Some Glue

Moving, building breaking.  Where have I been.  About time to start (continue) keeping track.

Landed in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia a few days ago.  Before that, Ranong, Thailand mainland for a week.  Before that, Koh Payam island, Ranong, Thailand, a two hour boat ride off the coast.  The mainland stay was my favourite place so far.

I found a room with a double bed, toilet cum shower, large wall-mounted fan, wardrobe, clothes rack, table and chair, for 300 bat (about 6.70 euro) per day (including a fresh bottle of water in the morning.  The place only offered nightly rates, not weekly, and most other lodgers only stayed one night before moving on (often connecting to ferries or buses that would take them island hopping or over to Myanmar for a visa run to extend their stay).  With so many transients surrounding, I finally felt I could sit still for a while.  The food on the streets was delicious and cheap.  The town was quiet enough, but busy enough during the day with shop keeping, and the locals were soft-featured and generally friendly, though very little english was every spoken.  I set still, I watched films on the one english channel late in the night -- Air Force One, all three Damon Bourne films, Ocean's 11.  I also watched Jet Li's Fearless.  It was much more blatant and blunt than my beloved Unleashed and Hero, but managed the same effect of the latter two: I looked up Jet Li again and tried to find a way to contact him.  Apparently he lives in Singapore now, having gained citizen ship there for the sake of his daughters' education.  I considered just catching a bus or plane down to Singapore and having a look around, maybe even lean on a large chunk of faith that I might be able to run into him on the street.  I want to do something with my inspiration that he gives me.  I want to ask questions of these people who inspire me.  Taking John Green's advice to "find someone who is doing what you want to do, better than you can do it, and listen to them."  I want to write a letter to Jet Li, asking for an hour or so of his time, just to walk and talk.  To listen to him.  Similar for Chris Smither.  I've asked myself what the connection is between the two, and I believe the answer is Grace.  These people to me are a paragon of grace in action.  The message in Jet Li's three epics, that of true power being the mastery, indeed the artistry, of your own potential, rather than excercising force and domination over others to prove one's might.  It's the message I found in that oddly great animation about the dinosaurs We're Back, and again in my beloved Iron Giant.  These beasts who have the potential to be quite powerful, given this potential without control, learning to contain it through the lessons they receive in grace.  It's there again in my well-thumbed and well-mulled story and film A River Runs Through It.  "My father was very sure about certain matters of the universe.  To him, all good things -- trout as well as eternal salvation -- come by grace, and grace comes by art, and art does not come easy."

In that same town in Ranong mainland, walking every day, I stumbled upon an open-air boxing gym.  I gestured and pointed and half-talked with some local children on their way home from school in the evening to learn that I could come back the following evening at 5pm to meet a teacher, or trainer, or somebody associated with the place.  I went at 5 the next day, and waited around until 6, stabbing my bare feet into the sand and walking slowly across little patches of sharp rocks, trying to toughen up the soles of my sensitive feet.  Eventually some men came by with puppies on short leashes.  Soon after some women, daughters or wives or friends, came to take the puppies off their hands and the men started stretching and half paying attention to me doing the same.  The sun set and we were boxing in the dark under the fluorescent lights with moths overhead.  A very young and stout child took charge of me.  He had not one single word of english, but I eventually figured out that his name was Fuat.  He was very serious with me, and I respected him immediately.  Attempting to take his gestured instructions on how to execute the cutting kick, he stopped me mid-stance and motioned for one of the other boys, who was just watching, to come over and help him.  The boy steadied the bag against my shin and Fuat worked me from ankle up to my spine and shoulders, shaping me like he was about to make a painting of a model.  Then he stepped back, looked me in the eye, and nodded, satisfied.  I kicked again and again, trying to replicate the pose he'd moulded in my bones.

The next day I arrived at 5 again, and this time an actual trainer was there.  He was Thai, though he'd been away somewhere, worked as a doctor in the local hospital, and spoke with a soft German accent.    He took the whole class, about six of us, through stretches and then exercises on the ring mat, entirely in english, for my benefit.  He worked out cores, our legs, our hips, our necks, our arms.  We were pouring sweat in the evening heat before the form lessons even began.  He started with the stance.  Then the jab, paying attention to the shoulders, explaining how the chin must stay down, shoulders up, to protect the head.  If the chin is stuck out and gets knocked, your brain has a much better chance of getting mucked around in your skull.  Shoulders up and chin down, it's harder to get the brain to rattle.  So every jab, the shoulder covers the ear and the chin tucks in.  Then he taught us one-two, with the more powerful punch being the second blow, gaining energy and momentum from the hips up.  He got us twisting our hips and feet, while keeping the steady triangle stance.  Then the uppercut and the hook as a third in the combo.  He built us up, piece by piece, and we practiced each set in tens while moving across the ring.  After that, we got out of the ring and over to the bags.  We practised the combos on the bags.  Then he moved on to kicks.  He explained in essence and physics what Fuat was trying to teach me with gestures the evening before.  He taught me how to pull the energy up from my hips, and whip the leg out like a rope, and aim through the bag, not just to the surface, like the punching I'd learned long ago in some quick karate class as a kid.  You don't aim for the surface of your target, you aim behind it; if a face is your mark, you aim the blow for the back of the head.  I kicked the bag with my shin, hard, until the the surface obtained a pale lustre like unchewed bubblegum.

