Read Online A Fighter's Heart: One Man's Journey Through the World of Fighting by Sam Sheridan - Free Book Online
Authors: Sam Sheridan
Tags: United States, General, Biography & Autobiography, Biography, Sports & Recreation, Sports, Martial Artists, Boxing, Martial Arts & Self-Defense, Sheridan; Sam, Martial Artists - United States
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primary weapon against fire is fire, and burning was my favorite job. Being on big fires at night, watching the behavior of intense heat and flame, can be indescribably beautiful.
After the season, I applied for a position with the North Cascades smoke jumpers in Washington State and got a new tattoo on my left forearm, a tattoo of my life, with the motto “Mundis Ex Igne Factus Est,” which means “The World Is Made of Fire” in Latin, a quote from a Helprin book (A Soldier in the Great War) that I had read maybe five years earlier. It captured the idea that life is born of struggle and striving, that true joy and understanding do not come from comfort and safety; they come from epiphany born in exhaustion (and not exhaustion for its own sake). Safety and comfort are mortal danger to the soul. No good painting ever came easily to me: The good ones were battles. I got the tattoo so that I would always see it there and be reminded.
Though I had applied to be a smoke jumper (and got hired), somewhere, in the dark wilderness of my heart, I still wanted to fight. I had promised myself when I went to Thailand that I would get ten fights, and then stop; because ten fights would be enough to know what fighting really is. I had quit after one—and I had never been tested. If only I could find a way to get it to pay for itself—that’s how I had done all my traveling before. It’s a part of my philosophy: You can always get it to pay for itself somehow.
Fighting is a way to feel, an anti–video game, a way to force something to happen. That’s what brought me back to it, because when I’ve fought someone, I know something has happened. How many days of your life pass you by that you could take or leave? When nothing really happened?
During college, I had lived and studied at the Slade School in London for a year, and I became involved in the trance club scene—the Fridge, Escape from Samsara, Return to the Source—and what became apparent was that these thousand kids tripping balls on ecstasy just want to feel something. They just want to feel as though everyone in the room understands them, and belongs, and that they belong, and, most important, that something is happening.
All those experiences—sailing around the world, Antarctica, firefighting—I chose them because they were the best options I had going. All I am is persistent, and willing to entertain many ideas. I’ve done drugs; and I used to drink like it was my job. I wasn’t a college athlete; in college, I was a painter who smoked two packs of cigarettes a day. I’ve done things that maybe I should be ashamed of, but I’m not.
You have a specific responsibility to existence, to God if you like, to taste, touch, and smell what there is to experience. You have to do everything. If given an option between doing something and not doing it, you have to do it; because you’ve already done the “not do it” part. This can be juvenile and dangerous, I realize, and there are a lot of things I have chosen not do, for a million reasons. I was raised polite. I’ve never hurt anyone, except guys I was sparring or fighting with. And I don’t take needless risks. The idea is to make it through intact; “safety” is my middle name. But I feel that you owe it to the world to be curious. Somebody asked me if I was looking for something. I am looking for everything.
Part of my responsibility, while I am strong enough, lies with fighting—not just to get as good as possible, but to understand it, and I maintain that to understand something, you have to do it, and do it more than once. I thought I had closed the door on fighting when I left Thailand, but I hadn’t. Four years later it was still there.
So I set out to explore and explain the world of fighting, to myself and to anyone who would listen—not everywhere in the world, and not everything, because that would never end—to try in some small way, with some logical progression, to understand it.
RULE
After the season, I applied for a position with the North Cascades smoke jumpers in Washington State and got a new tattoo on my left forearm, a tattoo of my life, with the motto “Mundis Ex Igne Factus Est,” which means “The World Is Made of Fire” in Latin, a quote from a Helprin book (A Soldier in the Great War) that I had read maybe five years earlier. It captured the idea that life is born of struggle and striving, that true joy and understanding do not come from comfort and safety; they come from epiphany born in exhaustion (and not exhaustion for its own sake). Safety and comfort are mortal danger to the soul. No good painting ever came easily to me: The good ones were battles. I got the tattoo so that I would always see it there and be reminded.
Though I had applied to be a smoke jumper (and got hired), somewhere, in the dark wilderness of my heart, I still wanted to fight. I had promised myself when I went to Thailand that I would get ten fights, and then stop; because ten fights would be enough to know what fighting really is. I had quit after one—and I had never been tested. If only I could find a way to get it to pay for itself—that’s how I had done all my traveling before. It’s a part of my philosophy: You can always get it to pay for itself somehow.
Fighting is a way to feel, an anti–video game, a way to force something to happen. That’s what brought me back to it, because when I’ve fought someone, I know something has happened. How many days of your life pass you by that you could take or leave? When nothing really happened?
During college, I had lived and studied at the Slade School in London for a year, and I became involved in the trance club scene—the Fridge, Escape from Samsara, Return to the Source—and what became apparent was that these thousand kids tripping balls on ecstasy just want to feel something. They just want to feel as though everyone in the room understands them, and belongs, and that they belong, and, most important, that something is happening.
All those experiences—sailing around the world, Antarctica, firefighting—I chose them because they were the best options I had going. All I am is persistent, and willing to entertain many ideas. I’ve done drugs; and I used to drink like it was my job. I wasn’t a college athlete; in college, I was a painter who smoked two packs of cigarettes a day. I’ve done things that maybe I should be ashamed of, but I’m not.
You have a specific responsibility to existence, to God if you like, to taste, touch, and smell what there is to experience. You have to do everything. If given an option between doing something and not doing it, you have to do it; because you’ve already done the “not do it” part. This can be juvenile and dangerous, I realize, and there are a lot of things I have chosen not do, for a million reasons. I was raised polite. I’ve never hurt anyone, except guys I was sparring or fighting with. And I don’t take needless risks. The idea is to make it through intact; “safety” is my middle name. But I feel that you owe it to the world to be curious. Somebody asked me if I was looking for something. I am looking for everything.
Part of my responsibility, while I am strong enough, lies with fighting—not just to get as good as possible, but to understand it, and I maintain that to understand something, you have to do it, and do it more than once. I thought I had closed the door on fighting when I left Thailand, but I hadn’t. Four years later it was still there.
So I set out to explore and explain the world of fighting, to myself and to anyone who would listen—not everywhere in the world, and not everything, because that would never end—to try in some small way, with some logical progression, to understand it.
RULE
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