Author: an Ichi Kyu

I study Kyokushin karate at a dojo in Burbank. I don't yet have permission to say more than this about my dojo. I am also a mother of two, both of whom have studied Kyokushin karate a year longer than I. They are instructors! My husband created the art posted on this site. I have his permission to use it, but he expressly asked me not to credit him as the artist. He's moved on to other styles, and doesn't particularly want a public association with this piece. I love this artwork, personally. And me? I work full time as a cloth and hair simulation artist, as well as a python coder, in the visual effects industry. I have roughly sixteen years experience in film and about four in television. I am 50; I suppose my decision to attempt the black belt test, along with creating this blog, represents my mid-life crisis. Wish me luck!

Saturday May 2nd, 2020

I woke up in time for karate class at 10am. While half-asleep, I remember arguing with my alarm: “I don’t want to get up! I’m so tired!” But I crawled out of bed, sprayed down the kitchen with disinfectant, setup the older laptop outside, and followed the link to the karate Zoom session. Both kids slept in.

Sensei R lead the class, but our Shodan and Nidan Senpais were also on-line. He had us do the same one-leg challenge we had done in class last night” you balance on one leg, while Sensei keeps time, and see how many kicks you can do before you lose your balance or the time elapses. Usually he times us for one or two minutes. Last night, I was able to do fifty-five on my strong side. This morning it was closer to fifty.

Senpai Nidan understood, from Sensei’s instructions, that we should only be doing Mae geris, and to be fair, Sensei did say “front kicks.” During yesterday evening’s class, any kind of kick counted, and many of us followed that rule. Sensei had us do our second, weaker leg in the manner of our Nidan: only Mae geris. That was a lot harder.

For the “kyoku-kids,”or children six years and under, Sensei called the kicks. We then performed ten in a row, while balancing on one leg. I should mention that there were three and four year olds able to do this!

Both during last night’s class and this morning’s class, we went over Fifth Kyu Syllabus. Again.

Oh, oh, I forgot to mention: during last night’s kihon, Sensei asked me to call kihon. Both kids were with me, on either side. If I was too slow in remembering the Japanese name for a move, one kid would whisper it to me. I know the moves and the terminology, but am rusty. However, it came back and I needed little help at the end.

Also, Sensei complimented me on one technique. Unfortunately I do not recall which it was, since I was focused on remembering the terminology. Nevertheless, I will brag anyway: he said that particular technique was “perfect.” When, if ever, do you hear you did something perfectly? I was so proud!

After this morning’s karate class, I moved the kumquat bush closer to the back patio. It was in too much shade in its old location closer to the loquat tree. One day, perhaps, it will grow as large as the kumquat tree belonging to my friend’s mother!

I also ran on the treadmill: twenty minutes, with an additional ten minutes of walking.

All in all, today was a productive day!

Friday May 1st, 2020

At work yesterday, we had a “town hall” over Zoom. Around May 18th, the company will start furloughs. My department lead believes we will all go on hiatus, for a number of reasons. First, our department competes for work with a second, newer department begun by our equally new head of digital. This does not bode well for us. Second, since most of us are older, seasoned artists, furloughing us sooner rather than later will be good for the bottom-line. Finally, our company simply does not have a lot of work left. The younger artists can certainly handle the handful of shots left to do.

This announcement was no surprise. A month ago, our top visual effects supervisor estimated that we had roughly a month’s work. Because we are dependent upon live action production, and these have been deemed unsafe, we have no new work in the near future.

Hannah, a coworker, stopped by with kumquats. We gossiped a bit, each of us in our fancy patterned face masks. My husband opened the door and chastised us for hanging out too long, too closely. She drove to Target, and I picked loquats from our tree for her. While she waited to go in, I arrived with the loquats. She said she planned to give some to her mother. The prolific kumquat tree belongs to her mother. So we had a “quat exchange.

