Yesterday, Joe and I trained with Jake at Sityodtong in Somerville. As we headed home, instead of feeling the usual adrenaline rush that accompanies my post-workout, I felt a peacefulness, a serenity, that was, at first, hard to pinpoint.
Then, sometime during the afternoon, I realized just what I was feeling. Earlier that morning, I had poured over a makeshift shrine on a ledge above a set of wall mats. The Sityodtong family had paid tribute to Eric Armington, one of their own, who had tragically lost his life two weeks before in a motorcycle accident on Route 93.
Eric's shrine included of a pair of his gloves, his Mong Kon, medals, a framed photograph from the gym's gallery, incense...and a bottle of red Gatorade, artfully placed in the middle of his Twins.
I did not know Eric, but the heartfelt sentiments and carefully chosen items that comprised his tribute made me think...about the person he was and how the age-old traditions of the art we practice only become more meaningful when we interject them with our own contemporary lives.
Kru Mark has obviously gone to great lengths in his gym to embody the Muay Thai culture and the artifacts that adorn the walls only serve to strengthen that awareness. After seeing posterboard collages of snapshots of Eric and his family and friends taped to filing cabinets, I thought about the vulnerability one can experience in being charged with maintaining martial art traditions while also being contemporarily human. We respect and do our best to adhere to the culture of the art we practice, but how beautiful, and wonderfully mortal, to integrate those traditions...with a bottle of red Gatorade.
Stacia
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