I found that I couldn’t do Brush Knee With a Twist Step (which happens twice), without doing Step Block Punch, which is complicated and has taken me a couple of tries to get something readable/interpretable.
The key was to acknowledge the slight turn which nonetheless faces the practitioner slightly southwest. Call it south-southwest. Except, even now, I’m not sure that this is right. It was a devil of a set of movements to try to capture — the left leg steps on brush knee with twist step, and then steps four times in Step Block Punch: first right foot, then left foot, then right foot, then left foot. How does one represent that effectively?
The poem for Brush Knee is also complicated. Here’s why:
Now, with your right foot anchored to the floor,
pull left and right hands away to the right.
Imagine, if you can, there is a door
just in front of you, and you must now fight
through that narrow gate. Let your left hand sweep
across the left thigh to defend the knee
as your left foot steps. Your right hand will keep
pushing forward — and though the hand is free,
the right arm transmits the left foot’s pressure.
Shift all your weight from right foot to left sole,
fit through the narrow door: golden treasure
lies beyond! Balance your weight, become whole
with left and right heels equally grounded
and your trunk on left and right defended.
All this stuff about golden treasure, and balanced weight, and passing through the narrow gate… yeah. For what amounts to a step forward, a low sweep with the left hand and a punch with the right. Except… the NEXT poem is tomorrow’s movement: Grab the Needle on the Sea Floor. Which means there’s a missing poem. And this explains why it was so difficult for me to draw out this sequence. I’ve not tried to explain it in words yet. It’s not there. Oops.
Tomorrow will be a writing day, clearly, rather than a diagram. I have make-up homework, apparently.
