Zen and the Art of This Overused Phrasing

Dear Wrestling,

It's been awhile. Yes, I am this bad at communication with humans, too--much worse, in fact. Too much of my writing depends on being struck by something and then excitedly rushing to share it.

In this case, I'm struck by this essay by the endlessly wise and kind J.J. McGee:

"Your worries and doubts and hopes, the ones that feel solid and heavy as stone: they’re raw material for wrestlers. Something that could be a weapon to break barriers. Something that could be a foundation to build on. So hold on to them, even if it means being willing to exist fully in those moments of despair, to stand in the dark with your heart squashed and your hopes buried, bereft and lost."

Existing fully in moments of despair is something most of us spend most of our lives trying to avoid. So much of life can be described as running to pleasure or running away from pain.

I've been interested in Buddhism for a long, long time. One of the ideas that most drew me, years ago, was precisely this idea of not running from pain. It seemed so...dumb, frankly, so bizarre, and yet there was also so much obvious wisdom down that path, too--and so many Buddhist leaders were deeply thoughtful and immensely compassionate. It was a puzzle to me.

I've always hated pain, passionately, and even as a very little child--age 8 or so--I was learning about herbs and medicine, whatever little things I could do. A friend got stung by a bee on his lower eyelid, and I mixed up some fresh mud to put on it until he could get home, to draw the venom out.  I am still the person my family goes to for help with injuries, which I sometimes even treat with my homemade salve.

It took one of the worst toothaches of my life to understand the difference between pain and suffering. I'd had to have oral surgery--I can't even remember which one--and even with the painkillers I'd been given, I was in agony. This happened toward the end of my first year studying Buddhism, and so I turned to my texts. I reread the passages on pain and suffering in Thich Nhat Hanh, Roshi Kapleau, and others, over and over. It took me that long to find the courage to really try it, probably.

"To suppress the grief, the pain, is to condemn oneself to a living death. Living fully means feeling fully; it means becoming completely one with what you are experiencing and not holding it at arm's length." ~ Philip Kapleau

“Do not lose yourself in the past. Do not lose yourself in the future. Do not get caught in your anger, worries, or fears. Come back to the present moment, and touch life deeply. This is mindfulness.” 
― Thich Nhat Hanh 

So, I gradually started turning my thoughts from "Holy SHIT do I want this pain to end!" to "Hoo boy, this is some pain. Strong, strong pain. Yep, that's still there. Still just sitting here with my pain..."

It was a process, and one I certainly didn't master that night--or any night since. Suffering, it turns out, is trying to escape what you are actually experiencing. Pain is just the experience itself. In wrestling terms, pain is the story, the match, the promo. Suffering is the late night discussion about whether Sami Zayn will still be a heel when he comes back from injury, months from now.

Wrestlers can't do anything with our smarkiness. Our prognostications are not the fuel they thrive on. They can't craft an emotion out of our preoccupation with who's going where and how the story might end. No criticism of a feud or booking is going to thrill our hearts.

They need our presence and our attention. Our enthusiasm helps, I think, but I'm not certain it's strictly necessary--the best draw it out of us despite ourselves.

All the guessing and the emotional games are fun, sometimes, and to a point, but for me at least it's essential that I remember: those games are not part of wrestling. They don't help my beloveds, and as often as not, they harm me and my enjoyment. Granted, I'm a person who is riddled with anxiety, so it doesn't take much to pull my head out of a match and start worrying about the ratio of money to good stories that wrestling seems to insist on, for instance.

Our presence, our emotional immediacy, and our openness. Those are the components we as fans can contribute to this art we love. Anything else, I suspect we do just for ourselves.

Love,
Autumn










*I do not include criticism of sexism, homophobia, racism, etc. in this. I'm referring only to criticism of aspects of wrestling that do not harm others, such as booking or some aspects of character work.

Engraved in my heart and in my skin

Dear Wrestling,

On August 18th, my youngest sister's birthday, I paid a nice man to stab me about 100 times a second for 4ish hours. As a result, I now carry this on my shoulder.

Red pandas are adorable creatures, if you're not familiar with them. They're like cuter, more agile raccoons. They're also quite fierce for their size, they're capable hunters, and are the only remaining creature from their family in the world. Watching them move, one can see certain resemblances to El Generico, especially in his tendency to thrown himself onto Kevin in celebration. I'm not a fan of a portrait tattoo, but I am very much a fan of an inside joke (or loving reference, if you prefer...)

A turnbuckle screw is pretty much my favorite wrestling tattoo. It's simple, elegant, and clear.

Cherry blossoms, and especially in this style, are something I've felt conflicted about for a long time. On the one hand, it can feel appropriative for my white ass to carve them onto my skin. On the other hand...the trees in my backyard were some of my dearest friends growing up. I named them, and our little ornamental cherry blossom tree was my favorite. Her name was Xantha, after a dryad in a book, and she had these two limbs that were perfectly placed for sitting and reading or cloud/branch watching. She was a double blossoming type, and in the spring I would climb up and shake her branches so that the flowers rained down on my little sisters.



When I visit Charlotte, I always check to see that she still stands.

I love English, but there are some wonderful phrases and concepts we lack. Weltschmerz is probably my very favorite, but mono no aware is amazing. I don't even have your classic 'weeb's' understanding of Japanese language or culture, but that idea is very relevant to me, nonetheless. If you're not familiar, it's a big part of why cherry blossoms are so revered in Japan.

Finally, the piece of this tattoo that might be the most meaningful to me: 'a mark who persists'. This phrase comes from an essay by the brilliant and sweet @MithGifs. It's truer for me than she could ever have intended, and when I read it, it rang in my heart like a bell. I am a mark, a wrestling fan. I am a mark, a person who is open to the world, sometimes to the point of being naive and foolish.

And I persist. I persist through third world poverty and mental illness and PTSD and malnutrition. Through joy and its end, through disappointment and hurt, hurricanes and dreams and depression. Through Latin charts and thinking I should get a trade working with my hands since I'm good at trivia, but I'm not a good thinker, and then finding out better...

Normally when I get tattoos, I don't choose ones that are deeply meaningful. Things I care about, but small things--knives and thunderstorms and herbs--but nothing that if it was ruined, would really hurt me. This is the first time in almost fifteen years that I've put my heart and my love on the line--on my sleeve, in fact. It's still relatively safe: El Generico is retired among the orphans, after all. The chance that he'll come back and do something terrible are statistically negligible. But it could happen, and it would crush me...

In those terms, a tattoo like this is like a moonsault: a blind leap of trust. Anytime we trust, we do so knowing that trust could be broken. Life is life, and anything could happen.

But we do it anyway. Because it matters, because we care, because...if we did otherwise, we simply wouldn't be who we are.

Wrestling is entirely made of trust, I think. (It can also be made entirely of art, or love--that's wrestling physics for you) The most urgent is the trust between workers, but the base level is the trust of the audience. We trust them to entertain us. We trust them to tell us stories, and to hurt us in the best ways, with sorrow and with purest joy. And they trust us to show up, to cheer, to shyly say hi at the merch table, to care...to trust them.

So we climb up, unsteady, pulse racing, and we jump off, trusting that they will catch us, as they always have before.

May it always be so.

Love,
Beck