The Plague We Live In (Part 9)

He looked at me with grey eyes. the same grey that was beyond the big window, beyond the noisy crossroad, beyond Vilnius, beyond the sky which pushed us to search for a safe shelter from an unknown thrill that was about to pierce our humanity.
It was as if every single day of my life in Vilnius were selected by something that resonates in the silence of the night and when I woke up it pierced the still sleeping brain, again.
I thought (I hoped) that it would disappear, but it did not. It would colour my entire day yet, And that colour had the same colour of Alvaro’s eyes.
It seemed, that we, both, had the knowledge to involuntarily obey to a memory of a far night rapidly approaching. Was that memory the secret Demiurge of our mind?
I remembered the first days in Vilnius. The new reality, above all. The new people, the new culture. The new mentality.
New colours, new flavours, new smells...a different world from the world I was coming from. But, the most important thing I learned at that time was a truth regarding Vilnius that stroke me for its evidence. I found it in a book written by a Lithuanian author, Kristina Sabaliauskaitė. In Lithuanian, it sounded like this "Niekas šiame mieste nėra tai, kas gali pasirodyti iš pirmo žvilgsnio".
That truth, hidden and unknown up to that moment, smogė, hit me, in the face with the gravity of its brutality. "Nobody in this city may be what it seems to be at first glance".
In those days I was interested in martial arts. I believed in Thai Chi and I had met a Thai Chi's Master. He invited me to see his method. He worked with knives at night in the forest.
One night I went to the forest to see like he worked.
He was exposed to moonlight. He danced. He seemed electric. Perhaps half-tiger, half-snake. He moved like a dervish dancer and had the flexibility of a cat. In front of him, a woman with two knives tried to hit and cut him. The Master was frantically moving his body like a wave, like a stream that recoiled from the blade of the weapon that impetuously arose from right, left, and also from the top and from the bottom.
But he flinched back not in fear, not in horror. Just a serene sneer was giving strength to his action.
He talked of love and Thai Chi,

If one punches with anger, his mind is dangerously sick. For this reason, we must seek love in martial arts, love is fluid like smoke, it moves everywhere and in every direction. Only if love is the object of your mind your body becomes fluid. In anger, fear and in hatred, the body is rigid, hard. Love is energy if you have love you have energy, an inexhaustible source of energy. After fifty years of age, the body needs elasticity and fluidity. Everyone loves himself. Who does not have a little love for himself? Maybe a few...usually people love themselves, their ego. A martial artist must look inside and seek for love if he wants energy.
The main question we need to ask ourselves is how to transform our daily living in happiness. Martial arts can do that if we base them on Love. To do this you don’t have to think of what is very effective in martial arts. Not the technique works but works the man you are (it doesn’t count you are a fighter or not).
You must be gentle. No hatred, but love. Leave hate, leave anger, rancour, to these people who work in the city offices or ministries who do not know how to get to the end of their days. Perfect slaves of a system of human annihilation. Remember the wave. Remember the wave. It goes up and when it reaches the highest point seems to stop for a moment and then comes down instead and brings death and destruction. But it does not immediately fall down, it has a pause, an apparent pause, before unleashing its violence. But the wave in itself has no violence, it follows its nature. Thus the body, it must follow the wave of love, the nature of love, the nature of us, human beings, and not the stiffening of hatred. Feel the wave from your heel till your punch, feel the wave through your body, through your leg, through your back, until your final punch bursts!
I was immediately fascinated by the Master, whom I remember had the same grey eyes as Alvaro.I started Thai Chi's classes with him. But after some weeks his classes started attracting a lot of girls and became a combination of spiritual and frivolous glamour. In those weeks, he had been seen many times on the national Lithuanian TV in several talk shows. He had been interviewed by the most important Lithuanian magazines, which turned him into a fairly well-known personage in Lithuania. The Master had changed. He was now very vulnerable to female beauty. He was defenceless against it. 
He had lost his sense of calm trust in the fate of his mission, in the quiet submission to his stoic composure in the face of danger and in a certain disdain of worldly life. 
He now appreciated the worldly life. He loved that kind of life, like never before. 
I talked to The Master about his change. 
His answer was quite curious. 
A man who has read a little smells a little pedantic, a man who has read a lot smells even worse.
He realized my blank expression, for he added.
An intellectual is like a machine. I now consider intellect less important than emotion. I now experiment with emotions. Intellectual emotions did not drive me where I wanted. I thought about my life…have you ever wondered why I do Thai Chi?
No. Why? I responded.
I used to combat before.
You?
Yes. Here in Vilnius, there was an underground fighting circuit, where anyone could fight. Illegal fights. Extreme fights
And you really did this?
Yes.
Why?
I challenged myself. I wanted to overcome the fear I had.
Fear? You? To fight?
Yes, fear…that’s it. That’s it...It was what I needed to get over my panic. I needed adrenaline, the adrenaline that would pump in all my body, in every atom of my being. People come to see fighting for adrenaline. They bring you adrenaline. Music shakes the walls. People are intoxicated, yell, bay, get crazy, want to see blood. Just wait for you stepping into the ring ready to draw blood from your opponent.
Did you win?
I won, I lost…but I learned to have a big heart. To combat you need a big heart. If you don’t have a big heart after 2-3 rounds…done. But if you fight with a big heart, after the fight, when you leave the ring, people surround you, touch you, yell out after you “You are great! You fight so crazy!”…too much, too much of everything. Too much violence. I had to change. I did develop an unbearable hankering for fighting, anywhere ... so I started practising Thai Chi. I had to harness all that energy, focus it into one point. Dominate it. And maybe I became too sophisticated, too whimsical, too freakish perhaps…but fighting is a resolution of self-destruction. Self-destruction is a work of man’s will. It is a shortcut to death. But soon, I realized that I didn’t want to die. I wanted to live, I wanted life. I chose life and eros. Love and sex.

I moved to Vilnius because I needed new adrenaline to be pumped in my blood. I was intoxicated by my past life. I needed new stimuli, life and eros. Said Alvaro.
I blankly gazed at him. I was speechless, Did he read my mind?His voice brought me back to him. I had forgotten him and had lost myself in my thoughts. What did you say? Why did you say that? I responded.