I have since discovered that the meaninglessness of life is not a burden. It is an opportunity. If there are no reasons to exist, there are no constricting boundaries. If being alive will impose nothing on me beyond feeding and nourishing my body; then I must be free to create my own way. I want to create my own meaning.
I wasn't going to survive my own ignorance the way I was going. I couldn't bear my own lack of understanding. I would get low; and question why I was alive. I would think of death as a better alternative. Sometimes, when I got deep into despair, the only justification for not killing myself was that I had an obligation to live so that those who cared for me wouldn't feel upset if I died. The only tangible reason I could find for getting out of bed in the morning was social momentum. My day had to be performed because I needed to act out my own life, and impersonate the likeness of other people. I needed to do this because it was amongst the things that are done. There was no other reason to exist beyond the fact that I should join everyone else. I felt like a balloon made out of someone elses skin, inflated with rented air.
I had no reason to be alive. Without one; I was going to die. Not in any way I had control over. I probably don't have the courage to kill myself. I can think of much more horrible ways to be extinguished. I could lose my life and my sentience slowly and mundanely. I could spend my life with no higher goal than ameliorating my boredom. I could waft through a meaningless life filled with secondary obligations; wishing it was the weekend, then the holidays, then my retirement, then to die old and empty. I didn't need to wait until then to achieve that. I felt old and empty already. I have asked myself enough times before if death was a better option to know I needed strength to continue on. So I sought it in Tokai.
I learned there that I was so terrified of the trajectory of my life that I wanted to flee from myself into the strongest Judo university that I knew of as a way to escape it. I was afraid of the training; but I was more afraid of myself. I went in armed with an existential fear strong enough to drive me on. It turned out to to be a potent weapon. I took the energy that my fear gave me and I used it to create a way to throw Judo students who were paid, who had flown from distant countries with the intention of becoming stronger. My fear was strong enough to give me the motivation to persevere at costs others wouldn't.
If I was going to die; I wanted to do it on my own terms. My fear gave me a purpose. I adapted and changed for a radically different environment. I saw my body as little more than a vehicle of my will. I adapted my Judo and I became capable of achieving what I, what anyone did not believe possible. I got to a stage where I could no longer be thrown by some of my opponents, some of which had contracts and were employed to train with me. I got to a level of fitness where occasionally, when I got the overhand grip on my opponents, some of them had to stop randoori, or sparring with me, because they were too exhausted to continue. I got to a level of Judo where people were asking me my name; my rank in Australia; who taught me; and if I could teach them. I got there because I came up with my own style.
...
I created drunken Judo by mixing three martial arts or styles together. It feels different to Judo to me because to use drunken Judo requires some violations of foundational Judo concepts. I blended Judo, Drunken Boxing, and a small but critical Aikido component into one artform. I consider it an artform, a sport, and a martial art; in that order. I consider it necessary to identify it with a different name to Judo because drunken Judo technique has a different methodology to Judo. For instance, it has no Jigotai position (defensive judo posture that looks a little like a horse riding stance), and the approach to footwork is different. Its not just eccentric or weirdo Judo (although clearly it is these things too). When I do what I do well; I can throw people using approaches which ought not be possible under ordinary Judo.
It has the grammar and most of the syntax and structure of Judo. All the throws remain pretty much untouched. But it also had a lot of introduced loan words and some underlying structure of Drunken Boxing. The approach to grip work and balance I have taken from what I think Drunken Boxing is. And the only way that these two styles could be meshed together was with an Aikido concept that bound the two together. I know nothing really of Aikido or Drunken Boxing beyond some limited experiences, and Kung Fu movies (respectively). This is likely an advantage; as the more I would know the more snags I would hit trying to mesh incompatible styles together.
...
There were a few critical precursory experiences I had, to be capable of coming up with Drunken Judo. It would not have been possible for me to train at Tokai had I not had them.
a) Drunken Balance
I was walking drunk one night on a moving train. I opened the door that separated two different cars and as I was passing through, I stood on the outer lip of the opposite car. My feet were straddled across the connecting join between the cars. As I sunk my weight onto the floors, the train hit a bump and lurched. I had my weight on my foot on the car closest to me. My two feet separated outwards. It felt almost exactly like an Ashiwaza attack, or a foot sweep. Without thinking; or acknowledging what was happening; I used the forward momentum of my hips and slid my weight onto the foot that was on the furthest car, on the lurching floor. I rebalanced like it had never happened. It was a bit surreal, it felt like it should have been impossible. A several ton machine had just Ashiwaza attacked me; and I flowed through its force and recovered my balance like it didn't happen. I instantly realized I had just felt a significant concept. I casually used my momentum and drunkenly fluid balance, and together they protected me from being toppled from a force too strong to oppose with a rigid sturdy footing.
