Not for me but rather I want to introduce you to yourself as I see you.
I feel pretty positive there are 100 goblins in your mind telling you that you aren’t good enough, that your work is bad, that you don’t fence well enough, that you are an imposter in a tradition to which you do not belong.
Consider me the final goblin and I’m here to tell you who you really are.
You struggle, you strive, you suffer… and why? There are traditions of combat, combat with swords. They were at once beautiful but terrible and many of them were lost.
Against all odds and in defiance of the world around you, you chose to become part of these traditions. Your actions and your work restores them, preserves them, resurrects them from their paper graves to give them new light realized in the art of human beings again.
Every day, someone in this world, without knowing it, produces the best of their tradition for the day in that moment: a moment the dead masters would cherish because their voice speaks through you as part of a living story.
When you fence you become an artist and an alchemist of violence; that which was meant for destruction and killing you transmute into beauty, fellowship, knowledge, skill.
The early goblins will tell you that you don’t belong here… Listen to me, your final goblin, you are a part of your tradition and its history.
The work you do today allows it to live, to breathe, to grow. You belong here, you are part of the history of the tradition, and when you are long dead those who follow you may well look back at your work and nod, “Were it not for this person, we would be less.”
The tradition is not the sole property of the perfect, it is for those who show up.
In mid-2011 I began training to face the Chicago Swordplay Guild’s John O’Meara. He’s explosively fast, tall, skilled, and he uses Fabris which is a very good book.
At this time the Italian rapier practitioners seemed unstoppable and successful examples of Spanish Fencing against high level Italian practitioners were rare. Certainly there wasn’t much on YouTube and the understanding when you fence at the WMAW gala is that within a day your fencing will be watched, scrutinized, and perhaps praised or criticized for years to come. It’s a high-pressure situation.
Knowing this was coming and knowing that we wanted to represent the tradition well I worked with and trained with my two friends and classical Italian Maestri, Eric Myers and Kevin Murakoshi. (Unknown to me John O’Meara had also been training and had worked with Charles Blair to train a local fencer of my height and relative fencing profile as best they could as an analog of what John would be fencing against.)
In secret, both of us trained against the other for 3 months. Friendships and memories are made from such as these.
In order to train we applied the True School Destreza tradition in its purest form; as a theoretical science to guide training. What are the causes that form John’s fight? What are the causes that form mine? Knowing these things can we form a training plan that will allow us to beat (or at least touch) an adversary with greater reach, a longer weapon, and a broader community in which train?
We broke John down into causes and patterns and then from these we created a training tree. (Which I have shared below.)
The fight is presented here:
Did we succeed? I’m not the person to answer that with any certainty but I think we demonstrated that someone practicing La Verdadera Destreza can compete well against a top level Italian fencer. It’s my hope that no viewer thinks I intend to represent all of the tradition and, if you view the tree below, you can see it’s an abbreviated subset of the tradition tuned for this adversary.
Is it perfect? Certainly not. Looking at it now I would have preferred my footwork to be more active and I would have hoped to have been aware enough of my surroundings to see the bit of ice that had fallen off the table which created a slippery surface. It’s too much of a burden for any one person to present themselves as the sole representation of the tradition and it’s not something I would try to claim. It was fencing within its time and I see both good and bad, but it served its purpose in that moment.
With love and affection for my friend John, I share this advice on how to fence against him (and perhaps many other Italians as well)
John O’Meara vs. Puck Curtis – Decision Tree
Inside Line
Atajo Inside
Adversary does nothing
Attack with half reverse, transverse right, and Atajo again
Or attack by thrust with transverse left
Adversary attacks by disengagement
Convert the adversary’s attack into a Line in cross with transverse right
Or place an Atajo on the outside
Adversary uses movement of increase to attempt to take Atajo inside
Yield into circular reverse with a movement of conclusion and footwork left
Invite with the Right Angle on the Inside
Adversary attacks with engagement
Yield into circular reverse with a movement of conclusion and footwork left
Adversary attacks without engagement
Place an Atajo over the attack
Use a circular reverse (like a Narrowing) to pick up the attack while stepping left (either counterattacking or just attacking the adversary’s weapon)
Outside Line
Atajo Outside
Adversary does nothing
Attack with half cut, transverse left, and Atajo again
Or attack by thrust by glide
Adversary attacks by disengagement
Convert the adversary’s attack with narrowing and transverse left
Or place an Atajo on the inside
Adversary uses movement of increase to attempt to take Atajo outside
Yield into circular cut with a movement of conclusion and footwork right
Invite with the Right Angle on the Outside
Adversary attacks with engagement
Yield into circular cut with a movement of conclusion and footwork right
Adversary attacks without engagement
Place an Atajo over the attack
Use a circular reverse (like a Narrowing) to pick up the attack while stepping left (either counterattacking or just attacking the adversary’s weapon)
There is no point in dreams if they lack some measure of audacity.
