Arrakis teaches the attitude of the knife—chopping off what’s incomplete and saying: ‘Now, it’s complete because it’s ended here.’ Dune, Collected Sayings of Maud’Dib by the Princess Irulan I first read most of the Dune saga in high school and arrived at college in Oregon eager, naïvely, to meet its author. A classmate from theContinue reading “Frank Herbert”
Tag Archives: Dune
Gene Wolfe
Although I would not call myself a science-fiction aficionado, two of my favorite authors are Frank Herbert and Gene Wolfe. Two days after my father died, Wolfe followed (April 14, 2019), two lights dimming together, oddly twinned in my memory. Wolfe’s obituaries appeared in the Washington Post, The New Republic, and The New Yorker. Wolfe’sContinue reading “Gene Wolfe”
ZANSHIN AS THE PRESENTATION OF SELF
Zanshin 残心 is the relaxed state of awareness visibly displayed by the practitioner’s posture at the end of the technique. Often instructors hide behind foreign lexicon to slather a mystic veneer on the martial arts. I am a pragmatic American and for me the terms need a better explanation and translation. I crib the title fromContinue reading “ZANSHIN AS THE PRESENTATION OF SELF”