We have three refrigerators: one in the garage, one in the kitchen, and a college dorm-room sized small one on the back patio. The one in the garage stopped cooling the food, and we had about four gallons of milk sour. Before you judge, remember we are actually six persons, two of whom are growing teens with big appetites, and three cats.

D and I defrosted the refrigerator in the garage, but only the freezer has really reached a usable temperature. The main body has only reached about 55 degrees, not cold enough for milk. It needs to be repaired. We had this problem roughly a year ago, and at that time, a repairman cleaned out one of the parts and got it working again. We do not want to call a repairman now but would rather wait until it is safe to have contact with strangers.

D rescued much of the milk: he made yogurt with the slightly sour milk, mint-flavored whey and fresh cheese from the milk that had separated. Chilled, the whey with mint was quite refreshing. The mint leaves came from our flowerbed. We ate fried, spiced cheese with dinner two nights in a row. On the second night, F prepared dinner, and provided fresh cheese with salt and dill along with the fried cheese, and two varieties of store-bought cheese. So we had a private cheese-tasting inspired by spoiled milk.

Thursday April 30th, 2020

I meditated for ten minutes under the loquat tree. I had a view of a dilapidated trampoline, a bougainvillea bursting with color, a stunted kumquat bush, two loquat saplings and foxtails.

A memory of my college mentor and art professor, Don Evans (d. 2013). Both my freshman and sophomore years, I’d taken art classes with him. During my junior year abroad in Germany, he lost his son in an accident.

His son Jonathan was so talented, like his father. He’d built a giant Rube Goldberg machine, mostly of wood, in Don’s studio and both he and Don liked to show it off.

I didn’t know how to talk to Don about his son’s death when I returned. I took another class with him my senior year, and felt I should talk to him about his loss, but didn’t. When I received word of Don’s passing, I sent a letter to his kind wife. She wrote a lovely response back to me. They also have a daughter, who is also an artist and organized events in his honor.

Don’s art collective was called “the Little Marrowbone Repair Corporation.” I’m glad to see his website is still up. He was such a wonderful, quirky personality. He created a clown car, which also served as his art collective’s logo. But it existed, as an actual car and it had a face on it, just like the drawing:

http://www.thelittlemarrowbonerepaircorp.com/

There are photos up on FaceBook. Guess I really have to join. If you go to the FaceBook page for the Little Marrowbone Repair Corporation, you can see videos of his collective’s performance art.

I’d been looking out at my yard and thinking about what Don said: everything could be art. He didn’t separate art and life. How you kept your home, how you live your life, how you cook–all art.

I stayed with his family one summer for about a week in Tennessee. They lived in an old farm house outside the Nashville city limits. Their home felt like art: a funky clock with pictures of family members where the numbers would be showed them reacting to the different times of day. Their kitchen table was a picnic table setup indoors, next to a large glass door looking out at the back yard, which was a gentle stretch of land bleeding into the woods. His “clown” mobile, which I’m sure he drove at Burning Man, was parked in the front.

In my eyes, theirs was such a happy home: full of laughter, art, wonderful cooking, free spirited friends. He had all sorts of friends who showed up at all times. And there, also, was his wife, a warm-hearted school teacher, talented herself, and his gifted children, already young adults my age.

At this moment, I am so heart-broken thinking about the loss of their son, right when he entered college. He was just starting to live out all that promise–their home full of the art that all of them had created: childish art, colorful youthful art, serious young adult art, middle-aged and wise old folk art–all there in that home, around them, and him gone.

Wednesday, April 29th, 2020

Maybe I should make these entries shorter, more meditative.

Today I sat in front of the clover, which is starting to fade from its previous glory. The finch came back. I saw it on the thistle from the kitchen window as I cleaned. While sitting, the big carpenter bee came back, too. No wasps, but sweat bees.

I wonder if I can try and work meditation back into my schedule once I resume doing my exercises.

