The Pass and Fell of Incised Points
So how do you spend your free time?
My life can get pretty full just on work and workout and friends and Fiancee and kids. Add in a few parties and trips here and there and you have most people's lives. I however am cursed with too much friggen energy and an insatiable curiosity on a library worth of subjects. That, and I love to experience things, reading is great, watching on TV or a movie is fine, but doing is where it is at.
Tonight, my friend Dick and I will be two hours in sword play on his front driveway.
I have (as many of you can guess from some of my posts) a life long passion for military history, theory and strategy. Pick any period, I can bore you to tears with the grand scope or mundane details of how people removed their neighbors from this best of all possible worlds. (thank you Dr. Pangloss).
For example, in the 16th and 17th century, Reuiters Calvary and Curassiers were armed exactly the same ( full plate armor to the shin, two or three wheel lock pistols and a longsword), but had very different tactics. Reuiters (Dutch word, the Spanish called them Genitors) would ride up in dense columns to the front of an infantry formation. The first rank would unload pistols, then wheel to the back to reload while the second would shoot and wheel, then the third and so on, pouring fire into the ranks of the enemy. Curassiers would just charge home, shooting their pistols then driving into the disrupted front with drawn swords, overthrowing their opponents with a mix of fire and shock.
Asleep yet? Hey, I have a million of them.
I love swords. I own six, two rapiers, a practice rapier, a main gauche, an English sword rapier and a Tai Chi sword with a Damascus blade. I buy them from an outfit in Atlanta run by an academic expert, who has them designed to original specs and made by a plant in India. No stainless steel knockoffs, these are the real deal. I work out with them a couple of times a week on my own and fence once a week with the group.
About two years ago a friend and I formed a renaissance fencing group. Not RenFair, and not the Society for anachronistic Living (Nice people, but they take things waay too far. ) We were both sometime Japanese Martial Arts students that wanted to try something European. Most Wednesdays, done up in masks, padding and gloves we go at it like musketeers. We use the practice swords, they are designed to be real, but the tips are hammered flat and the blades bend on the thrust. Sometimes it is single blade, sometimes it is sword and dagger (my favorite). Always a workout for body and mind.
There are a couple of things you learn when you go from watching Johnny Depp and Orlando Bloom to actually thrusting away. First thing is just how quickly your arm can get tired. Real swords are much lighter than you might think for that very reason, but regardless it only takes a few minutes of active sword work for the burn to set into your shoulders and forearms. The second is just how quick things happen. Victory comes not to the strong, but the quick and agile. Watch the movie Rob Roy, the skinny assed pasty faced Tim Roth ran Liam Nielson in to the ground. (of course, if you stand there and gloat the big old Scotsman might just grab the point of your little rapier, at which point you become a sitting duck for a claymore, which gets me back to the need to be quick).
Another thing you learn is that all that spinning and leaping nonsense is just that, a lot of nonsense. The whole battle takes place in line, face to face in a matter of minutes. The fool who shows his back or steps off line only provides an easy target that is soon serviced.
It is real simple. Parry riposte, parry riposte, parry, thrust, thrust home, and in the real world someone has a half foot of steel in his vitals. In our case, you can wind up with a bruise under the padding.
Now I could have read about that, but you know, you never really get it until you feel it.
Kind of like life. We can read all about it, but until we live it, well, we really do not know anything. It is part of the reason why we get into so many situations, some good and some bad. Until you do it, you don't know, and all of us deserve to know, need to know for ourselves.
And I guess that explains some of my views on life. Given the choice to watch it, read it or do it, doing it wins every time.
Hey, sometimes you get whacked on the back of the leg with a steel sword, and let me tell you, it hurts!
But it is fun.
My life can get pretty full just on work and workout and friends and Fiancee and kids. Add in a few parties and trips here and there and you have most people's lives. I however am cursed with too much friggen energy and an insatiable curiosity on a library worth of subjects. That, and I love to experience things, reading is great, watching on TV or a movie is fine, but doing is where it is at.
Tonight, my friend Dick and I will be two hours in sword play on his front driveway.
I have (as many of you can guess from some of my posts) a life long passion for military history, theory and strategy. Pick any period, I can bore you to tears with the grand scope or mundane details of how people removed their neighbors from this best of all possible worlds. (thank you Dr. Pangloss).
For example, in the 16th and 17th century, Reuiters Calvary and Curassiers were armed exactly the same ( full plate armor to the shin, two or three wheel lock pistols and a longsword), but had very different tactics. Reuiters (Dutch word, the Spanish called them Genitors) would ride up in dense columns to the front of an infantry formation. The first rank would unload pistols, then wheel to the back to reload while the second would shoot and wheel, then the third and so on, pouring fire into the ranks of the enemy. Curassiers would just charge home, shooting their pistols then driving into the disrupted front with drawn swords, overthrowing their opponents with a mix of fire and shock.
Asleep yet? Hey, I have a million of them.
I love swords. I own six, two rapiers, a practice rapier, a main gauche, an English sword rapier and a Tai Chi sword with a Damascus blade. I buy them from an outfit in Atlanta run by an academic expert, who has them designed to original specs and made by a plant in India. No stainless steel knockoffs, these are the real deal. I work out with them a couple of times a week on my own and fence once a week with the group.
About two years ago a friend and I formed a renaissance fencing group. Not RenFair, and not the Society for anachronistic Living (Nice people, but they take things waay too far. ) We were both sometime Japanese Martial Arts students that wanted to try something European. Most Wednesdays, done up in masks, padding and gloves we go at it like musketeers. We use the practice swords, they are designed to be real, but the tips are hammered flat and the blades bend on the thrust. Sometimes it is single blade, sometimes it is sword and dagger (my favorite). Always a workout for body and mind.
There are a couple of things you learn when you go from watching Johnny Depp and Orlando Bloom to actually thrusting away. First thing is just how quickly your arm can get tired. Real swords are much lighter than you might think for that very reason, but regardless it only takes a few minutes of active sword work for the burn to set into your shoulders and forearms. The second is just how quick things happen. Victory comes not to the strong, but the quick and agile. Watch the movie Rob Roy, the skinny assed pasty faced Tim Roth ran Liam Nielson in to the ground. (of course, if you stand there and gloat the big old Scotsman might just grab the point of your little rapier, at which point you become a sitting duck for a claymore, which gets me back to the need to be quick).
Another thing you learn is that all that spinning and leaping nonsense is just that, a lot of nonsense. The whole battle takes place in line, face to face in a matter of minutes. The fool who shows his back or steps off line only provides an easy target that is soon serviced.
It is real simple. Parry riposte, parry riposte, parry, thrust, thrust home, and in the real world someone has a half foot of steel in his vitals. In our case, you can wind up with a bruise under the padding.
Now I could have read about that, but you know, you never really get it until you feel it.
Kind of like life. We can read all about it, but until we live it, well, we really do not know anything. It is part of the reason why we get into so many situations, some good and some bad. Until you do it, you don't know, and all of us deserve to know, need to know for ourselves.
And I guess that explains some of my views on life. Given the choice to watch it, read it or do it, doing it wins every time.
Hey, sometimes you get whacked on the back of the leg with a steel sword, and let me tell you, it hurts!
But it is fun.
posted by Maurice_Basilius at 11:24 AM
1 Comments:
Well said, my friend, well said.
Post a Comment
<< Home