I train Brazilian jiu-jitsu. I'm grateful for every day I have the privilege to train and compete.
BJJ is a language and laboratory of its own. Every movement and sequence is acquired slowly and exposed under stress with a partner whose job is to make it fail.
The more time I spend practicing it, the more the structure of jiu jitsu begins to resemble a language.
At first, before having the chance to roll it all felt like the memorization of vocabulary terms, stored for later use, fumbled and mumbled when brought out from storage. But once I began to roll, the context for "terms" weaved them together into a sentence, then a story. And if it's a story, if you have the words to speak it into being then you don't need to memorize individual events so much as broad narrative arcs. And similar to language, there is an ineffability in its production at times, where the emergence of forms comes from something deeper than the "I" that feels like the author.
Something else takes over, speaking movement into form. You don't plan out each sentence before you speak, though you know the general direction your words will take you and whoever else is listening. And so too when rolling. And it's interesting, that same feeling I get when reading good, gripping writing washes over me when I see or feel masterful jiu jitsu. The same kind of principles apply, where something like word economy and word choice weave together into something that hits you in the gut.
Notes from training, and on what the mats have taught me about the science, will collect here.