Traveling, training, thinking

I got two pieces of great news today.

First, my mother’s breast MRI results came back. There is no sign of cancer besides what the doctors have already diagnosed! Of course, there’s still the small matter of the lumpectomy, which happens on Tues, but it’s a relief that there isn’t any more than that to contend with. I’ve been playing phone tag with my parents for the past couple days, but I did get them to text me on their cell phones. I’ll call them this weekend and then after the surgery, when I’ll probably talk to my father while my mother is recuperating. Mom, I love you and am so glad the news was good!

The other good news is that people are actually reading—and, ostensibly, enjoying—my blog! Jennifer*, Maura, Chrissy, Marjorie, Harriet, Stimy, Brooke, and Marcel have all told me they are following my trip. Well, actually, Marcel complained that he hasn’t been mentioned yet, in true Marcel fashion. Just to spite him, I will never mention him. Oh, and if I don’t mention him, I can’t mention Alan either. So I won’t. But thanks to everyone who is following along!

Today I drove about 320 miles, leaving on I-40 from just west of Knoxville around noon, stopping in Nashville to train at Nashville MMA, and then driving on I-24 to Paducah, KY, which is where I am now. I spent the morning in my hotel room working on my web site and “running” some errands—writing checks, making phone calls, etc. Had some free breakfast, too!

When I got in the car, I decided to drive without the radio on, kind of to see what I ended up thinking about. Like I mentioned before, I feel like I’m incredibly busy on this trip; if I’m not driving somewhere, I’m researching where the next school is, or calling the next person I’ll visit, or checking my email, or sleeping like the dead (though it usually takes me longer to fall asleep than normal). And part of this trip is “BJJ,” but the other part is “vision quest.” So I just set cruise control, took in the sun and the beautiful scenery (TN is very hilly and verdant), and noticed what came to mind in the relative quiet.

I felt a little lonely, but was happy to note that I wasn’t afraid of it, if that makes any sense. I had known I’d feel lonely at times on this trip, and I’ve decided to just feel it while I feel it, and wait for it to pass. It always does. Of course, it always comes back, but welcome to being human, I guess. But there are things I can do about it. Just let it pass, listen to some music that makes me happy, call somebody, cry. All viable options. All options I have exercised in the week I’ve been on the road. This time I just let it pass.

I also noticed that I have ABSOLUTELY no desire to be back in Chicago. Like my job, Chicago has receded to the deeper reaches of my brain, and when it does surface, which isn’t very often, it feels like the person who lived there and had the experiences that are in my memory isn’t me anymore. (The foregoing is an absolutely horrible sentence syntactically, but I’m going to leave it because it’s midnight and I have a lot more to write before I get to sleep.) Maybe things will change, but for now, I’m pretty convinced that I won’t be living there after the trip is over.

So that realization made me a little anxious, because while I know where I don’t want to be, I have no idea where I DO want to be. I mean, if this whole deal--shaking up my life, giving away or selling most of my possessions, and stripping off an old identity, all to make way for something new--doesn’t give me some clarity, I am out of ideas. I have officially blown my wad.

But when I started to feel anxious, I just decided not to worry about it. It’s not time yet for me to know where I’m going to land b/c I’m still flying. My friend Tracy did an astrological chart for me, and apparently this time in my life is all about upheaval. (I kind of already knew that, but it’s interesting that that’s what the stars are telling her about me too.)

Eventually I got bored of being introspective, so I called my friend Lacey. She lives in Denver, and I’ll be spending about a week with her. Well, I’ll be spending a week at her place, starting next Thurs or Fri. She has to go out of town for her job after next weekend, but we’ll have a fun time together while she’s in town; there’s so much to do in CO in the summer! Then I’ll stay on for a bit in her place, train at various academies, and do some other stuff I wanna do (e.g., visit the main Muscle Activation Therapy office, visit Estes Park, hike). So anyway, Lacey is way cool and I’m looking forward to seeing her! She and I worked together at my first job in Chicago; she escaped before I did and moved to Denver, where a lot of her family is. And one of the great things about Lacey is that she told me I could stay for as long as I wanted, and she truly means it. I won’t stay THAT long, but it’s cool that I could.