Yesterday I missed a lot of the Kihon class: it was short and I was late. I caught the end of fifth kyu syllabus. Senpai B taught us to cross with one leg in front. When I learned it a while ago, we’d done the cross with the same leg to the back. Senpai B is a black belt, and my senpai, so I don’t question. I try to learn the correction, but also not worry too much. The shape of that syllabus is there for me. It’s one of the more awkward ones, since we travel. We’d once learned the final back kick as a side kick. That had been a major correction! Senpai B’s correction for the class was more minor: cross, then do the back kick.

I want to put pictures up of the thistle, mallow and clover. Then folks will know what these things are called, and that my yard is overgrown. I love that it attracts so many birds.

My cousin’s son played a looter in a short dystopian film created by his friend, based on the pandemic. It was well done. I should pay her son a compliment!

A squirrel in the loquat tree is making a racket.

Tuesday April 28th, 2020

We will have karate tonight over Zoom, and I did get in a run on the treadmill yesterday.

I meditated for ten minutes in front of the sow thistle and mallow, hoping to see finches. Instead, a yellow and black striped hornet and a large black bee, and several sweat bees wove in and out of my weedy yard forest. I must have watched for several minutes before noticing the white spiderweb, hidden death, stretched out in nearly the center of that tiny paradise.

Today I brought out a translation of the Qur’an and, like a Torah, it reads from right to left. I only got through part of the translator’s introduction before it eas time to write in this journal. I still have a schedule, even during meditation week.

A. Yuesuf ‘Ali, the translator, spoke of what led him to translate his holy book into English. He’d experienced a personal tragedy that he did not divulge, and devoted himself to the work. The idea was one that had been with him for years, and he’d collected materials and notes over forty years. After journeying to Lahore, he shared his ideas with some young friends. His project excited them. They encouraged him to write, found a publisher, a calligrapher for the Arabic text, and a printer. (Note: his name has a “u” with an umlaut that I’m writing here as ue. Not sure how to find special characters yet.)

He wrote his preface in 1934, so between the two world wars, after India’s Declaration of Independence was passed there but before Pakistan’s own Lahore Resolution.

1934 was about three years before my father was born, but my dear aunt, who helped raise me, would have been three years old.

The birds are still singing. Behind me, a squirrel scolded some creature, possibly that cat from yesterday for another squirrel.

Jessica texted: her employer furloughed her from her job this week. I will call her today.

Monday April 27th, 2020

I sat in the back yard and meditated for ten minutes, or at least tried to. When I meditate, I try to clear my mind, listen to and observe nature. A calico cat came walking down the fence. She saw me, stopped, watched as I retrieved a Kleenex from a pocket, then delicately turned around on the narrow rail joining the picket boards together, then headed back from whence she came.

A finch flitted between the giant dandelions and ate seeds. Actually I believe these large weeds are sow thistle. The finches love them.

My daughter came out on the patio and asked me to look over her English homework: identifying prepositions. She had to circle as many as she could find on a page. I told her I was taught that a preposition was, “Everywhere a rabbit could run: over, under, beside, on….” I found a few more with her. Rabbits don’t really run “of,” however.

Today I also plan to run on the treadmill and update this website.

At the moment, I have ten minutes to get ready for work.

Sunday April 26th, 2020

I’m writing very late. Today is almost over. I was so busy: cleaning, five loads of laundry, and cooking. One load is still in the dryer. I cooked a week’s worth of oatmeal and fruit compote for the kids’ breakfast and made two large veggie and cheese omelettes for dinner. Everyone, except for D, had the omelettes.

Our neighbor Jessica came to retrieve her gardening supplies, so I took that as an opportunity to pick fresh loquats for her and also gave her a container of prepared ones. She texted me when she came, and retrieved the fruit from where I left it in the driveway.

I also tidied up the front lawn: trimmed the grass and weeds with the weed eater, cut suckers from the rose bush, swept the sidewalk, chained two hoses together in the front yard to connect to the soaker hose across the median and used them to water the camphor tree. The long hose I normally keep in the front had burst the last time I used it.

Shannon called, but her phone cut out periodically. We decided to talk later.