It was January of 2000 and the world had survived the millennium bug. The place was Breckenridge, Colorado and a member of my wife’s family had a cabin near the ski resorts. There at the top of the mountain I got my first bit of instruction in the ancient art of skiing.
The first and last thing I heard was, “Lean forward,” and so I did. I began to slide down the mountain gaining speed. I had no way to steer and no idea what I should be doing. I found myself completely out of control and was headed towards the trees at increasing velocity. Before I painfully crashed I orchestrated a controlled wipe-out into the snow with poles, skis, and limbs all flying in different directions. The remainder of the day was a repeat of the same series of leanings forward with various wipe-outs. I got better instruction and learned how to stop by “snow-plowing”. By the end of the day I had learned how to turn and stop with the skis parallel.
Sometime ago I became interested in the study of incompetence and how incompetent people generally behave. Specifically I was interested in the meta-cognition of incompetence as studied by Justin Kruger and David Dunning who found that incompetent people were unable effectively to evaluate their own competence. This lack of ability to understand personal competence has been called the Dunning–Kruger effect and restated basically it means that incompetent people tend to overestimate their own level of skill.
(For an academic study, this is riveting material to read especially as a researcher, teacher, or student of martial arts.)
Compare that to Carranza’s statement, “He who knows most doubts most.” Carranza adds the perfect corollary to the DK effect and uniting the two ideas has given me a basis for moving forward during difficult tasks. (As an example, when a prairie-born Okie is rolling down a mountain with skis tied to his feet.)
The point isn’t to belittle or slander incompetence; we’re all incompetent in some subjects. Instead, my goal was to develop strategies to understand and mitigate my own incompetence by reserving a healthy dose of doubt about my own ability and creating a series of tests to validate my own performance.
I am going to add my own rule which I learned in Breckenridge, “Lean forward.” We can paraphrase Voltaire to arrive at a similar statement, “Never let the perfect be the enemy of the good.” If I had become paralyzed with the fear of the many stumbles, spectacular wipe-outs, and public laughter at my misbegotten antics I might never have learned to ski that day.
We might best understand this as a Medio (or a virtuous mean or balance point as Aristotle and the Destreza authors might describe it). There is absolute perfection at one extreme. At the other extreme is complete incompetence. Between the two extremes is the good work we might do if we just lean forward and accept our imperfection.
We need to teach and practice La Verdadera Destreza to build our skill and to foster a community. But, we also know not all the work has been translated which should be a warning to us to preserve our doubts. Previous attempts have stumbled and fallen quite publicly. Worse, our mistakes may be mocked and picked apart and ridiculed by our peers.
1. Know that your ability to self-evaluate is shaky while you are learning.
2. Preserve a healthy doubt and create meaningful checks to ensure your work is good.
3. Lean forward and be ambitious unto audacity. Don’t let the fear of failure prevent you from producing work.
Like many of the stories of my life, this one should start with me being a fool. It was WMAW and assembled there were a collection of instructors trained through Maestro William Gaugler’s fencing program. The Chicago Swordplay Guild wished us to deliver to Maestro Gaugler a gift. Resting inside a carved box was a wooden gladius, a Rudis, of the kind which was traditionally presented to a gladiator who had earned his freedom to become a Rudiarius. Engraved were words expressing their desire that this tradition should persist forever.
Maestro Gaugler
At the time I thought it was merely a lovely gesture for his years of hard work but this was a young man’s thinking… it was a fool who could not see the message contained therein which we must all face as fencers, teachers, and members of a martial tradition. What I did not know was that Maestro Gaugler was dying and that his days of servitude to the tradition were ending.
In 1979 Gaugler started the San Jose Fencing Master’s Program which harkened back to an older expression of the tradition in which the inquartata and the passata sotto were still taught. It was taught as if the weapons had greater mass than the trainers themselves actually possessed. The parries emphasized defensive power over the quick ripostes favored in sporting competition. It was a school in which we were required to both percussively strike and then slice in our sabre cuts in order to lay open wounds we would never see. The sabre cuts circled from the elbow to generate enough force to deliver powerful cuts while withdrawing our forearms from the threatened space created when the weapon left the line of offense. It was heavily based on Parise’s work which was itself an attempt to protect the Italian tradition. In order to certify the Fencing Master’s program Gaugler brought masters from Italy to witness the exams and they did so expressing their admiration that he had created so authentically an Italian expression of the art.
