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Black Belt Trials: Round Two And Always


http://www.lonelyplanet.com/south-korea/seoul



At Bristol Academy, 163A Church Road, Redfield, Bristol:
It is crowded. While our nervous yet determined students are working up a sweat in the hall upstairs, I take a walk around St George's Park. It rains, light heavy, and snows cherry blossom. Over the pond each drop patters, sends out loops. Ducks waddle on the path. They all look as I pass: quack, contended. Nice weather for ducks. Chestnut trees have flowers that stack like wedding cakes. Spring is for beginnings. Summer to autumn for fruition, winter for the hack back to skeletal basics. Spring is for beginnings… There's something about the combination of a mass meeting of like minded people, the creative surge of nerves and knowledge (plus espresso) makes my brain splurge: before I have put a foot back to the Academy words are pinging. In the porch, simply conversing, words become attached to potential actions.Mr appears, from his hall upstairs perch. He is smiling. No results till Tuesday: but he is happy that all of our participants this weekend (twelve in total) have done their best. For us, this is what we have asked of them. We both smile. On the way home we call to see the new home of Niece Kate: vaguely dilapidated, fantastically picturesque, fire lit flat in the stable block of a fading stately home. We eat bolognaise, talk Tae kwon-Do, talk dreams.
She says: something like: you can say wouldn't have been nice if, or wasn't it nice when? In the car, on the final home leg, then, the drift of reality settles. Potential can be made real. Those that graded today: if you did your utmost, you did well. Carry it on: something like: you can say wouldn't have been nice if, or wasn't it nice when?

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Comments

Suze said…
I love this post, Lisa. You excel talking dreams and then coaxing from them potential.
29 April 2014 at 17:44
Lisa Southard said…
Thank you lovely Suze- we have just got nine of our students through their Blackbelt gradings and all have been successful- nothing better than seeing the fulfillment of potential! :-)
30 April 2014 at 23:48
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