b) Emotional Balance
When I went to boarding school; other students would bait me emotionally. They would tell me that some other student my age had insulted me; my mother, stolen my things. Then they would watch and cheer as I exploded and went off to seek my revenge against him. The students who were skilled at this never hurt me. They never needed to. They made it so I hurt myself by reacting to them. It is a truly confusing and alienating experience when someone can reach inside you and manipulate you emotionally to a point where you cannot identify if they are hurting you or you are hurting yourself. You tear the inner lining of your mind apart in anger; not understanding how to protect yourself. They join you in attacking yourself; and you are quickly outnumbered. I learned my distrust and fear of people during this time in my life; and I learned that my mind could be turned against myself to the advantage of others.
In Glasgow I used to train with an experienced player. He had an interesting technique that exploited my emotions. He would get his grip and rattle the lapel grip under my chin. He had no intention of using this position to throw me. He would just hang there and harass me with baiting swipes. It was not enough to warrant a Shido, or penalty, for being too passive; but also not enough to break my balance and throw me. I couldn't get around his grips, no matter how hard I tried. He would keep irritating me with this grip; keep pestering me and shaking my head. I would get irate; then angry. My eyes would turn red and I would lose my patience; and lunge at him. Then he would invariably throw me. It was actually really cool. This example showed me that balance can be manipulated elsewhere than just on an opponents body. You can break an opponents mental balance.
c) The cooperative nature of Judo.
A few years ago; my Judo was terrible. It still is, but at least it was much worse than it is now. I couldn't relax and didn't understand that I needed to. So when I was told to loosen up so my partner could throw me in training; I did my best to impersonate the example of relaxation that my teachers gave me. I tried to imitate their example. It didn't work; it was actually worse. My body was too rigid for my opponent to drill their throws. My partner's throws were designed to apply against people; but I was locked up like a statue. There was a training; one player started swearing at me because I was trying to cooperate with his throws, but by doing so, was denying him the ability to do it. He asked me if being thrown hurt; and why did I train if it did.
Since then I have gone to the other extreme and become so loose that it is also a problem for my training partners. But this experience taught me something critical. Ukemi, or breakfalling, is taught as something Uke (the person being thrown) needs to do to prevent injury to themselves or to Tori (the attacker) when Tori throws them. Ukemi is only really observable after a throw, when Uke hits the mat. I discovered that Uke's contribution to the throw is much more than that. What Uke does in a throw is more than just the break fall. Uke actually participates with Tori's movement before and during a throw.
There is a way you must hold your body in order for a Tori's technique to work. And so Judo throws are not really just a one sided attack that is solely Tori's per se; it is more like a dance movement; both partners must participate with one another for one to successfully throw the other. Both players throw one player. You have to participate to be successfully thrown. Once you can identify what that participation is; then you can refuse to do it with your opponent. I have found that if I hold my body like a drunk; my opponents cannot throw me easily; because I have turned my mind to my part of the throw; and refused to participate with it.
d) Absorbing Force
I went to an Aikido class in Glasgow. I can't remember the name of the technique we drilled, and my memory of it is likely to be clouded. I think it involved Tori getting a hand on Uke's jaw and pushing backward. In my mind it looked much like the Kuzushi (or balance breaking maneuver) for O Soto Gari. Uke was supposed to lean backward at a 45 degree angle and recede from the force Tori applied. I did it and it felt like a complete violation of everything Judo had taught me. I felt that my balance was something that could only be maintained if my head was parallel with my hips. I commented as such to my training partner.
"This feels so weird!"
He said something back to the extent of;
"Yeah well you will have to get used to it (you filthy Judoka)."
I didn't talk much to him after that.
After the class, the teacher gave me and another first time student a demonstration of an Aikido technique. He got two of the other students to grip his arms at the elbow, either side of his hips, and pick him up. He resisted their force. They got him off the ground after a short struggle. Then he asked them to do it again. He relaxed completely into their force. One student tried to pick him up, and as he did the teachers unresistant body weight slopped off his force and onto the other student; which destabilized him to a point where he didn't have enough of a foundation to pick him up. He explained that there are Aikido techniques where sometimes doing nothing yields better results than resisting with strength. I was a little bit skeptical; but could see the truth in what it was he was talking about.
