finding juan 2

Arnis 13-moves (Benjamin Lema school):

1- strike shoulder;
2- strike waist (rt. side);
3- strike waist (left side);
4- strike neck;
5- thrust abdomen;
6- strike clavicle;
7- thrust chest (left side);
8- thrust chest (right side);
9- strike rib (right);
10- strike rib (left);
11- thrust right eye;
12- cut throat, thrust left eye;
13- hit forehead.

Learning for me didn't stop after law school- if anything, it's become more intense, particularly in the last 2 or 3 years as I sought to widen and deepen my knowledge and continued to test ideas in the "real world." After law school graduation, we have what is called law review, a couple of months spent preparing for the bar exams, reviewing and synthesizing all materials learned in four or five years of classes. Right now, I'm at a similar stage of reassessing all I've learned in life so far and, at least with respect to the question of race, who I am as a Filipino, I've found arnis to be a useful tool of reflection.

An opinion piece here expresses very well the angst of an adolescent nation- born into freedom a little over a century ago- on the brink of adulthood. Many of our societies are open and welcoming to outside ideas and influences- our big cities porous and cosmopolitan- that it's sometimes difficult to draw a line between the local and the global. With arnis, I feel one with a martial tradition that Rizal and Bonifacio practiced, as did many generations of our ancestors before them long before the advent of globalization.

Here are a couple of my reflections during practice:

• The triangle is a favorite Filipino shape: it is on our flag, in the form of the roof of the kubo or local hut, in the popular "panatag" (comfort) milk commercial, and yes even in arnis. If aikido's movements are circular, the feet in arnis move along the sides of an upside-down triangle. The triangle is like a spark- pretty but potentially painful, a symbol of creativity or mysticism- and is considered reflective of conflict in traditional feng shui, though it is a favored shape of Chinese-born architect I.M. Pei (Bank of China Hong Kong, Louvre Pyramid). It is present in our most common views of love, it is in the message of our traditional dance, the tinikling. It's in our politics. Oh, it's also in LRC's logo.
  
• To resolve conflict through arnis, it is believed that the best defense is an offense (or counter-offense). Most of the time, the hit comes from the side, rather than directly from the front (analogous in culture to the palipad-hangin or indirect comment). It was painful for me to imagine hitting or cutting someone, but it was also empowering to embrace this shadow- I understood a pattern of conflict better.
  
• In arnis, the emphasis is on substance rather than on form. I would describe many of our local dishes this way (see how a beer commercial pokes fun at haute cuisine here). Imagine slicing with a bolo using the 13-moves above: the result would not be pretty sashimi, it would be tasty kilawen.