“You may never like any thing I write – and then suddenly you might like something very much. But you must believe that I am sincere in what I write.”
Ernest to Grace Hall Hemingway, 1927
The afternoon sun was high and softly blanketed by thin clouds whispy and swirling. The thick Rio heat was broken by the breeze, making the palm trees lean, their hard crisp leaves chattering. The boy seemed as a man, unbelievably small but with aged eyes and even muscles, his skin brown but not yet leathery. The kite spindle he used was an old plastic water bottle, and he tied the line with an expert knot, his hands moving not as a child but as a spinster, daydreaming of something else. The kite was small, square, and homemade with thin paper and balsa wood. He let out enough line and threw the kite in the air, turning his neck back to watch it as he ran into the wind. He stopped and worked the kite, his hands skillfully jerking and freeing the line, the ocean wind lifting and pushing it higher.
True writing is actually more real than life. Separating yourself from the event, recreating it with words, you are actually closer to real than when you were sitting on the concrete wall, watching the boy with the kite. This is why I am more tired after writing, than being.
I squinted in the bright light of the morning sun. My students were lined up in a perfect line, facing the ocean, the warm-up and stretch series becoming routine. The beach was hugged by sharply rising mountains, steep rocky peaks emerging out of dense green forests. The site of Rocinha was in my view, its immense form cradled in the saddle of two mountain peaks, carved into the hillside as if the hand of God had scraped it himself, three hundred thousand people, squatting.
We were already sweating. Luciano was focused, concentrating on the stretch counts, repeating them louder than the others. We were shaking off the comfort of sleep, mentally preparing for another grueling session. I collected everyone’s flip-flops and put them in my backpack, and we begin our run. Moving through the thick sand, we ran for forty-five minutes, stopping every ninety seconds for strengthening exercises. The shrill of the whistle brought attention to our group, so did the strange exercises. The curious attention received actually strengthens the group’s morale. We love to talk about it.
Luciano lives next door to the institute. He is around forty years-old and is a professional photographer, which leaves him time during his day to help me, or just sit around and talk, a favorite Brazilian pastime. The reader will remember that Luciano is “the Italian,” the beloved character that enjoys busting everyone’s balls, especially the institute directors and the volunteers. Luciano is single, has no children, and is deeply religious, his lifestyle as a teetotaler stands in stark contrast to his immediate surroundings.
I arrive Rocinha at 7:45 for our morning workouts. We start to assemble at 8:00 so I always take a few moments to sit on the steps and read Veja, the Brazilian equivalent of Time Magazine. This is a peaceful time and I do enjoy watching the Rocinha residents start their day. The institute is located in a very narrow alleyway between impromptu buildings three stories high, causing a claustrophobic feel that leaves the alleyway always dark and usually wet. The thin view of the sky is broken by an infinite array of adhoc, spliced powerlines. Louie is the cat that lives across the alley in the home where I spent Christmas. He wakes up when I arrive and sits with me until everyone shows up. He is white with large spots of mottled grey and black. At precisely 8:00 am Luciano shows up with the key to the institute. We spend a brief few minutes discussing what we did the prior evening, and then we get going.
We are almost back to the starting point of our beach run, the past forty minutes have been a blur of heat, pain, sweat, and sand. The sands’ continuous attempt to cover our skin is failing due to the sheer volume of sweat we are producing. Luciano’s form during the exercises is good but not perfect, this does not stop him from motivating the others. He is in serious pain, and cannot hide this fact from his face. This is why he keeps coming back, and this is why he is a believer, something deep inside of him needs this, and I don’t know yet what it is. I do know that he feels as if he was born into the wrong life, that he was meant for something different.
I blow the final whistle for the end of the workout, we exercise discipline and do our stretch routine first, in silence, giving them time to calm their intense desire to jump into the perfectly crisp ocean water, forcing them to reflect on their recent experience. The stretch routine, at first clumsy and awkward, is now perfected, a unified group seamlessly gliding through the series in perfect silence.
Luciano leads the group into the water, not tiptoeing, but sprinting, diving headfirst. I watch them with joy, and with pride. I’m dying to get in the water but I follow my impulse and begin to organize our things, delaying gratification… Something new inside told me that this was stupid, so I stifled my complex and ran in the ocean… The water was cold, but just right, our heads bobbing up down with the large waves that broke closer to the shore. Luciano told me this was his first time in the water in years. I looked back to the mountains, and to Rocinha, and I felt good.
My last Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu session was two weeks ago. I had my first opportunity to fight another white belt, and this was satisfying. Each fight is 8 minutes long, so I prepare for each fight with a quick reflection, telling myself to be smart, stay calm, and only use strength for when I really need it. With the white belt, we trade positions for four minutes, and I could tell he was getting tired. I had been saving my energy, not going for any kill positions, but playing it for the long run. I was in the rear guard, to the unfamiliar this might seem to be a defensive position, as you are on your back, but it is actually quite offensive. My opponent was standing up and I had my legs wrapped around is his waist. He was leaning over, which was a mistake as he was bleeding energy rapidly. The key to setting up for an arm-bar is not to give it away, as every participant is familiar with these moves, success is only achieved during a brief moment where your opponent lacks attention. I had one of his arms locked to my chest, and with my opposite leg I released my wrap and shot my leg straight up and past his head, rolling and twisting in the opposite direction. This maneuver caused us to tumble once over on the ground and I ended up on top, with my opponent’s arm between my legs, sitting on his shoulder. All that was left was to simply roll back until his elbow, with any more pressure, would have broken, causing intense pain and him to tap-out. I crawled back to the center, ready to start again, but he was done. Later that day I noticed pain in my lower ribs. A few days later, while bench-pressing at the gym, I actually felt and heard the crack of the lower rib finally giving way.
I now have space for my physical training equipment in Rocinha. It’s only a closet, but it is inside a community meeting room, large enough for me to run a class of 10-15 students. I can now complete my bench press and squat rack, and then begin construction on other items. It will be important to seize this small but powerful leverage point.
The sculptor knows that a chip doesn’t have to fall every time the chisel is struck, because he understands that every time he strikes the chisel, he weakens the stone. If he’s patient long enough, the piece he wants to chip will depart from the main rock – James Maxwell
My vision for the physical training class: Hosting 10-15 students inside the community center, running them through high-intensity 30 minute workouts that use equipment I construct from primitive materials that can be found anywhere, especially junk yards. Some days I make progress towards this goal, some days I don’t. I am finding that holding onto to this vision takes immense patience, perseverance, and faith. Simple things become immensely difficult. I continually push to get momentum and then push to keep it going, while all the intricate elements of favela life and Brazilian sense of time seem to push back.
We carried the heavy iron bar back to the institute, sweating profusely and dejected after a failed attempt to transfer it to the community center, and I thought about visions and processes. As a western thinker, I have been trained to get what I want now, and that the process is just a means to a greater end. This is not true, every action and every emotion involved in creating something is the true value: the sense of misery when I carried the medicine balls back from the beach, the dangerous motorcycle ride to the back side of the mountain only to find that the guy we needed only works on Thursdays, and the countless fruitless travels around Rocinha, searching, measuring, and negotiating. Still today I have little to show for my efforts, but I won’t stop. Still carrying the iron bar, we made our final turn back to the institute, relieved that this ill-fated trip was almost over, and I smiled, resolving to accept the meaningful struggle as value.
