Brazilian conversations

"You're too far away. We can't have a conversation because I can't kick you!"

Hahaha! And THIS is what they teach you in school kids!

No, but seriously, today I was forced (but pleasantly so) to see martial arts in a completely different way. What do you think about when you hear martial arts? Self-defense right? Well, Fabrizio (author of aforementioned quote) presented a confrontation between two opponents as a conversation. And it goes like this: "Hi! How's it going?" (kick in the head), "Not so bad, not so bad" (duck), "How's the family, they're doing good?" (kick from the side), "They're doing alright, yes" (dodge to the side), "Good weekend?" (head butt), "Oh yes, very relaxing" (sidestep to the right), etc.

Now, I can't say that this applies to all martial arts, but this is the mentality of a capoeirista or a intimate to the art of capoeira. These are also the same people who, when they start a fight, they say that they are going to "play". For the uncultivated people out there who don't know what capoeira is (such as myself until up to two-three weeks ago), it is a African/Brazilian form of martial arts mostly composed of kicks and, as weird as it might seem, dance moves. During this "game", you have to keep your center of gravity as low as possible and that sometimes gives the players (what I like to call) the look of crawling worms. It also leaves the inexperienced apprentice with very, VERY sore thighs and the feeling that your legs will no longer support your weight at the end of the day. However, even if it is SUCH a pain to play (and I'm not even talking about the show-off walk on your hands and do back-flips type), capoeira is beautiful to watch!





Buuuut, all that to say, that I did find the metaphor of a conversation as quite beautiful to describe this practice.