Richard’s cousin, a doctor, called to talk about Karen. She was upset to hear Karen was diagnosed with COV-19. Karen’s diagnosis, however, was based on observation of symptoms, rather than a test for the presence of the virus. Richard’s cousin is very worried about Aunt Karen, even though we currently believe she has a mild case. Karen’s age, mid-eighties, puts her at a higher risk for complications.

Tonight I will skip the web entries. Perhaps tomorrow, when I am back on my schedule, I’ll catch up. Meditation week is always more difficult to keep on a schedule, though I plan to keep running on the treadmill.

My weight came back up a little: 109 pounds, so I need to pay more attention to what I eat. Maybe I need to add even more cardio to my schedule.

I forgot to mention we had a meeting with Sensei on Saturday morning: the Ichi Kyus, our Nidan, two Shodans, other high ranking students and Sensei. We talked about how to proceed with our black belt tests, given Kumite and Sanchin may not be options during the pandemic. Many cool ideas surfaced: a strenuous run up a mountain trail, or kata on the beach, while ocean waves roll in to add resistance, or Sanchin as Mas Oyama reputedly did it, while balancing jars of clay. I love the idea of doing a test in nature. Granted, most of us associate the ten man fight with the black belt. Could we, instead, battle ten elements of nature?

Saturday April 25th, 2020

We had Kihon on-line with Sensei yesterday evening. The kids and I setup the laptop outside, like we had on Tuesday. We worked out on the patio against a backdrop of Trees of Heaven. During class, we did twenty push-ups, sit-ups and squats. When class was over, I did forty more: 20 knuckle push-ups “tricep” style on the concrete and 20 “chest” style on the overgrown clover. The clover is pretty soft, as long as I didn’t worry about bugs.

S was concerned about a wasp stuck to the back door. He thought it would build a nest. This morning, it was gone, but it had left behind a tiny little post, which I knocked down with a shovel.

We drove to Culver City and dropped off loquats with Mikage and Jerry. The kids and I stood on the sidewalk while they stood at their front door, and we talked. It was so good to see them.

Their dog, Cherry, can walk now. She’s elderly and had had surgery. They had been afraid she would not walk again. A few weeks ago, after Jerry had taken her out, she walked to her water bowl on her own. Her vet had also taken her off of a pain medication, so maybe that helped. Since then, she has been walking more and more. Jerry brought her out, and, almost as if to demonstrate her newly regained skill, she wobbled a couple body lengths in the grass then stopped to lay down. Her gait was that of a drunken sailor, but she took the initiative to explore, and seemed content. Her people were clearly joyful, as were we to see all of them once more.

Afterwards, the kids and I drove down Washington Blvd. towards the beach, then turned up Ocean and followed it into Santa Monica. From there, we picked up the Pacific Coast Highway.

We drove along next to the ocean. Fog covered part of the view and made the green, hilly countryside opposite the ocean, itself bursting with green trees, succulents, flowers of all sorts, feel like Hawaii. The kids wanted to listen to eighties music. On our first camper trip two years ago, we drove up the PCH, listening to eighties music, but we could stop and walk out into the sand. Now all the beaches were dotted with police cars, enforcing quarantine.

Somewhere past Point Dume, we turned off the PCH and headed inland, in the direction of the 101 from Calabasas. From the 101, we made our way south to the 134 and Burbank.

I should mention there was little traffic, except for the PCH. On the PCH, we were in bumper to bumper traffic with other folks, most likely thinking what we were thinking: they could watch the ocean from car windows.

I thought we had turned off the PCH onto Highway 23, but now I think we may have been on Mulholland Drive most of the way. At some point, we saw signs indicating it was Mulholland. That drive was treacherous: 25 miles per hour along hairpin curves and switch-backs, but also verdant countryside, bursting with unique plant life.

I told the kids, this drive will remind os all of how big the world is.

