JimFormation

The knowledge that the atoms that comprise life on earth – the atoms that make up the human body, are traceable to the crucibles that cooked light elements into heavy elements in their core under extreme temperatures and pressures.

These stars- the high mass ones among them- went unstable in their later years- they collapsed and then exploded- scattering their enriched guts across the galaxy- guts made of carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, and all the fundamental ingredients of life itself. These ingredients become part of gas clouds that condense, collapse, form the next generation of solar systems- stars with orbiting planets.

And those planets now have the ingredients for life itself. So that when I look up at the night sky, and I know that yes we are part of this universe, we are in this universe, but perhaps more important than both of those facts is that the universe is in us.

When I reflect on that fact, I look up- many people feel small, cause their small and the universe is big. But I feel big because my atoms came from those stars.

~Neil DeGrasse Tyson

Enjoy your own wabi sabi beauty. Simply acknowledge your imperfections without beating yourself up or hiding them.
~ Thomas Moore

What is Wabi-Sabi?

Wabi-Sabi is a Japanese term for finding beauty in imperfection and authenticity.

Wabi-Sabi is a mom and pop bookstore, not Barnes and Noble.

Wabi-Sabi is a little belly, not an airbrushed and made up Vogue model.

Wabi-Sabi is a skin tag, a wrinkled forehead.

Wabi-Sabi are the worn areas on a stone path.

Wabi-Sabi is nature and accepting the natural order of things.

Wabi-Sabi is humble.

Wabi-Sabi is Real.

Wabi-Sabi is explained by the Skin Horse in this passage from Margery Williams’, The Velveteen Rabbit or How Toys Become Real:

 ”What is REAL?” asked the Velveteen Rabbit one day… “Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?”

 ”Real isn’t how you are made,” said the Skin Horse. “It’s a thing that happens to you. When [someone] loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real.”

 ”Does it hurt?” asked the Rabbit.

 ”Sometimes,” said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. “When you are Real you don’t mind being hurt.”

 ”Does it happen all at once, like being wound up,” he asked, “or bit by bit?”

 ”It doesn’t happen all at once,” said the Skin Horse. “You become. It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t often happen to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept.

 ”Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand… once you are Real you can’t become unreal again. It lasts for always.”

When I was 10-years-old or so, my father gave me a box of his 8-track tapes. In the box included Rick Wakeman’s “The Myths and Legends of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table” and Jethro Tull’s “Aqualung.” I played the hell out of those two tapes. Certainly they influenced my musical tastes.

Fast-forward to high school where real musical influences formed and I was deep into The Beatles. The Beatles were my main musical influence — things branched off from there. But I wonder what would have happened if, instead of The Beatles I’d glommed onto The Rolling Stones.

Truth is The Rolling Stones are more up my alley. By and large, I like my music gritty, dirty, and unpolished. The Beatles were ultra-polished and The Stones, well, Keith Richards — need I say more.

And The Beatles wanted to hold a girl’s hand. The Stones wanted to make love to her.

I wonder who I’d be if I was a Stone and not a Beatle.

That  said, I decided to make a list of my favorite Rolling Stones songs. I can’t grab many deep tracks, because I’ve never owned a Rolling Stones album. This is just stuff I’ve heard on the radio over the years.

My 10:

1. Sympathy For the Devil
2. Gimme Shelter
3. Sway
4. You Can’t Always Get What You Want
5. Angie
6. Start Me Up
7. Shattered
8. Ruby Tuesday
9. Brown Sugar
10. Ain’t Too Proud To Beg

A couple of weeks ago, some dude came to the jiu-jitsu academy to take a couple of free classes. He took the Muay Thai class followed by the Beginner’s Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu class. We have a lot of guys do this from time-to-time.

This gentleman practiced another martial art. Kung fu. He wore his sash.

It caught the attention of several of us senior guys in the school:

“Is that a sash that he’s wearing?”

“I think it is.”

“Does the Professor know?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Should we tell him?”

“I think we should talk to the dude.”

Now let me say this, I’m certain the guy wasn’t being disrespectful. Not in the least. But why he wore his kung fu sash in a jiu-jitsu school, I have no idea.

