I put on my white karate uniform and tied my belt. I re-tied my belt so it looked symmetrical. I imagined I was tough and pushed out my teenage-boy chest and thought you are pathetic right now but not for long. You are not your mind. 

“You are not your mind,” I whispered. 

I bowed to everyone as I entered the room. 

The light came in through the window, between the trophies. The room looked gold. Dust floated in circles. Slowness, light and wood. Empty hands cutting air. 

Someone said “oss” as I entered. 

Karate people say oss. I didn’t know what the sound oss meant, but we all said it. It sounded macho and cool. It could mean “yes” or “hello or “the spirit of perseverance.” It’s the mystery of the oss. We’re all still searching for it and saying it too much. 

The Shelby, NC karate dojo was strong back then. Haseeb and his sister Nida were black belts and had been training since they were little. Their mom was from Pakistan. I never saw their dad. They lived on Lake Moss in a big house with a jet ski. 

Speedy was a skinny skater boy and a brown belt. He smoked cigarettes and wore glasses. His real name was Zach but we called him Speedy because he was so fast. 

Jay had a purple belt and a matching purple Camaro. Next to Haseeb he was the strongest fighter. He was kind to everyone. Except when he was fighting. He’d get all serious with his guard up and hit like a truck. 

Once he house-sat for my parents and forgot to clear all the gay porn from the family computer before he left. At first mom freaked and thought it was me or my brothers. In the end the dates confirmed the gay porn in question belonged to Jay. The mystery had been solved. It was embarrassing for him at the time, but years later he thought it was funny too. He even said I could put it in this story. 

Woody was the sensei. He wore a faded American flag gi. He first learned karate as a soldier in Japan. Near the Yokosuka Naval Base, South of Yokohama. He was tall and barrel-chested with a full gray beard. His son Jaron was the other teacher. Jaron was in his twenties and wore the same American flag gi as his father. Less faded. 

“Osu,” Woody grunted as I approached him. The old greeting. 

I bowed. He smiled and nodded to me, his hands resting on the knot of a thick, frayed belt. 

Woody said “OK,” and we all lined up in two rows on the wooden floor. 

Woody and Jaron knelt, then we knelt too. They sat beneath a black and white photo (70s maybe) of Woody’s old teachers in Japan. It hung at the head of the room.

Jaron yelled out “Mokusō.” 

Silent thinking. Time to meditate. Everyone was quiet. We closed our eyes. 

I tried to meditate, but I didn’t know what it was to meditate. I imagined things from kung fu movies. Things in Asia. Mystical bamboo forests. Karate fighters standing under a big waterfall. A waterfall. The water was very blue. A sonic blue waterfall. That was it. So I thought the phrase “a blue waterfall, a blue waterfall, a blue waterfall,” over and over again until maybe I was meditating because I forgot everything outside. The blue waterfall didn’t mean anything and neither did we. Then I forgot that too. 

 I opened my eyes and lost my emptiness, and was back to being a young shithead. A shithead who wanted to drink beer in the Super 8 Motel on 74, and karate kick his friends in the head and have sex in my 1996 Dodge Sunhawk. Cherry red with the tv and vcr. I wanted to write silly karate stories like this and live forever across a foaming sea of beer, seven thousand miles away. 

We sat in a circle and stretched. Woody said stuff in Japanese and other things in English. We did small circles with our knees and ankles, and big circles with our arms and hips. We spread our legs and reached for the floor. 

Woody counted to ten for each position. 

“Ichi, ni, san, shi…” 

Left and right, up and down. The quiet stretching was calming. Like watching someone move pieces on a chessboard, or getting a haircut by a pretty lady in a quiet salon. Her wet fingers might brush the top of my ear while she speaks in a half-whisper. 

“Breathe,” he said. “Breathe.” 

Breathe, I thought. Don’t forget to breathe. 

Karate was 100% magic in the nineties. Probably still is and always will be. People who think otherwise don’t even know. 

Woody told us to stand up in two lines for basic techniques. We threw straight punches, reverse punches and inside blocks to reverse punches. back kicks, front kicks and all the other kicks. 

I yelled my kiai, and everyone else yelled their kiai too. You can tell a lot about a person by the sound of their kiai. Nida’s kiai was high pitched and unnerving. Woody sounded like an old samurai. His kiai was the best of any kiai I ever heard. Mine was kind of a raspy grunt with two octaves like “ee-YAH.” I just yelled mine a few times to be certain. 