I grew up in a farming background. I have picked up enough dead livestock to know that a passive unresistant weight is much harder to handle than a tense resisting one. You can anticipate how to reinforce your grip against a struggling animal, and you can control it to move it where you need to. A dead animal doesn't answer to any force except 2; gravity and your own force applied against it. It will react with these two to slop away from your force. It makes handling such a weight hard to do; and much less stable than a resistant one. It becomes a much more involuted process; you have to control and react to your own force slopping and rolling through the animals body back against you. I realized that when you pick something up; your strength does not apply to just a weight itself; but it needs to pivot on a sufficient frame within the object for that force to move it. If there is no frame, no tension within what it is you are picking up; it will flow around the outside of your force like water.
e) Presumption
Studying law has taught me that human thought builds on presumption. Humans cannot know everything. So they observe what they can and use limited external information to produce understanding. But you must always bear in mind that any understanding you have of anything is based off a finite, limited selection of information. There is no reason to assert that this information exhaustively covers everything that could happen. When no contradictory evidence of any statement or idea is available; it does not necessarily follow that that idea or proposition is true; is exhaustively understood; or can be exhaustively understood on the available information. This is so even if the concept is tested in all available scenarios. There most likely is no such thing as an exhaustive understanding of anything. Just because I have dropped an egg twice without it breaking does not mean it won't break if I drop it a third time. I can only presume it won't if I have no contrary evidence. Just because I have dropped an egg 9 999 times without it breaking doesn't lead to any necessary obligation of the egg's to not break if I drop it for the 10 000th time. Reality does not fit into human minds. Human minds try to hold a image of reality as best as they can.
People are not omniscient. It is not possible to verify everything objectively to a point where facts can be asserted as completely encapsulated into human understanding. Presumption is necessary in order to build any understanding of anything. The best that anything can be understood is by asserting "in the absence of any further proof, I can anticipate that this is or will be the case."
f) The foundation of presumption
Tokai taught me that presumption has its roots in an emotional foundation. I had to presume the training had something I wanted, some sort of possible benefit I would gain if I went there. Bitter trials help you ask yourself why you want what it is you think you are pursuing. You become very conscious that your desire and your feelings drive you on. This is true of anything. In life, you need to presume your day will go well for you if you get out of bed and face it. You need to presume that when you eat breakfast it doesn't contain deadly poison and won't kill you. You need to presume that if you climb into a vehicle that runs off the fermented dead biological matter of unobservable prehistoric monsters; that the whole alchemic contraption won't explode and kill you. You presume because you have no reason to think otherwise. It is relatively safe to presume that these things wont happen, and so few people question these things. If you did have available evidence to question these presumptions; your would not feel safe, and of course you would not do these things.
But that is it; that is where it all pivots from. Only if you have been emotionally affected by the observation of something can you react to it. Your emotional base is where your understanding of these things; of all things, comes from. You want to preserve your health and well-being because it makes you feel good; and this is why you rely on things you have no ability to observe directly. Your understanding of anything is directly subservient to your emotions. Understanding does not flow from objective reality. Understanding flows from desire, from emotion. If you attack this foundation in a Judo player; you can attack the foundations of their understanding, unbalance them psychologically, and exploit that imbalance to your advantage.
...
This is nothing new. There is a technique taught in Japanese martial arts called the "Kiai" . It's usually translated into English as a "spirited shout", but I disagree. Its used as a way to unbalance an opponent emotionally. The standard approach seems to be that you give a short punchy shout; with the intention of unsettling your opponent so that you may gain an advantage over them. You usually do this just before you try an attack. I have a different interpretation of what it means. The characters to write it are "spirit meet". I have taken that as meaning "a meeting of the spirit". If I Kiai against you; I want you to meet my soul.
In Australia I was taught to shout in class, as a way of gaining advantage over an opponent.
I had my own opinions of what it meant and how to apply it. I have had nightmares of looking at homophobes down the wrong end of a shotgun barrel. I used to have delusional fears of violence for a long time. And so I thought my Kiai must be more sincere than anyone elses in my class. If the other students used it; they would use it in a sport to win some points and perform well against another single player. I thought there was a possibility that I would need to use it to defend my life against one or multiple attackers. If that was how I ought to die I wanted to salvage as much life as I could and live on as a splinter in the mind of my enemies. If I was to die for being something less than deserving of human treatment, if I was to be crushed for being an abomination, then I wanted to earn that treatment and survive as a parasitic demon in the nightmares of my murderer.
