Living Through Fighting

“You wanna go?”

The whispered words echoed around in my head, and for a moment, and I just stared blankly forward at Jonathan’s smirking face. I could still hear Sensei talking, but his words had seemed to fade as they left his mouth entering another plane of existence, leaving only a slight residue of their original meanings. I didn’t think. I didn’t size up this man that looked as much like Keanu Reeves as was physically possible for another human to pull off without being a living caricature. I knew he was faster, possessed more finesse, and was just flat out better than me.

“Yeah,” I responded.

I could feel the smile begin to form on my lips. I tugged lightly on the front of my gi (the white robe like clothing worn by those training in karate), pulling the gi top just slightly free from the tight confines of my brown belt. Jonathan nodded at me. This was supposed to be an example, a moment of teaching where the lower ranking belts would watch the two highest-ranking students engage in free sparring. I was barely paying attention to anything Sensei was saying, only listening just enough so that I wouldn’t be taken by surprise.

“Hajime!” Sensei said, making a chopping motion with his hand.

And for an instant, time stopped. Both of us stared at each other, watching the other for any sign of movement. Seconds seemed to stretch on for an eternity and I could feel my back leg begin to tingle for want of movement. We were both in guarded stance (One fist up, one pulled back and our legs standing as if we had paused with both feet on the ground as we were running forward). One second, maybe two passed in that eternity. All eyes were upon us. Finally, I moved. I shot forward, opening my hand and placing the palm as close to his nose as I could get it before stepping again, trying to drive my fist into Jonathan’s stomach. But as I said before, he’s faster than me, and he dodged quickly to the side.  We circled each other for a time, taking leading shots and attempting to get the other to bite, much like two dueling lions growling at one another. Every first move was an attempt to break through the other’s guard. In that moment, all of life faded away, and there was only Jonathan. It was a goal. It was a battle. My chest was thumping, and my skin was tingling as the fight wore on. I could feel the adrenaline pumping. I stepped in with a roundhouse kick, meeting a fierce block from Jonathan as he slammed his arm across my shin. The pain registered, but I couldn’t think about it. I dropped the leg to the ground and pressed forward with another kick from the other leg, only to have it meet the same fate. I jumped back quickly, my feet grazing the ground, trying to put some space between us. Jonathan followed. I dodged. I attacked, and he dodged. Finally, he threw the punch I had been waiting for, a middle punch. I stepped around it and slammed forward with my fist, and I connected with a hard blow to his stomach— Right as he connected with a hard blow to my chest. The pain no longer even registered, the only sensation was the knowledge that all the air had been forced from my lungs. We jumped back. I was breathing heavily now, not from the exertion but from the punch. In an instant, he was pressing his attack, and I knew that if this didn’t end soon, I was going to take a much fiercer attack. I couldn’t catch my breath, nor could I garner up the power or the speed to dodge well.

“Yami”

The word broke through, reopening reality to my eyes, and both of us stumbled back. Sensei commanded us to bow, and we both reached forward to shake the others hand.

“You got me good,” I said, and pointed to my chest, “Right there. Another thirty seconds and I would have been done.”

“That was something I learned sparring, Chris,” Jonathan said. “He always falls for it.”

“I’ll remember that.”

That was the first time I truly fought. Sure I’d sparred a few times before, but always with the same jerky, backwards forced movements of one aware and yet unaware of his own strength. My punches and kicks were always the same, hard and fast at the outset but pulled at the last moment as if scared to leave a bruise on my opponent, while welcoming with open arms the tenderness of flesh that comes from a hard hit. Those fights had no meaning; they were simply exercises in the idea of fighting, the idea of winning and loosing. But that one, in its glorious, controlled uncontrolled violence, was the first time that the idea vanished and the event became the real. I can imagine that there are a few out there who are more than a little frazzled by my enjoyment of fighting, and I can even picture your horrified face, much like Wallace Stevens must have, my high-toned, old Christian women friend.  I can see by the look of disgust in your eyes that you think I’m nothing more than a simple barbarian out to rape and pillage the land, satisfying only the carnal aspects of life as violently as possible as if seeking some extreme, perverted, macho Valhalla. Don’t mock the home of the warrior’s ma’am, but please, have a seat and rest yourself. Those shoes must hurt your horny feet, so please put them up while I call my friend, the one who rolls the big cigars. He made ice cream today, and from the look on your face I do believe you need some. But ma’am, you must please listen, I am not a barbarian, though lord knows I must look frightfully similar. I am merely a man who is seeking a correct path through life. And that path has led me to where I am today.

