Elf Sternberg

The other day, I bumped into one of my old senseis from karate class. I apologized for not renewing my membership, but the elbow injury from the previous year had not resolved well and I wasn't going to go back into the class until I knew I was going to be able to keep hacking at the physical demands of the sport. I mean, I'm 48 years old, and karate is a young man's game.

"That's too bad," he said.

I shrugged and said it was little loss. I was progressing slowly compared to others, I often confused my left and right, and didn't feel like I was going to go far. "Nah," he said. "You would have done fine. You know how to move."

Which I think is very peculiar thing for someone to say. Because if there's one thing I'm painfully aware of, it's that I don't know how to move. I'm often very conscious of the way I walk, adjusting my gait and posture to achieve some efficiency of movement, some appearance of self-containment, some maintenance of the alignment of bones and muscles. I expressed this to him, and he said, "That's my point. Most people don't think twice about walking."

And then it was time to order our lunches and go our separate ways.

I've always thought of myself as ungainly. I bump into stuff a lot, mostly because I have a head full of something other than getting somewhere. But apparently, all of that is because I'm distracted. When I'm fully present, my gait is a deliberate and well-trained thing. I never knew.