Grab the hilt as you would a hammer, resting it against the inside of your palm. Stand facing the target with your feet roughly shoulder-width apart. Your non-dominant foot should be forward. Rest your weight on the dominant foot.
Raise your hand next to your head, blade now pointing up, or perhaps behind you. Take a breath. Focus on the target. Imagine the knife leaving your hand, rotating blade-over-handle until it strikes.
Take another breath. Shift your weight to your non-dominant foot and push your arm forward, releasing the knife before your arm is fully straightened. Give it just enough force to rotate how it needs. Relax.
If you’ve done it right, you’ll hear a satisfyingly gentle thud as the point of the knife sinks into its target. If not, a dense thud and the clanging of metal on the ground. Not every throw can be perfect.
Knife throwing is as much an art as it is a sport. Much like archery, it requires patience and control: of the arm, weight distribution, and breath. Many people assume I like these sports because I have an affinity for violence. But the truth is I like them because I have a fear of losing control. This is a way to practice control and restraint.
Every blade that hits the target requires me to restrain myself. I must control the muscles in my arm to prevent exerting too much force. I must shift my weight at the right moment. My breathing must be steady and even. Without all of these, the throw won’t land properly.
In exercising this control, I am getting in tune with every part of my bodymind. I am communicating with it, holding together all the pieces of me. This provides me with a way to release pent-up anxieties and overloaded sensory receptors. It’s a lot of pressure to put on one little knife.
A dense fog has settled over the city. I can’t even see the tops of some buildings. They just fade into the mist, as if the world is enclosed in a shaken snow globe, the future obscured. This fog, a manifestation of the energy in the air this week, unsettles me. Something is off. I can’t get a full sense of what it is.
For once, I take out my earbuds, sinking into my surroundings. The sounds of tires and water and voices. Squirrels skittering up trees, flitting across branches. Two lone birds chasing each other. The fog hovering over it all.
This morning, a heavy weight was shifted. My muscles begin to relax, slowly dissipating some of the tension they’ve been carrying for months. I’m a little less on edge here than I was a week ago.
I take another step forward, preparing to board the oncoming bus. With every step I’ve taken, it never feels like I’m moving forward. I am still located squarely in the present. I look behind me, and I can see the trail of footprints, rough and arrhythmic. They stretch back, swallowed up by the fog. How many steps have I taken to get to this point?
Boarding the bus, I quietly take my seat and stare ahead. Fog obscures the end of the road, as it does my footprints behind me. Which side is the past, and which the future? Is the distinction as simply binary as that question suggests?
Regardless of the answer, the bus moves forward, and I with it.
Ashton Rose 