The Day, The Night

Mystery Men

1999 seems so long ago.  It is a time BMIII (Before Mission Impossible III).  It is a time BIM (Before Iron Man).  It is a time before now, which means it is destined to be a time when superhero movies look a tad dated with their quaint pacing, slow fights, and not-of-the-moment special effects.

Yet 1999's Mystery Men has so much more going for it.  It has a dozen actors doing funny things, even if the funniness doesn't quite reach the level of full-on satire of the comic book flick (still waiting for that one).  Hank Azaria practicing his fake effete British accent in front of a mirror, complete with effete puns, while he brandishes his never-lethal cutlery (his superpower is flinging cutlery, but never knives!).  William H. Macy as a deadpan Shoveler.  Paul Ruebens in his comeback role.  Geoffrey Rush in a delightfully lunatic turn as supervillan Casanova Frankenstein.  Janeane Garafolo as The Bowler.  Ben Stiller just being goofy.  And Greg Kinnear doing his understated but brilliant sleezy thing.  What they all have in common is that if each of these funny people did a satire of comic book movies, these are the characters they would play.  Azaria over the top and under layers of artifice.  Macy as sturdy but somewhat clueless.  Ruebens as adolescent weird.  Garafolo as conflicted assertive city girl.  Stiller doing himself. Kinnear as self absorbed.  All with superpowers, sorta.

If they do a sequel, I am first in line.

Space-Wolf

It happened in a few places in my life, all at once.  Which means I only noticed something that had happened, everywhere, long ago.

A potential client has been sitting on a project for months now.  He's got other business to attend to than the project in question.  I usually sit back, wait for them come to it, don't be too loud about it, maybe they want to look around at other architects, and so on.  Except this is the kind of client who doesn't beat around the bush. I called him and asked that we start the project next week, and that he not look at other architects because I wanted this job.  He agreed to my requests. He heard them as requests, but if I tell you about the words I actually said, you'd think I was a pushy dick about it.  I was.

A long time ago I only dated men who had that kind of power. I wrote a lot about that during the gym diaries. Except what was really going on is that I wanted it for myself.

Fight Cub and I had something, but in the end we chose to live our lives in our respective cities.  Los Angeles is fucking far. And it turns out I don't need a traininer partner in a lover.  I have an entire jiu jitsu school that I helped create, with powerful fighters all around, who are intimately acquainted with my physical training.  And they are intimately acquainted farther than that: they are a literal second family. My professor is like a second father, or a Brazilian uncle, from who I needed to have implicit approval of my next boyfriend before I jumped in whole hog.

At my last tournament fight, a large, international Brazilian Jiu Jitsu tournament, it came out in full force.  I was taken down immediately by a guy who was clearly a good grappler (but not as great with the gi on). He was on top, and almost submitted me.  I've been there a dozen times before, so no biggie.  I get out.  I almost sweep him, and instead of getting swept, he steps away from the fight at hand and stands up on the mat.  I get up, and it CAME OUT.  One of the samurai thought I was engraged, enough to yell out te calma, te calma Shad!.  My future boyfriend was scared of it.  But those weren't what was happening.  I felt nothing but pure power, and had stopped hiding it.  I could have ripped the guys head off at that moment.  Sensing trouble, he backed off. I came at him hard, but in full control of the nuclear reactor within, and it tickled me. And we continued our fight.

Oh, future boyfriend: I saw him in a coaching class and thought he was cute and immediately tracked him through friends and hunted him down on facebook and asked him out and did great coffee and invited him to my big supremely gay fight shortly after. I didn't know if he was for me, but I had grown weary of fucking around. After being all "not sure if we should be PDA at the tournament" on him I just hugged and kissed him immediately after my fight.  And later he copped a feel in the fighter's bullpen. I liked that. It went unnoticed except by one of the samurai and my professor's wife. (The tournament was called the New York Open.  He said "WOW.  It's really Open!".) I was comfortable being not sure for a while, while I made up my own mind, and now I'm sure.  Love.

Aaron has disappeared into the fully formed apparition he was always destined to become.  Time's spiral not only took him, making him ever-younger, progressively forgetful, and eventually just gone: he was sublimated. I became him.  I have become the crazy time-travelleing space wolf I've been writing about all this time.  I even know how to beat someone up along the way. For the first time since I began writing, nine years ago today, I face the unique difficulty that I have in fact become what I want.  My imagination's creations have simply, utterly, incredibly, been fulfilled. Now it's time to really play.

