"It vexes me. I'm terribly vexed." Such a fun movie. But it's not the durchwechseln really that vexes; they're actually kind of fun. It's the pronunciation of the word itself that's irksome- there are too many silent letters and it sounds like a sneeze. And if you do it more than once? Pffft. Durchwechselnen? Durchwechselns? Gesundheit.
Actually, we started off the practice day with a four cuts/one axis drill. Zuchen, Unterhau, Kurtzhau, Oberhau- flick the blade up, continue into an unterhau, snap the blade back down, and continue with the oberhau. I have to practice those more- I do fine on the way up, with the zuchen and unterhau, but I get a little too flowy on the turn and oberhauing down, and I know my wrists twist so the angle and my blade geometry are shot all to heck. I might be able to impress my kids at school with it, but it's no good otherwise. And I definitely favor one side over the other- I can't seem to keep track of what my hands should be doing when on the opposite side with the longsword, though I'm ok swapping sides with a sabre. Weird.
But yay! This was the first practice where I didn't get any comments about my faerie-footing! Maybe it was the fact that my toes were froze. Maybe it was my trying to bounce out of the snow like an arctic hare so my sneaker-clad feet wouldn't get any colder. Maybe the Professor just wasn't looking. Or maybe my footwork actually is improving. Whatever it was, I managed to get out of the way of several incoming shots and to score my own more than once with decent form, so yay!
We moved into the Zorn orts with our partners after the axis cuts. My partner and I got in a lot of zorning, but not so much the orting. My point control is pretty lousy. On the up side, the kid less than half my age who was my partner wasn't much better at it, so at least we were learning together. He's going to be something when he catches on though.
So we're taking turns zorning each other. I get ample opportunities to practice my oberhaus as he tries to perfect his zorns, then we swap. I think I'm getting better at the blade slinging thing as opposed to muscling my blows. Professor calls out a "There you go!" as the tip of my blade finally stops where it's supposed to. Is it stupid I live for those? That little thrill that runs through when you finally get commended for doing something right after trying for so long, it's always been a motivator for me. Sadly, that means the opposite is true too though.
My papa can't carry a tune in a bucket, but he could always tell when I hit a wrong note when practicing. As I'm trying to help my partner remember how to do the next move, I realize I'm having a moment just like that- I don't know exactly what the move should look like, I just know we're doing it wrong. I'm finding that with movies some now too, which is cracking me up. I forget whether it was the Hobbit or some other film, but I was watching with a friend and found myself snorting at the silliness of a sword fight and criticizing technique. She looked at me like I was a nutter, threw a handful of popcorn at me, and went back to ogling Legolas. Maybe I just had a bit of sword envy.
We moved on to the durchwechselns. I had a tiny edge since I did them last week with the Professor, though I think the cold was trying to eradicate that. I like these... they seem sneaky and flexible and delicate all at the same time. "Haha- take that! Just kidding, take this instead!" The Professor says I should practice them on my cat, Circe. I was thinking that'd actually be fun, because she's really good at that swipe-y change-up thing, using her claws at least. But then he said I ought to use my sharp. Such a meanie! She's such a sweet, gentle kitty too. Just because she's taken a swipe at him a few times... and scratched him once or twice... and I think maybe tried to bite him....
Working with my partner, we try durchwechselning each other, flicking our sword points in little circles (ok, great big ones with aspirations of tinyness) as we practice. But as always though, I find that trying to explain something to others
helps me understand it better. Maybe that's what I need to do- start
teaching all my little minio... er, students at school the different
sword plays and maneuvers. I might have a better chance at remembering
at least. Plus I could have my own army, and how cool would that be?!
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