On practice and the new year

Before I begin, I just need to say I hate the new WordPress text editor and need to figure out how to revert. This is infuriating. Anyway. Back when I was in New York, practicing iaido, every new year of practice we’d rededicate ourselves to our studies by performing a thousand cuts. I can’t entirely remember if we only did one kind of cut, but these days, I have to vary it up. That said, the cuts aren’t the meat of the matter of this post. A significant part of my Destreza practice is reading and translation. There’s painfully little original LVD material available in English, and I’m one of the handful of people well placed to solve it. So here’s a variation on the thousand cuts, and symbolic rededication to my practice. I’ve been working on the off-hand section of Figueiredo’s Oplosophia for a few years now, very intermittently. … Read on!

Mendoza on the flail

The Brisbane School of Iberian Swordsmanship is celebrating its fourth birthday by releasing Ron Koks’ introduction to using the Iberian mangual. In it he references two assertions from the Resumen de la verdadera destreza de las armas, en treinta y ocho asserciones (Summary of the true skill of arms: in thirty eight assertions), by Miguel Perez de Mendoza y Quixada (published in 1675). When Ron was first working on this document, I drew up a translation of Assertion 32, which describes how to use the flail, and how to build it. It’s an early translation that I haven’t taken a second look at, so I place it here with some trepidation. Holler at me in some way if you see a howling error that needs quick correcting. Anything that’s not a footnote that’s in square brackets is an editorial insertion either for clarity, or to indicate why I might have chosen … Read on!