The Wrong Side of the Fork in the Road

            It's okay to feel like you are destined to walk down the wrong side of the fork in the road. Take the wrong side of the fork in the road. Walk down it with the same fervent pace you would as if you were entirely certain that it was in fact the right one. Buy a bottle of your least favorite liquor. Let it burn your throat every time you feel too petrified to take another step. The vile taste will force you to become less dependent on substances and eventually you will accept how life feels in your present state. Your adventure is just beginning. Remain sober for as long as you can. Entertain the idea of asking someone for their story when there is nothing but silence surrounding you. Send an email to an individual that you know could teach you something you are passionate about. Don't go out of your way to be the most noticeable person in the room-- but always take the opportunity to engage with your fellow humans. If you are enticed by something so thoroughly that you forget to check your phone for over an hour. Embrace it. Be consumed. Take heed of the sounds, visuals and feelings that are produced by the entity that enamors you. Prioritize a fearless plunge into the unknown over a meager nod to the most intimidating monster in the room: self-doubt. Take a hatchet to the trappings in life everyone is guilty of being restricted by at one point or another and don't stop chopping away until you are weightless, unrefined, absolved.

            Men and women are wired differently. Yet both are capable of fiercely potent love. Compassion speaks louder than hostility, obnoxiousness or selfishness-- do what you can to make it the characteristic you are most commonly associated with. Reference your favorite movies to the people that love it for the same reasons you do. Talk about your fondest moments from five years ago. There is nothing incessant about nostalgia. When you hear your favorite song being played in public don't sing; bellow. Treat this moment like an opportunity to pin an enormous banner across the largest wall in the world that simply reads: 'NO ONE CAN EVER TAKE THIS AWAY FROM ME.'

            Fire a Roman Candle at the moon. Buy a giant sword and cut a watermelon in half. Borrow your old man's knee-high socks that looks like they were manufactured during the Regan era. Wear them with your newest pair of Vans. Let the blotchy and somewhat tacky tones of white and grey cotton offset the pristine maroon suede of the canvas. If anyone asks, tell them you wanted the best of both worlds: comfort and comfort.  Vacate your mind of inconsequential disagreements you once had with the people you still care about. Think about death, but only for a moment. Let your most prevalent, most endearing ideas on all things in life oscillate in your heart like a pendulum that is powered by your anticipation for the future and is immune to despair. It will only be so once you allow yourself to thrive. So thrive as you walk down the wrong side of the fork in the road. There's a roundabout less than two days away. You're going to be just fine. 

This was written on a lot of coffee.

Alright, folks. I definitely took my sweet time uploading my third entry here. A thousand apologies-- there were numerous training sessions attended, books read and Tumblr accounts scoured. Aside from that, I’ve been hard-pressed to figure out what to discuss considering life is more or less the same here day in and day out (which for me, is an absolute blessing).

     First off, I’ll be fighting on November 6’th in Bangkok. Initially I was booked to fight in China at 65 kilos under K1 rules on the same date, but in unsurprising Thai fashion, logistics can change at the drop of a hat. As of now I’m a little over two weeks out and feeling great. I’m embracing the excitement, the nerves, and the overpowering smell of the Thai oil with open arms and plan on making the best of this experience regardless if I win or lose. All I know is on November 7’th my only mission will be to deplete Bangkok’s most prominent resource in devastating fashion: eat all the Banana-Nutella infused pancakes. Oh, and send mom an email to let her know I’m not a cripple post brawl.

     With all the free time in between training sessions here I’ve had ample opportunity to reflect on the atmosphere of living at the gym for an extended period of time. And the conclusion (thus far) I’ve come to is this:

     My family loves each other very much. That much is indisputable. Yet based on the way my parents, sister and I address one another it doesn’t really make a whole lot of sense to simply pigeon-hole my family’s… expressiveness, as simply “love”. A better term I would argue would be ‘Affectionate Chaos’. Now the term is still in the seedling stages of its’ conception, but I believe the best definition of ‘Affectionate Chaos’ would be the act of simultaneously inducing anxiety, laughter, education, frustration, empathy and appreciativeness within five minutes of interacting with a family member on any given day. ‘Affectionate Chaos’ is a blessing; regardless of who is providing it. The Sitmonchai gym is a hot-bed of ‘Affectionate Chaos’— and I mean that in the best way possible. If I’m sparring with a trainer at 4:45 PM, there’s a good chance I’ll be roped into practicing the Wai Kru with two kids and a dog by 4:52.  The point is that nothing in life remains stagnant here despite adhering to a strict regimen of fighting and food six days a week. The good-spirited nature of a life dedicated to helping people from different nationalities learn a craft as fluid, challenging and self fulfilling as Muay Thai is contagious. It really is an exceptional thing to see even the most disillusioned of people remove the caution tape from a particular portion of their minds and allow change to occur. Keep in mind I’ve never been an advocate of the Whole Foods/ Bikram yoga good vibin’ spirits of the homeopathic nonsense the hippies love (Yes, Boulder. I’m looking right at you.), but I’ll be damned if I can’t appreciate an arms-in-the-air feeling of accomplishment after two and a half hours of hard work, battered shin-bones and shaky hands to cap off a damn pristine Saturday evening.

Thanks for reading, everyone. Keep the Affectionate Chaos near and dear to your hearts.

The Laws of Advice

When I was much younger (around 11), my dad hit me with the following statement:

"Steve-O, you can lead a horse to water but you can't make him fuck fish."

Now, out of context most people would agree this isn't exactly sage advice for an 11 year old. And truth be told, I never took much away from it aside from my delinquent ass thinking that the idea of a horse trying to fuck a fish was absolutely hilarious. But now, almost 12 years later, my dad's questionable parenting tactics have inexplicably began to bare some relevancy as I do more and more research on the current state of Thailand's political infrastructure.

Before you assume I'm just trying to retrofit a tastelessly juvenile moment of my life to a topic that deserves a far more competent writer allow me to elaborate...

To start, the opposition against the Thai military Junta has borrowed a page straight from the playbooks of the ‘Occupy’ movement and has adopted the three finger salute illustrated in the Hunger Games film/book series as a symbol of revolt when forced to interact with military officials in specific districts of the city. As I’m writing this I can see a large poster across the street of a thai police officer with his arms drenched in white out and drawn over with the phrase ‘ทรราช’ or ‘Thrrach’, which simply translates to ‘tyrant’.

While the ‘Occupy’ movement was equipped with the mask from the film/graphic novel, ‘V for Vendetta’ the use of imagery from fictional dystopian tales has had a deep-seeded impact when attempting to rattle the cages of officials. The reason for this can only be explained by the widespread recognition of these symbols and how these moments of rebellion in the stories we read made us feel when we experienced them for the very first time. While all attempts to completely hinder the military’s push for national control has not been entirely successful, small battles have been won in the citizen’s favor. For one, the military has recently decided to lift the night curfews on several tourist destinations including Phuket, Pattya and Koh Samui— allowing tourist-based profit to fully flourish once again. Considering that a substantial number of Thai locals leave their homes in the more rural areas of the country in order to move south for the high season to boost their annual income, this was a step in the right direction. The curfews had most recently been reported to have caused a 27% decline in tourist visits in Phuket and an even sharper decline in Bangkok and Chiang Mai (the source on that figure was tepid at best so I’m currently trying to get that confirmed).

Okay, I bet you’re still wondering what my dad’s wisdom on free-will and decision making ability has to do with any of this.

Disclaimer: this metaphor is to be taken with about as much conviction as an episode of Futurama. Where you at, Vice??

Let’s say the body of water represents Thailand-- or more specifically, Bangkok. The fish can most appropriately symbolize members of the military. The horse is the physical manifestation of all the citizens that have opposed the actions of the military through silent protest. The fish are popping their heads up out of the water over and over to shout words of encouragement to the horse.

“Come on in! The water is much warmer than it was before. There’s no longer any sharks and look! We have one of those floatable chair things loaded with Corona and Whiskey. You’re missing out, man.”

  The horse (citizens) reply with a fairly reasonable and level-headed response:

 “Water is shit. Beer isn’t going to make shit not shit. We like our land. We can eat hay and not drown standing up. We’re going to stay here.”

The fish (military) then begin to get a bit desperate and impatient.
             
 “Well that sucks because all of this water is going to get bigger and bigger and eventually take over all of your land and when that happens you’ll have to either become a fish or pack up and leave.”

