love in the dojang

it’s an interesting relationship,the one you have with your trainers. with your gyosanim, sabum, sabumnim, daekyanjangnim…with your teachers and masters in martial arts. they push you harder than you would push yourself. that’s part of why you accept their teachings. why you pay them. why you need them. they take you to a higher level…if you are willing to go there. and suffer for it, and want it, and surrender to it. but at times you hate them, almost. for a moment or five. in the throes of pain, your lungs burning or your legs feeling like stone, like you cannot lift them one more time…and they won’t stop. they won’t end the damn exercise. in those moments you almost hate them.

later you are through the heat of the moment and you’d never admit to such fleeting feelings. they are hardly real. they don’t live in your belly, they don’t curdle inside your mind. they are like the loud snap of lightning, come and gone. they are fresh, wet, shrieking but for a second or three. they live in your bones, in your muscles, in your lungs. you exhale them, you sweat them out, you weave them into striated passion.

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the reverse spin kick is such a foundational…or adaptable move. you add to it, augment it for use in different situations. you chamber your kicking leg earlier if closer to your target. you learn to step or hop a bit forward as you begin your spin—to reach people who are a bit too far from you, or you suspect will back up in time. you turn it into an attack by adding a step before it, to close even more distance and add momentum to an already powerful kick that is perhaps best suited to be used defensively. you sometimes hop-spin, rather than pivoting with a foot on the ground. to spin even faster.

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you don’t want to be a boy taking advantage of my little girl. even a little boy. i don’t like seeing her bullied or treated dismissively or as if she can be bossed. she’ll let it happen. kids have a deference to older kids. and i think luna does to boys anyway. she likes boys. she thinks they are neat. prefers diego to dora. idolizes the worst influences because they are in proximity, and a boy.

but it burns me right up. i always squash it. its a bad, bad pattern to start letting a girl think it’s okay that she gets pushed around or ruled over by males, or given hostility and to accept that as friendship. others in the vicinity are not so reactive to it. but i jump up. and yeah…i know part of this is being kids. let it happen not in front of me, that’s all i’m saying.

tonight at the dojang, this one boy from one family (whose boys all seem to share interesting behavior issues) was acting in a way i didn’t care for. they were coloring in coloring books. he would take colors right out of her hand if he wanted them. he would take her coloring book over his, if he liked the page she opened up. she had no priority, no agency.

ugh. tho i think all kids do this. at least i see her do it to her little sister. i squash it there, too. i really have a problem with bullying. i do not fucking like it.

anyway, i told him not to bully her just because she was smaller or a girl. i told him to stick to his own coloring book. that he couldn’t have both. i wasn’t laughing or smiling. i was stern. i had to speak a few times to squash a few incidents. all involving him thinking he had a right to decide who colored what, etc.

sure, there was (and is, still) the possibility of their dad–whomever that is–taking offense. (not worried for some reason about mom…only because she’d be a grown girl, not a grown boy) but i’m not going to see my girls pushed around. it’s important now, even if it seems small. this is where they begin to learn How We Do. she needs to see in clear terms what is cool and what is not.

it’s also important to me that my kids see me not hesitate to stand up for them. to me, that is paramount. i won’t pick them up if they fall or stumble. i let them navigate the peaks and valleys of the world, of struggle. i do not coddle them or intercept their needed growth with rescuing. but this…other people coming into the equation in such a way…that’s different.

the boy mellowed out. then again, i was hovering. waiting for their grandmother to show up and pick them up.

but yanno. kids are not necessarily malicious. he wasn’t necessarily aware of what he was doing, i knew that. kids learn their junk. they are treated ways and they treat others that way. they don’t want to be wrong, or scolded. they don’t like hurt feelings. so he tried to please me. colored a page and said “this is for you.” he said it a few times, made sure i heard. it was sweet. i rubbed his head and made a warm parental approving sound. i know that mode too.

