Fear The Unlived Life...And My Unstoppable Mad Fog Machine Skills!

Holy Shinto! On Friday, someone certainly chose to go beyond living like a sheep for a lifetime, and truly roaring like a lion for a day!



It appears Aquinas High School religion teacher Mark Koehne earned the most money of any teacher for Cash for Cancer last Friday. Aquinas’ National Honor Society started the campaign a month ago to raise money for three students, two of them still in school, who’ve been diagnosed with cancer of the lymphatic system. They initially aimed to collect $1,500 in donating to this philanthropic cause, but ended up raising $6,500 and presented the check Thursday to the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. The vice-president of National Honor Society at Aquinas, Sara Kerrigan, currently continues treatment for her cancer, where doctors recently discovered new tumors near her cheek. She’s expected to undergo two weeks of radiation treatment and, possibly, a bone marrow transplant this summer.



In celebration of him earning the most cash of any teacher for Cash For Cancer, Koehne went backstage, and...well...let's just say he fell just a few lilies short of a shojo-ai! (giggles) Yep, sword and mind became united, when he leaped out of the night in his shorts, flipping nun-chucks, conjuring a monsoon of steam from a dry ice machine across the stage, chasing a phantom opponent, flipping the chains from hand to hand in blinding motion. Then he dropped the nun-chucks, landed cartwhells all across the stage, went all Harlem Globetrotters with a basketball, hula-hooped in a most frenetic motion, and put on a grand finale when he hurled cinnamon roll shuriken at students in the audience. Apparently on this very day, it was easy to spot all kinds of black belt enthusiasts in the crowd; they were all collecting the bags of cinnamon rolls like Marines on roller skates! Waaahhhhh!



Maureen Breuer, English teacher and Honor Society advisor, also noted that a number of teachers had offered to perform acts of humiliation to reward student donations, and speculated Koehne earned the most because of a misunderstanding. I guess when we forge our bodies in the spirit of our ancestors as Koehne did, there could always be such misunderstandings because, after all, as is written in the Kentucky Fried Movie: Fistfull of Yen playbook, in doing that we are creating a fighting force of extra-ordinary measure, ha ha!



Holy Furitama indeed! I used to take martial arts classes back when I lived in the Centennial State. Down on the corner of 29th and Sheridan Boulevard in northwest Denver, you'll find a sacred school I used to attend known as Progressive Martial Arts (official web-site is located above) where I learned some basic Chinese Kempo Karate, Indonesian Pentjak Silat katas, self defense, grappling and kickboxing skills. R.J Everett was my original instructor, who I most enjoyed having as an instructor and was as warm and friendly as a big Build-A-Bear Workshop teddy! He was my instructor a majority of the time I attended the school, where I learned several katas including Hard 1, Hard 2, Short 3 and Mass Attack, and went from a white belt to a brown belt. Eventually R.J Everett resigned, which was kind of sad to see but I got to see R.J Everett numerous times after that at karate tournaments and in the front parking lot on Saturday afternoons, and Roberto Cisneros and B.J Villanueva (he dated my sister for a while) became my subsequent instructors until I left the school.



I initially took interest in attending the school as I was told it would be a wonderful way to improve my motor skills, and how they certainly did as I learned to employ my mind as a mirror and understand from Hui-Wu that "the whole world is a door of liberation." And I will always have memories of many New Years Eves, when I rang it on in by participating in doing Kilo Abs (1,000 sit-ups, 2,000 on Y2K). Even as I have been out of martial arts for about four years now because of my growing disenchantment with the school in that it got increasingly competitive and seemed to care more about winning tournaments than harnessing the meaning and poetry of understanding the "empty-hand", perhaps even now I can manage to singe some leg hairs! (giggles)

Another event which may have slowly diminished my heart in Progressive Martial Arts was when I participated in a grappling tournament the school hosted known as SLAM! which is regularly held at the Denver Convention Center just off of I-25 and 58th Avenue just north of Denver, and shortly into my match-up, I shattered my left clavicle and was left in terrible pain, and had to be carried out of the convention center and taken to the hospital, where I wore a swing for a few weeks. That event stuck to me and startled me somewhat, and that was the point that led to my decline in interest in the school.



Part of my heart has interest in returning to martial arts classes, but merely just to learn to further enhance my state of mind, balance, self-respect, respect of others and perhaps being able to answer Zen Koan's question, "How do you step from the top of a 100-foot pole?" Nonetheless, I hold true to my heart fond memories of my many peers at the school, completing physicals loaded with push-ups, sit-ups and squat-thrusts, heading over to Gas 4 Less across the street for Gatorade at 2 P.M after every day of classes, attending the PMA Picnics down in every August and playing volleyball in the sandbox and chess with fellow students while drinking down four or five Pepsis, etc.



So from the wind between the wings of a thousand cranes to Izanagi no Mikoto (or Izanami no Mikoto for you frmales, yay!) let that cinnamon roll shuriken fly, be sure to see from the valley rather than from the peak, and abjure the why and seek the how. I see the sun has managed to perforate the clouds right now so I'll have to soak myself in this how!



Immerse yourselves in nakaima ("in the middle of now") young grasshoppers! I've been there, and when I'm in nakaima, I am the world's strongest coffee candy!

XOXO,
Noah Eaton
(Mistletoe Angel)
(Emmanuel Endorphin)