The horse says: “We want our land to stay the same size it is right now. We don’t want to have to be in our homes by 11 pm on a Saturday and we wish you would stop blocking major outlets of social media because we have no way of adding filters to our profile picture or friend requesting that Clydesdale we ate Pad Thai with last Tuesday.”

Alright, at this point the narrative of a horse communicating with fish as a way of depicting how the country is operating right now is downright embarrassing. On a more serious, less sophomoric note— word on the street is that the gym will soon be visited by a journalist that writes for the Fightland portion of Vice (if you haven’t heard of their work prior to this please take the time to check it out. Really impressive stuff). As well as a couple of stars in the American Muay Thai scene (no point in naming names until they’re actually here).

That’s all I’ve got for today, guys. I hope you didn’t waste more than 20 minutes reading this post. But if you did, god bless. I owe you one or eight beers.


‘Til next time. 

Three Months in Thailand: Day 10 at Sitmonchai Gym

I'm currently sitting down at the Amazon Cafe (exotic, I know) reflecting on the first 100 pages of Thomas Pynchon's Inherent Vice. Old man Eisman recommended it to me with the following addendum: 

 "I don't know, man. One minute they're talking about eating pussy and the next they're looking for a member of the Aryan Brotherhood. I don't remember the 60's being like that. And the main detective only eats chocolate bananas... I hate Thomas Pynchon. He's a genius. But I hate him." 

As you can tell, the man was born to be a book critic.

Okay, onto trip logistics: I'm staying the grand majority of my 12 weeks here training at the Sitmonchai gym in the Tha Maka district of the Kanchanaburi Province (about 120 kilometers west of Bangkok). The area is quaint, and offers very little in the way of entertainment. Which for aspiring athletes coming to Thailand to train, is ideal. Aside from not being anywhere near a beach, I couldn't ask for a better environment to supplement the daily grind. 

In recent years the Sitmonchai gym has garnished a healthy following around the globe for it's warm welcoming of foreign nak muays and it's notoriously lauded 'Sitmonchai' style of kickboxing. A signature pattern for fighters that hail from the gym consists of putting a heavy emphasis on boxing and powerful outside low kicks-- a game-plan that rarely allows fights to go past the second of third round.

Because of the high demand of people who want to train at the gym there is a twelve person limit on how many foreigners can stay at any given time. Needless to say I was very lucky to have been able to book my spot when I did. 

After roughly a week and a half of gradually acclimating to the training schedule (two hour sessions, twice a day, six days a week) I can say with confidence that I will not be training at any other gyms for future trips. The Sitmonchai gym is unheralded in its' acceptance of foreigners and in the trainer's enthusiasm that comes with seeing you get sharper day by day. While those are both important traits of a gym you want to train at I think the most impressive aspect of this place is the owner. Pee A has owned the gym with his family for over over thirty years and despite nearly a generation worth of seeing fighters come and go he monitors all newcomers with a close eye to make sure you are getting enough food and rest while adjusting to the climate/training schedule. To put it simply, his commitment and care for our small community is unimaginably giving. Coupled with Abigail's incredible work as the gym's chief manager, the duo creates a near perfect training experience for everyone. 

While my primary focus here is training and eventually lining up a fight in Bangkok, I am still very much determined to be able to cover some semblance of the political upheaval that has recently left its' mark throughout a large portion of the central/northern region of the country. When the opportunity presents itself to ask locals questions about how it has affected daily living the feedback is nearly universal:

"This happens every single year. The relationship between the monarchy and the military will always be strained. We find it unusual that the US all of a sudden has become so interested in our affairs when this sort of unrest has been a growing concern for ages."

I may be completely out to lunch, but this response took me by surprise. Calling the local's opinion on the entire situation apathetic would be a generous adjective. But I'm not going to lose faith just yet. The details of this military coup aren't gone, they're just lying dormant. And at the end of the day, that sounds like a much better scenario than Bangkok gradually becoming the next Cairo. 

That's it from me, guys. I miss each and every one of you. As well as Chipotle, DP Dough's, the Flatirons, college girls, Pearl Street and my Honda. I'll have another post up within ten days or so. One love, everyone.

A Valuable 3 minutes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RYlCVwxoL_g