Nice blog Chris, I told Susan about it this morning. Thanks for training with her and helping her last night! Agree with Niall, Asoh Sensei said; Aikido is just swinging your arm, it takes thirty to forty years, if you are lucky, to learn to swing it correctly. Nice haiku Daisy Luu: Billy

Very cool, Daisy. That's a kind of haiku. It was originally 30 lines. Pound pared it and pared it until only 2 lines - just the essence - was left. That's what we have to do with our aikido. http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps...ound/metro.htm

"The apparition of faces in a crowd; Petals on a wet, black bough." --Ezra Pound

Great post, Chris. It reminds me of a book called Les Choses de la Vie, by Paul Guimard, which was about a car accident and all the intersecting moments that built up to it. It was made into a French movie with the same title and then later remade as Intersection with Richard Gere and Sharon Stone. In Japanese culture cherry blossoms are treasured because the life of a samurai was so fleeting and ephemeral, like the petals blowing away in the wind.