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it’s funny to see all the eldest siblings at the dojang. you can always always always tell who they are. they act as authorities quite comfortably and naturally taking to the hierarchy when it suits them. but often bristling when they meet the small end of the exchange.

i think the strong hierarchies of rank and age intersecting are a good thing in the dojang. it’s good practice respecting people you may not feel like respecting. for the sake of being self-respecting. try replying “yes, ma’am” when corrected, or “thank you ma’am” to a woman less than half your age when your technique is brushed up and you’ll know what i mean. i’ve found it good practice in being decent and humble.

sometimes little grudges seem to flare up. for example, sometimes you’ll remind a young man—a green belt, say—to address you as sir, not just “yeah” and they’ll give you a totally unexpected murderous look. like you told them they are grounded for a week without any stereo until they’ve raked the yard, oh, and by the way, that you’re the New Daddy.

i’ve come around…to think maybe tiny currents of dislike or the occasional desire to dominate aren’t so bad in the dojang. in training in martial arts. i mean, i’d rather we are all one happy family. but hey. as long as respect for the art of taekwondo and for the dojang’s rules and for human dignity are followed, some sparks to keep sparring and climbing interesting might not be an entirely bad idea.

if you get pissed off…what will you do with it? will you let it eat you alive? slow you down? make you blind? or will you channel it? think it over? become friends with it? transform it?

there are lots of challenges on the path to mastery in martial arts, it seems to me. the easiest ones are, no doubt, physical.

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continuing on the Get The Young Menz in Line thread…i just had to approach this fella (who has the same rank as me) about his counting in Korean. it was driving me crazy. i like the kid. he’s fine for a kid of his age. (16? 15? something like that). but his pronunciation of eight (which should be Yuh-dohl, basically) was making me cringe. for like the tenth time i’ve heard it. what do i care, right? except when you are leading the room in counting stretches, and people are sitting in the seats watching, and families are there, and some of them Asian, and perhaps some of them Korean, and you are almost a brown belt and you pronounce it “Dah-Loop”?

i mean, we all bend the pronunciation of korean. we are americans, raised on english–most of us. so i get that. i’m not super strict, in fact i never go around correcting people’s pronunciation. this was the first time ever. but ‘DAH-LOOP’???

it sounds ridiculous, you look unschooled, and embarrass me for our dojang.

i approached him after class and said “what is 8 in korean?” (friendly-like, mind ya. i was carrying a baby, for crying out loud). he couldn’t pull it out of a hat (can be hard if you don’t use the numbers out of linear context, understandably), and then i said (this time laughing a bit), “it’s yuh-dohl! not ‘da-loop’! learn your korean, blue belt!”

he said some things in either explanation, excuse, or insult (?), but i didn’t hear, cuz i was sort of laughing and had turned away mostly because i was bringing paloma out of the locker room (from the bathroom, where i had changed her diaper) and luna was jumping up on my legs as their class had ended.

okay, i could’ve been softer about correcting him, i’ll admit. i guess in general, i think correcting someone should be done artfully and gently, if ever it is appropriate. matters of language seem especially touchy when it comes to corrections. i shamed him in pointing out his rank. i am aware of that.

but that’s the problem with waiting weeks to say something to someone. when you finally do, you’re bubbling over.

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it is possible i am coming across as some kind of authoritarian prick after recounting these incidents. but i swear to you while i definitely can be a know-it-all prick at times in life, i am not at all like that practicing taekwondo. in fact, you’ll rarely see me more quiet and ego-free than at the dojang; rarely find me so focused on my own thing unless i’m home working on art. to me, this is love. love at the dojang.

these moments come about simply because of the nature of how the art works (and well, cuz it’s dumb to push my daughters around in front of me), the hierarchies in place, and well…human nature.

it is true, i guess, that i am coming out a little more and getting into guiding younger men and lower belts lately. it is not because i have any real drive or desire to do so. i don’t. i’m very happy doing my thing there. taekwondo challenges me and rewards me, and others don’t have much to do with that. but as we rise in rank, this is expected of us more and more. my strong inner focus and quiet sphere i move about inside of cannot last as-is, it must transform. this is what happens when you move up in rank. you help teach and guide. and then you must learn or make your style of teaching.

also, taekwondo is a beautiful thing. and we need to respect it, those who practice it, the culture from which it comes, and the dojang where we practice and share in it. i guess on those things, i feel pretty strongly.