When I arrived in Nashville, I stumbled onto Vanderbilt University. I wasn’t looking for it, but I had some time to kill before class at Nashville MMA, and when I stopped at the Borders I spent the afternoon in, there it was. It’s a pretty campus, what I saw of it, anyway. I did not find the Grand Ole Opry or Dollywood. It’s kind of strange, I guess, that I’m driving through all these places and not really sightseeing. That will change when I get farther west, because I’ll definitely want to go to some of the state parks. But this is also a different kind of trip.

Tonight I went to train at Nashville MMA. It is a Lloyd Irvin affiliate school run by brown belts Shawn Hammonds and Ed Clay, located in 100 Oaks Mall. The unassuming atmospheres of these academies never cease to amaze me. What I mean is, many of the academies I have visited are in gyms or storefronts or malls (like this one). They are all great spaces and get the job done, but in my opinion, these academies are hallowed halls of learning, so they should be housed in ivy-covered buildings with Doric columns and commissioned portraits and reading rooms full of mahogany furniture. Of course, it’d be difficult to train in a place like that, but that’s beside the point.

Anyway, Nashville MMA has an enormous space in the mall. I signed in, paid the mat fee, and suited up. Ed came right up to me to welcome me to the school (Shawn is in Las Vegas for the UFC tomorrow), and had the class give me a round of applause. It was a really nice welcome, needless to say. It’s always awkward doing the line-up to bow in when you’re visiting an academy, because different places do it differently. This time they had me stand at the head of the line of purple belts because I have stripes and none of the purples there do. Of course, as with belts, stripes don’t necessarily mean as much as you think, so I kind of wished I hadn’t been at the head of the line. Especially because I’m feeling really humble at all these academies. Every school teaches the same techniques with slightly different details, and I learn a ton at every place. Well, I have at all 3 places I’ve been to, and I have no doubt I will at all the others. And I have been to other schools in the past, just not as many as I’ll be going to on this trip.

To practice technique, I paired up with a hilarious purple belt who likes to use the words “shit” and “fuck.” He’d say things like, “Yeah, I don’t want to lose that shit (position) because I work hard for it and it’d suck to fucking lose it.” He asked me about whether the guys I date have a problem with me training, and when I said they generally don’t, he said, “Yeah, I’d think it was cool if my woman did this shit because we’d be doing the same fucking shit and we could do it together.”

Sparring was fun; after my first spar with the purple belt I described above, he said, “Wow, you got some fuckin’ hips!” (BJJ is all about the hips, so that was a compliment about my technique—I think.) See my training journal for more details. I got a picture with Ed and chatted with him a little bit; I also met a guy whose claim to fame is that he took down Cael Sanderson, an Olympic caliber wrestler, in a match. Ed asked me if I learned anything. I laughed and said of course, because as I mentioned, every school teaches things slightly differently, and you can always learn something from an excellent teacher. I recommend Nashville MMA to anyone going through.

One of the good things about training in a mall is that there are lots of mall concessions available, like this table full of candy. I had a handful of M&Ms after class. Oh, and Mrs. Durham’s banana bread is GONE. Like I always say, probably ad nauseam, BJJ is cool because you train your ass off and then get to eat it back on. Banana bread and M&Ms probably wasn’t the best dinner, but it sure tasted good. And I’ll get some healthy breakfast tomorrow.

I’ll get up early to get to St. Louis in time to train at Rodrigo Vaghi’s school, and then I’ll figure out a place to watch the UFC. I’m thinking I might stop in Columbia, MO, for that, which is where my sister got her master’s degree. I can give a shout out to her old stomping grounds. Right now I gotta get some sleep!