As this year comes to a close it is ironic how people, places, and things from my past are starting to resurface as if almost by design. My recent re-dedication to the martial arts has almost seemingly summoned alot of my boys out of the woodwork. One of my old training partners, and dojo brothers, Fame has moved back to NYC after living abroad in Europe for the past decade.
I knew that Fame had been back in town for a few months, but our schedules kept us from crossing paths. We have been friends for almost as long as I have been friends with Des and Jeff. In fact, is was Des who actually introduced me to Fame nearly 30 years ago. Anyway, Fame had been re-acclimating himself to life back in the States while my hectic semester after the department shakeup hadn’t made it easy for many of my friends to get ahold of me either. Well, today we finally had a chance to reconnect. One of our other dojo brothers, Rick, got my digits from Sensei and finally prompted all of us to get off our backsides and touch base. Rick, much like Fame, had also resurfaced on my radar after a similar decade plus long absence.
All of us trained under Sensei, who of course, was the only one whom had stayed in contact with everyone. In one of my earlier posts I mentioned that Fame, Rick, and Sensei all moving away was a prime reason why I had stopped training years ago. It wasn’t the same with them gone. While I will always love the “art” within the fighting systems, the one thing that I really loved was the camaraderie. Working out to the point of exhaustion and learning to defend ourselves was just an added benefit.