The Best Half A Fight I've Ever Fought

Last night I fought the best half a fight that I've probably ever fought. This sounds like a strange statement so let me explain. I was fencing young Stuart the left hander, with whom I have had a long standing but friendly rivalry. I had not fenced for a couple of weeks, had a minor twinge in my right hamstring from not really warming up properly and Stu had just been fencing. In all ways the odds did not look particularly good and although I always fence to win I was semi-suspecting that I might not do so. We agreed to fence to ten hits and let battle commence.
We kicked off the fight and I scored the first hit, a pretty good one which settled me down a bit. It was a tactical fight with both of us looking for the right openings. Hits were exchanged but I found myself building a lead and fencing really well. It almost seemed that every hit I attempted was working and I had the strong feeling that I had the measure of my opponent. It is wrong to say that I became aware of this, in fact if anything I became less aware but more focussed if that makes sense. I was acutely aware of my opponent but not any specifics of his movement. Yagyu Munenori makes an analogy of this condition by saying when looking at a tree do not look at the leaves. As soon as you see one leaf you can no longer see the entire tree. In this case I was seeing the entire tree. I was also acutely aware that as soon as I got stuck on being in this state I would lose it, so I was determinedly trying not to be aware of being unaware. (It gets quite confusing here doesn't it?!) Anyway, the next hit was a corker, right on target, economic and effective. I was getting quite into it by now and when I hit Stuart with a supinated attack to his flank I couldn't contain my spontaneous shout of pleasure. Well, I had just been teaching it to the class as an effective attack against left handers so I was quite pleased!
At the point I was 5 -2 up and just knew that I was going to win the fight. Unfortunately at that point we had to break for an equipment malfunction and in the ensuing gap I completely lost the thread. All of a sudden the hits that were fixing five minutes before were not registering and Stuart clawed back the deficit and then overtook me. I was beginning to think I would never score a hit again! Had I reached fencing Nirvana? Should I just retire immediately and take to the mountains? Eventually I did score another hit but lost the fight 10 - 6 but what a first half it was. Now all I need to do is fence like that regularly. Give me another 20 years and I might just get there!