Homework from Magnifico Bjar the Blue

Who does what at fight practice, and how to make sure you're making the most efficient use of your time in a leadership position...

Everybody in the Hall:

-        Clean up after themselves and keep their personal possessions neat and tidy

-        Treat all other occupants of the hall with respect and courtesy

-        Watch for others and mind your safety and space

-        Assist in setup and teardown of the hall (as bodies allow)

-        Mention if conditions/fighters are becoming unsafe and address this directly if appropriate

All Fighters:

-        Fight safely and courteously according to our rules and conventions

-        Ensure their gear and weapons have been properly inspected and are in good repair

-        Make other fighters aware of any training goals you have for the day

-        Be aware of other fighters and make space for others to fight

-        Follow the rules of the list

Junior Marshals:

-        Assist in weapon and armor inspections and bring related concerns to a senior marshal

-        If requested and desired, do active marshalling for practice tourneys etc.

-        Welcome newer fighters, assist in basic training if desired, and make sure they have what they need in terms of loaner equipment

Senior Marshals:

-        Oversee weapon and armor inspections, ensure they’re happening at the beginning of practice, and provide clarification or final decision-making on concerns

-        Fill out paperwork as needed if in a supervisory position

-        Arrange and supervise practices

-        Arrange and supervise tournaments at practice

-        Assist in de-escalating conflicts between fighters

Knight Marshal:

-        Represent the fighters and their needs to the Council

-        Present reports to the Seneschal and KEM and KRM

-        Welcome people to practice on behalf of the barony

-        Attend the vast majority of practices

-        Open and lock the hall (or delegate someone to do so) and ensure hall is respected and in good condition

-        Communicate with the hall to ensure a good relationship

-        Maintain Iron Key inventory and safety

-        Communicate with fighters and hall attendees via online channels and in person

-        Maintain a good rapport with attendees and understand dynamics affecting group functioning

-        Ensure all necessary tasks are being completed and delegate as necessary

Where my fight lives

My fighting manifesto: "Love yourself enough to stay alive, then help others do the same."

My fight is:

- Defiant
- Playful
- Embodied
- Dancing
- Mobile 
- Quick
- Nimble
- Spiraling 
- Tricky

How would you describe yours? 

The unexpected vision

A few weeks ago, I found myself in a little apartment in Sunnyside with my oldest friend. 

We sat, side-by-side, holding our mugs of strong Yorkshire Gold tea (just a little milk for me; milk and spoonfuls of sugar for her) and cried.

There was a lot going on.

In the weeks that followed that afternoon, a lot continued to go on. Hard work followed. 

The whole world has started to look different. It's a little bit like trying to focus through a 3D movie where nothing's lined up quite right. Or, maybe like staring at a hidden picture image so hard that you're going cross-eyed because you just know there's something in there that you're supposed to be able to see. Before that moment, I hadn't been aware that there had been something extra to see, and now that I know, it seems of critical importance.

I am starting to see time, and accomplishment, in a different sort of way. When all you can see is the next step in front of you, always falling forward from one moment to the next, every peak and valley feels extreme and never-ending. There's no context and no agency; no understanding of amplitude and frequency in the greater picture of a whole life. You're not able to see the vast landscape of criss-crossing paths and threads, each with their own overs and unders, ups and downs. 

Obsessed with the perfect cultivation of a single rose bush, you fail to plant seeds for next year, or perceive the marching encroachment of ground ivy which threatens to destroy the work of decades. It's a sort of terrible tunnel vision that you don't know you have until you learn how to look up and out. 

When I look in the mirror, I still see "the young lord." I see his all-consuming hunger, his desperation to be loved, his terror of rejection, his manic intensity, his passion, and his howling emptiness. I see the demons that he lets ride alongside him who promised a balm to all of these things, but who delivered only more of the same. I see that he is exhausted. 

