In which the writer mulls over whether her forays into the world of Mixed Martial Arts were wise or regressive, while also describing a short-lived stint producing 'brutal' erotica. Today’s notes on the view from my window: Autumn’s arrival is evident. Leaves have turned red and are crispy and detachable. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen Europe like this, and it’s very pleasant. This week I wanted to complete what I have so far found myself unable to: a piece about fighting. Every time I plan to, I struggle. I have so many unfinished pieces about this topic, all of which I develop a distaste for as I am halfway through them. There just feels like there is so much unfinished business. It’s been almost six months since I’ve even touched a punch bag. All that remains as a reminder of something that took up so much time and energy and space in my life is a mouth guard and a t-shirt from the fight school I’d joined here in Berlin that you had to wear it during practice. I’ve misplaced my wraps. I never had my own gloves. In Hong Kong we borrowed, and the smell of what I sometimes call “sketchy-man-sweat” was part of the deeply visceral, daily experience. Here in Berlin, I’d planned to buy a pair but couldn’t yet justify the expense, so I trained with bare fists. When lockdown struck, honestly, what I felt about not being able to go to my MMA gym here, was relief. My enthusiasm for the sport, which began properly (with various stops and starts) in 2018, I think, has waxed and waned dramatically through that time, and has always been driven by my emotional state. During times in which the need to train has felt less pressing, I’ve dragged myself to the mat, telling myself that it would be a waste to have to have given so much time and heart to it whenever whatever fire it was that got me there in the first place was somehow no longer burning. Honestly, there was a point, last year, when I was so wrapped up in it all, so inspired and empowered by it all, when this crazy, wild world felt like everything I wanted that my world of books and words, writing and cold analysis, and this sense of never being enough -- could never give me, I was contemplating how I could make this a full time thing, how I could make this my life. Few things (or people) have struck me with that level of passion. And when they do, they are usually not all that healthy. I’m very interested in the idea of neuroplasticity. That is, that the mind is malleable and that it is what we do on a daily basis that shapes us, and that we actually have considerable power over who we are, and that there is a lot of scope to create adaptations around the aspects of ourselves that do need work. That this is a daily thing to work on in increments and with a gentleness that allows us to make space for our many flaws and foibles. To this end, I have two rather conflicting and irreconcilable takes on my brief, burning love affair with combat sports: On the one hand, it taught me so much, and it unearthed a courage in me that lived somewhere deep and felt forgotten. I remember the first time I was put in sparring scenario, around two weeks after I first took up classes. And it was so strange. Faced with an opponent, and given a simple sequence to riff off, well. It’s hard to describe. But in that moment, someone else showed up. Someone who knew what they were doing and who was completely unafraid and unapologetic. Completely oblivious to pain. It was bizarre. Coaches pulled out cameras and filmed the episode, in which I’d faced off against a much more experienced, male opponent. I think everyone was a bit surprised by this little demon that had shown up in my place. After our third and final bout – during which I’d been operating from a much more defensive position owing to fatigue starting to set in (my pacing skills that help prevent me from “gassing out” have much improved since then) I excused myself to the changing rooms, pulled my gloves off my fingers and sat panting and staring at the walls, soaking up – I don’t know what feeling that was, but it was incredible. I was hooked. God there is so much more to write here. What I will say is that of course it is brilliant that more and more women are tapping into the darker and scarier forces within them that can protect them. There’s so much to say on this subject. On the untapped potential of a woman broken free from societal restraints. On Woman finding the strength and power she always had but felt forced to conceal. But the story is never that simple, is it? This summer, I enjoyed a sort of professional freedom that allowed me to try all sorts of work. I found a talent for selling furniture on Ebay on behalf of a client, and, in another strange gig I found advertised on Craigslist that I thought might be fun and allow me to experiment more with fiction, I briefly picked up a client in the murky and kind of hilarious world of erotica and role play writing (So Berlin). My first (and only) assignment? Two young women facing off against each other (with weird geopolitical overtones throughout), in a bitter tussle during which layers of clothing are conveniently dispensed with, that ends in a rather brutal and public humiliation. My client, whose real name of course I never learned and who adopted a highly effusive-to-the-point-of ‘it-feels-like-I’m-being-groomed’ tone towards me and my work, gave me extremely particular briefs, emphasising that the more brutal I go, the easier it would be to get more assignments.
I laughed it off, wrote what I think is actually a pretty good piece that’s quite slapstick in places, undergirded by an understanding of the psychology involved in women fighting alongside an awareness of what bodies actually do during a fight, interspersed by the bits I was told had to be there, like cup sizes and mentions of jiggling butt cheeks. (Jiggling butt cheeks? Really? People pay for this stuff?) Anyway, my completed work was accepted and approved of by the appropriate parties (honestly, I have no idea who these people were, except that they were couples bored enough of each other to have to outsource erotic inspiration). My client told me I was enjoying a “buzz,” with the caveat that my next oeuvre should focus less on plot and character development and more on spanking and gagging. Where am I going with this? My dealings with this client ended soon after the initial assignment. I had been offered a new, better paid job from him that would involve virtually slinging insults at another writer, something which I briefly considered doing mostly because my trash-talking skills are already sort of legendary, but which just felt so sad and dodgy. Being part of this industry pitting women against each other to turn strangers on. I’ve now done something quite dastardly. I’ve drawn some connections of my experiences with the world of fighting with a brief and bizarre attempt at writing porn. Obviously the two things are not the same. But let’s return to the subject of neuroplasticity. Is teaching women to fight. To fight each other, especially, really a value worth getting behind? Or is it regressive? Was the fire that began to burn through me in those months of kicking and punching and wrestling and choking one I ought to keep alight or one I might rather wish to blow out for good? Can that even be done? I don’t know. These things are never that simple. I know part of me misses the mats. The camaraderie. The rituals. The completely novel ways of moving and being in the body and relating to another person’s body – as to their mind. How you start seeing something in people that you normally never would. That honesty, that extremely bizarre intimacy. How fascinating and creative and unpredictable it all is. This feeling of being part of something thoroughly new each time you do it. MMA is such a complex and fluctuating beast, so beautiful in its brutality, so clever and artistic in the way so many physiological languages are woven together. It’s such unique way to experience game theories in action, to learn to study the particular corporeal algorithms we all have that speak to so many untold stories embedded deep within each and every one of us. There’s nothing else like it. Read more on Sarah's Mixed Martials Arts journey via the links below: 1. Fight Club 2. Lessons from the mat 3. Good and bad algorithms 4. Taming the lizard brain Read her summary of why she fights, and what cultural value MMA brings in her BIO.
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Sarah KaracsA Berlin-based writer engages in the study of belonging and in-between places after years spent faraway from 'home'. Archives
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