Combat was always something I craved as a child, but not the brutal and bloody fighting that comes from wars. No, ma’am.  I was not interested in wadding through a pile of enemies, broad sword in one hand, spiked shield in the other, slashing, chopping, and bashing my enemies into bloody submission. My goal was not a combat built on brain matter and entrails and the putrid scent of rotting corpses. My childhood was built around a combat of togetherness. I played in the gardens, in the forests, and on high walls. I was Robin Hood, and at my side was a sturdy long sword and in my hands a longbow, while quiver of arrows rested against my back. I could hear the clip clop clip of horse hoof beats as a coach carrying a fortune in stolen tax money came around the bend. A quick glance up showed what I expected. Little John nodded, drawing his sword. We waited. Closer. Closer. Closer. My arrow flew with a thunk as it buried itself into the seat beside the driver. A startled gasp, a scream, a war cry and me and my merry band were upon them. But hoho, to our great surprise, three knights, dressed to the hilt in plate mail armor stepped from the coach. The metallic scratch of metal against metal reverberated throughout the forest, and in an instant the fight was on. The armor-clad men fought with passion, rage, and power, taking lumbering steps and swinging heavy blows. But my merry band and I, we fought with guile and cunning and swift, tricky blows. We were cool and we were calm. And of course, we always won. That night, laughter filled the forest, as we celebrated our great victory. Little John would clap me on my back a bit too hard, causing me to loose my wine, and Maid Marian would be retelling the glories of the battle point by point in her loud, storyteller voice to all who would listen. We were close, this group of thieves, closer than any mere friends, more than any real family. It was a bond created by shared experiences of combat and a feeling that at any moment we might die. That is why we could laugh so heartily.

Of course, Ma’am, it was merely the fantasy of a child, and the reasoning behind all that occurred in my dreams was lost to me for a long time— and in some cases it still is. I knew what I craved. I craved the challenge and the fight; the desire was with me to struggle against a force so great that my strength alone could no way even hope to stem the tide. And I craved friendships beyond words and beyond emotions, connections so strong that the thought of leaving one of them out to rot was not even a question. To my young mind, it was the struggle that bore these things, but to a child, what was struggle? It was something that is almost incomprehensible, a lingering faint idea like the after image of the sun after you close your eyes, the darkness slowly claiming it and you have to open and shut them quickly once more just to see the trail of the trail. The bloody realities of combat weren’t there yet, but in my sophomore year of college, I did something that would one day make that more real. I joined karate.

The dojo is hidden away on the second floor of the coliseum, placed as far from sight as humanly possible, in one of the wings without heat or air-conditioning. In the summer we swelter and in the winter we freeze, with nothing but 2 fans in the large room to fight the heat and our own exertion to fight the cold. It’s not easy to be in that room sometimes, but then, life itself would not allow a representation of itself to be so comfortable. The room had at one time been a dance hall, ballet specifically, as was evident by the stretch bars, mirrors, and posters with phrases like “You have to reach for your goals” with a man in tights stretching out past his toes. The floors were made of hard wood and the concrete walls had been painted, and repainted, white. It was a beautiful room. I can remember the first time I was in that room, my bare feet (Because we train without shoes or socks) numb from the winter cold, experiencing one of the most painful moments of my life— Sitting in seiza. Seiza is not an exercise, nor is it a stretch. It is a formal Japanese sitting position that involves sitting with your knees to the ground and your butt resting on your heels. The pressure it can place on the knees can be intense, and I can remember fighting against it, praying that the pain would end.

“Purpose of seiza?”

As I write this, I can here the voice of Sensei Roy (The teacher of my sensei, who gives us our belt exams) calling out, speaking clearly in his Creole Japanese accent. My hand instinctively rises from the keyboard for just a moment and the word osu forms on my lips before I remember I’m being foolish. But the answer still lingers in my head.

“Orderliness and humbleness for the mind and body.”

The pain of seiza is a cleansing pain. It is a pain designed around the fact that you are not perfect and at all moments it is to remind you of that fact with sharp thumbtacks of insight. The worst is when you can feel the pain in the toenails of your big toes. That’s when you truly know your human. The fact that placing toenail to cold wood floor causes one pain— It’s not an insight that can be explained in words, except in the sense that it is to know a pain that derives from nothing. More often than once, in the beginning, I wanted to quit, simply to escape that existence-less pain. But to give up, after only just beginning because of a little mind cleansing pain, seemed weak. It was as if giving up at this moment would signify that I would give up at every moment. So, I stayed with it, even if I sometimes did need a few encouraging words from my friends to keep me involved.

There were other things that I had always wanted to learn. I‘d always wanted to learn to wield a sword, not just swing it around as if it were a feather duster, but learn the ends and outs of it, to create with it an extension of my arm. Eventually, I was granted that wish, when Sense Robert (my sensei) decided to begin to teach a weapons class. I was probably one of the first people to toss up the twenty dollars that it cost to get the bokken, a wooden sword made of oak. And I was probably one of the most excited to begin training in the art of Iado. We began much like we had in the beginning of karate, practicing over and over the five cuts and the blocks. We learned how to move, by shifting our right foot forward as we lifted the blade and to bring the left foot up as we sliced down. We made large, rectangular tracked trains that wandered around the room; Lift-step, slash-chase. Over and over and over again we slashed. The muscles in my arms burned from the constant struggle, but I slashed on, determined to learn this. Iado is a strange art. It’s not like Karate or the other weapons I’ve learned. Its emphasis is not on flash. With the sword you do not twist and spin, creating glints in the light with your silvery blade. Two moves— That is the life expectancy of an enemy in an Iado kata. My enemy tries to surprise me, but I react quicker, slashing him across the chest, my sword is now dripping with blood, dulling the blade. But my enemy is not dead, and rather than allowing him to live a life of shame, I do the only just thing, I step forward, with a slash that digs in right at the base of the neck. I step back, watching my opponent crumble as I fling the blood from my blade with a snap of my wrist. I continue to stare, even as I place the flat of the blade against the scabbard, drawing it out until the tip clicks into the groove before sheathing the blade. It was an honorable death. All weapons, and all forms of fighting are violent, I will grant you that Ma’am, but there is a gentleness to all weapons that seems to contradict the violence that they were designed to inflict.

