The end of this month marks the leap year and the date that Doc left us, an anniversary that we can only really observe once every four years.  Fitting maybe, for a man that one comes across once in a lifetime, if ever.

Since then I have tried to fill the void, or my “budo emptiness” as best I can.  In truth, I’ve been extremely lucky to be “taken in” by Sensei Rich Faustini, who serves up world-class instruction and a steady stream of chicken soup for a bruised budo soul.  And I’ve been lucky to participate in a wonderful little Kenjutsu class that Sensei Perez introduced me to.  Sensei Bryan Musicar has been a wonderful and generous sensei; when my shoulder heals, I believe I will ask if I can return (obviously after getting clearance from Sensei Perez).

For four years I have reflected on what I learned and what I should have learned, what I took and what I should have taken, what I contributed and what I should have contributed.  In my office hangs a copy of the mosaic that I gave him on his 90^th birthday (yes, I kept a copy for myself).  Each night, as I’m reading, the hands, and what they accomplished, stare down at me. 

When I first hung their image, the hands gave me comfort and happiness, remembering how it felt to grab on as hard as I could, how his chung would completely shift my entire center of gravity, how his tegatana block would knock me back 6 feet, and also how they could heal. After a very serious bicycle accident in 1993, and after I had convalesced enough to return to the dojo, he checked me over, prodding, eyes darting to specific spots on my upper torso and neck.  It wasn’t until he murmured (the murmur he saved for corrections or encouragement during a demonstration, the murmur that only the student could hear) “Well, your nose is on sideways,” that I knew I was going to be ok.

Now those hands, and the totality of what they achieved in one life, which the mosaic only captures a slice of, are admonishing.  “What are you getting done with yours” they ask quietly.

When my sensei was my age, he seldom walked onto a mat with less than 30 students.  Usually more.  I can look back now and say that the moral and emotional burden of carrying an entire style had to have been enormous.  I remember one night after a sandan session with Sensei Perez and I, he sighed at his home and said “I don’t know how many of these I have left in me.”

But he pushed on.  Generously.

All of which lead me back to the theme of this newsletter: Generosity.

I have been a recipient of an enormous amount of generosity, not just from my sensei’s, but from my fellow students and friends.  My New Jersey friends and my Maryland friends have been there for me.

This is what Generosity looks like:

Sensei Chris Ourand taking falls in my place.

 

Joel Valdes taking “The New Blackbelt” through some nuances of Shodan waza.

The Onions of Generosity

Late one night Doc’s home in Grasonville Maryland, after we returned from class, after the protein shake and the scoop of nonfat vanilla frozen yogurt and the discussion about the finer points of what we learned that night, after the “regulars” (Sensei Perez and Sensei McKinney) went home, and just before we both turned in, Doc walked me into Byrd’s office, which is where I would spend the night before getting up a few hours later and driving back to work.  He wanted to show me something, what it was I cannot remember.  Two sides of the room were filled with classic novels, books on history, culture and conservative politics.  Another wall was covered to the ceiling with paintings, mostly landscapes and oil portraits of friends, family, and acquaintances.  I pointed to one painting of a French bookshop and commented that Desiree would love that painting. 

He looked back at me as though he were suddenly hit with a wave of inspiration, an idea he had oddly never considered.  He turned, lifted the painting off the wall, did an about-face, and presented it to me.  I employed all the proper and polite refusal formulas one is supposed to employ in these sorts of situations, but when Sensei insists, Sensei insists. In truth, I probably didn’t try that hard.

Then the image hit me all at once.  My Sensei was standing in front of me with a painting in his arms, holding it out to me, and behind him was a wall filled with paintings from floor to ceiling, with one square, unmistakable blank spot in the middle.  I didn’t realize that it was a metaphor until the next morning at 4:45, as I started my drive back to New York, and the image came back to me.  The metaphor of a Sensei giving pieces of himself to the student.  “Sensei is what Sensei does…you’ll do it too” he said after the sacrificing hours on Route 95 in the sweltering July heat to conduct my Nidan promotion along with Sensei Perez. The verb I think he meant to use was “give.”  Sensei is what Sensei gives.

I write this from the couch in my office, in front of the mosaic I presented him, and next to the mosaic, the painting that he presented to me.  I am convalescing from a nasty rotator cuff surgery, having given my right shoulder to a Shodan promotion last Spring. Trying to live up to the example given to me, hoping it’s enough, but not sure.

I’m trying, Sensei.

 

On February 29, 2024, my wife and I will be going to Mount Fuji for dinner. (History | Mt. Fuji Restaurants (mtfujirestaurants.com)).  We’ll be there at around 6:00PM.

During his glory days of the 1980s and 1990s, Doc and Byrd had us all gather at each year’s end, wives and girlfriends mandatory.  Even Doc’s secretary would go.  We would raise a glass, we would tell a story. Occasionally, we would leave the table (very briefly) for Sensei to explain a move. I would get asked twenty or thirty times if I had ridden my bicycle there.  After dinner, at the bar, one could occasionally hear Mickey say “hold my beer and watch this…” as he motioned someone else over.  During those days, between Yoshitsune and retirement from his chiropractic practice, I think Mount Fuji was Doc’s happy place.

I would love to see you there, if you can make it.  We can remember a man that one comes across once in a lifetime, if ever.

Faithfully,

Scot Lynch

Yondan

Tusgiashi Do