Dreamed of Mantis

Over the last week or two I've been reading through selected postings in archives of martial arts blog Striking Thoughts (brilliant blog name!) as I've waited for my data recodes and analyses to run. Interesting stuff: he's enrolled in a joint lock style of kung fu, as well as a Mantis style. Reading his blog has re-awakened my interest in getting back into martial arts -- specifically, to enroll in a class. One of these days.

Still, I found it pretty interesting (when I woke up, that is) when I had a dream a few days ago where I was at some university gym, sitting on the sidelines observing a Mantis style kung fu class. In the dream, my mom was hanging out waiting for me, sitting on a bench reading a book: because even when you're forty-two, it's still cool to have your mom drive you places. (Actually, maybe this indicated that I was visiting Seattle, and thus had to be driven to the campus gym).

For some reason, I was wearing the kung fu uniform from the style I used to do (black pants, black t-shirt), even though the Mantis folks were wearing something else. That's actually an odd thing to do when visiting another school as an observer: unless you're a representative of your own school, it's better to just wear regular clothes.

Frustratingly, in my dream I could only get glimpses of what they were doing, because they kept changing rooms to do different parts of their practice -- and somehow I kept getting left behind, getting lost in the gymnasium. And just as I finally found the room where they'd relocated, they'd be packing up to go to another room. (I'm sure that's all highly symbolic: being left behind; only having tantalizing glimpses...)

Maybe once my work schedule settles out (currently I log most of my hours on evenings and weekends), I can get back into it. My specific direction keeps shifting: currently I'm thinking Wing Chun.


--GG