Sometimes I Write Essays in My Sweaty Kimono
5/13/2015
Words are signs of
natural facts.
Particular natural facts
are symbols of particular spiritual facts.
Nature is the symbol of
the spirit. ---Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nature Essay
Today I did what was customary as of recent months---I
sat in my car for nearly two hours before Jiu Jitsu class starts and I read. I
have the availability of time, even considering after I have worked out my
muscles or my cardio. I consider my reading time my time away from the savages
of the world to redefine my thinking. It’s my personal oasis. It’s my time to
look at the landscape and horizon of my life. My memories are behind me while
my hopes are in front of me.
Emerson is I think one of the greatest Essayists that I
have experienced so far. If you look at his life, it’s hard not to see why. Yet
in his day you have to consider that there was not the technology or
distractions that there are today. He was not checking his Facebook, or playing
video games once he got done with his Harvard classes. Back then, an
intellectual mind was in a wonderful world to contemplate the nature of a man.
What is that nature?
I think about it like this: a man cannot mock the nature
that he lives in. He cannot live an evil life and so not expect that nature
will call out to him its revulsion. Nature is a witness for or against a man’s
character. This is considered a Godly instilment into the created order of
things. There is this universal soul that Emmerson talks about. That soul is
called reason. All men belong to it and reason testifies against us by the
weakness or strength of our character. It’s fabulous stuff to think about.
Tonight I realized that Brazilian Jiu Jitsu is also a
part of this truthful reason that exists in art from. Art is nothing short of a
man’s soul trying to express the beauty he sees in the world, himself, or
something in the invisible world trying to call out to those of us who are
awake. Taste is the appreciation of that beauty. You cannot fake your way in
fighting. Either you have the strength of mind, character, and technique to be
able to showcase your abilities in this art form. If I wore a black belt on the
Jiu Jitsu mats, I would be discovered as a fraud with immediate circumstance.
Once you stop trying to fool yourself, only then can you stop trying to fool
others, but many times you are the only one who is fooled until you wake up and
realize that you were put to sleep by a veteran grappler.
Tonight we learned some side control attacks. Before we
went over technique, we got smoked with multiple pendulum arm bar drills from
the guard. I believe we had to do twenty each. My core was on fire after this.
The next drill was multiple triangle set ups. After this we went onto the
technique. The first technique was the anaconda from top side control. We
drilled this attack multiple times. The next attack was this slick triangle set
up from top side control. You trap the arm, move the other arm from your hip,
and bring your knee to elbow. And when you are nice and tight, you roll them
over on top so that as you are rolling over, they are falling into a nice
triangle set up.
The techniques and drilling lasted for an hour. After
that, it was time to roll. There were a bunch of us. Because of the smaller mat
space, only five groups were allowed to roll at a time to avoid people’s head
getting injured. The first guy I went with was a white belt named Josh. He saw
my purple belt from across the room and came calling for me. I gladly accepted.
The kid was young. I would say 24-26. He was a brute of a young guy; very
strong. Before the match begun, he told me he didn’t know much, and to go easy.
That strategy went immediately out the door as soon as I could feel him using
every bit of strength and killer instinct to do whatever he could to take my
head off. I also noticed that when I tried to calm him down and I would slap a
submission on him, he wouldn’t tap. There were a few instances that I knew that
if I kept going, he would let his arm, or elbows break. That’s when I knew he
was just a guy to play defense with. I don’t care about hurting people and I
have nothing to prove to this kid.
The next roll was against a wrestler named Jason. He was
a visitor to the school. He was such a wrestler that he was even wearing the
wrestler tights or whatever you call them. I wouldn’t think anything
undignified about that, except that he looked well past the age of wrestling,
so he was the type of guy to take his wrestling very serious. I would realize
that he did. He was very big, athletic, and strong minded as most wrestler guys
are. He used some asshole techniques, for instance digging his elbows into my
thighs to break my guard open. He was doing a few other reckless things like
trying to throw me around. I kept trying to catch him in a nice anaconda choke
when he would leave his neck wide open, but he was too strong and sweaty for me
to control it. His antics even caught the attention of another purple belt, who
was soon taking an audience to this mayhem. He was watching my performance so
that he could have a go at this wrestler who it seemed was trying to make sport
of this other grappling art called Jiu Jitsu. I was able to keep him in my
guard, and recover whenever he would escape. I made his life miserable by breaking
down his posture consistently, but I wasn’t getting any submissions on him. He
had years of wrestling behind him, and was bringing it. Eventually the match
ended. The other purple belt got his licks in on him. I sat and watch. He was
unable to do anything ending to this wrestler guy. I talked to the black belt
about him, as if I should feel some shame in my lack of performance. The black
belt reassured me that we were going up against a monster and that we were
doing fine.
My next match was against a red-headed MMA fighter. He
has a purple belt like me in Jiu Jitsu as well. He is a scrappy little white
guy. He knows better than to stand up against me because every time he stands
up, I get up with him and over power him with my strength and usually start
setting up a choke on him. So he will play open guard against each other. He’s
tough and as an MMA Fighter, he is in much better shape than me. Yet I kept it
even between us both. We each got a single submission on each other. A distinct
moment that I remember in the match was when I looked up and caught him giving
me the prison-stare-tough-man-look. I immediately felt the anger rush through
me as if to say, “Don’t you dare fucking look at me like that”. Anger and
strength don’t usually work for you in Jiu jitsu because getting emotional like
that usually throws off your concentration and you get outwitted by the guy who
just got under your skin. I figured this out after 5 seconds and I decided to
stop treating him like my red-headed step child. We kept it cool.
My final match was against a person I call “Lieutenant
Shannon”. She is an Air Force officer at the base that I work at. She’s a
skinny red-headed girl with freckles and an aerospace engineering mind. She
looks as sweet as a button, but she is strong and she loves Jiu Jitsu. She is
recovering from a broken hand in which she had to have metal bolts inserted and
then later removed. She is that committed to the art. In Jiu Jitsu, it is not a
compliment that you can tap everyone who steps on the mat. I consider it a
compliment when the black belt tells you that he feels safe putting you up
against all the lower belt girls, because he knows you will not hurt them. But
let me tell you, Shannon has enough skill, that if you are not careful, she
will catch you in something, broken hand or not.
That was my night tonight with Jiu Jitsu. I read essays
by a man who helped shaped the mood of the American society with his writing. I
trained Jiu Jitsu against people who want nothing less to express themselves in
the best way they can in this fighting art. Eventually they learn how to take
those lessons off of the mat and put them into effect in their regular lives.
Jiu Jitsu is amazing stuff. Jiu Jitsu will turn savages into fighting
aristocrats. I love it.
Jissoseph out!
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