biancadarc.com Blog

Inspiration Out of Desperation

Good Saturday to you, everyone! I’ve been thinking a lot lately about my raison d’etre… Why am I here? What is my purpose? All those big issues that come into question when there are major changes in your life. Today, I’m trying to put all that on hold and just trying to live one moment at a time and making it the best moment I can. Such a simple concept, so hard to do. I find myself drawing on my early experiences with the martial arts to accomplish this… and so much more…

When I was in my 20’s I was a very serious martial arts student. My teacher, who had earned the title Shihan, was so highly ranked in his form of martial arts that he had to travel to Japan to be tested for his next ranking because there weren’t enough people of sufficiently higher rank in the U.S. to be able to test him. The dude was serious. He looked sorta like an old beach bum – longish, streaky blonde hair, a Buddha shaped body that wasn’t fat, but if you didn’t know how much power the man packed, you might assume him to have the beginnings of a beer belly. He was a walking, talking example of why you shouldn’t always judge a book by its cover.

This guy made a huge impression on my young life. I was a pet project of his. I was going to be his next female black belt. There weren’t many women in this dojo. It was mostly cops and ex-military types. Shihan trained police departments in hand-to-hand combat methods as a sideline. I think I was one of maybe 4 women in the entire dojo and one of only 2 who was ranked high enough – and was gung-ho enough – to train with the more advanced guys.

Shihan was a Buddhist. He made us meditate after every 2.5-hour class. It was an eye opening time for me and I find myself using bits of this experience in my writings to this day. As an example, the layout of the dojo in my paranormal shapeshifter romance, CAT’S CRADLE, is based on the dojo I studied in. Some of the things I learned in that dojo were also used in DRAGON STORM, which delves more deeply into the culture of Tibet and the various forms of Buddhism.

Without doubt, I call on my fight training and the actual sparring I once did with a bunch of big, hard, sweaty guys… whoa… sorry… got off track there for a moment. As I was saying, I use that experience in every hand-to-hand fight scene I write.

I also try to remember that discipline now, as I battle depression and grief over the huge hole the loss of my beloved Mom, my best friend, has left in my life. It’s funny how something I did so long ago has had such lingering effects on my life to this day. To be brutally honest, I wound up in that dojo because this guy I was dating studied there. Without him as the lure, I doubt I would’ve even tried to compete on that level. Though he ended up breaking my heart, I still owe that bum a lot, though he’ll never know it. He got me to that dojo and that teacher. He caused me to be in the place where I learned lessons I call on to this day.

Crazy, huh? It’s these little twists of fate that make life interesting, don’t you think?