Tsuken Akachu no Eku Kata and Learning to Better Appreciate Every Day

I apologize for my long absence in posting. It’s been an eventful six months, and not much of it in a good way. Since it is behind me now, I am returning to normal and don’t mind talking briefly about what happened and what I learned from it.

First, the good part, at least for me – although probably less interesting for you. I was able to finish an extensive rewrite of my novel, The Arrow Catcher. It is with my editor, awaiting her read-through and suggestions. I’m fortunate to have a great editor, Lynn Stegner. Lynn is not only an award-winning novelist but also a writing teacher at Stanford University (considered one of the two best writing programs in the country). And she is also the daughter-in-law of the late Wallace Stegner, who was one of America’s greatest writers.

The reason I had so much time to focus on my writing over these last few months was my two stays at the hospital.

I wasn’t sure if I would ever go home after my first stay. I developed an infection that spread throughout my body, a condition they call “sepsis”. It came out of nowhere. I was fine, then developed a fever. I drove to the dojo to teach and got sicker and sicker as I went. (I live 90 miles from the dojo.) By the time I arrived, I figured I’d teach the first class and then go home early, getting one of my senior students to cover my classes. I felt so bad I lay down on the office floor, thinking I might feel better if I rested a bit. But I kept getting sicker, my fever climbing and my kidneys aching. I realized that if I didn’t leave then, I might get so sick I wouldn’t be able to drive home later. So I left a note for my office manager and set out. By the time I got home, I was burning up and felt like someone had hit me in the kidneys with a baseball bat. I had been kicked so hard in the stomach many years ago that it bruised one of my kidneys. This was a hundred times worse. I called my doctor and he told me to go straight to the emergency room, which I did.

The emergency room staff ran some tests and told me I had an extremely bad infection, which they later identified as sepsis. They admitted me and put me on a strong antibiotics drip. I was there for 5 days before being released. Another infection hit me a few days later and another after that was treated.

I mention all this in more detail than I feel comfortable with, or you probably wanted to hear, for a reason. I teach Tsuken Akachu no Eku kata to my students. Within this kata is an unusual jump, reportedly unique to weapons kata. In it, you drop the eku handle, kick your feet backwards unevenly as you jump, and (while still in midair) reach out as far as you can with the blade of the eku.

I learned this kata many years ago and told it was called Tsuken Akachu no Eku Bo. It was explained as a battle between two fisherman, one with an eku (oar) and another with a fishing spear. The spearhead was made of metal, I was told, which would become rusty and encrusted with rotten fish guts over time. A cut from its tip would introduce bacteria into ones bloodstream. As this kata was reportedly created 150 years earlier, there were no antibiotics at the time. The person cut was believed to have approximately ten days before he went into septic shock and died.

So the odd jump had three purposes: 1) block the spear thrust at ones feet with the handle, 2) kicking the feet back to make sure they were not stabbed or even scratched, and 3) reaching out and smashing the attacker in the side of the neck with the blade of the eku.

I was never sure if their sepsis explanation was realistic until I found it could occur even today. Had I come down with what I did back then, I would have died.

They found that my infection was caused by an internal tear. (I won’t bore you with the details.) Surgically fixing it was what necessitated my second hospital stay. But that was completed in early June and I’m back to normal, or as normal as one can be at nearing 70. I now have nothing wrong that rolling back my age by ten years or so wouldn’t clear up completely. But I feel fortunate to be this healthy and fit at this age. I contribute it to my lifetime in the martial arts and my long quest to always keep myself in shape both physically and morally in order to serve as a positive role model for my students.

Anyway, thanks for your patience and continued support. It means a lot to me.