Gaugler had created a time capsule waiting for the right moment to be opened. Outside of Gaugler’s Italian time capsule competitive fencing had moved in a different direction but a new movement lay on the horizon and the historical fencing community arrived at the end of the millennium. I had been working on historical traditions for over 10 years before I began studying under the masters that Gaugler had trained. The fencing master’s program was based on a martial system which was well-documented but even more compelling for me was a tradition of teaching which was largely unknown outside the school itself. As I began to train, my own understanding of the historical texts and my ability to transmit the material to students began to accelerate. Not only was my own practice getting better but my ability to train an effective historical Italian fencer had begun to blossom.
The Spanish Destreza author Carranza describes the early rudiments of knowledge as trying to write a letter while knowing only ‘A’, ‘B’, and ‘C’. Having found the Gaugler-trained masters I was awash in a rich language which I had never seen before and I was beginning to write fresh prose as I received the hundreds upon hundreds of touches from my students. Every lesson I gave changed the world in some small way and I was creating fencers who were both powerful fencers but also mastering a systematic way of approaching their martial tradition.
Gaugler’s insistence that lesson be the mirror of combat, that our classwork artificially preserve the mass of actual weapons, had created a clean bridge from the classical tradition into the earlier rapier work and the results were impressive. In my younger days I was a competitor in my fencing. I fought for the love I had of friendly play and the joy of the art itself. Fencing is so often an art form that lasts but for a brief shining moment which transcends all our human imperfections to create an instant of perfect time. What a joy it is to be there and to see the light it brings to the world.
Today I more often work on helping others to kindle their own spark. The day will come when I am held to task for what I did to preserve the traditions in my care. Did I create new and useful work? Did I train new fencers and teachers? Have I done everything in my power to ensure the tradition will persist forever?
I am a thing so well out of his place stumbling and making errors in my work as I strive to rebuild the Iberian traditions and protect the Italian ones. In that sense, being a fool is one of my strengths for I persist in striving regardless of my mistakes in the hope that I can do better. Being publicly wrong and taking the bruises required to correct my fumbling is a cost I will pay if it means the traditions endure. I am a fleeting, temporary thing but I am mindfully working to create a new generation of fencers and teachers who will carry the torch forward. The measure of my worth is not the adversaries I have defeated with my tradition but rather the students and teachers I have given to my tradition.
On December 10, 2011 William Gaugler died. Before the doors were closed on his program it had created 18 masters, 31 provosts, and 47 instructors. His gifted Rudis was a message from a grateful community to the Maestro; it contained a release but also a promise that we would carry his burden going forward so that the art would persist. Your work is done Rudiarius; rest easy.
My lovely wife is pregnant with twins and the first trimester officially ends on Thursday, February 25, 2010. Of course, you want to see the pictures and I won’t deny you.
Baby Pictures
Here is the latest Ultrasound from this last Thursday:
Our twins at Week 11. (Click for High Resolution.)
Things seemed to be going fine with the Ultrasound when the doctor noticed some strange behavior.
Twin A turned to face Twin B so as to minimize his profile.
Fortunately, I was there and was able to interpret what was happening inside Mary’s tummy.
From Twin A's invitation in 4th, Twin B attempted to find the sword on the outside line in 3rd with his hand in 2nd. Twin A, executed a cavazione di tempo, but executed it as a feint. Twin B counterattacked in 4th only to be parried by Twin A in 4th who responded with a riversa to the outside cheek. Twin B eluded the cut to the outside cheek by lifting his hilt into Italian sabre parry of 7th and then in a sudden transition Twin B attempted to pass and seize the off hand of Twin A with a Spanish Movement of Conclusion. Perfectly in synch with Ettenhard's theory, Twin A eluded the circular footwork with circular footwork of his own and the phrase ended.
Seriously Now…
When Mary and I got back from Spain, we got our lives back into a semblance of order and then gave it our best shot. We got pregnant almost immediately and had a bit of a scare at 7 weeks when we thought we were out of the game for awhile.
We were scheduled for an emergency ultrasound and that’s when we discovered not only was Mary still pregnant, but that there were two little hearts beating in there. We’re incredibly happy and things are going very well for us now.
Because of the earlier scare, we have been keeping this quiet but with the first trimester ending next week we’re lifting the veil of secrecy. My blog has been remarkably quiet of late and that’s because a good deal of our effort has been consolidated into writing up our experiences as we go through the pregnancy on Mary’s blog. Until today, these entries have been password protected with only immediate family having access.
The due date for a typical pregnancy would be about September 9, 2010. With our twin pregnancy, we expect the twins to arrive sooner, sometime in mid August.
Mary’s Baby Blog
We’ve been blogging about the whole thing since we found out and you can read about it here:
If you want to read all the posts (which is not required by any stretch of the imagination), start on January 1, and use the calendar on the right to select the different dates.
We’re having a wonderful time working our way through the process.