Next we had to run the stairs. Speedy helped me put on the backpack full of bricks. I ran up and down the stairs 20 times. Then Speedy put on the bag and ran the stairs 20 times too. We laughed and cursed and sweat. There was no AC in the hall, no lights either.  My legs burned. We were just a bunch of kids in sweaty karate clothes running around in the hot dark. 

Then it was time for kata. Prearranged movements used to catalog techniques, train movement and condition the body. Woody grunted the names. Names like jion, tekki shodan and bassai dai, and we’d all start the sequence. 

Arms up, punch, punch, punch. All together. High block, reverse punch, don’t forget to kiai.

It felt like we were all in a movie with the camera circling, flutes on the soundtrack. One body. Karate can be funny too. Don’t take it too seriously. But it’s pure. It makes me feel good about the pieces of my body and my body as one thing. My body is one thing. Not separate. This thing that moves in strange ways. I am not my thoughts. Make it all work like a machine. Make it animal. Make it fly. Get away from death. Get me away. Save my family. Save my friends. Save me from myself. My thoughts folded in on themselves and all the beautiful mumbo jumbo faded. Everyone needs their own mumbo jumbo. 

Last was kumite, or sparring. Free fighting. That was the fun part. You have to pressure test the concepts. Everyone watches closely as you square off against an opponent. It’s just the two of you, and the sound of feet sliding across the floor. A kiai here and there. You try to use distance, and float like a gazelle. Counter when necessary. But I was not a gazelle. 

I’d get punched in the head and kicked in the stomach, and punched in the chest and kicked in the legs. I’d get thrown and punched in the head on the ground. It was beautiful and fun and it hurt. 

“You wanna go?” Jay asked. 

Purple belt, purple Camaro. Long arms. No mercy. 

“Sure, buddy,” I said. But I was also thinking fuck. And then oh well. Fuck it. You are Jean-Claude Van Damme. You are Jean-Claude Van Damme. 

I put on my gloves and kicks. Everyone was quiet. Jaron was between us. The light died in the windows. There was no world outside. I saw the entire fight flash in my head.

Jay lifted his gloves. I lifted mine. He was the only guy that wore 16oz gloves. His legs were short but his arms were long. He was built like a gorilla and he wanted my blood. Sensei dropped his hand between us and said “hajime.” 

We circled, then Jay came forward with a blitz, which landed flush. It ended up being nothing like the epic fight in my head. I managed one or two kicks but Jay whooped my ass for the entire three minutes. 

“Well shit,” I said, as the match ended. We laughed. 

Sensei Jaron showed me a simple pivot-counter. I felt like shit from getting owned but it was always like that. I bowed and Jay bowed and we hugged. 

Everyone fought and then we all fought again. 

Jaron fought everyone and nobody could touch him. He’d been trained by Woody since he was four. He and his brothers used to practice in the woods and travel around winning karate tournaments, whipping everyone’s ass in the southeast. They were a real-deal karate family. Old school before the McDojo’s took over. I want my family to be a real-deal karate family too. Someday. Just like Woody’s bunch. 

Class was over and we knelt in lines again. Same order, by rank.

Woody told us a story about when he first trained in Japan. He said all the Japanese guys used to beat the shit out of him, but after a while he beat them sometimes, and then he got good and beat them a lot. He said that belts are nothing and styles are nothing and trophies are nothing. All that stuff is fun, he said. It helps a lot, but the training is a journey and the journey is the thing. Karate. Judo. Wrestling. Boxing. It’s all the same. Just train. 

“Don’t forget,” he said. “Never forget it.” 

I imagined the years that would follow and tried to say fuck it. Fuck it and train hard. Fuck it and write something. Be a good person. Make things happen. Whatever the training is. Wear your flag on your chest even. 

Jaron said mokusō. We all closed our eyes. 

I did not see the sonic blue waterfall at first, but then I could see it and it sparkled. I heard the water smacking against the rocks, and over and over and over again. The sound went rushhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh smashing down on top of itself, and becoming itself. Then me. Then nothing. 

I opened my eyes. 

It was dark now. Speedy and I and the other goons would buy cases of High Life and rent a room at Super 8 that night. We’d get hammered and destroy the room and smoke a thousand cigarettes. 

Woody still has the photos of us on the wall twenty years later. Every Friday and Saturday kids run the stairs with the backpack full of bricks, sweating in the dark. They are all like me, and I am like them.