handslive | Dojo Detritus

Another seminar. The patterns of preparation are so similar each time. And the path reaching to the moment I'm at right now seems inevitable. There would be no escaping some form of these chores.

I'm standing in the darkened judo club. The street outside is along an industrial park of chain link lots and warehouses, like the one that houses the dojo, with 25 foot ceilings, mercury vapour lights, and industrial fans swatting the air, the washrooms like little boxes with walls that only rise 8 feet before giving up. This dojo has a past with my own, a history of successful events and conflicts and disgust and the kind of comfort a ratty old couch in your basement might have.

It's cleaner these days than it once was, when the people managing the club were going their separate ways and the little maintenance activities weren't being done. There'd be no toilet paper in the washrooms, no soap, no paper towel. There'd be no garbage bags or water cups. The water cooler would be dry. And somehow you couldn't help thinking it might be the only safe source of drinkable water in the building. The showers, which are only in the men's change rooms, would be covered with wet, wadded up paper towel. Dirty unclaimed clothes in the corners. Boxes of old martial arts toys: wooden guns, rubber knives, rattan sticks with duct tape wrapped around the ends like handles or padding.

But now there's a computer on the desk beside the mat and a stereo at the back. The carpet still looks like there's no hope of ever cleaning it and fewer attempts at proving it, but they've recently taped down some of the curling ends where the glue has finally let go. The cupboards are well stocked with the necessities of judo tournaments and seminars. I walk around the edge of the mats picking up children's garments, likely lost at a class or a tournament.

And little wads of tape that I think of as "judo rings". These bits of tape are just big enough to go around an adult's index finger or thumb or maybe a child's big toe. They aren't sticky at all anymore and they've rolled up into little rings, discarded to the side of the mat. Probably used to support a sore toe or finger or to hold a bandage over some minor scrape so it won't bleed. I've never been on a mat after a group of judo players has used it that there wasn't at least one of these on the edge of the mat or off to the side somewhere.

I find myself wondering how I developed these habits of checking the washrooms, checking the mats, checking the edges, arranging the chairs, emptying the garbage. Sometimes I have help. Sometimes someone else does it all. But always someone looks after the dojo, preparing it for the few dozen people who will come out the next morning and give themselves to the space made here.

When I started in karate, my commitment was only to attend the classes and work hard. I failed in that once and took seriously the need to simply attend. And I learned that the most important thing was that the dojo had room for students to come back. Later I took the dojo with me. Not as a teacher, but as a student who was always thinking about training, about technique, about learning. I took to parks and empty parking lots and backyards and roads. I practiced when people watched me and when they didn't. I learned to make some parts of the art my own and only when I'd really absorbed this did I find that my teacher had been waiting for it. Later I would realize that he was looking for the spark that infested me. And I remember the lectures about paying attention to detail and about the responsibility of rank.

When I came to aikido, I brought these things with me. When my sempai and my instructors asked me to take on responsibilities I knew what the cost was, had seen it, had been taught in advance what it was for. I saw the need for etiquette in the little things around performing these tasks and imagined myself as a serious student.

But gradually, the tasks became something else. This was how the dojo was run, how it kept moving through time. I became part of the workings of the dojo, a bit of gear assembly. Much relied on, much missed, but hardly noticed when operating smoothly. I felt pressure to do the job well. I felt stress at doing the job poorly or not as well as I needed to. And then I was bitter that this load was mine and, seemingly, no one else's. That no one else would willing do what I was doing, as though the work didn't exist until I did it. As though the work wouldn't still be there if I wasn't.

And then I became concerned that the job couldn't be done by anyone else. Watching people's eyes glazing over if I tried to instruct them sufficiently for even a routine task. Too controlling, too pensive to simply leave them to it. But starting now to realize that my work for the dojo was a gift. All I could give for not being the student I hoped to be. Not a self-imposed punishment, and not a penance either. And how much of those first lessons from the karate club still lingers here, reminding myself to pay attention to detail, feeling the shape of a small responsibility, worrying away at little things along the edges of a darkened dojo. Holding the detritus of practice in one hand while polishing some small part of my spirit with my shuffling feet and bent back.

How much is just attending, how much knowing each time that there is a space to come back to? How much is in the details and how much in finding a space within myself first and filling it with the bits and pieces I pick up around the edge of the dojo?