Obviously that was a bit too much. That kind of approach to screaming doesn't really belong anywhere except in a life or death scenario. I got looks. I got asked why it was I doing my thing. I answered; "you asked to meet my soul". It had feeling; and yet it wasn't a particularly good Kiai. It robbed me of oxygen, taxed me of energy, and made me worse at Judo. It took me at least 3 seconds to give a Kiai that I thought was sufficiently sincere.
...
I was at the international open for my states Judo titles. I was doing my best to think down my nervousness. You have to be very level emotionally to be able to do Drunken Judo. Properly harnessed emotions can be an advantage in Judo. I heard one guy I used to train with in Scotland say he always played angry, wanting to rip his opponents head off. I cannot use my style in anger. Its not because I have a moral qualm about it; although I do have one, as I feel being angry with your opponent violates the respect you ought to show them. Its because if I have any emotion at all it will flow into my body and interfere with my technique. Fear, anger, the ambition to win; all of these things might override the control I need over my body to move the way I need to. Any involuntary movement, however slight, will create tension in my body and provide a frame within me for my opponent to pivot me. To maintain your balance and attack someone while moving like a drunk requires a mental discipline that nothing else has ever asked of me before. I used to listen to metal music to psych up; chasing the adrenaline rush I could use against my opponents. I don't anymore.
Someone who regularly comes to our club came up to me. with another guy. He explained to me that my first opponent was strong; was good at gripping, and had tight technique. He gave me some advice on how I ought to proceed. He was listing all his Judo stats; like a Pokemon.
159 defense;
347 special;
276 attack.
Favored moves; hydropump, laser cannon; hyperbeam
He was one of the line up in the elite 4. He sounded exactly like the imaginary Judoka I designed drunken Judo around.
"I am going to try drunken Judo on him"
The other guy questioned me, and asked me to repeat myself. I explained it was a style I came up with. He shrugged it off. To do what it is I do requires indifference to the opinions of others. If I feel any embarrassment or apprehension of the judgement of others, that feeling can override the control I need over my body. But discarding the opinions of others as irrelevant is easier said than done. I struggle with it. And yet it is completely necessary to move the way I need to. If I couldn't say "drunken Judo" in front of 2 people I definitely can't use drunken Judo in front of a basketball stadium full of spectators. I went through the process of mentally letting go of any belief that I could control what others thought of me and what they might think of what I was about to do. Changing myself and my actions for the benefit of others who will never acknowledge the difficulty I need to go through to do it is meaningless. I have my Judo, I know it works, and I know it is safe. I have nothing to gain by trying to do a Judo I don't understand and can't use, and nothing to lose by trying my own. My own emotions and my reactions to how others might feel about my drunken Judo are meaningless.
To warm up I needed a yoga ball. I needed to be able to hold my head behind my hips while standing before I could be confident in allowing my balance to go backwards in the competition. If you can hold this position; than in theory you can use unresistant body weight to manipulate your opponents balance by throwing your own body backward. Your grip your opponent on the lapel; and pitch your body behind you like a drunk in a train unprepared for the sudden deceleration which knocks them over. It looks bizarre; but it is more powerful than trying to unbalance someone with strength alone. This approach adds the weight and momentum of your body to your strength and magnifies it. You unbalance yourself and then let that imbalance flow through you into your opponent. But it requires careful calibration of your balance; because if you cannot regain control over it you essentially Ippon yourself and lose. It took me at least 40 minutes before I could maintain a static position like this on the yoga ball . My balance was rusty; but was closer to what it was when I left Tokai. When I was capable of about 40 or 50% of my prior balancing ability, I tried drunken Judo in Randoori and got nowhere with it. It badly shook my confidence. I've discovered I need at least 60% to be able to corpse whip people; more for other techniques. I was going to operate on about 70%. That was enough to move a bit, to give me the ability to put some of my ideas into practice.
Before I bowed on my first opponent, I went up to him and told him I was going to use a strange style; and that I was not using it as a way to mock him. He grunted. We bowed on. I let my balance flow across the mat, and spiraled into gripping distance of him. I got some derisive laughs from the crowd. I could see his pupils following my movements. I was trying to derail the structure of his training. My basic plan was that he could not rebut me if I didn't move in a way he presumed that his Judo would apply to .
