National ICantConcentrateToday Day

Espresso grinds smell like morning breath. Or maybe the two smells just hit my nose at the same time every morning so now I can't smell one without thinking of the other.

Henna is derived from the leaf of the henna plant, therefore it smells leafy. This is increased by water, so when I take a shower, my hair smells like the feed room at the goat farm where I used to work.

Today I used Herbal Essence on my hair, the old kind, not the post-bottle-change. So it also brought back memories of spring time, and cleaning the house with my mom, and sunshine in the fall, bike helmets, and cozy blankets.

The wrestling room at the gym smells faintly like battleships. Not that battleship-dieselly-paint smell like the elevator of my freshman dorm, but the smell of men working their bodies to the limit for something they believe in.

Steve smells like french fries.

There actually is an explanation for why I'm exploring the world in smells.

Today I went to waltz lessons. The instructor was explaining how to turn in the dance. As you step, you don't just move your feet, but you turn from the hips, letting your hips send your body where it needs to go, and face in the direction it needs to face.

Anyone with even a couple classes of jujitsu will think that sounds familiar, so that got me thinking about jujitsu and how it seems that everything is integrated when it comes to moving the body. Letting my mind wander to jujitsu effectively got me completely lost when it comes to waltz. I couldn't remember which steps we were doing in which order. Was it box step then travel then quarter turn? Or was it just the quarter turns followed by a direction change? I didn't even know which foot we were starting on.

That's ok, I can solve that. Jujitsu has taught me that people telegraph their future intent, whether its winding up an arm for a punch or simply leaning more weight on one foot than the other. So all I have to do is look at my partner to see what he's about to do and step accordingly. Ok that works I've stepped on the correct foot, but I'm so excited about integrating jujitsu into this that I'm not really learning the answers to my initial questions.

The whole class was a big snowball of not paying attention. The instructor demonstrates his points sometimes and needs a partner to do it, so he'll randomly select a girl to help him. Once he picked me and since I had no idea what we were doing, I stepped on the wrong foot. He readjusted his hand position, and suddenly, it didn't matter one bit what I did, his hands and arms provided enough weight on the correct side that I HAD to step on the correct foot. It was like some of our jujitsu moves where we want our partner to step back on their left foot so we push their left shoulder while holding their right arm stationary. We don't do anything to the left foot, but we still acheive our goal. This was just like that- he was shifting my weight for me so that the foot he wanted me to have free would be free.

Then I felt bad, one that I wasn't paying attention to him and two that it forced him to do my work in addition to his.

Thankfully that class is fairly short so it was off to the wrestling room for jujitsu. When Scott was explaining to the white belts how we can tell where to stand when we're lining up by rank, he used Dan and me as an example. "You'll notice they both have blue belts with one stripe, but Red tested before Dan."

I think I like Jean Grey better. Scott's other comment was that I did it just in time for Saint Patrick's Day, which is a good point. I should find an Irish pub somewhere.

Back to jujitsu, Steve took the colored belts and Scott took the white belts. Steve had us work on foot work, practicing turning 90 and 180 degrees, and looky there its a 1-2-3 step just like a waltz.

By that time I was pretty fed up with my brain because it wouldn't stay in one place, ideally the wrestling room in the College Ave Gym but if not there it could at least have picked ONE place to go. But when Steve asked me later what was wrong, I listed all the places my mind had gone. The list started on Louis Street and didn't come to a complete stop until we got to Livingston, which would be maybe 3-4 minutes.

Anyway, I'm usually not that unfocused on the mat. I don't know what happened today. Oh right, so the reason for the smells was because when I got fed up I sat out on the side of the mat and let my mind go. For some reason when I did that, I could feel my body more strongly, could feel where my aches and pains are, could hear all the voices in the room louder, and the red of the mats got brighter. But my nose was stuffy so I didn't smell anything. It felt vacant somehow, so I decided to sit here and think about all the smells I have come in contact with recently.

So yeah that's all I suppose. I'm gonna go chat with Steve for a while. Goodnight.