Something a little whimsical tonight, to keep me from watching something worthless on TV instead...
I read Sci-Fi/Fantasy for fun. I especially like stories about different kinds of magic. I've often fantasized about writing a novel of my own.
Today, whilst hiking (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CluQU3Gum7U), I was thinking about Aikido and I was struck with an inspiration for a "twist" on magic that is related to the principles of Aikido. I stopped on the trail, pulled out my phone, and typed a note.
Here's a possible clip from the story -- it's the magician explaining his art to a student.
"My magic doesn't affect things. It affects the spaces between things; the relationships that things have with one another. This makes my magic difficult to detect, and difficult to defend against. Difficult to detect because the in-betweens are seldom noticed, let alone suspected. Difficult to defend against because one cannot easily enchant something that doesn't exist until other things combine, and that disappears when they part. My spells are also difficult to learn and to cast, for all the same reasons. I live between things; between lives; between worlds. I live off line; beside; behind. You see five fingers on a hand; I see four spaces between them. You see a fist; I see something small and uninteresting, or nothing at all. You see combatants and conflict; I see a bond that can be manipulated. You see objects; I see empty space."
The space between people is where conflict exists. Proper conflict management is focused on reducing the conflict that is between two people. It is not part of the two people. When conflict management is successful, it reduces (manages) — or perhaps even eliminates — the negative entity that exists in the space between people. That is magical.
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In general, I agree. Aikido is a martial art, and as such we train to deal with physical, harm-threatening or even life-threatening conflict. However, the real every-day benefit in my training is in being able to turn conflicts of many kinds into confrontations that remove or reduce the negativity by changing the relationships involved. That was my point in the story about magic -- that perhaps we deal with the relationships more than anything else.
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