I am a black belt.

I am a second dan (nidan 二段) Aikido black belt with the original school of Aikido, the Aikikai Foundation.

I started Aikido practice in early 1997 after a holiday trip to the US. When Aikido was introduced in Brazil, it had inherited local rules from the Judo federation back then, so pre-black belt students (mudansha 無段者) have a colored-belt ranking system from yellow to brown.

photo by: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Chrkl

Everyone starts with a white belt, which usually comes in the same package as the dogi, the practice uniform, when you buy it.

It took me some time to learn that the white belt is a kind of “self-assigned” symbol. To get one, you just need to buy the uniform.

Once you go through your first evaluation or “exam”, you may or may not advance to 5th rank (gokyū 五級:ごきゅう).

Later in my experience I also learned that kyū progression through different colors wasn’t really practice or understood as practice by black belt dan practitioners.

It was learning.

Learning in the sense of discovery. As you were so early in your practice that you could only discover things that exist. Like sitting in the cockpit of an airliner for the first time. You don’t even know where to look, let alone touch. You need time just to find things and learn what they are.

There are between 2,500 and 3,500 different techniques in Aikido depending on the naming used to explain the variations. A 5th kyū student with less than 6 months of practice may have tried, with luck, 100 or so different techniques. Ever since early practice, students learn to associate parts of techniques with their names. Then they memorize complete technique names and learn how to execute them with training partners.

Advanced western students or Japanese students can be given the name of a new technique, a technique they might have never trained before (like technique #2311) and build it on-demand in their heads before putting it into practice. Something like looking at a fragmented image on the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, correctly guessing what it is, and solving the puzzle almost instantly at the speed of thought.

In the following video, legendary Aikido master instructor (shihan 師範) Christian Tissier demonstrates an ushiro ryo kata dori naname kokyu nage (or sokomen irimi nage).

Tissier shihan can not only execute this movement with technical perfection, but also with his own particular style. Aikido masters are known and differentiated by their styles.

Their styles become so unique sometimes that practitioners use them as a reference to describe other students’ styles, like: “Oh, that instructor is more like Ueshiba’s style, whereas his new student has Yamada’s style.”

Styles are signatures.

So this journey begins when you buy a piece of clothing with a white belt, then goes through thousands of techniques, moving into the black belt realm years later, learning a lot more about the non-physical, philosophical, and even spiritual side of Aikido, developing style, developing leadership inside your federation and out, and never stopping the refinement of technique. Even when the body is too old for breakfalls or kneeling practice (suwari waza 座り技), some refinement can still be done in the sense of avoiding some techniques while developing others.

Such an experience-rich journey to go through. I truly recommend Aikido to anyone.

I am a white belt

I finished the manuscript of my first book this week.

I wrote it using a combination of tools anyone can buy: a computer and word processing software. Just like the dogi and its accompanying white belt. I started writing it in such a rudimentary way—with narratives, dialogues, and chapter structures—that I still don’t have a clear idea whether they are right or wrong.

The first time I reviewed the initial chapters (the first 30 pages, I guess) I saw typos and grammar mistakes that would put any adult to shame.

By the way, I wrote it using my mother tongue, Brazilian Portuguese, which looks noticeably better than this English text you are reading here, and which I rarely review before posting online. Even so, some parts of the book were badly written and had to be revised several times.

Once, I decided to ask an AI model about a specific narrative structure I was building. I just wanted to know if it was OK to have it in a book like mine with such-and-such a story and such-and-such characters. The answer came with a description of an entire literary school devoted to that form of narrative. My silly literary doubt was, in fact, a century-old line of research with people dedicating entire careers to it. There are PhDs in this area.

I’m such a white belt.

I haven’t even stepped onto the mat yet. I’m in the locker room trying to figure out how to tie that belt.

My book is aimed at teenage readers and young adults. I had questions about past- and present-tense narration. I wrote it all using past-tense narration. Then I started reading Charles Stross’s “Accelerando” and saw how nice present-tense narration is; I was blown away. I decided to ask AI about it, and I learned present-tense narration is a modern type of narration preferred by teens and young adults. They love it, in fact. So I was doing it all wrong in my book! And I didn’t fix it.

I stepped onto the mat and felt completely lost in my first week of practice. My instinct was telling me to step forward when the technique required a step backward. White belt, no doubt. Then I made all sorts of mistakes. Some were evident. Some were hidden, so I found them much later. Others are still to be found—and not by me, but by other people.

I’m looking for a publisher right now.

I sent an executive summary of the book to a friend who is a publisher in São Paulo. I don’t even know what kind of feedback I might receive at this point. What are the possibilities? How many are there? A handful or 3,500? It feels the same to me.

I never stopped reading books while writing. I read Asimov’s “Prelude to Foundation” and Herbert’s “Dune Messiah” cover to cover, at least, and read sections of many others (see my books page).

Reading those masterpieces felt like attending an Aikido grand master exhibition, where the layman’s eye can only see the tip of a 2-mile-deep iceberg. A good example of this is this short video of legendary Aikido master Morihiro Saito from the 1980s. He demonstrates ki no musubi (気の結び), a technique that looks trivial to the beginner, but that advanced practitioners take many decades to understand and learn. Some masters even say the technique may never be grasped by some types of students due to its inherent complexity.

So I wrote my first book at the age of 50.

What can I expect to learn about that craft, or art, or both? There must be a literary ki no musubi. Something that felt like second nature to Dostoevsky (Достоевский) or Nietzsche. Not that I have that level of expectation for my work—not in a million years. I don’t mean sophistication, but achievement. Some results are really unachievable. By the time I started Aikido, I had no idea what ki no musubi (気の結び) was. I probably don’t know it fully even after 30 years. I didn’t know how far I could get in Aikido. I got my black belt, then my 2nd degree black belt, and have practiced for more than a decade as an advanced student. I don’t know how far I can get as an author. Or rather, I’m not even an author yet. I’m a white belt author. One of the first things advanced students and instructors told me when I got my black belt was: from this point onward, you are learning and practicing. Before then, you were just learning. Maybe I’m just learning how to write novels right now. I’m stepping onto the mat and finding my bearings. Many questions at this point:

• What is writing?
• What is Aikido?
• What is learning and what is practice?
• What kinds of writing are there?
• How many kyu and dan degrees are there?
• What is mastery?
• What is style?
• Is there ki no musubi?

Until I find those answers — if ever — I’ll keep writing for one reason: I can.

I can write novels.

This is something I proved to myself was possible. I can write novels the same way I learned Aikido.