Championship Match

I went to my fifth BJJ tournament with the intention to win. As in WIN IT WIN THE GOLD MEDAL.  

Result: I did.  I decisively defeated two opponents in my division and took the medal. On the mat, during the fight, I was amped, yet fluid.  My teammates started calling me macoco, even though Professor was a tad unsatisfied at all the jumpy mistakes I made.  I could have won by more points than I did. After the championship match I thought he was going to make me do pushups for the two really bad mistakes I made.

After the final match was over, and I was resting, it was like a whole new world had opened up.  I can win any fight.  Or, more precisely, any fight is winnable. It was really that simple. What happens on the mat is heavily influenced by my intention when I step out there. I would have been perfectly fine with a loss, but I was going to sacrifice my eyeteeth for success. In short, I fought for it.

And then I started living my life the next day, and fighting for it was all over my life. No, not combatitive. But taking the initiative, everywhere. Letting others speak up when they have an issue and be responsible for their reactions. Let others react to my doing. A little cockyness where required. Bold actions. Contentedness. Even if things unravel I can pull them back, force of will, and make it work. Optimism is the new violence in this age of 44. The will to make the possible into reality is all we've ever needed.

Four days after the gold, Professor rolled with me for an extended period. I've been fortunate to roll with the new black belt from Brazil for the weeks leading up to my tournament: he is younger than me, much bigger, and not gentle.  It took my game from so-so to champ in short order.  But I haven't rolled with Professor in a while.  Everyone finished early, exhausted, and so it was the two of us, our endurance off the charts, ready to roll.  He often escapes my guard and stands up and runs around me on the mat.  I keep my ass wisely planted on the mat, because he can so easily take me down.  But this time he wasn't playing, he was fight-fighting me.  He insisted I stand up.  I went for a crazy slide takedown he taught me 20 months ago; at the same time he tried a forward trip move. I slipped, he slipped, and his shin landed on the top of my foot.  I yelled OW of course and stopped.  He said "do not stop" and I said "yes sir" and we continued. My body was going to do whatever I told it to do.

Team Family Declares It Will Happen

[note: trophy in one hand, ham sandwich in the other hand]

My third BJJ tournament was so much fun.  We are a huge group.  We all know each other.  We tirelessly support each other.  We are a team.  We are a family. Including the ones we don't love-love when we're in class together. Imagine your entire family going to a fun game together. Not just your mom and dad family, but your brothers, sisters, their spouses, kids, cousins, second cousins, first cousins twice removed, and all their kids too.  I made ham sandwiches for the occasion.  

It was a small tournament, and the only fighter available in my age division was someone thirty pounds heavier. The fight was late in the day, because they had forgotten about our cross-division bracket. Like all BJJ tournaments, they often forget a division, because someone dropped the paper that your fight was written on while they went to get a drink of water, and unless you say something they'll just forget you were there. So after a few hours of restlessness, I said something. I declared that I would be fighting in a few minutes. It happened.

A few days later, I said something to a person who has a big project brewing.  My paper had dropped to the floor while he worked on other affairs.  I called him and said "I want this project. I have not stopped thinking about it since we first spoke of it.  I look at Google Maps satellite of the site every few days.  I sketch.  What I want to know is how do I get the job, right now?" I have stopped playing small.  I think the potential client liked my brashness. But I was just having fun. Who doesn't want that? And who doesn't want to work with someone who declares that he will make a particular outcome happen?

So my last tournament fight was something like this. But I just made that connection up right now. You could also see something else out of it. Just before the fight, I was not nervous. It was the first time. I knew the opponent was bigger, because I could see him in front of me, and also because my master teacher had told me hours ago that he had accepted this fight on my behalf. I trust him, so I said yes to his already-said-yes. Besides, the first time I submitted someone in tournament, during my second tournament, it was against an opponent at least 50 lbs heavier. He tapped on my x-choke from guard, and was dazed on the mat for a minute before he could stand. Fighting a bigger guy is all upside.

I chose that this new fight was going to be fun. Right then standing in front of my opponent. Team Family was all around the fencing there, everyone having finished fighting for the day, and focused only on me. That was nice in and of itself. Master teacher had snuck onto the mat, sitting just inside the fence, illegal but everyone respects him too much to shoo him out like they do the other teachers. He called me over as they were resetting the clock. I bent down, and his advice was this:

"Shad.  Think as if your opponent is me, and oh! you need to get me!" (he used his name instead of "me") and then he smiled wide.