I also see a brief shadow of "the saint," who hid that damaged little fellow from the world for years, like a field dressing or a smothering pillow. She made herself small and quiet, unchallenging and unappealing, endlessly patient and infinitely generous, self-sacrificing with Marian devotion, asked no questions and demanded nothing. She was paralyzed by pain. I love and forgive her.

I think, perhaps, there is another person starting to smile back now as the potter continues to turn the wheel. They are both, and neither, but they're more complete. I think other people could see them in me before I could. I think I will love them best of all, if I am brave enough. 

Conquering the deep

Last week, I went scuba diving for the first time.

When the opportunity was presented to do some diving with friends in Aruba, I thought about it for a long time. 

When I was 16 years old, my mom's best friend and business partner died in a diving accident. She was an ever-present second mother. Her passing blasted an irreparable hole through literally all aspects of life.

My relationship with deep water, and the ocean in general, became very complicated. Over time that fear faded away, for the most part. But certainly, I never considered diving myself. 

The fact that I was still scared of it in my mid-30s made the decision for me, so I said yes. 

I was not entirely comforted when the solo instructor showed up at the port to pick my friends and I up in his beat-up SUV (he apologized that one of the back doors was broken), a haphazard assortment of gear tossed in the back. I was very nervy, so we were all quiet on the drive to the beach.

Here's the beach we dove from. You can see where the water gets deep because it gets darker - that's where we swam out to

After being strapped into gear and an all-too-brief skills introduction to "how to not die in the water" and "what to do when things go wrong," we swam out to the first dive spot on the surface and went under.

There's nothing like diving. It's an exercise in maintaining absolute calm. Only your equipment is keeping you alive, which you must trust completely. You must trust your dive partners completely, too, to rescue you if something goes wrong.

Everything is slow and deliberate. 

Breathing, slowly. Air from the regulator is pulled by intentional intake of breath, not unconsciously like above the surface. It's easy to feel like you don't have enough if you panic. 

Moving, slowly. It's easy to bump into each other or obstacles, or get separated. 

Communication, slowly. There's no talking under water, so everything is achieved by line-of-sight hand signals. 

The greatest risk for new divers is what our young instructor eloquently called "going smooth-brained." When the water closes over your head and you start to achieve some depth, your unconscious brain starts throwing out alarm bells. This is a good thing, normally, since it reminds you that you need to come up for air. 

Your brain does funny things when it's desperate. It's happened that new and poorly-supervised divers have ripped the regulator out of their mouths and kicked frantically for the surface, drowning before they got there. 

Gravity impacts you differently and your sense of up and down changes as your inner ear struggles to adjust to the pressure, so vertigo can make you confused and disoriented. You have to master all of those impulses to dive successfully. 

When we hit our first depth and sat on the sandy bottom, looking up at the surface, it was like no experience I can possibly describe. Once you overcome the first few minutes of panic and give yourself over to the experience, being underwater is wonderful. Existing down there is effortless, as long as you don't fight it for control. The surface feels very far away, physically and mentally. You become quite detached from it all. It's quiet in a profound way. And the things you can see up close! 

Our instructor shows off a sea urchin

Fish!

I'm as elegant below the water as I am above it (ie: not)

Once we went a little deeper, I stopped equalizing properly. Basically, that means my ears wouldn't pop. It's incredibly painful. I tried every trick our instructor showed us, but it wasn't happening. Not surprising - I had a lot of ear infections as a kid thanks to underdeveloped Eustachian tubes, and there's some pretty bad scarring. 

I really, really hate giving up. Like, compulsively. But, the harder I tried to equalize, the more my heart raced and the more air I needed to take in - and then the vertigo started. I signaled the instructor for help. 

He brought me back up to the surface slowly while my friends stayed below, took my gear (except for my mask and fins), and told me to go back to shore while they completed the dive. It was a pretty long way back to swim by that point, but the fins helped. 

Was I sad I didn't finish the dive? Yeah. Am I still happy I tried it? Hell yes. 

I only made it down to about 10m, which is nothing, really, but. 

Fear is a leash. It stops you from making decisions and forces you into a state of reaction, and I resent it. I feel that I wasted more than a precious decade of my life being ruled by it entirely. 