“Grip the sword as you would a dove. Do not crush it.”

You must hold the sword loosely and yet strongly. Sensei always repeats this statement as we are practicing our cuts, reminding us how to hold our blade, and how to care for our blade. When learning the bo, a long staff made of wood that should stand six inches taller than the wielder, I was taught to never grip the staff except in the instant of attack or block. Instead I am to let the weapon slide on my palms. This weapon is not the blunt clubs one imagines would be used by the barbarians. It is not designed to be gripped tightly and used to bludgeon repeatedly an enemy in the face until their features are no longer distinguishable. It is a weapon of finesse and range, every strike is potent and powerful and capable of dropping an enemy. An enemy who falls to the bo is not battered to death. Only one blow comes, swift and hard, snuffing the life of the enemy with a hard jab downward. I have spent years learning these weapons, and both are fun to learn, challenging to master (Of which I am no where near), and more than a little perplexing, but no weapon is as violently beautiful as the sai.

The weapon itself looks like a sword, with a hilt and a cross guard that curves upward into two points and a short blade. So of course the weapon must simply be a style of strange short swords. That’s wrong. The sai is not even held by the hilt, except for during certain attacks, instead it is held with the forefinger running up the hilt, while the three others wrap around one of the smaller hooks, and the last hook rests gently in-between the thumb and the forefinger. The blade runs down the arm and the point should extend two inches past the elbow. It was a weapon designed to add to Karate. Everything learned in that art is a move with the Sai. It is both a blunt weapon and a piercing weapon. Punching with the sai is the act of jamming the hilt into someone causing more damage than you could with a punch. But the sai is a weapon of surprise. And the enemy is supposed to think that you are only capable of dealing damages with the punch. And that is where they are wrong. The sai is an elegant weapon whose fighting style involves the flair of those movie weapons. It is a weapon flipped and spun constantly and is not given the luxury of remaining still, every move one makes with the sai is one of two attacks. Is that inward middle block aiming to jam the hook into my head, or will it be spun and thrust into me? The fighting of the Sai is the most brutal that I have ever witnessed, and often the movements of a kata (A prescribed series of moves used for the dual purpose of teaching and preserving the history) are left unexplained. Raking out the eyes, and jamming one blade into the chin before stabbing the other through the throat are movements in the first kata. I counted with my sensei one day. The first sai kata leaves five dead.  But this brutality is often beautiful. The movements are simple but flashy, and pleasing to the eyes to watch, but more importantly is the weight of the blade. And by that I do not mean the physical weight, but the emotional weight. With every move one makes in a kata with the sai, with the other weapons, or in karate one must accept that they have taken a life, even if it is only an imaginary one.

The brutality exists, ma’am, in these acts and in these lessons, and there are those who will think of me as little more than as a maniac who revels in the excitement of bloody combat, and to this I will say to you, ‘uphold the principles of propriety and courtesy. Cultivate the spirit of effort. Perfect the mind of patience. Live the way of truth. Do not lose self-control or act in a violent manner.’ These are the precepts of the dojo, the facts that one must accept and honor before they are allowed to throw one punch. Every class begins and ends with their recital. I am not a violent person, ma’am, as I said before. I do not dream of walking into the grocery store and slamming the teller’s face into the cash register just for the hell of it. I do not revel in the deaths of others or acts of violence that are seen on the news. Training in karate has not taught me to want kill. It has taught me to accept death. It has taught me that life is fleeting, and when I understand this notion the best is when I am able to laugh loudest, forgive easiest, and love fullest, because I understand that life does not last. That is why the friendships in my dreams were so strong, because they had to be, because every one of them, my dream self included, knew that death could come at any moment— possessing a weapon in confirmation of that fact.

I own a sword, a mercenary long sword, made of carbon steel and sharpened into an exact edge. It is a tool designed and ready to kill, and holding it in my hands, I do not feel the blood thirsting desire you might imagine I do, ma’am, but I do feel its weight. A weapon, my arts, they are what they are, but they are also so much more. They symbolize the constant struggle between life and death. The beauty of a weapon and of a balled fist trained to inflict damage is not in its flair or in its movements, but in the idea. They carry with them at all times the facts of life and death in a marriage of heaven and hell. Every time you pick up a weapon you take death by the hand so that you might fight death. I fight death everyday. Everyday I look death in the eyes, the same as everyone else, and I smile. I take his hand, not because I aim to fight him in an attempt to beat him, but so that I may live freely and fly more gracefully into that wide water without sound.