I forgot

I forgot to mention the butterfly.

In that massage class, there's one other thing that the teacher had us do... to help the person receiving the massage, we do gentle stretches of their arms, legs, and back. To help them relax, we first relax ourselves, and then comes the butterfly.

Put the thumb of your left hand lightly on their forehead, on the "third eye." Put the thumb of your right hand on top of your left thumb. Then let your fingers drape down the sides of their head, slightly over the temples. Hold this for 15-30 seconds, I can't remember the exact number that she said. I'll have to ask her. Then remove your hands in the opposite order, so, lift your fingers, then remove your thumbs.

As the person giving the massage, you are supposed to imagine your fingers are a butterfly lightly landing on a fragile flower. When I was the person receiving the massage, it was amazing. I was lying in my secret place with the sun shining down on my face, and I can't tell you where exactly it was or it wouldn't be a secret, but I will tell you it was a grassy meadow of sorts. And all of a sudden, the biggest butterfly I have ever seen came dancing over and landed on my forehead. I remembered being 6 years old and chasing butterflies, wishing they would just ONCE sit still long enough so I could get a decent look at them. I didn't chase to catch, I only wanted to get close. But this one gave me the honor of sitting right there on my forehead, and I couldn't help but smile. It was incredible.

The other thing I wanted to write about is not quite as happy as what I just wrote, but its nothing to worry about. I was sitting at Anissa's reading my Ancient Near East history book, and I read something about violence. And then my mind started to wander so I started thinking about the violence in New Brunswick, which led to what if I'm attacked, which led to grappling with an attacker, which led to grappling with dojo members on jujitsu nights, which led to freestyle and the competition in CA, which led to the fact that there's no division for my rank which means I have to compete against people who outrank me, which led to testing for the next rank, and then all of a sudden I got really nervous about testing. And suddenly I had somehow read a whole page in my history book without comprehending it, and the nervousness went away. It was weird. The first time you test for a rank, its ok to be nervous cause you don't know what's coming. But now, I know what to expect for gokyu, and I know that I know my stuff, so there's no reason to be nervous. Maybe it was just remnants of nervousness that I buried way down deep from last year. I dunno. It was odd. Its gone now though.