This one was a big one. Every time you overcome a fear, you cut a tether that can jerk you around and interrupt your ability to proceed according to your own will. 

Life is too short to avoid fear. Maybe I run towards fear too much now, and maybe that's just as bad as running away from it. When you choose to turn and face it, though, you get to confront it in your own time and on your own terms. That's worth it for me. 

Will I do it again? Maybe, if I can figure my ears out. Some people do better the second time. But no matter what, it's territory I can say that I've taken back for myself. And I'd like to think that Sherry would've been pleased that I did it. 

What's the "art" part of Historical European Martial Arts?

Allert's slightly spicy take on swords...

I actually don't study La Verdadera Destreza because it's an effective system for winning tournaments (although I believe it can be, and is, in hands more skilled than mine).

I study it because I believe it to be true and beautiful. I believe it holds some important lessons about human nature, decision-making, and self-mastery.

Do you walk up to someone in the park flowing through tai chi postures and say, "tai chi sucks in a real fight, I think you'd be more effective martially if you took up Shaolin wushu"?

"Bruh, you guys are never gonna medal, what's the point?"

No. Because you see and appreciate that the goals of the person who is meditatively practicing tai chi are not the same as yours. You'd be more effective martially if you picked up a glock. You both accept that there's more to what you're doing than just that one element.

We know that tai chi assists in stuff like lowering blood pressure, helping in rehabilitation, getting you out socially, and encouraging thoughtful, reflective engagement with your body and the world around you. We feel the practice of perfecting an art form through careful practice has merit.

Why don't we allow this kind of conversation about swordcraft?

Why do we still have modern masters of swordcraft who drop out and never pick up a sword again once they stop regularly winning tournaments?

I think HEMA - and all similar sword-based sports - will mature once we allow students to have different reasons for studying their form of choice and different successful outcomes. It is important to encourage love in what we do. We must celebrate the study and practice of those forms as purposes unto themselves.

Swordcraft can be gentle. It can be beautiful. It can be an intimate dance. It can be a terrible reckoning. It can be a celebration of the human body and what it can do. It can be a tribute to the past. It can be a tool for unlocking secrets about the self. And yeah, absolutely, it can be a thing you do as a sport to wreck people in tournaments.

Do I want to win tournaments? God, yes, do I ever. But that's not the beginning or the end of what we're doing - is it?

What do you fear will happen the most?

I'm an avid "fight journaller" - by which I mean that I have a lot of notebooks with incredibly strange esoteric ramblings in them which are sometimes recognizably related to swordcraft, but often aren't.

When I fight journal, I focus a lot on goals and motivations. I know intimately what my North Star is, for example, and I hold it very close to my heart all the time. What I don’t do very often is really take a hard look at the shadow cast by that bright light so I can see what shape it is.

When you feel anxious, disappointed, lonely, frustrated, trapped, scared or angry during your journey, what is that shadow trying to tell you? What are the deepest fears you have behind your highest goals? How are they holding you back, and how are you going to take meaningful action to either address them or make peace with them so you can keep moving?

Here's a little bit about my stuff. 

I know that I really fear being disliked. I really fear abandonment. I really fear being misunderstood. I really fear harming others unintentionally. I don't think any of those are very uncommon, honestly, especially for those of us who are neurodivergent. 

One of the things that kept me back from fencing when I started in the SCA was some pretty unfortunate issues in the community at that time. I remember being a second or third-hand witness to interpersonal conflicts of absolutely brutal intensity - sometimes due to a lack of courtesy or honor on the part of one party or another, but often just because of years of critical failures in communication and excessive competitiveness that spiraled out of control. Most of those big personalities are gone, but I'm always a little afraid that it's a problem that might come back one day. 

I know that those fears absolutely impact what I'm confidently able to bring to the field when it's time to fight, and so now they're a problem for my fencing.  

"We're, uh... we're still getting beers later, right?"

