Art
This was first published in Raze II at the end of 2021.
There is nothing practical about Jiujitsu. Learning to arm-bar an assailant won’t save your life from a theoretical street fight scenario any more than walking around with a life vest will save you from a flood. And yet, JiuJitsu might be one of the most universally transferable arts. It doesn’t have anything to do with the form in and of itself, but in how it reveals yourself to your self.
There is a visceral frustration that coincides with learning Jiujitsu. There is a tension and a truth to being incompetent that no amount of will-power can overcome. Wanting to do something and being unable to is the sort of truth serum that binds religious texts. The universal rule is that everyone loses—a lot, just like life. But anyone can learn to win… and winning can mean many things. This inescapable facsimile of death that will reoccur—seemingly into infinity—is what you are training for. You learn to fight, to not quit, but in order to do so you must give up and give into.
Most who practice the art have a method, a map of how to learn it and a structure that was handed down to them. Practiced long enough—with typical prescriptions—this map becomes the terrain. You can start to recognize similar features, the path is well known, and if you are lucky, thought will dissipate into automatic reaction—a complete knowledge that the nervous system understands and the body responds to. The crux of JiuJitsu happens too fast to be dependent on cognitive response. All the decisions that turn into winning moves are made months and years before they happen, and they are only realized after their success. This is what gives the art its philosophical bedrock, body-time immemorial.
No one can agree about what this map looks like. “Moves” that work are simply features of a moment in time that happens between two players. People have codified, indexed, and named these moments, but it is not an exact portrayal of their nature. There will always be an ethereal separation between the world and what we call it. Imagine being put into a vast forest, so thick that no horizon or memorable landmark is recognizable. You could find carved paths, and every once in a great while the sun would be high enough that you could have some sort of reassurance that you are at least on earth, but only a few have carved their own path here. This is the point of learning art, so that one day you can create your own. It is also a realm that few want to walk into, and probably the only one that matters—everything else is tourism,
Winning is not getting someone to tap. It is continuing the game, the discovery of self through moments that you recognize. The point is not to figure out WHAT to learn but HOW to learn. It is about learning to read these moments, and seeing yourself in them, above them, and through them. You just have to remember when the trees get thick and dark, that you asked to be dropped in the forest.