One of our guys politely talked to him. He put the sash away. End of that part of the story.

Most people might think it’s silly, but there is a tradition going back to Brazil that you don’t wear another school’s “colors” while visiting another school. By colors, I mean your school’s patches on your gi or a rashguard with your school’s logo on it. A lot of the schools here in America have brought that forward; ours is one.

Don’t wear someone else’s gi to our school. Our senior guys will look at you funny. The Professor will take offense.

This guy didn’t wear another school’s uniform, but he did wear his rank around his waist. That is akin to me going to a Judo school or a karate school and wearing my jiu-jitsu purple belt. Silly. I’m not going to do it. I will tell the instructor what I do, what my rank is and who gave it to me. And I will tie my kimono jacket tight with a white belt unless the instructor tells me otherwise.

Similarly, when visiting another school, I’m not going to wear my gi that has my academy’s logo all over it. I’m not going to do it. It’s in poor taste. I do think it’s disrespectful — but maybe I’m tiredly old school.

Case-in-point, this winter I accompanied my instructor to two academies. He went there to teach. Both academies are run by his friends — we are loosely affiliated with them.

I didn’t bring my gi emblazoned with my instructor’s name. I didn’t even wear one of my school’s t-shirts under my gi. Personally, I just feel it’s a bit disrespectful to the school I’m visiting. Don’t ask me why. It just is.

I did, however, put on one of our t-shirts after class and worry it out to dinner with the students from the other school.

…

Here are some of the Rules of Etiquette I use when visiting another school:

1. Show up early;
2. Make sure you and your uniform is clean, and your nails are clipped;
3. Talk to the instructor (if you haven’t already) and tell him your level of experience and a brief history;
4. Don’t wear your colors. If it’s all you have, explain it to the instructor. He may not be happy and, depending on the school, you may be a mark. And then you’ll have to take your beatings — you’ve been warned;
5. Warm up with the class. Don’t stand in the corner futzing with your belt;
6. Don’t roll hard or strong! It’s not the Olympics. Be cool. It may even be wise to roll light to begin with and let your rolling partner tap you a couple of times. It’s not a big deal;
7. If you wind up rolling with someone who you are obviously better than, do not submit him over and over and over again. Just roll with him. Again, be cool;
8. Don’t ask to roll with anyone. Let people approach you. As far as I’m concerned, when asked, you’re not allowed to say “No”;
9. Don’t be surprised that if you submit or dominate the first guy you roll with that the next guy won’t be so easy. If you submit him, then the next guy will be tougher. This will keep going until you get your ass kicked. Take the ass-kicking with humility and move on. They’ll respect you for that;
10. If you come in with a chip on your shoulder, you can expect to get the toughest roll in the room, and he probably won’t roll nice;
11. Thank everyone you roll with and;
12. Say “Good-bye” and “Thank you” to the instructor.

…

We had one of those guys visit our school once. You know, a guy who talks a bigger game than he can back up. You know it when it happens. Guys who know don’t really talk about it.  He claimed a wrestling background and a couple of years of jiu-jitsu.

He said something like, “I can handle the Advanced Class” after our Professor essentially begged him to consider the Beginners/Fundamentals Class.

“No way,” he said. “I can handle myself with your advanced guys.”

Okay.

This poor guy. You can tell that he’s not quite there yet. His movements on the ground were choppy and halting. He was still mostly stuck to the ground.

The Professor didn’t want him to roll with the advanced guys. I’ll find someone you can drill with. “You can drill out the series I taught today. I’ll even get one of my guys to show you what I taught yesterday.”

Nope. This guy wanted to roll.

So the Professor let him. He was partnered with one of our submission hunters who was given the order to “Submit him.”

The poor kid got the full arsenal and was submitted time-and-again. Over and over. In five minutes. “Jim,” he told me later. “I ran out of jiu-jitsu.”

…

On the other hand, we had someone visit the academy during open mat on Saturday. He briefly spoke to the Professor and was sent to the back to get changed.