Friday April 24th, 2020

push-ups: 1:09 minutes, 30/tricep on the floor and 30/chest on a yoga matte
squats: 1:49 minutes, 70 squats, alternating with punches every other set
sit-ups: 2:12 minutes, 70 sit-ups, more upper abs in the morning

These are my times. Next week is my “meditation” week, though I will continue to run on the treadmill. The following week will be 80 sit-ups and squats, then I should move to 40/20 for floor and matte push-ups.

I emailed Sensei yesterday about this site. I hope he likes it, and is able to see it!

Oh, I reached Shannon on the phone last night. She’s fine! Such a relief! D suggested calling her at night, so I did. They don’t have kids, and, as D suspected, they were still up at 10pm. They were not upset that I called so late.

She was sick for several days last week with a fever, and received the COVID-19 test. Her results came yesterday: negative.

Shannon tried to check out this website but could not get it to load. It loaded as a broken domain. I may have left the site in a bad state one day last weekend. I should check it under a different user, just in case that makes a difference.

Miriam suggested taking loquats to Mikage and Jerry, two good friends of ours who recently moved back to Los Angeles, after living in Vancouver for several years. K loves loquats. She is originally from Japan, and told me once that loquats never stay in the grocery stores long there. They have a short season and sell out quickly. My tree is full of fruit. This will be my weekend: loquats. Picking, delivering, cleaning, preparing and and eating loquats.

I looked up the “shelter in place” order for LA County. Culver City, where Mikage and Jerry live, is fourteen miles away. Delivering food, however, is certainly allowed. Is there someone I can call? “Hello city official, I’d like to drop loquats off with a friend. Is that okay?” I may also simply ask Mikage if she is comfortable with me dropping off fruit, and make sure she wants them. I could also freeze a batch for her, and give her those when we’re allowed to see one another.

Granted, the idea of driving to another area is attractive: seeing different scenery, and just feeling how large the world is. I want to respect the order, however. I’ll ask D for his opinion.

Delivering home-grown fruit may be a grey area. Funny–if she paid for them, it would count as “essential” business since it involves food. I will just ask her. I can leave the loquats at her door step, then wave at her from the car or from the street, just like the delivery folks. She loves loquats.

I love my loquat tree, and love giving away its fruit. I like eating them, too, with lemon juice and honey, or simply as they are. They are a bit of work to prepare.

Well, that’s my timer. Time to pick!

Thursday, April 23rd, 2020

It’s that time of day when I get to sit outside and report on my accomplishments, karate-wise. Yesterday I ran on the treadmill for twenty minutes and walked for ten. I also got in my exercises last night and this morning. I’m pretty tired lately. There are spots in my arm muscles, just below my shoulders that hurt as if I’d recently gotten a flu shot.

Aunt Karen is still recovering at home.

I haven’t been able to get a hold of Shannon, so I’m concerned. Today I’ll call her home number and see if I can get or or Louis. I hope she is okay. Initially I wasn’t worried because her symptoms sounded similar to the illness that D and I had had two weeks ago. However, long silences aren’t like her. D checked her Facebook page, but there were no recent posts.

At work, we have a townhall scheduled over Zoom. I suspect they may cut back our hours further. I’m on the fence about this job. I have several good friends there, but one of the people in charge has no perspective on the people he is in charge of.

He told our head of Character Effects, (CFX does clothing and hair for digital characters), that he wanted a “hair expert” to check his hair setup file. Now, I looked up this “hair expert” on LinkedIn. She doesn’t sell herself as a “hair expert.” She has two years experience doing hair at a film company and she’s otherwise fresh out of school. Our CFX head has about seven years experience specifically in hair and roughly twenty in visual effects; he was a groomer at two large film studios: one feature animation place and one live action place. Yet he’s not an expert?

While writing, I hear a tell-tale low, lawn-mower sound; a fairly large hummingbird just flew over my head, hovered near the wind chimes, then dove down tin the very tall dandelions.

The universe is telling me to stop complaining about work. I have work.

The timer is telling me to go to work.