grew extra for her, and she would sleep beneath it.

Miss Kitty is gone away forever, and I am shattered.

I keep listening for her, wondering where she is. She talked a lot, telling me where she was and what she was doing, always seeking me out to be near me. She always knew when I was sad, or lonely, or sick, and would lean up against me to sleep. I open the front door, and wonder why she is not there to greet me, or calling out to let me know where she is. I open the back door, and wonder why she’s not waiting to come in and be fed. I see the places in the garden where she has squirmed around and made cat-sized depressions to sleep in the sun.

My cat has died, and my heart is aching.

 

Miss Kitty’s Villanelle

Review – Teaching and Interpreting Historical Swordsmanship

Brian R. Price, ed.
ISBN 1-891448-46-3

This slim volume is very much a mixed batch. Reading it I could not quite decide if that was intentional, or the result of somewhat imprecise invitations to contribute, and I’m unlikely to ever know which it was.

Brian Price put together this collection of essays from a very wide variety of modern teachers and interpreters of historical swordplay some years ago, and it is intriguing to compare what was published here and how things are standing now, particularly as there is a growing movement toward providing a space for competition in historical sword play.

Putting aside any carping, most of the articles in here were fascinating, and there is a high degree of agreement between different teachers around the approach to Teaching and Interpreting swordplay. A handful of articles deal with specific technique, a handful use specific technique to illustrate a teacher’s approach to interpretation or teaching, and some like Stephen Hand’s look at a philosophy of teaching and interpretation.

It was this latter topic that particularly interested me (although Johann Heim’s article on versetzen introduced me to a lovely set of longsword ideas), and the topic that had broad agreement from the other authors. There is a core didactic problem with teaching from historical manuals, or from interpretations of historical manuals. If we go back 10 or 15 years, there was such a paucity of material available, and in such poor quality, that there was a fair degree of emphasis on interpreting the illustrations, not the accompanying text. Serious students quickly discovered that this was woefully inadequate, and that the text was the important thing, with the illustrations supporting the text, rather than the other way around.

That’s where things get messy. As Chris Tobler notes, these texts are not only in very foreign languages, they are littered with dense jargon and precise technical terms that are seldom explained. That makes interpretation – in both senses of the word – difficult, but there’s evidence from these articles that there is a definite trend toward collaborative and cooperative interpretation, enchanced and not detracted by differing interpretations of specific techniques.

The nice thing that is happening is that there has been a general recognition that historical manuals contain codifications of principles, exemplified by specific applications of those principles, and illustrated in part by the images. There are a variety of these general principles held up as exemplars – Silver’s times, the Lichtenauer Versetzen and the guards in Fiore/Vadi.

Balanced against these more philosophical articles are some really nice descriptions of different ways of managing the activity in the salle, different approaches to drills, and even a nice article on how to deal with different personalities and body sizes.

A few of the articles are a bit grating – Price’s own contribution spends some time talking about himself and his experiences, and Chelak’s felt somewhat vague – but overall this is a collection well worth reading.

The context of teaching and interpreting swordplay in the modern world is obviously hugely different to the historical context, and there are significant modern difficulties that need to be overcome. It is encouraging that there is patently a broad and intelligent community of teachers and interpreters considering the difficulties, and communicating a variety of very nice solutions.