Second tournament's advice: "Keep moving, moving, do your technique."

First tournament's advice: "Do not stay on your back, stay on your side."

So third tournament's advice was have fun. He read my mind. Or, perhaps he and I were of the same mind: he knows me so well, that he can check in with himself and know what I am thinking. I went back to my starting position, faced my opponent, then turned to teacher and laughed and tapped my head. "That's a good one" I yelled over to him.  Then I turned to my opponent, shook his hand, and we started to have fun.

The fight was intense, as they all are.  All four opponents are there, as they always are, but this time the most difficult was the clock opponent. I am old, I only get 5 minute fights now. My sparring partner was strong, impossible to throw around, and sloppy. So he played it safe, playing me to a draw. When he moved I scored with my awesome blue belt jiu jitsu (joke) but he caught me sleeping one time and scored in kind. The fight landed in his favor because he scored two more advantages than I, thus breaking the tie. But we ended well and I felt rewarded getting second place, even though I had lost the fight.

A little later, master teacher got us in a circle.  We had just won our first second place trophy.  Our school is only 9 months old. He said "today" and pointed at the trophy in front of him. "But tomorrow" and he put the trophy to the side, stepping where it had been, "you live your life".  Then he paused.  "This is my family," including us in, which is saying something: he has a great wife and two awesome daughters who were with us all day.  "Brazil was Brazil.  Now, USA.  This is my-time, and this is my-team." Except he said team the way he said family earlier: with unmistakable tenderness. With the certainty of knowing his words cause it to happen.

My Week Has Been Like This

And with any luck, the weekend will be more of the same.

Today On My Computer

A Few Other Places

 A few other places you may have seen me.

1. New York Magazine.  Someone reads Tropolism.

2. Curbed.  I've been contributing there for the last couple of weeks.

One Should Be Afraid Of Being Born

"Why fear death? I don't need anything, I don't have anything, I don't want anything. I think it's silly for somebody to be scared of dying. One should be afraid of being born. I have already told my children when I die I want a party, with no alcohol, no hell raising. But I want a party with music, food."

Hélio Gracie, 1913-2009.

I had tried to pass his guard about a dozen times over the last three and a half weeks, since he moved here from Brazil, and I was getting no further than I get with my professor.  So I tried something new.  I jumped off of a cliff.  Literally: I rolled forward, my foot still in half guard, in a way that would free my foot.  It almost did, my ankle sliding to his thighs, and I was doing a shoulder-stand, based with my hands on the mat and shoulder next to his head so I had good base, and my one leg hanging in the air, like an arm bent for work, the thing I could move to shake my other foot free.  It worked, I was about to shake free, but he signaled for us to stop: I was ready to roll into a mirror.  He let go and we laughed, me still upside down.  

Think about it.  There are no kata, none of the positions that are learned by rote and repeated.  His great Jiu Jitsu invention was contextualizing all the technique.  You learn the steps by dancing, not learn steps then start dancing.  The shift may seem semantic until you realize that a hundred years of this way of learning has created a unique practice.  It allows for a lifetime of learning, a forever deepening of experience. You are always hungry.  The prospect is a little frightening.  You are both always and never complete with it. But this kind of journey is familiar to me.  

He has started to roll tougher with me.  At first it was like my professor 18 months ago: very careful.  But that quickly ended to simply creating a maze.  This week he is shifting to fighting.  He is a fearsome opponent when he looks at me like this.  He is going to fight me.  He is much taller than I, muscular, lean, fast, powerful, and much younger.  And third degree black belt.  He is no joke.  Professor has looked at me like this only once.  My new friend is transitioning to this as our normal mode, him knowing that this is what I need to take my dumb blue belt jiu jitsu to the next level. And I love playing like this.  I'm not afraid of any opponent anymore.

He was the scrawny brother who, because of his health and frame, devised his own techniques so he could fight any opponent. He is like a bump in the evening. Like the bump in the P in "The Walrus was Paul", a sound that inspires decades of music, yet was made in passing.  

After we are finished he always does something that secretly tickles me.  I am usually on my back and he in my guard, and when the timer rings he turns his head and puts the side of his face to my stomach and chest.  He stays there for a few seconds, touching longer than most Americans are used to, and then we stand up, embrace, and move on.  It is tempting to try to capture the moment, but I am content to simply observe how the moment impacts future moments, and other people in the room.  The other samurai have started hugging me tightly after a good roll now, too.  We just started doing it, and I can't remember a time when we weren't this close.

