TCB #104_P.O.V. you start Jiu Jitsu_Part.1
You're just a modern guy, *neck-deep in the meaning crisis, trying to reconnect through mutual combat. The Jitz seems like a good game for that. Here are 34 progressive insights into the journey.
P.O.V - YOU START JIU JITSU
*Rough Draft.4
34 insights. Starting from scratch. Day.1
1. Tomatoes are the Color of Blood.
The red dome on private property looks like a tomato soup can cut in half and turned on it’s side. A lions den. A cave of pain. Tomato soup. Blood. Chokes. Horrible associations. You can’t help but have some primal gut level sensation that what you’re about to walk into will test you to your limits and reveal to you how weak you actually are. But you know. The truth is, you know all too well. And that’s why you’re here. And maybe she knows too…and that’s why she finally broke you down enough to come.
2. The truth is you are a desperate modern man.
Desperate. Lost. No cultural rights of passage. With Air Conditioning and Wifi as your vital lifeline. Starved for meaning. A millennial chump with metaphorical combat in your heart only, and on your screens—plentiful violence of every variety for your viewing pleasure, but none on your fists or body. You are untested. Passive aggressive. Underground. Ironic. And part of you feels like it would be the biggest kind of sweat relief, the truest comfort, like a kiss from fate, like a gift from a true friends who knows not what you want but what you need: to get a righteous ass-beating.
3. There’s a little Golden Buddha outside carrying buckets of water.
A fire pit. Cars are all crammed into the gravel arch of a driveway. Even parking is a scary thing here. You are on the threshold. My god man, what are you doing?! Turn back. Turn back you coward and live free of their pain and judgements! But But But…you couldn’t look yourself in the mirror. Not one more night. Not one more night with the fear and dread. So you open the red door.
4. A Children's Karate Class?
They’re sparing…these kids have more fight experience than you do, they’d just like you to know. But you have to play before you fight, I suppose. You walk along the edge of the children sparing, the children more familiar with fighting than you. How you envy those children, in a way, to look so at ease, oh children, to not know the real violent horrors of the world and to play fight so free and beautiful. Train a child up in the way.
5. Weapons Everywhere.
There are many trophies on the walls. Rows and rows of them. All over are knives. Swords. Throwing star on the desk. This is a temple for killers. This is the samurai dojo on the west side of our Appalachian steal town, out in the woods, out in no man’s land. The recreated East on the west side. You’re in awe and terror simultaneously.
6. “Take of your shoes Moses”
You turn the corner of the children's karate room, following the narrow pathway along the outside of the room where you may stride with your shoes. NO SHOES ON THE MAT. The philistine approacheth holy ground. The symbolic place Moses takes off his sandals in order to talk to God. There it is before you. A black chaos. A void of possibility. A warning for the untrained. In the beginning. There was nothing. Nothing but black mats and the anticipation of death being greater than death itself.
7. These have to be the nicest deadliest people you’ve ever met.
This must be the owner. Trojan-horsing, your think. You won't be tricked. He tells you to take off your shoes, and you’ve dressed somewhat appropriately though you need a rash guard, a tight fitting shirt basically, so nothing gets tangled up in the roll apparently, and you wonder momentarily about what version of jiu jitsu is it that people roll in the white pajamas with belts, and how the belts work without the white pajamas, but you don’t necessarily think those questions are the priority right now so you just stay cool. And they get you fitted with a rash guard that’s a little tight on your figure for your own comfort but it is what it is. It is what it has to be. I wonder if they smile as they choke you.
8. Ritual bowing. You don’t even do this in church.
And you have to bow to go onto the mat. Hands at your side. 45 degree head nod, this feels silly at first. But this is the ritual. On and off the mat you bow. Like to a god you don’t understand, and that has the power to strike you down in the black ashes, and if you could pray to this god with any certainty at all you’d say…help.
9. Day One: You could black out or break something this way or this way or this way.
Day One is so basic but so confusing. You’re thinking alot. Why do people choose to lay on their back here? In the wrestling match. We call this the guard? Seems counterintuitive but people insist its a good position. On your back. By all means, lay on your back in a fight. In a fight. The guy that’s working with you is a lineman for a the power company and wirey but seasoned, he has some kind of open wound on the top of his right foot. He’s like a backwoodsman with the beard and the studied relaxed posture and the easy going nature, but has probably hunted and killed his whole life… and now from this woodsman you’re getting lots of directions for all 4 appendages, and your hips, and their positioning in relation to each other. Forearm here, legs wrapped around me, hand here, etc. And pretty much whatever you do he’s like watch out because when you do that i can do this, or this, or this, or this. All of these things they say they could do sound painful and insulting and invasive. You have a feeling that you’re not going to remember any of this, and then something painful is going to happen to you.
10. The Golden Buddha. Embodied.
Then there's this one big guy on the mat. He’s between 300 and 350 pounds, easily, right around there somewhere, and when he walked in earlier everyone kind of turned to face him and acknowledge him and show respect, or pointed over their should, you can’t miss him, and he walks over to the mat with his Yellow hoodie on, hood up, shorts on, and sits down cross-legged like the personal gym buddha. The Golden Buddha. And he kind of just sits quietly on the corner of the mat in detached observance, this big guy, and while the lumber jack guy and this other dude who was clearly a college athlete or something are still warning you of the all the ways that you they can cause you damage. Like this or this or this. And while they’re talking suddenly out of the blue the patron buddha of the gym from the corner of the mat addresses your question. All you did was ask like what’s the goal. What’s my goal? And the patron Buddha, who you weren’t event talking to and who you aren’t even sure was listening, this round cosmic figure of a man is staring off and begins speaking, but you’re not sure if he’s addressing you or not because he starts speaking like a statue that’s eyes are the only thing that move and they land on you and he says…
11. To Accept.
“I can see brother that your goal is to try really hard to win. I will tell you now, that will not work here. Jiu Jitsu will use all of your energy against you. The harder you fight, the worse off you will be. You first goal brother, is to accept.”
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