Fencing Bear at Prayer

It sounds like such good advice: “Just do the best you can.” It is the implications that are somewhat worrying. Yes, it’s the beginning of the tournament year, and I’m back where I was in July, wondering what the point is. Okay, so one of the reasons that I lost that pool bout 4-5 was because my weapon failed on the last touch and my parry-riposte, clear as day to look at, did not register on the box. (My opponent remised, and there we were.) What was I doing letting things get to 4-4 in the first place? Well, I had been behind 1-4 and come back, but never mind. I lost the last touch because I did not know how to clean my tip properly, and that, plus one thing and another (both of my other weapons failing because the body cords were loose and so my attacks registered nothing but off-targets), I only won 3 of my 6 pool bouts, putting me in the middle of the field (16 out of 32) for the D-E round. And then I lost my D-E to the girl who had seeded 17th. So there I was sitting at the...

Some of you who are not fencers, maybe even some of you who are, may be wondering why, if fencing puts me through agonies such as I have been describing this past week, I do it at all. Surely there are more pleasant ways to spend my leisure time, if what I am looking for is a little fun. Why bring myself to the strip over and over again, night after night, year after year, if all I encounter there are the demons of pride, envy, gluttony, anger, lust, sloth and greed? Well, as the desert fathers who invented this list of deadly sins (more accurately, temptations) would put it, because that is where the demons are. How else will I learn to fight them? I know, this may sound paradoxical. Why put myself in the way of temptation when, by avoiding the strip, I could so easily maintain my calm? Or could I? I would, of course, like to think I could, but then, how would I know unless I were brought to the test, for example, by having to stand in a long line at the airport waiting to hear...