Knowing that those are my fears, what can I do to make myself feel a bit more comfortable bringing some competitive spirit to the field while still trying to make sure I'm not contributing to a future problem?

1. Communicate clearly with my fencing partners to make sure we're on the same page about intensity, blow-calling, conventions, calibration, emotional state, etc.

2. Greet people warmly before the tournament and after the tournament so if I need my "game face" on during the proceedings, people understand that there is no personal issue. 

3. Assume the best intentions, work out problems as much as possible in practice time, encourage communication directly between impacted parties and not gossip, and politely but kindly communicate boundaries at appropriate moments. 

4. Appreciate that sometimes tournament experiences are not fun, even if they are rewarding, and not everyone has to go away smiling that day - but if they don't, that doesn't mean I did anything wrong. 

5. Trust that everybody else is also here to have a good fight, and that giving your best fight is a sign of mutual respect and admiration, not spite and aggression.

Maybe this won't solve every problem, but I hope it will help with some. 

On persona #2 - Pinterest for the visual learner

I personally feel that Pinterest is one of the best tools for anyone working on persona development.

Pinterest is a tool for creating digital "vision boards," and works on a sort of chain of association model. You can search terms directly, or you can click on a picture and it will show you a bunch of different related pictures and/or links. You can "pin" these to a board and create a little themed collage for yourself. 

As a persona development tool, this is pretty priceless, especially if you're not 100% sure what you're going for yet. 

Here's mine, for reference.

Let's do this step-by-step.

1. Create a board for your persona.

For example, here's the top of the Pinterest board I made for my persona, Allert Pierson. I have some word associations here from a visual standpoint to help guide my costuming, but also to help me better define how Allert presents himself to the world and what niche he fills in that society. You may not have all this information yet, and that's okay. Start simple, and refine as you go. 

2. Use the search function to learn more about what your persona looks like. 

Let's say you don't know a whole lot about your persona yet, but you know you really like The Tudors or Vikings and you'd like to portray someone from one of those periods. That's fantastic! We can work with that. 

If I was going to search up some visual inspirations for Allert at the very basic level, I would type in "17th century man" or "1620s male clothing". You may type in "Roman man" or "Tudor woman". 

Scroll down through the suggestions and make note of anything that really pops out at you. Pin everything you like to your persona's board. Don't be choosy, you can go back and remove some later! 

Once you've been doing that for a while, go back and look at your board. Is there a cut of garment or color scheme or hairstyle that you really love and is coming up a lot? Click on the images and links and see if you can figure out what that's called, or specifically what time period it's from. If you can't narrow it down, that's okay - you can always ask for help later. 

Quick note here - while it can be tempting to pin screenshots from movies and television shows (and that's a great place to start for general inspiration!) try to stick to portraits, sketches, and work from reenactors if you can. You don't have to duplicate what they're doing exactly! But, it will help give you a better picture of what folks were really wearing and doing at the time, rather than dramatized versions which are selected and designed for a very specific on-screen purpose. 

3. Learn more about where your persona fits in the world.

Are you pinning a lot of pictures of noblemen, middle-class women, or soldiers? Are there some professions or particular locations that keep coming up? Why not try adding that to your search terms next and see what comes up? Google things you think are interesting. Let yourself be dragged down inspiration "rabbit holes" as you find them. Pay attention to what you really find engaging and exciting. 

Pin pictures of landscapes, settings, buildings, books, and even color palettes and objects that might have existed in the world around them. This will help you to build texture and realism into your persona's life. 

4. Use Pinterest's "more to explore" function to help you refine further.

You've found a pin that really interests you or seems to perfectly reflect the niche you want your persona to fill? Click on it. Scroll down. Pinterest will offer you lots of what it thinks are related ideas, and that can be an excellent way to discover more. 

5. Revisit often and keep it joyful. 

Persona is a conversation with yourself and with the past. As you play more and learn more about who you are and want to be, it's totally natural to go back and change and further define your persona. This is a vision board exclusively for your own use, not a set of rules!