After class, we watched the other older trainer with one of the older students taking his kicks in the ring with arm pads on.  Then one of the younger students got in the ring and they practised some holds.  "This, I need to think about more," said my doctor teacher. "See how he's holding his head like that?  In Muay Thai, if you control the head, you control the whole body.  Like this."  Suddenly he had me in a head-to-head lock, with his fists around the back of my neck like thick rope, pulling down, like the two figures in the ring.  He explained that he studied Judo, where they deal much more with grappling, and you have your hands free, so a shirt or extremity is a legal hold, but in Muay Thai, no shirt, and you have the gloves on.  "I want you to move left, I move you, or right.  I control the head.  So what do you do?" he challenged.

"Okay.  Well, the instinct is to duck down, to get out."

"Yes.  But you do that you meet my knee on the way up."  He brought his knee up to what would be a very awful blow directly to the face.

"Okay, so the next instinct is to pull back, retreat."

"Yes.  But then you're giving me momentum, and I still have my knees, here."  He shot a knee each up to my rib cage like engine pistons.  "So you're all target.  So what do you do?"

"You close the distance."

"Yes."  And he demonstrated by suddenly pressing himself right up against me.  "No more target, both equal, see?"

He let go of the hold and smiled back up at the teacher in the ring showing something similar to the young student.  "It's like life, isn't it?" he mused.  "You try to duck out of your problems, they hit you harder, you try to run away from them and they come back at you with momentum.  The only way is to stand up and face them, walk right to them."  He demonstrated with a quick few sturdy marching steps forward.  "Yes, I have to think more about this."

It was all so clear to me.  The combination of elements that something deep in my soul or self or skin has been looking for.  The discipline, without the brutality and regime of the military.  The concentration on self-improvement for its own sake, as a way of moving through the world and among them.  Learning not only how to anticipate and defend, but also to participate and dance along with what is happening around you.  This, without hanging your hat or your shirt or mind out to dry on some rack of prescribed religion.  Relating to nature the way it already is, and taking all these magical human insanities on board as part of the same natural soup, and learning how to move with it.  Jet Li says he has never had to use any of his mastery of martial arts in a an actual fight, and he hopes he never has to.  See, it's not about turning one's self into an unstoppable weapon, it's about balance and wisdom and reserve.

I moved on from Ranong, just to keep seeing a bit more of the world, but I miss my little room on the hill already.  The faces that were already becoming familiar to me in that little town.  The natural way I began to fall into a routine that my body actually enjoyed.  Stretching and exercising in the morning before my shower, the same exercises the teacher showed us on the mat at the boxing gym ring.  Then down to the little lady in the kid's clothes shop who also had a juice & shakes kiosk just outside for a huge cup of watermelon and ice shake.  Then over to the hard-working family down the road for a bowl of noodles and veg or soup with a bit of meat in it.  Then picking any old direction on the map that I hadn't explored yet and simply walking, walking, walking, for hours.  Meanwhile working on my orientation, keeping my bearings, a sense of where north is.  Then my date with the sunset, often enjoying a cigarette while I watch that old friend sink below whatever counts as the horizon line by then (sometimes a mountain range, sometimes a building in the way).  That's when the starlings come out.  Watching them scatter and dance, silhouetted against all that burnt gold, thinking about the speed of their beating hearts, and wondering why the dusk, why the dusk, and then clearing my thoughts of everything, any of the clutter that might be left even after the long walk, and quite simply watching the birds and the light while thinking nothing at all.

In the hostel in Kuala Lumpur I've tried talking with a few people. The words come out like they're covered in marshmallows or mushrooms, warbled and muffled and frumpy.  Sentences like bad hair days.  But at least I feel a bit more relaxed about it.  Since starting this routine with my stretches and exercise in the morning after waking up and before doing anything else, I've felt much more energy and even a tiny bit more flexibility.  I'd love to magically get all my flexibility back, but I know it will take time to re-do what has over several years been slowly being undone.  So stiff and covered in such heavy layers in that sunless Irish land.  I now look forward to my morning stretches.  Even on the sleeper train, when I woke up at 8am and still had four hours to go before our destination, I found a place between the cars that served well enough for everything except my jumping jacks.  Even the two sturdy steel hand rails on either side of the two steps were perfect for some lifts for my arms and core, especially with the train rocking and throwing off my balance, so I had to use my stomach muscles to keep in place.  See, I've been experimenting with an idea that I had on one of my walks, where I keep remembering to look for opportunity.  This requires a general direction or desire, in order to fill in the blanks.  But it's interesting when something doesn't go the way I expected it to (a missed or full bus so I have to wait in an unknown town overnight, for example).  I wouldn't necessarily get steamed or annoyed, depending on the expectation.  But I also wouldn't quite know how to dance along with the re-direction, and often would end up walking myself into a spiral where I could plant a little frustrated seed of Having Been Hard Done By.  Instead, I've been experimenting with the idea of filling in the blank to "Well, this is an excellent opportunity to ________," and seeing where that takes me.  I know myself well enough to know that it isn't a false optimism patch trying to patch over some actual anger that I'd like to pretend I'm not feeling.  It's like my other memory projects; it just gives me a little direction and something useful to do.  I've been filling in the blanks with a lot of stretching, and exercising my arms and legs, and my stressed out scatterbrain that was fearing it had lost all abilities of memory when I arrived here has been slowly coming back into sharper focus.  I've been able to keep better track of myself, and my thoughts, instead of filling in idle time with blankness and a general sense of feeling lost while wondering how I got somewhere and where I should be instead.