Thoughts on Dreams and Reality
...a letter from summer camp
by David Beauroy
The other day, I woke up from an afternoon siesta with aikido on my mind. The room
around me was still unclear and as I came to my senses, I realized that I had been
dreaming about summer camp.
Except that it was not the same camp I had been to three weeks before. For one thing, Oleg, Joseph, and Kato were not there, and Fran Turner Sensei was not her usual self. The Shihan, too, were different. Instead of Kanai, Yamada, Tamura, and Waka Sensei, we had Saotome, Kimeda, and Obata Sensei as hosts. Then I really woke up and recalled having read several issues of ATM that had highlighted the people of my "dream" camp.
What happened down in Hamilton, N.Y., was much more interesting. For there I was, getting up every morning at 5:45 to catch the day's first class at 6:30 am. After a five minute walk through the morning mist that enveloped the hills around us, I found myself sitting in a huge room that seemed large enough to house a 747. Around me were about 200 people who showed up regularly for the chance (and fun) to practice under the watchful eyes of Kanai and Yamada Shihan or those of Waka Sensei.
Each morning, as I lined up and waited for the respective sensei to bow onto the mat, I thought, "I am here and this is really happening after weeks of explaining to family and friends that I was not out of my mind to do this as a holiday." Indeed, there I was, sitting in seiza with Fran Turner Sensei, Kato, Oleg, Joseph, and a couple hundred other aikidoka from all over North America, the Caribbean, South America, and even a few from Europe. This, I thought, was definitely the right place to be and all these people understood that.
Then, another magical day began with the bow of the sensei.
Back