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i felt good about blocking my drills partner’s axe kicks and pushing into him as i countered with roundhouse kicks. with one (tall) leg up and me pushing, it left him with little to do. i even felt good when it threw him off balance and he fell down. (one of the places being shorter will be an advantage).

i didn’t feel good when the brown belt next to me scolded him, laughing at how tense he was. mocking him for it. then i felt like a bully. i said “he’s fine” and turned back to drills.

i know he’s tense. i understand why, too. it’s not a joke. that’s not how you help someone become less tense. i like him and respect him a lot for how hard he tries. he is battling some ghosts, they live in his muscles and yank the curtain cords tight.

also, he is dealing with disability of some kind. he has a screwy eye, he was in a bad accident at three and they did a tracheotomy and he was all messed up, prounounced dead for like ten minutes, and lived through it. they told his parents he’d not be okay afterward. but he’s pretty okay, it seems to me. he’s a little quirky, and he always squints around his wandering eyeball, but he seems very real and kind. and he really works hard at his martial art. and you’ll never see him mocking someone else’s stance. just not his focus.

when i’m sparring him or drilling, don’t get me wrong…i’m not there to let him get the best of me. but i’m fair. and when i think we are hitting each other too hard (a loud exhalation when you kick someone’s ribs is a sure giveaway), i’ll check. and suggest we lighten up. i don’t take advantage of what i see he naturally deals with. or anyone. well, mostly not. not aside from perhaps feinting to get him to jump and release those long legs in a kick at me, so i can dance around them and move in fast. i will use someone’s tension or anxiety to get them to swing wild, yes. but that’s part of what we do in sparring. you have to learn to work with your own tension or anxiety there.

i don’t agree with that kind of calling out. that was cruel. to me, nothing is uglier than people who have trained in martial arts being petty, mean, or cruel. that’s gross to me.

I’M A MARTIAL ARTIST! master lee has us shout. I’M A TRUE MARTIAL ARTIST!

but just yelling it is not enough.

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had another of those mismatch moments when it came to my size today. yanno, those moments where it’s hard for me to see how others see me. where i think i’m still that tiny kid with his bones sticking out and no muscle on his body to speak of. that 16 year old who weighs 95 pounds and has other dudes proposition his girlfriends in front of him.

a friend (brown belt) tried to sneak up behind me and loop his belt around my neck while i was talking in the locker room.

well, okay. first you have to know that this is something we often do to each other. sneak attack, or just plain attack with kicks or something. the deal is you parry, you dodge, you throw kicks back, you wrestle. hey, we are martial artists! this is the dojang. this is love in the dojang.

so he wasn’t doing anything bad.

i felt his approach. i’m, well, let’s say i’m rather vigilant. chances are extremely slim that you will be able to walk up behind me unnoticed. even if i’m standing and acting as if i don’t see you. that’s a zone with alarm wires around it.

so i felt him out and when the silence and timing and…something else (did i actually catch a brief glimpse peripherally in the mirror as he moved in?) came together right, i shot my arms up so that he’d not be able to loop it around my neck, but would be dealing with some sort of counter move (aside from the back kick, etc).

he laughed, sort of surprised that he had not escaped notice. i told him i had a sense for people coming at me physically, even if i couldn’t see it.

he laughed like i was lying or joking. i said, no i am not joking. i told him that getting violence dealt to you in life will do that kind of thing to you. cause you to tune in sharper.

he was almost stunned, imagining that i’d have to deal with that growing up for any reason.

then it was my turn to feel stunned. i thought…really? i mean i know you are younger and smaller…but. hunh.

weird to me, very weird, that any person could look at me and even imagine that somehow i’d bypass those rough beginnings so many of us had, due to …what? how i look now? what i put out? but…those things happened in part as reaction…they were not always there. maybe. who knows.

but i often feel i mentally built my body. that i have the body i wanted so bad as a young man, but never did. that i turned out my own dense deltoids, ropy forearms, and wide lats from sheer will, from dreaming, from cursing, from envisioning. from a million nights of intense desire. that i clad myself in muscle and sinew from sheer need and mental might.

but i imagine a lot of things.

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oh, and i guess i should mention somewhere in here that a new tv station in dallas, texas, wants to feature my political news-anchory latino-focused videos and beam them into a couple million homes in 2011. that’s sort of wild. i’ll probably let them.