The very basic core of a man's living spirit is his passion for adventure. The joy of life comes from our encounters with new experiences, and hence there is no greater joy than to have an endless, changing horizon, for each day to have a new and different sun.
My father used to stop time. He became a black belt in both Karate and Taekwondo all the way back in the s, when martial arts was first introduced in Denmark. He always told me a lot of stories about training, and one of them stuck with me throughout my childhood. When he was at his peak, competing in full contact tournaments in his twenties, he could sometimes slow down time. I remember he said that every second seemed to last for two or three seconds; how his opponents looked like they were moving in slow motion when they attacked, giving him time to block and counter.
I was training with him in the living room now and then and was still waiting for the day when I was old enough to start in a real gym. I often wondered if I would ever reach that same magical moment that he talked about, where time slowed down. Fast forward twenty something years. I had been on the road for three months and traveled east, half way around the globe. It was my second match in middleweight brown belt division at the Brazilian Jiu Jitsu World Championships. I had won by advantages against a big guy from Mongolia in the first round, but now I was behind My opponent was strong and in good shape.
His bicep was pressing firmly down on my chin, pinning me in the side control position. The perfume in the detergent he had used to wash his gi caught my nose. I could feel every detail of the rough texture of the fabric on his sleeve that was tightly wrapped around my chin and neck. I noticed the skin on my forearm that was framing on his neck to keep the pressure of his weight off me. I had a golden brown tan from surfing in Hawaii, sailing in the Caribbean, and swimming in Bali.
The little hairs were completely white, bleached by the sun and salt water. I looked up at the ceiling and. It was constructed as a metal framework of thousands of triangles.