While he was getting changed, the Professor came to a group of senior guys and told us, “This guy came from far away. He’s got some good training under his belt with some top notch instructors (American Top Team, Florida). Make sure you make him feel welcome.”

And we did. He rolled with a bunch of us.

When I left, he was sitting in a circle with about a half-dozen of our senior guys. Laughing. Comparing notes. Sharing techniques and stories.

This is how it can be and how it should be.

This was originally published in September of 2010 but I took it down and broke the internet (because I linked to it on youtube). Someone recently asked to read it. So here it is in all its glory: 

…

I have what I call a “jelly elbow.” The medical term for it is “olecranon bursitis.”

The olecranon is the tip of the elbow. Bursitis is inflammation of the bursa. A bursa is a sack of slippery fluid that pads most joints. At the olecranon, it actually pads the area between your skin and the elbow bones.

I am on the powerful anti-platelet medication, Plavix. My blood doesn’t clot very quickly. This doesn’t marry very well with my chosen hobby: Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu is, as one friend put it, “kinda-like judo with no rules.” There is throwing and wrestling and choking and joint locks and chin grinds and rib pushing and all other sorts of nastiness.

Because of the Plavix and the jiu-jitsu, I’m susceptible for bleeding and bruising and an assortment of other injuries. One of those injuries was cauliflower ear, where the blood got between the skin and cartilage of my ear — my wife drained the blood out (several times) and, while my ear is a little thick, I don’t have a deformed ear.

Now blood has entered into the bursa sack at the tip my elbow. My elbow is two or three times larger than a regular elbow — but much softer. Softer because my bursa is filled with blood.

I know it’s filled with blood because my wife aspirated 12.5 cc’s of jelly (blood) out of it over the weekend. She did it with 0.5 cc insulin needles. Now if you’ve taken the time to do the math, you have already realized that she jabbed me 25 times. And there’s still at least 10 cc’s of fluid in there — 20 more sticks. (Pic & video at the end of this post.)

My elbow feels like it has a mild toothache. But I’m already imagining my call to the doctor:

Hi, Doc. It’s me, Jim …

Yeh, I know. Long-time, no-see …

Listen, I called because I’m having a bit of a problem. I have olecranon bursitis …

How do I know? I checked it out on The Google. I’m sure it’s what I have …

Thank you.

The Google said the best treatment was ice, rest, and over-the-counter anti-inflammatory meds. I tried all that for a month and didn’t get better …

No. I didn’t rest it …

Of course I should have. But that’s not why I’m calling. The Google said that my next line of treatment was to aspirate the fluid out …

Ha! Of course, I didn’t do it myself. I had my wife do it …

No. She’s not a doctor …

Stop laughing. This is the important part. I think she healed the olecranon bursitis but I have another problem. I looked up my new symptoms on The Google and it turns out that I probably have localized staph infection and septic arthritis in the elbow. The Google says that I’m going to need antibiotic treatment right away before I get a systemic infection …

I’m glad you agree with The Google there …

No. I don’t need an appointment. I just need you to call my pharmacy to prescribe some antibiotics …

Hello? Hello?

Sandi, I think another doctor hung up on me. Get the phone book!

…

Some of the Jelly

…

I haven’t been blogging or writing. At all.

Most of my time and most of my days have been spent doing. I work all day and then spend 3 hours almost every evening at the jiu-jitsu academy.

I teach the kids. Sometimes teach the noobs. And then take my own class.

Add to that that I have been taking kickboxing classes two or three days per week, and there is no time for writing. Well, not much time anyway.

I have been playing Skyrim. Whatever.

(Oh. This was a test post from my tablet. Seems to work.)

On this day, put it all aside.

If you believe that Christmas celebrates the birth of Christ, celebrate.

If you do not believe that Jesus is the Christ, meditate on his teachings. If you don’t know his teachings, I’ll help –

Love your neighbors, your enemies and those you may think “beneath” you;
Tolerate the actions of others;
Forgive those who have wronged you and forgive yourself;
Consider the hypocrisy of the religious elite;
Teach others and touch others;
Heal.

If you believe that Christmas has been spoiled by commercialism, consider the smiling children.

Have a very happy and meaningful Christmas. Much love.

