This past week was the first anniversary of the death of a unique practitioner. A practitioner with lots of gray areas, that kept getting darker. Checking old photos, you can see how he would fill up a basquetball court in the 90s and barely have half a dozen people fifteen years later. There were reasons for that. His last days were... disheartening. I'm still cleaning bad habits from his teachings... more than ten years after my last class with him. He used to be exceptional at teaching beginners. Sadly, he took "the eternal beginner" to a whole different meaning.
And, yet, he was the man who once introduced me to Iai, and to Tatsumi-ryû. I wouldn't be in the school if it wasn't for him. He is the foundational stone of a lot of my understanding of martial arts, and Japan. A key stone in many other areas. I can't, and I shouldn't, forget his paper in that, fail to acknowledge his contribution.
I recoil from what he became, I mourn what he could have been, what he had been to his few friends. I remember my good moments with him; I'm afraid he always saw me like the babyfaced teen he met in the early nineties.
So it might be a weird memento, but I did 108 repetitions of a kata in Tatsumi I'll always associate with him: nuki uchi, ni no uden, ni no tachi, kesa. He liked it, because if was off the main track of the school, on its own. It almost says it all, right there.
Godspeed, Miquel, rest in peace
