Bruce Lee

Being water, my friend

/ PJ Caldas / Leave a comment

A few years ago, my colleagues and I won an Emmy for our web series The Beauty Inside. For my surprise, that TV award unlocked a literary career that had been stuck for years.

Damn, I tried. Knocked on so many doors. Asked so many favors. Showed it to. So many people. And crickets. Until that point, publishers in Brazil weren’t interested in my stories. They said the theme I picked — the overlap between Brazilian and African cultures, religions and mythology — wasn’t very marketable. Which was a code for “the world this story represents does t buy too many books.” Which is equally frustrating as it is revolting. For a segment that was supposed to be so avant-garde, so world changing, publishers’ conservatism still baffles me.

But then, once I won the Emmy, they suddenly wanted me. My story was perfect.

Sigh.

The good news: the audience, that one that wasn’t supposed to buy books, seemed to agree with me. Right out of the gate the book reached one of the top positions in the best selling lists among Brazilian fiction books. And in the second volume of the trilogy, and for a few weeks, it reached #3-5 overall, beating all Brazilian books (including Paulo Coelho who was a few steps below me).

All that to say that I have never been shy of picking themes outside the hottest trends, or to keep fighting for a place for my story until I find the right house. Like Bruce Lee famously said, if you behave like water, gently poking the rock with enough resolve, eventually it will give you passage.

My first book took 10 years to break through those rocks and find a publisher. This new one, The Girl from Wudang, took 5. But it finally found one. Now, in one more year, my story will be in your house too.

I can’t wait.

——

PS. A full decade later and I still get messages from readers thanking me for bringing a world they can relate to literature and from writers who can now get their story published because of the work I started. Resilience makes you work hard for a while, but pays long dividends too. ❤️

Dummy Rant

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The #wingchun #woodendummy is a trunk with arms. But it’s the trunk, not the arms! A tool created to help us visualize the centerline, fundamental principle of this art. To help us learn to pressure the centerline. Attack the centerline. Move around the arms and the legs… to attack the centerline. Yet, most people I see using it, are so focused on the arms they never take the true practical effect of this brilliant invention. They learn to fight an immobile opponent instead of moving around the attacker, of learning to flank him and go after the centerline from the new angle. The result: robotic chain punching robots that can’t use wing chun for anything real, who get the art criticized for having weak footwork, when in fact the more I train, the closer I think it is to boxing footwork (though a bit more rooted). Anyway, the next time you stand in front of one of these, forget the arms. They are just an obstacle to the trunk, the centerline. No matter where you touch, make that body shake.* ——————

* side note: there is a considerable difference between the wall mounted dummy and all the other ones in terms of the feedback you get. Once you try the wall mount everything tends to get clearer.

#boxing #mma #kungfu #mixedmartialarts

How to chose a martial arts school

/ PJ Caldas / 1 Comment

Any mildly serious martial arts training has to give you three things. 1) a system of techniques that can protect, cause damage and transition from one another under pressure; 2) physical and mental conditioning to allow you to survive the effort of a fight; and 3) a routine that allows you to eat some pain without panicking, so you can survive until the the opening for your final move. (The idea you can get into a fight and leave unharmed is only for Hollywood)

That reminds me of a quote from #BruceLee : “A fight is not won by one punch or kick. Either learn to endure or hire a bodyguard.” One can take endurance here as enough cardio and muscle resilience, but knowing @brucelee ’s obsession with practicality, I bet he also meant the ability to eat some pain during the fight.

That’s particularly important for women in our #McDojo times. Some will try to lure you by offering the cardio and strength workout, or even a few techniques that are better than none. But unless you have a chance to spar, to get hurt a little, to feel the mind-forging power of pain, what you’re doing ain’t #martialarts — It’s just gymnastics. Will keep you healthy under safe conditions, but will not protect you in the real world.

Of course the opposite is also a threat. Some schools focus too much on the ability to take pain and end up causing deformations on the body and long term impairment. That’s dumb too.

Those two kinds of bad experiences — pain free McDojos or torture chambers with too much of it — aren’t privilege of a style, but rather a trait of the place and the instructor. For any style strong enough to survive its creator must have at least some martial validity.