He was either playing Judo with me; or fighting against me using Judo. People use these two as interchangeable concepts; and yet I feel they are incredibly distinct. I was doing neither of these two. I was dancing drunken Judo with him. I was thrashing out my confusion and my fear, trying to make it his. I was trying to colonize his mind. He was here ostensibly because he wanted to win a Judo tournament; he had trained and prepared in the furtherance of this desire. I came because I wanted to prepare myself for a hostile world I had no understanding of. We had different mental foundations; and different approaches to balance. I wanted to attack his mental presumptions. He may have trained more than me; harder than me; and more skillfully than me; but I knew he had not trained for this. He got angry. This was exactly how I used to respond when older students exposed me to treatment I had no preparation for. I was hoping to catch him in a volatile explosion of his emotion.
We had a short grip battle. I wouldn't address his strength directly with my own. I knew if I reacted more proactively I would lose my position to him; he was much stronger than me. I slid both my arms over both his elbows and got a double lapel grip, and corpse whipped him. From this position the corpse whip is more powerful; but harder to lead into a useful grip I could throw him with. I got stopped many times and penalized for being too passive. It was frustrating. I had just pitched my own balance into my opponent. It took me months of training to be capable of doing that without being thrown instantaneously, But that was too passive and defensive compared to dropping my balance and putting in a single nuisance attack every 5 seconds or so.
One thing Shiai has taught me is that there is no Drunken Judo answer to being pushed out of the mat. I have yet to find a way to answer this. If you balance yourself like a drunk, you must go where your opponent pushes you. This is an advantage for counter techniques; because you can absorb your opponents force and let it wave through you and back against them. Or you can exhaust them by making them grapple with your corpse like body. But it is a major disadvantage for Shiai, or competition, because of the structure of the rules. The rules were designed to propagate a specific kind of judo. So far my Judo lies outside of that box, so it will need some work.
He gripped me, and rattled me once. With the strength of his right arm; he pulled my left shoulder slightly out of its socket. I wouldn't call it a dislocation but it did move out of the joint. This has happened to me a few times before. I have loose shoulders from bad posture and prior injuries. Whenever it happens I usually have no strength in that arm for about 15 to 30 seconds before the pain subsides enough for me to feel comfortable enough to use it again. I was in pain when he loaded me so he could throw me in a right handed Harai Goshi. His balance radiated through his hands into me and I could feel it coming. I flowed into him.
...
Tokai Judo was liberating. It was like leaving the dentist. The anticipation of what was going to happen to me there was so much worse than the actual experience. When I kept training and saw that I remained alive; still capable of feeding myself, and generally still healthy and uncrippled, I saw my fears were irrational and groundless. I had dreamed often about being muttered about; hated; and plotted against by groups. I thought I would fall apart when this happened. When it finally happened, and the experience itself left me unhurt; I realized that the suffering came from myself. I owned my fear and pain. Maybe I could learn to command it.
I had my bike stolen; I was jersey punched; I was ignored for being too strange, I was hated. It felt amazing; the feeling was so minor compared to what I had anticipated it to be. I started to get giddy with euphoria; I felt so mentally free. Layer by layer I started to peel off all my insecurities and start to do the kind of Judo that felt comfortable to me. It was lunacy; but compared to my prior life of crippling anxiety it was quite logical.
I started to lose my fear of the training, and I started to lose my fear of myself. I no longer feared being thrown. I no longer feared my training partners. After I got injured in my knee I learned that it was my reactions, stemming from fear, that got me injured, not the throws themselves. You have to participate to be thrown; and how you participate dictates how you land. You have to make a positive contribution to a throw to be injured in it. With difficulty and sometimes hangovers; I learned to abandon my body to the training. Every training I walked through the front door; I thought that it might be that time that I would leave in a stretcher or several mop buckets. And yet that did not frighten me. I would only get injured if I contributed to my own destruction.
With that attitude I had more control over my body than I have ever had. I could shed my emotions as pollutants and do my Judo unburdened by them. My opponents had trained so that they could rely on their techniques without question when the context for them arose. My Judo denied them that. I could unbalance them mentally before I took a grip on them; and I needed to, because their grip work was too strong to get through. I no longer felt that doing a Judo attack was a commitment. It was a natural requirement of Judo; much like putting one foot in front of the other while walking is a natural requirement of walking. When I did what I did well; I lost all the barriers that separated my mind from my body. The differences between them felt meaningless. My mind and my body moved in what felt like perfect cohesion.
