There has been less update than usual on my blog. The reason is probably that I try to wring out the words on the tasks of the creative writing course. Right now I'm working on an essay on the wooden dummy. I will not be finished until the end of the week, but here is a sample, feel free to comment on it:
I invite you to come up close. Come on, step inside, and take a look at the strange figure, its heavy trunk of lacquered wood, its rigid arms without hands, still pointing finger at you, beckoning you. Let me introduce to you the Wooden Dummy, a very special kind of training equipment belonging to Kung Fu. But before you trace your fingers against its shiny surface, let me go into depth with what this piece of wood is all about.
...
Alone I enter the kwon, the Kung Fu training hall. Alone I approach the strange figure at the end of the room. This is my new enemy; this is my new best friend. I have seen him so many times before, but he looks different now, bathed in moonlight, with his dark shadow cast on the floor. It rests there like a black bridge between an abyss, or even the abyss itself. The sharp smell of chamfer that lingers in the kwon soothes my mind as it sometimes soothed my sore muscles after hard training sessions.
Actually, this room is the very temple for training, for striving, for trying, but not for perfection itself. There is nothing wrong with trying, I tell myself. But I can hear my heart beat in the thin silence, the heart that tells me otherwise. I can hear my careful footsteps; as if walking not to wake some sleeping beast, and I get the strangest feeling that I’ve done all this before.
Some Bart Cham Dao knives lies scattered on the floor by the big windows, someone has forgotten to lock them in, and now they lay there, shining in the moonlight. I’m tempted to pick them up, but the cold shine reminds me that they are way beyond my grade. I still have many years ahead of me before I can call myself master, and I’m once again reminded that Kung Fu is the Chinese word for “Hard Work”.
I stop in the middle of the kwon, past the knives, to look up at the picture of Yip Man, the founder of my particular linage of Wing Tsun. I clasp my palms in front of me and make a short bow, as is the traditional way of entering a Kwon. I paid my respect to tradition. Now I don’t feel so much like an intruder anymore, and it takes away the sour taste of sacrilege from my mouth. Why am I so nervous? Nobody can see me. It’s just him and me now. He’s cold and heartless, made of wood, and I reach out to touch him. He has three arms and one leg. My arms slide easily on the polished wooden arms but I cannot move them. In my despair I recall the soft warm skin of my training-partner, and his very negotiable body, arms that could give in, mistakes that could give me the upper hand. This is something entirely different.
Let’s knock on wood.
2 comments:
Hey Olivia :)
Great text but it deserves a fair bit of comment i think. so for now ill just leave my favourite piece of writting so far, it is the begging of Barbara Tuchmans "The guns of august" detailing the events leading up to and the beginning of the first world war, it begins and the king of Englands funeral:
So gorgeus was the spectale on the may morning of 1910 when nine kings rode in the funeral of Edward VII of england that the crowd, waiting in hushed and black-clad awe, could not keep back gasps of adminiration. In scarlet and blue and green and purple, three by three the sovereigns rode through the palace gates, with plumed helmets, gold braid, crimson sashes, and jeweled orders flashing in the sun. After them came five heirs apparant, forty more imperial or royal highnesses, seven queens- four dowager and three regnant - and a scattering of special ambassadors from the uncrowned countries. Together they represented seventy nations in the greatest assemblage of royalty and rank ever gathered in one place and, of its kind, the last. The muffled tongue of Big Ben tolled nine by the clock as the cortege left the palace, but on history´s clock it was sunset, and the sun of the old world was setting in a dying blaze of splendor never to be seen again.
Hope you enjoyed my little thievery and i promise to take a proper look at the text as soon as i get the time :)
ps. that paragraph i quoted, took 8 hours for her to write
Hello Thor! Thanks for sharing that gorgeous piece of writing! I feel tempted to pick up her novel, even though I've never read war-novels. (I read mostly horror/fantasy and some dusty classics, like Shakespeare)
I'm happy that you like the text. My great challenge lies in involving all the senses in my text, so that the Dummy becomes alive. My groupmates on the course have never seen a Dummy and they don't even know what a Sifu is!!
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