So don’t get fooled or dragged into fake schools either way. If in doubt, stop by and ask the Tigress.

#girlpower #girlfighter #fitness #unitedbyblood

* this account is fictional. For more details, check the about page

Photo is an Instagram #Repost of @femalekickers ::: @kispec a fierce #kyokushin fighter

The butterfly and the black eye

/ PJ Caldas / 2 Comments

butterfly

A long time ago, in the province of Meng, in China, there was an honorable philosopher called Zhuang Zhou. He once wrote about his dream of being a butterfly. As such, he flew through the woods, enjoyed the perfume of the flowers and the sound of the rivers. All was wonderful with his colorful flying-self, as he knew nothing about his times and desires of men, only the wants of the most beautiful of the insects. In his ignorance, he didn’t miss human life. Happy as he has ever been, he glided among the trees.

Suddenly, he wakes up. His pale skin and pointy fingers are horrendous. His shadow has no wings. Desperate, Master Zhuang runs to the lake to check his reflection. Who is that creature devoid of colors? So confused he became, for a while he couldn’t tell if he was a butterfly dreaming of being a man or a man taken from a dream of butterfly. Zhuangzi was a wise man though, and through dedicated meditation, he finally understood.

“I am both!”

Yes, he was. The man and the butterfly. “But I shouldn’t have been awaken that abruptly, for the walls between the dreams and life should have no windows to peek.”

I hear the story, wondering why Sifu chose that particular one among so many others. After a full day training of intense Tai Chi forms, the connection wasn’t the clearest. Then he calls me to spar.

My legs can barely hold; my arms are heavy as if they had carried a pig for a mile. “Be light like a butterfly” – I think. That’s what he meant! He’s always scolding me for my hard moves, after all.

We fight. Soft and gentle, I watch myself floating around him. As if I had wings made of rice paper, painted with colors of all kinds. My Tai Chi shines. So precise, so beautiful. I enjoy in pride, until I get hit. A punch, right on the kidney, makes my chi leak, rapid. Inside, a coiling pain slithers up my body and hooks onto one of my eyes, the one on the opposite side of the blow. It twitches, rolls into my head then gets dragged towards the injured organ below the ribs. I fold. One knee first, then another. My hand touches the floor, hoping for a landing more gripping than sand. I feel everything. See everything. I think, what is going on? Is this what the allegory was about? Do I need suffering to… transform? To wake up? Is this the only path to enlightenment? I turn to Sifu, begging for relief and an answer.

Behind a chuckle, he gives one: “The wall. Never lose the wall.”

Is that the best he can do?!

He extends a hand to help me stand. The problem with kidney shots is they don’t cause the sharp pain of a broken bone or the dizzying effect of a head hit. It’s so deep it makes you feel dark in the chest, praying the world leaves you alone. That is me. I hold the hand.

Leg limps. Chest refuses to open. Guts are loose, like watery noodles soup. In a protective Tai Chi stance, I wait for his move. He launches, faster than a man his age should. And his fist is inside my stomach. Not a full punch though. Just strong enough to knock me down.

Despite the agony, I can still think. What I can’t is breathe. He seats me up, hits me three times with an empty palm on the heights of my back. Clock, clock, clock. Darkness fades.

“The wall”—he repeats, with a grin. Sifu knows my beast. So I hold it. Not allowing him the pleasure of a double lesson. Instead, I wait, quiet, until he says whatever he wants to say. Hurts less this way.

“Life and death; forms and fight; man and butterfly. The different sides of life must not recognize the other. Or they will never be full on what they ought to be.”

Master twists his beard and raises to a beautiful Tai Chi pose. Head tall, weight on a single limb, arms pointing forward and back. From below, his indigo robe, deeper than the indigo flower itself, looks like an armor of dusk. He presses with a hand as the opposite leg takes a gentle step backwards. “Repulse the Monkey”—I say,  the name of the position. Perhaps it can unravel the mystery he taunts at me. Nothing. Damn, he is so light when he does Tai Chi! Maybe that’s it? He is telling I’ll never be weightless?

He says: “forms.” Then shakes into another pose. Elbows down, legs rooted like a tree, chin tucked, face hiding behind the fists. He jabs, crosses, hooks, dodges, kicks, leaps. “Fight”—he finishes. “They must not know of each other.”