When I did what I did really well; I felt like I lost all the barriers that separated me from my opponent. My mind took command of what what was happening in my body; my body flowed with it, and it registered the balance of my opponent's body; who had intended it with his mind. There was a connection between us; the channels it took were not relevant. When I could get to that feeling I no longer felt like our bodies even mattered anymore in the link between myself and my opponent. I never threw anyone while in this state. We threw one of us. Sometimes we would both knew what I was about to do and we would Ippon me. Other times we would both know my opponents intentions and he would get thrown in them by both of us. It felt like I was using his mind and his intentions as my own, and he could hear and feel everything I was thinking. My and his mind; my and his body; were all the same.
The techniques that I used became meaningless. His did too. The differences between me and him became meaningless. My will and his will to throw and not be thrown; they became meaningless. My opponents struggle against me and my struggle against him became meaningless. I felt like everything I did I did with my opponents permission; because he had to move in cooperation with me to be thrown by us. I felt no separation between us; we had become the same person. Identifying where my mind and body ended and my opponents mind and body started was meaningless.
To me that is a Kiai; that is when you can say that you have met your opponent's spirit. It is not easy to do. I have done it less than 10 times. I have done it only twice using normal Judo; and one of those times was because I was hungover. There must be no mental barriers in your mind to be able to summon this feeling. Hangovers seem to help me dampen my anxieties and make this possible. What I did in Tokai was in pursuit of that feeling; and with difficulty I learned to replicate it in drunken Judo.
...
My opponent had me in Harai Goshi. I let go of my apprehension and I used my idea of what I think a Kiai is. It felt like I flowed into my opponent. I had arrived there late. I had arrived there with a painful shoulder and in the middle of his throw. It became our throw. He was pulling my balance up with his strength and power; and it became our strength, our balance, our power. We had three decent shoulders; one busted one. We had decent balance and strength and refined Judo technique. We had momentum. As we threw me; I rolled force from my right foot up into my shoulder; which ejected my right arm into his grip further than he had expected. This unbalanced us, and we both fell. He got a point; but it was not enough to win the match outright. It felt like I had just climbed inside the mind of my opponent and tweaked his technique. I had robbed him of an instantaneous win by reacting after he had unbalanced me. From an orthodox Judo approach to balance this should not be possible. It was only a partial victory for me; but it was something. I managed to summon this mindset at will when I needed it.
We ended up in Newaza, or ground technique. I struggled to escape his hold on my legs, but managed to do it. I had a opportunity to strangle him in Gyaku Juji Jime; and made the decision not to risk it. That was my shot to turn the position to my advantage; and I didn't take it. I am happy that I made that decision; a decision. When we stood the referees, still confused about how to classify what I did; decided to grant my opponent a higher score than what they had previously. It still wasn't an outright win; but compounded with all my penalties it was enough to grant him the match. I did my best and I regretted nothing.
I feel that I may have lost that round because I made a bad decision to not attempt the strangle against my opponent. Maybe I could have had a crack at the strangle and won. But I decided, and that was an improvement. Most of the times I lose its because I am floundering in the inability to choose what to do next. Its like the "blue screen of death" on computers. My mind overloads with options; I cant process them all, they bottleneck into my tiny mind, I don't decide on any of them; and then I end up freezing and crashing mentally. The best Judo technique is not going to help you if you cant decide to use it. And so even if I make a terrible decision; that's better than not making any choice at all.
My next and last round was frustrating. I choked in indecision. I could wave my body through my opponents defenses; but I locked up mentally once I had the overhand grip on him. He pushed me out a few times and I had no answer for it. I got penalties for passivity, and so did he. I got a few positions of advantage over him, but didn't feel confident enough in my balance to use any technique. I had lost that feeling where judo attacks rolled out of me like steps, like automatic reactions, and so I had to attempt to recreate it manually. I froze again. I got penalized enough to lose the match because of it.
I tried my best. Everyone I have used drunken Judo on so far has gotten quite angry with me. This is something my teacher commented on after my rounds. I am totally ok with being thought a lunatic; and I accept that I will be thought of as wrong. But I will never accept anyone telling me that what I do is unsportsmanlike, underhanded, or not in the spirit of Judo. I worked hard to learn to move the way I do; and its clear I need to work harder. It feels like everything I do in Australia is damage control; trying to get back to where I was at in Japan.
The feeling you get when you can discard your body to your opponent as a meaningless object and climb into the drivers seat of theirs; that feeling is like no other I have ever felt anywhere else. You get hooked on it. I want to feel like that again. I need more training to do so.
