I’ll admit, sometimes I feel like I can identify more with Deguchi than O Sensei.
My (staying vague for now) childhood pain also bled me to feel the urge to “impact society” through adopting a trickster persona. So, I know how that feels. I might’ve actually been possessed by a coyote spirit—who knows? I'm not saying it’s a bad thing—pop-culture shamanism—I’m not ashamed of my past; I'm just making a cursory reference to it, as is customary in written dissertations. Even clumsy ones like this.
The nature of my own four souls is clear to me.
One soul simply wants to be a psychographical stoner, a hypnagogic sojournalist.
One wants to be a mystical martial artsy philosopher—and is disappointed by the lack of an Alan Watts accent, stronger ankles, and a full head of hair I could put up in a bun.
One wants to be an orangutan, more or less.
And one just kinda pouts about being a mildly delusional nobody from New York.
Five months ago, in earnest, I decided to "start focusing on Aikido more."
What that meant was, in addition to training 12 hours a week, I would write about Aikido instead of penning depressing dystopian songs and lyrical essays protesting techno-fascism.
What I’ve found so far is that Aikido is incredibly hard to write about…
Actually, that's not true. It’s pretty easy to write about as long as you just disregard the moldy opinions of the online gatekeepers.
If you have any semblance of an inner self—which I know some people say is illusory—but if you believe that you have one, if you admit to having an inner abiding spirit, a Naohi—and you're not one of those few people said to lack a narrative voice in their mind, then you've surely composed your own story about Aikido. Or, if you’re literarily gaudy and awkward like me, maybe you’ve composed some prose poems.
If you don't practice Aikido and somehow you’ve managed to stumble upon this obscure project—whenever you see the word Aikido—substitute it with whatever it is you're obsessed with. If you're obsessed with Pickleball, if Pickleball is your thing, every time you see the word Aikido just think of Pickleball. And whenever I mention “O Sensei” just substitute Joel Pritchard, Bill Bell, and Barney McCallum. (They invented pickleball, I looked it up.)
I've been obsessed with other physical activities: badminton, tango…
I guess that's pretty much it—I mean, as far as activities go—of course—I've been obsessed with people and places—but as far as being physically obsessed with the euphoria of participating in a specific activity—it’s only really ever been badminton, tango, and Aikido that put me in that “flow state.”
So, the fact that this exercise—Aikido—brings me to such a heightened state—and the fact that I keep going back to the dojo… yeah, you could say I'm addicted. I have an addictive personality—after all—my parents were junkies. I'm not saying that to disparage them; I'm just telling you where I come from. My life has seemingly been a series of substituting one addiction for another. I've been addicted to sugar, cereal, cookies, crayons, cartoons, fruit punch, chocolate milk, ice cream, Reese's Pieces, Hubba Bubba, Bubblicious, baseball cards, foreign films, pills, potions, lotions—everything, you name it…
(Okay, I was never really addicted to lotions, but I’m a sucker for sonority.)
So, after living with myself for almost 50 years, I’d say that what I'm looking for now lies mostly in the realm of theurgy—further merging with the universe. Even if my perceived separation from the universe is an illusion based on my limited scope. And…
Aikido is theurgy.
Quote me on that.