After hours training forms and a devastating sparring session, that’s something really fucked up to say.

Took me a lot to let the anger pass, even more to comprehend. Not just time, new ideas and methods too. I mentioned I love Bruce Lee, right? How I even moved to Oakland because of him? Influenced by his writings, I started to cross-train. A sponge, absorbing everything I touch. That helped.

One day, I am in a judo class, learning to unbalance people by breaking their steps mid-move. Oh, and throwing them on the floor too. Next, Muay Thai, BJJ, Eskrima… Fighting styles for the entire world. My Boxing instructor adjusts my stance: sideways, right arm horizontal and low, covering the entire waist; shoulder forward, a glove to protect the chin. “Philly Shell”, he explains. The punches come from all angles, and I try to stay calm, but I’m getting close to the wall. His flurry continues: up, down, side. My elbow covers a kidney shot without too much effort. The shell is an interesting guard indeed! I have a vision: Sifu and his Repulse the Monkey. Not the full move, more like a flash, and do a Boxing version of it. Leg back, spinning the body, connecting to a cross from the other side. It shoots fast, sharp, precise onto my instructor’s face. I touch the wall behind me, give him a black eye.

Intriguing, the wall thing. The butterfly one. You teach your body to operate with flowery forms, hold them on the other side while you fight. Then one day, a flash of a form crosses time and space and possesses your swing. All of a sudden, your instructor learns he can’t mess too much with you.

Pretty Boy

/ PJ Caldas / 4 Comments

Bruce_Lee_1973

I moved to the San Francisco Bay Area because of Bruce Lee. As a young girl isolated in mainland China, I fantasized with the vibrant fighting community he inspired, to this day ready to confront laws and canons, set to prove new combat ideas in the real world.

So I applied do Berkeley. Physics. This way I could witness that culture and also pick up some science to supplement my training.

The opening day, I was there. All suited up, the world so much smarter than what I knew… I couldn’t wait to meet the real fighters, the wild scientists. Then the classes commenced. Months in and there was still none of the juicy stuff. Just basics and more basics, no sign of getting better.

Tedius quickly turned annoying when the grades arrived and no one believed my D’s and E’s. Apparently, if you are an Asian in STEM, you have the duty to get A’s.

Stupid whites.

I had already made the decision to drop out when I walked in the classroom and the chick next to me tried to disappear behind her hair. She was sniffing, her face so red and swollen it appeared she head-butted a hornet’s nest. “Are you ok?” – that’s all I said. The story erupted from her lips: the party, the drinks, the hookup, the… “If you are not careful, it will happen to you too.” – she interrupted her account to warn me.

I may not be good with numbers and formulas. But I know a few things. Beating people. Breaking bones. Sending assholes to the hospital. She wouldn’t give me the name, though.

We made a deal: I would teach her to fight. The coming morning, I was showing her first moves at the park next to the Campus. Tai chi felt like the most suited for her hippie-ness. I was right. She loved it, both the slow and the fast. The ideas and actions. The applications. I chose to go easy but deep, making sure each motion she learned, she could truly use.

Her enthusiasm must have made an impression. For every class, an onlooker asked to join. I took them all. Young and old, students, professors, college officials and store clerks. Anyone, as long as they didn’t have balls.

The multiple ironies weren’t mute to my ears, of course. I had jumped from being the Asian in science to the Asian in Martial Arts. Moved from the People’s Republic of China to teach at the People’s Park of Berkeley. I was a walking, pushing and slow kicking cliché. I was having fun, though. Finally.

Until Miranda didn’t appear two classes in a row.

I searched for her. Called. Nothing. Days later, I noticed one of the Cal star swimmers limp his way through the corridors. I’ve seen him before. Good looking, hopeful Olympian, full of himself. He had a black eye too. You know, the pool may distress a hamstring, but no belly flop would cause a dark swollen socket.

From class to class I followed the guy. When he left the school grounds, I went behind toward the dorms, waiting for the right opportunity. A little alley, poorly lit. That was it. I reached out. “Miranda asked me to check if she hadn’t hurt you too much” – I bluffed. The jock never questioned who I was. Just begged for forgiveness.

Which of course I did. But I broke both his legs first.