Killah Jitzu

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.

Mamma Mia!

When I first heard about this musical, it was from a client.  He had seen it the night before and was commiserating with a fellow homo who would appreciate his comments on it.  "It's a straight person's idea of kitsch."  I stayed away because I likey the ABBA and had no desire to hear musicalized versions of their masterworks.

I only attained interest in this intellectual property when I saw Meryl Streep in a trailer for the film.  Seeing her singing.  And having a blast.  Every part of it she is over the top.  No dignity whatsoever.  This is not a film, this is a taped ABBA singalong party they filmed in Greece, with lots of singing extras.  Another highlight is Pierce Brosnan's howling, a sound not unlike the one my dog makes when he's happy, loud but strangely unmusical, even though it's clear that he is attempting to hit some notes, because there is a musical accompaniment giving him cues.  It's so painful, and so intentionally unfixed, that it's a lot of fun.  Is it weird that I was really into his acting?

The DVD includes singalong mode, which displays the lyrics while they sing the songs.  I'm inviting my friends over now.

WALL-E

When was the last time we danced?  I mean really, really danced?  That super-pure dancing where you are unleashed.  The only thing to do is to not do, and let your body dance, muthafucka.  Was it really last New Years?  Was it really that long ago?  I would never have guessed that I took 2008 off from dancing.  In space.

Now that I'm in an evaluative mood, I think I took 2006-8 off from making love.  The difference between getting off with someone and making love is more than sex, and more than repetition, more than mutual turning-on.  It's almost never achieved on the first attempt.  It's when both parties are connecting in a way that removes the barriers between them, causing them to be together, close, networked, as an extension of who they are when they are not making love.  Interface.

This week I danced and made love, again.  Not at the same time.