Category Archives: Swordplay

Professional Meetings and Exercise – Why Dancing Matters

I’m currently in Calgary attending the Advances in Stable Isotope Techniques and Applications (ASITA) meeting. This, like all professional meetings, is a challenge for people who like to work out daily. There just isn’t enough hours in the day, it seems, to attend the various parts of the meeting and get a good workout in.Continue reading “Professional Meetings and Exercise – Why Dancing Matters”

Summer Garage

It’s that time of year again. I can finally be relatively confident that I won’t wake up in the morning to find it snowed a foot. That doesn’t mean it can’t happen, but the likelihood is pretty low. At this point, I don’t live with the fear that if I park the car outside overnight, I’ll have to scrape a thick rind of ice off the car in the morning. I probably won’t be shoveling snow any more. I won’t need the snow thrower again for several months.

This is when I decide it’s time to convert from ‘winter garage’ to ‘summer garage.’Continue reading “Summer Garage”

Anxiety, Risk, and Swordplay

This month’s National Novel Writing Month (NaBloPoMo) theme is ‘risk.’ All of the prompts are focused upon the concept of taking risks, accepting that even a slight chance of success is worth risking failure.

I enjoy NaBloPoMo and have been participating by at least writing one blog post per day since last November. This month’s theme struck a little close to home, which has inspired me to write this post.Continue reading “Anxiety, Risk, and Swordplay”

Swordplay: Why do I do this?

It’s Saturday night and I am lying on my bed (writing this post). My entire body aches. I’m trying to identify any major muscle groups that don’t hurt right now. Even my finger muscle hurt (in my forearms). What have I done to myself?

Today I had a sword lesson. Actually several.

 

After spending several months searching, I finally found a sword instructor willing to teach me the longsword as well as the entire discipline of the western martial arts. Such instruction is hard to find, because most current sword instruction out there is primarily in sport fencing. I’m not interested in sport fencing; I don’t want to go to the Olympics. I want to know the entirety of the western martial arts, or historical European martial arts, or the knightly arts of swordplay. This includes the longsword as well as smallsword, rapier, saber, and foil fencing. But it’s a martial art, not a game of who can touch whom more often. There’s the mentality with it, and the rigorous discipline.

I found an instructor willing to teach me the longsword, but only after teaching me the more applicable skills of classical fencing. Everything I learn about classical fencing will parlay into the smallsword, then ultimately into the longsword. But no longsword until I master fencing and the smallsword.

I’ve accepted this. I have no argument. The longsword is a very specialized weapon. Certainly not something one might ever carry on one’s hip on a day-to-day basis. Fencing teaches a sound basis for all manner of swordplay. Necessary things like balance and footwork, and more fundamentally an awareness of where your body is as well as the point of your sword.

I have been completely delighted to begin the journey into swordcraft. The only challenge is that this instructor is two hours drive away from my home. While lessons and classes are conveniently on Saturday, it is still not practical to take a lesson each week. Instead, I make the trip once or twice a month, join in two consecutive classes (one beginning, one advanced), then take a private lesson. That’s two and a half hours of fencing fun. It makes the trip worthwhile, but it makes the body very, very weary.

Why, then, do I do this? That’s a lot of driving to beat the crap out of myself. And, as I’ve noted, I’m actually not learning exactly what I set out to learn in the first place. And seriously, what good is it to learn the sword anyway? At least Karate can be used in self-defense, but it’s not like I’m going to now start strolling down the street with a sword on my belt. Right? Is this not just a waste of time and money?

The reason is simple. It’s not just because of the sword. It’s not just the romance of it, or the coolness factor. In practicing swordplay, I’m learning a lot about myself. What am I actually capable of? What can’t I do, and how can I compensate (I’m 40, I don’t bend like I used to)? I’ve learned that I have a lot more strength than I thought. I’ve tapped into that endless energy that I recall from my youth.

These are powerful things. It helps me slog through a brutal week. It gives me the strength to say ‘no.’ Or to say ‘yes’ when it needs to be said. It makes me feel like I’m in control of my body and emotions like I have never felt before. Undoubtedly, these feelings will get better.

I’m sore today. And I’ll really hurt tomorrow. But it’s totally worth it. If I could do it every week, I would. I feel good about how things are going. I feel like I’m improving and developing. It’s a wonderful way to feel when you’re middle-aged and have been thinking like it’s too late to start something new.

Totally worth it, indeed!

HEMA – inspiration through perspiration

It seems that a great number of practitioners of the Historical European Martial Arts (HEMA – think of them as the Knightly Arts of Swordplay) are also writers and enjoyers of great literature. This seems to be the case for women, anyway. I am a member of an international group of female HEMA participants, called Esfinges, and this question was put forward to the writers in the group:

How many of you are inspired in your art by the things you read, and what in particular inspires you?

I hadn’t really thought about it. I know that attempting to write a novel that included swordplay is what made me seek out an instructor so that I could finally properly study HEMA. But I was already interested. I’d been fascinated with swordplay and the discipline of knighthood for what seems to have been the better part of my life. But I’ve also always wanted to be a writer. So which came first, the sword or the pen?

It’s funny as I think about it, because I think both followed from imagery. I know this, because images of swords have been a part of my repertoire for years. Check out this painting I did in high school. There are swords there. I was trying to capture a moonlit battle. I don’t think I succeeded, but I still like the painting.

Caniberons sword fighting. Acrylic on canvas board. Done back in high school. See? My interest in swordplay goes way back! All rights reserved.
Caniberons sword fighting. Acrylic on canvas board. Done back in high school. See? My interest in swordplay goes way back! All rights reserved.

When I think about the sword, I see pictures. Images of the gallant knight on his steed. The violent battle, ending with the battered and bloodied knight kneeling in prayer over his lifeless opponent. I feel it in my chest – the pounding of my heart. And in my arms and back – the violent shock of steel meeting steel. Reading solidifies these images, as does watching sword fights (especially those that are realistically choreographed), or looking at page after page of photos in knights in armor. Writing is how I try to express these feeling and visual impressions. Actively participating further helps me find that connection between the real and the envisioned.

Then I write and practice more, and rewrite and read books and papers, and I rewrite once more after pondering deeply for a few days.

Both my writing and my desire to participate in HEMA derive their inspiration from the images conjured in my head when thinking about the knightly arts. I have always felt that European swordplay is one of the most elegant displays of art in action. There is beauty in the discipline that crosses over to all arenas of life. I long for that peace that comes from such mastery of the body and mind, that is reflected in HEMA. I struggle to express it in my writing. I hope some day to find it and feel it. It’s there. I know it.