:: worlds in words ::

What is the place of martial arts in our world and in our lives?

With the popularization of martial arts and the recent explosions in the Western world, it really makes me reflect on the various aspects of martial arts. Now, a large portion of the people I know have done all sorts of martial arts from the mundane to the exotic – everything ranging from Karate and Tae Kwon Do to Jiu Jitsu and Muay Thai to Systema and Jeet Kune Do. Why is this?

The first and foremost reason that is usually given for martial arts is “self-defense”. The knowledge of martial arts gives one the ability to defend themselves should they come under attack, whether it’s bullying at school or a bar brawl. I’m sure that this could be a legitimate reason for some. The second reason cited, generally, is confidence. Martial arts gives a person the confidence they need to believe in themselves and their scope of abilities, amplifying their achievements in seemingly non-adjacent fields.

Now we’re getting somewhere.

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A transition from just being to truly living – this is that with which I struggle.

Responsibility, accountability, and denying immediate gratification are the top three on my list of problems to be faced, I suppose.  All three go hand-in-hand with one another, and the lack of all three of these things throughout just about my entire life have led me to where I am now, which is a place where I feel that I am devoid of humanity.  By the time that a man gets to a place where he looks at himself and feels – to any degree – that he is not representative of the human ideals, there have been a chain reaction of events that reach far back and make it so difficult to change established patterns of behavior.  For myself, this is particularly poignant as I have been an avid disciple of martial arts and philosophy.  These are all things that I am aware of and should be practising – they are things that I have actively, knowingly denied in myself.  I cannot claim ignorance.

“Give me chastity and continence, but not yet,” he said – and this is how I’ve felt for twenty-one years of my life, in many ways.  As though I have always been prepared to make the transition, like he was to the clergy and eventually to sainthood.  But I always felt as though I had time – I could put this off, I could enjoy my time in youth and carefree recklessness, and move over to the realm of adulthood and holding back personal pleasure at a later time.  To say that I was mistaken would be an understatement; to say that this line of thinking was foolhardy would fail to highlight how much more difficult I’ve made my life by continually refusing to make the right choice, the smart choice, the wise decision.

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When I was in Vancouver, I got into a bit of an argument with some of the troops over beers up in Whistler. I asked them: what gives a man, specifically a soldier, the right to kill in order to achieve it’s mission?

After all, if someone is antagonizing me in my day to day affairs, I don’t have the right to pick up a weapon and harm them, or even kill them. And yet, soldiers worldwide are permitted to kill in the scope of their duties, and I wanted to know what they thought of this.

The argument quickly boiled down into semantics in a matter of minutes. We hashed out what is logical, what is rational, in whose eyes justification is given, and so forth.

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While discussing poetry with a – it feels odd to call him friend, because he was a teacher. But it feels odd to call him my teacher, considering that we Twitter back and forth constantly throughout the day. While I was discussing the odd concept of writing, and the difficulty with writing when it’s something you want to convey so much but have such difficulty doing it, we got somewhat on the subject of poetry. Which then, of course, prompted me to go back through the folders full of old stuff I’d written which I used to honestly believe could pass for poems.

I think this piece from years ago really captures how I feel right now, though. Maybe I will get back into writing poetry, even if it is utter dredge what I come out with. It’s cathartic.

Leviathan’s Lament

Rising, the troubled waters reach
Screaming, shrieking, grasping for the sky
What divides the sea from the heaven?
Where ends shore and begins ocean?
They seek to usurp the hierarchy of blue
Pulling strength from the vasty deep
To lunge like a whale up to the clouds
A spray of tears on a young man’s face –
His eyes close. More than one reflection
In the water staring back – moving in the waves,
Reaching for him too, reaching down in itself.
The sun sets; the seas unsettle
Wreak all hell forth, in water’s fury
Weeping for his love, lashing at the least,
Roaring, ‘A thousand depths cross I
To smile thine eyne upon mine, o love!’
Not the unstable havoc of a child
But the custom madness of a poet
What terror lies there underneath the glassy sheen
Both a mirror and a window;
What hope rests within the flimsy craft,
Both a gateway and a coffin?
My love, you know not despair nor joy
Until you kiss these lips which have waited for you
My love, you know not fear nor elation
Until you see yourself fall into the ocean.

What controls us in our daily lives?

Pause – reflect. What is it, in the everyday, which drives us to do as we do, to think as we think, to act and react how we do, defining and shaping the very moments of our day?

I think that to a large extent, humanity is driven by images and symbolism. What do I mean by this? Imaginary lines drawn in the dirt which symbolize nations. Lines of paint drawn on asphalt roads – and if you cross them, you can be fined. A red light means STOP – and people obey. There is no power in a light source coming through a red-tinted piece of plastic to make you come to a halt at the line. But people do anyway. The symbol of it compels you to. A red stamp over a form with the four-letter word “VOID” can mean so much. Has it changed so much since before the stamp?

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