Familiar to me.  I did write that.  Because it is always practiced in families.  Families of all kinds.  But families still, and nothing less.  It causes one to continually be connected to the world conversation of Brazilian Jiu Jitsu not by watching but by participating, at all levels, until you are 95 and your body one day just gets pneumonia and that's it.

The Forty Fourth

Five days ago my mother asked me in an email, with regard to some business affairs, to let her know "if there's anything you don't understand".  I replied i don't understand why bernie madoff was released without bail this week, or why we haven't bloody revolted after 8 years of bush/cheney, but other than that i'm good.

In many ways I have denied myself the truth about how I've felt about the last 8 years.  Most of this little diary has been written during Bush/Cheney, and at the time that the last changeover happened, I thought it was no big deal.  I was really in denial.  I hated the last administration.  Not personally. I was never one of the people who thought Bush was insensitive or awful or inherently evil (Cheney I'm just not sure about).  He was simply incompetent, incurious, and chose terrible advisors.  In short, the opposite of my idea of a good leader.  The thing that wounded me above all others was the complete lack of integrity: mistakes (like those of the Clinton administration) were buried, denied as if nothing happened.  Those who brought them up for clear discussion were marginalized, whether they were inside or outside the administration's circle.  This is the lowest form of being, this absence of any sense of responsibility.  Without it no power can flow.  And none did, despite the dumb terrorism and our dumb wars about terrorism, and everything else dumb that happened, 2001-2009.

2004 came and went and I just kept my head down.  The one bright spot that year was the state senator from Illinois who gave his speech at the Democratic Convention.  He said his first few words and I immediately said out loud that is our next president.  I didn't know that, of course, and I make no claim to premonitions.  What I was saying was really this: in my world, this is the kind of person that is fit for the Presidency.  My kind of President.

And throughout the campaign for 44, I was rejoicing.  Barack Obama was talking frankly about race, finally.  But he wasn't race, he was a guy.  He was against dumb wars and hit the GOP hard for it (I never got why Kerry was so dumb about this).  He was not against wars of necessity. He asks people to be responsible for their own shit, the home base of power (see above). He has faith, real faith in real religion that believes in the divinity of all people, and yet he is a powerful intellectual.  He spoke. In. Complete. Sentences.  He was excellence defined.  Early on I told those near me that I wanted to see him get beat up a little, to see what he was like under fire.  It turns out under fire he is collected, and used every said opportunity to make allies and to speak in his own voice.  His every action telegraphed Midwestern pragmatism, calm, smarts.  He was unpredictable, in that conventional wisdom never could predict what he would do.  My favorite picture from the campaign was created during the pundit panic that happened after McCain selected his Vice-Presidential candidate: a picture of him with the words "Everyone chill the fuck out.  I got this." He could see beyond what others would want or need and create out of whole cloth a new realm for us to be in.  He was a leader. My kind leader. 

And here he is.  And he does so got this.

The Icy Walk

My grandparents live in icy Ohio.  The walk in front of their house was almost unwalkable a few weeks ago, covered in a slick icy sheet I could barely traverse.  For them, with their canes and terrible knees, it is an impenetrable barrier. Yet they do not even own salt for the walk. When we suggested it they said it destroys the concrete. So they risk life-threatening injury when they leave the house in order to save the concrete. They have become trapped in their own home as a result. The habits of old people turn inward on their own logic, rendering situations impossible through sheer stubbornness. To this I can relate.

I know that I told you that FC and I didn't really have anything left to say to each other.  Well that was a big fat lie.  What really happened was we were just afraid to take the jump.  He pulled back, and I acceded, saying we just had to take some time apart.  We had to try being not in love, or in love with other people, in our far away separate cities.  Besides, do you know how much a flight to Los Angeles is?  The logic was inviolable, and my insert money calculation pie chart wrapped the whole thing up. The amount total was very clear: the relationship wasn't working out.

Lie.

But it was a particular kind of lie.  Lie to myself.  Lie disguised as a choice.  Lie that hopes to fix the feeling part, to alter it.  We both did it, and that was all of 2008 for us.  It failed so miserably that the first few days of 2009 have been spent reconnecting.  Exploring how we've grown since we met two years ago.  And proposing some steps that may (or may not, we could live with that) lead to big, scary, measurable results.  Like a visit to NYC.  But at least we are taking action again, no longer trapped in the house.