I have a friend from Kenya.

He was born and raised in a very rural village just outside the savanna. The scariest thing, he said, was the sound of lions at night. Monkeys threw fruit at the girls (not the boys, because the boys had slingshots). Young boys became expert in packing t-shirts into tight balls that the older kids would use as soccer balls.

He was educated as Occupational Therapist in Nairobi City. Soon after graduation he told his family that he wanted to move to the United States. This was a scary idea. Even scarier when you consider what he thought the United States was all about.

“There are no trees in America,” Godrick once told me. “And everything was made of metal. Robots, my mother told me, did everything.”

“This is what you thought?”

“This isn’t what we thought. This is what we knew.”

Other than that, Godrick knew very little.

About ten years ago, he landed in the United States. Tired, he hobbled to his hotel room and slept until afternoon.

“I went down into the lobby when I woke up, you know, to see America. I was amazed. The people all dressed in wonderful, elaborate clothes. Costumes. And some had masks! And all handed me candy! Mother was right about America!”

Godrick had arrived in America on the eve of and awoken on the day of Hallowe’en.

I teach students of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu a lot. I always talk about tapping (submitting) before they roll.

Tapping is the beauty of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. Tapping is the only reason we can do what we do — fight to the death with other Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu students. To the death.

We tap indicating, “If you don’t stop, you might kill me. Or, at least, break me.” I tap, I live; I don’t tap, I die.

Okay, I probably won’t literally die. But we’ve had our share of people “go to sleep” on the mat because s/he (okay, it’s always been a “he”) didn’t tap. Hell, in the past couple of weeks, I broke two white belts who didn’t tap.

Neither was my fault, as far as I’m concerned.

Let me set the scenario: I am small (usually a pound or two under 145) and I am old (47 as I write this). Most white belts are brutish, rugged, young animals whose motto is “Tap or be tapped at any cost.” Tapping to them is a weakness. A sign of failure.

White Belt No. 1 had 20 years and 100 lbs on me. He’s been around a while. Maybe a year. He’s knocking at the door of his blue belt. He knows stuff.

I got him in an armbar from the guard. His arm was bent as I was applying steady pressure, it wasn’t locked out. He was trying to use the single biceps muscle of his arm curl against the entire force of my back and shoulder muscles. He was at the point where he needed to use brute strength to survive; he doesn’t yet have the technical skills to counter where I had him.

He didn’t have enough strength. His elbow popped while it was still bent. I broke a white belt.

Tap. Motherfucker, tap.

White Belt No. 2 is a raw noob. He’s been at the school a couple of months. He has that personality where he thinks he know more than he does and isn’t progressing quickly enough. I have about 15 years on him and he’s about 50-60 pounds heavier than me.

He rolled strong and fast with all the grace of charging bull moose with a broken leg. I rode him for a little while from under guard. Just staying a beat or two in front of him. Never letting him get  close enough to apply any pressure.

And then I swept him.

When I was on top of him, he pushed at me and allowed his upper arm to get away from his body. I filled the gap between his arm and body with parts of me and soon armbarred him.

Again, I applied steady pressure. He was holding on by a palm-to-palm grip and then, eventually, only his finger tips. I felt no need to use a technical grip break. As a matter of fact, I knew that he was already beaten — all I had to do was fall toward his head and rotate back around. But I wanted to attack his other arm, for my practice. I was enticing him to roll toward me so that I could spin to his other arm.

Oops! Too late, his fingers slipped and the armbar was applied. Not too strongly, but strong enough to hurt his elbow. Even then, it took him a moment to tap.

He came up rubbing his elbow. I broke another white belt.

Tap. Motherfucker, tap.

I tell these guys,

“Listen. Senior students are not impressed when you don’t tap. We’re laughing at the guys who don’t tap when they should. We’re happy for the guys that tap when they’re beat. We’ll roll with them any day.

“There is no shame in tapping. If you’re not tapping, you’re not learning. Learn to tap when you’re beat. If you’re beat and you’re not using technique to escape, then you’re not using jiu-jitsu. In that case, tap and start over and use jiu-jitsu again.

