Ruminations on the nature of the art

Quick review... on Fan's marvelous martial arts journey.
My very first art studied was baguazhang or "Eight Diagram
Palm". Not the easiest thing to start with (putting it mildly)..
but since then very few arts I've dabbled in have posed much
in the way of a conceptual challenge. After spending a few
years mucking about with my Nashville teacher I went away
for work purposes and started training with my one of my
original teacher's kungfu brothers (my "grandteacher" showed
up from time to time to watch.. give correction.. collect his % of the
take etc.).
When work transferred me away from the Baltimore/DC area
to Virginia Beach I began studying filipino martial arts (Lastra Family
Arnis). I was still full of amazing prejudice about other styles...
in retrospect I lost lots of time by not training my bagua enough..
and more time by not going and exposing myself to the JKD people
in Virginia Beach (also the brazilian jiujitsu, the other filipino martial
arts teachers etc.). While in Virginia beach I got my walking papers
from Artume's predecessor ("Draga") but found myself back in the
DC/Arlington training with the guys at Zongwumen, a Gao style bagua
and xingyi school in Luo De-Xiu's lineage. Sadly since leaving my
position in VA Beach (and yes I'm being evasive.. I don't like to talk
about that section of my life) getting back to DC has been a serious
bitch. It's been over a year since I've seen Geo (the instructor) and
my other bros.
Recently I've been going back into my immense amounts of practice
material to try and get to the root of what I've been playing with for
all these years now (has it been 7 years aleady? wow!).
I broke down and got a large bagua saber from ATS, and began
feeding my arnis de mano (filipino sword and longstick style) to
the bagua drills.
Btw this saber is about 5.5 ft long. I'll probably post pics fairly soon.

I'm thinking eventually if the saber blends well (and it certainly
seems to be the way... since I'm *ALL* about knife work), and
if I can get my old Yin lineage rehabbed into usefulness(my first
teacher was Dong Hai-quan/Yin-Fu/He Jinkei/Lu Shu-Kui/Lu
Shui-tian lineage) for work with saber and short knife.. I may
start in on the Lion system of Yin style Bagua.
My bagua seems to be a solitary sort of art... I get most of my
partner practice with other live bodies doing jiujitsu/grappling
or the occasional bits of weapons work.

One conclusion I've come to is one reason why my first bagua
school didn't teach me to fight effectively was 1.) I didn't train
hard enough (very true.. this is the reason I always assumed
was true).. but more importantly.. 2.) insufficient partner
practice.

Once a week, for a beginnner, where much of the class is
effectively being led through solo exercises. This simply
isn't going to get you very far in terms of martial ability.

Gladly I am no longer quite so green... and I know a bit
more (most of it courtesy of the rabid stick/knife fiends
of the kali/arnis/escrima world).

Pics coming up I think... sadly Artume's videocam is
berift of it's charger (she's visiting.. how great is that?)
so no vid. But pics we can do I think.