Today’s soundtrack: dead into my phenomenon, dazed with the quickness.
Today at 3:02pm: Breathing exercises.


I take martial arts, so I have a master. I guess it’s weird when I think about it, but overall having a master is good and I highly recommend it. Good ones like mine are like coaches, and their lessons go far beyond the boundaries of kicks and punches.

My master comes from a long line of black New-York-based martial artists; back when I was seeking out a style, studying under a master that was a person of color was of paramount importance to me. The master-student relationship involves trust, bonding and the transfer of large amounts of knowledge, and I can relate to a racial minority far better than I could to someone whose relatives had cabins on the Mayflower.

I study hapkido* but the curriculum also incorporates some jiujutsu, which my master studied under Soke John Davis, founder of Kumite Ryu Jiujitsu. Soke Davis came down from his school in Harlem to deliver a two-day “street tactics” seminar at our dojang and it was pretty goddamn intense.

Soke Davis is like a black Buddha. Short, squat, round, always beaming, smiling, laughing. Benevolent but tough, wise and wisecracking, with the dialectical marks of a person familiar with the streets. He’s also lightning-quick--I mean scary-quick--and he moves like a tiger.

He used me as the demonstration dummy for several techniques and as he tossed me around the mats it seemed like I had been transported to another dimension; in what seemed like only one second to me, Soke had pulled half a dozen techniques and mock-fashionedly broken my arm six ways ‘til Sunday. All while delivering friendly (and frequently funny) commentary. He asked me to choke him or throw punches at him and each ended up in swift disaster for me.

For someone with that much mass to move that goddamn fast simply defies laws of physics and nature. The man is truly a master. If you watched Soke move and were given the choice of fighting either him or Mike Tyson, you’d be like “Alright Mike, let’s see whatcha got, put ‘em up.”

Soke’s followers are hardcore. He entered the dojang with a phalanx of clean-cut and hard-ass lookin’ black men from uptown, several of whom spoke in thick Ebonics but all of whom bellowed a crisp “OSS”** when called on. Several of these guys also demonstrated techniques; each seemed perfectly capable of disarming a S.W.A.T. team.

At the end of the seminars I gave Soke a 90-degree bow and thanked him. He stuck out a hand to be shook and broke into a toothy grin of the sort that make you suspect there are no problems in the world. This is a man for whom adversity and particularly physical violence have simply ceased to be a threat. Soke seems to me to be something I have not seen in a long while: An uncomplicated and happy man.

I trained on my rooftop today, under the sun, sweating, alone and content. It felt good. In the middle of it I spotted a Chinese woman from the sweatshop next door watching me through a window but I pretended not to notice. She stayed for longer than I was comfortable with but what are you gonna do.

Next weekend I’m off to Vermont for an informal Hapkido training weekend. Today was only one day, and Vermont will be only three. It will take me years and years and years, but it feels good having something to shoot for.


*If you’re actually interested in what it is...do a web search. The web can do a better job of telling you what it is than I could.

** “OSS” = Japanese martial arts utterance of respect.