“I tap almost every day. And no one here has tapped more than our Professor.

“The tap allows us to fight at full strength and speed. But if I don’t trust you to tap when you’re beat, I’m not going to roll with the intensity that we both need (I may not even roll with you at all) — it’s a disservice to both of us. And that’s best case scenario; if you get to the wrong guy and you don’t tap, he might hurt you. There are some guys on the mat that don’t even care.

“Tapping also allows us to get out of our comfort zones and do things we wouldn’t ordinarily do. It allows us to try techniques, submissions, and transitions that are new to us. We are going to fail at these in the beginning and get ourselves into bad places. We might even get to the point where we have to submit. So be it! Good for us; we tried!

“So tap. Tap a lot. Tap early. Tap often. Especially as white belts.”

Okay. You might not believe me. I’m a lowly purple belt. Listen to Professor Ricardo Almeida, Renzo Gracie’s first black belt:

In many martial arts school, the instructor is the guy who is above everyone else and no one has ever seen him actually train.

In most Jiu Jitsu schools the instructor has earned the right to teach only because he has been tapped out more then anybody in class. Wether he would openly admit it or not …

I have no doubt that Grand Masters Carlos and Helio Gracie (the founders of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu) tapped more than any living practitioner.

 And that is why I love Jiu Jitsu.

Tap, motherfucker. Tap.

For those that don’t know, I’m a purple belt in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. I started studying in the late 1980′s or early 1990′s (I’m old; I don’t remember). I stopped taking formal classes for about 15 years in order to start a family and make a career. I’ve been back for the last three years and train four to six days per week.

Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu teaches you how to fight efficiently — using technique and leverage.

Comedian, television personality, UFC commentator, and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu brown belt, Joe Rogan tells us why Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu is good for you. I agree with Joe on every  point. (A link to the audio on youtube at the bottom.)

“Jiu-Jitsu is good for you … It’s good to get your ass-kicked. It’s good for you to know how easy it is for a man to kick your ass too. It’s good for you to get destroyed. It’s good for you to get mounted and triangle choked.

“It’s good because you realize how easy it is for someone to do that to you. Because most people have no idea.

“They walk through this world having no idea of how some Marcelo Garcia character can just fuckin’ take your life any time he wanted to. And not just take your life, how about this? Take my life.

“How about that I’ve been doing jiu-jitsu since ’96 and that little dude from Brazil can strangle the fuck out of me any day he wants. That’s reality. And I’m almost a black belt. Like, high level.

“There are a lot of dudes I’ve choked out. I’ve choked out some good people, man. That guy can just tap me any time he wants. So for me to be almost a black belt, I may as well have never done jiu-jitsu — I’ll be able to hold him off for a little; he’s going to be able to get me. It’s inevitable. That’s the kind of reality that exists for most people that know jiu-jitsu.

“For most people, if you’re in some sort of street altercation with someone and you get a hold of him, that’s all you have to do is hang on. Hang on.

“Because you know what? In class you’re going 100%. Do you know why? Because you don’t hit each other. You’re trying to choke …

“In grappling you’re allowed to go 100%. It doesn’t mean you hurt your partners. If you have a lock or if you have a choke, you put it to a certain position and you can just hold it and let it go.

“But the point is it takes 100% of your to get to that position, and that’s exactly what’s going to come up in a fight. In a fight it’s going to be a 100% effort, except that you’re used to doing a 100% effort three or four nights per week.

“Three or four nights per week, I go and there are grown men and they are going to try and kill me with their bare hands. And I’m going to try to kill them. And then we are going to slap hands, and we’re going to hug, and I say, ‘Thanks, Brother’, and I move on to the next guy.

“You go to the next one. And you tap hands, you slap hands (that’s what everyone does) and you lock up!

“And this is the goal: I’m going to try to get you to tap. And what you’re saying when you tap is, ‘You could’ve just killed me.’ And you’re going to do the same thing to me.

“If you get me in something, I’m going to have to tap. I’m not going to want to, but I’m going to have to. Because it’s very important; you don’t want to die.

“It’s a game. And the game is using your body to dominate another person’s body with technique and leverage.”

…