I asked AI to make me a painting of a kung fu fighter…
When I was 16 my best (my only ) friend casually mentioned that he was studying kung fu with a blind man. It seemed too good to be true. It was something straight out of Carlos Castaneda. It was a Karate Kid cliché.
I asked if I could come along for a lesson.
I half-suspected he was putting me on but the next Saturday morning we made our way through the streets of my hometown in Brighton, England and we were buzzed into a musty apartment with Celtic crosses and daggers on the wall, esoteric books lying around. The whole place smelled of marijuana. Carl, the blind kung fu teacher, sat on the sofa smoking a joint. He was 36 years old, pale white Irish-English skin and had ropey dreadlocks.
He’d gone blind as a young man due to a degenerative disease and it had first affected him by causing night blindness – he could see by day but not a thing by night. When I got to know Carl better, he told me a story about going to a squat party in London with some punk he’d met along the way. It got dark and Carl ended up walking straight into a lamp post and falling over. Later, at the party, he heard the punk tell friends:
‘See that bloke over there? He’s a total nutter! On the way here he headbutted a lamppost for no reason!”
The onset of blindness had been a terrible blow for Carl. He’d been a dynamic, agile man and now he felt frustrated and helpless. A lifeline came to him, however, as he heard the founder of a new style of kung fu was looking for a blind man to prove that the reflexes of the body were faster than the eye. The new style focused on the use of sticking hands, where you spar with your hands constantly touching those of your partner – if you feel their hands leave yours you know a punch is incoming and you better block. Or you might feel a space for you to step forwards to strike.
I started going to classes each week though it was clear to me pretty early that I wasn’t going to become a kung fu fighter. I wasn’t very tough and I hadn’t grown up having to fight my corner. But I loved the elegance of the style, the intuitive communication of sticking hands. When it came to martial arts, it was the ‘art’ bit that interested me.
Sometimes we even practised in the dark.
Kung fu with Carl was usually followed by a few spliffs and then pints in the nearby pub. Carl wasn’t a yogi and got wasted on a regular basis. Which didn’t affect his ability to get around. He was able to navigate the town with his guide dog even when blind drunk. Or on acid. Just like with the sticking hands, the reflexes were built in.
I sometimes wonder if blindness had divorced him from reality a bit – Carl believed in astral travel, magic, tarot cards and believed he could actually move candle flames with his own chi. I saw him demonstrate this but, in reality, it was just the small air currents from the movement of his hands that caused the flame to move. His awareness was uncanny at times, however. Once he was explaining something about footwork to me and while I listened I threw a slow shadow punch which he moved to block.
‘Did you just throw a punch?’ he asked me, amused.
Or once we were at the local pub, four pints drunk, and we’d been yakking away about witches and satanism when Carl leaned in with a conspiratorial air and murmured, ears have walls, Tom. Then I noticed the landlord of the pub was pretending to play fruit machine behind us while listening in to our extravagant conversation.
Blindness was a curse for Carl but he was self-aware enough to see the funny side every now and then. He was once tripping by the side of a loch in Scotland with a few students and got up to take a piss; for the sake of politeness he walked 20 metres away and came across a large rock in the middle of the field. He felt its contours and then climbed over it and walked another ten metres to relieve himself. Then he turned around and somehow found the same rock and clambered over it once again before rejoining the others. I don’t remember there being a wall there, he observed to general hilarity.
Carl was a formative influence on me and awakened me to the importance of not taking oneself too seriously. He enjoined me to be less stiff and to ‘get some charm’ if I wanted to enjoy life more.
But Carl wasn’t a gentle soul. He also let me know me know In no uncertain terms that I was young and arrogant and had a lot to learn. He was right on all counts. Eventually I made one faux pas too many and after having been away for a month or two, I called round one day with a friend and we were both buzzed in to the apartment. But when Carl heard my voice his head swivelled towards me.
‘What are you doing here?’
‘I just came to say hello.’
‘I think you should go.’
‘Okay.’
And it took an effort not to run down the steps of the apartment building. Carl was the last person I wanted to be on the wrong side of.
After that, Carl became something like Captain Hook’s crocodile for me. Once he actually passed me in the street and I had to step back and press myself against the wall. His guide dog recognized me but Carl pulled the leash tight and walked on.
It might have just remained a colourful story to tell as I got older. It wasn’t as if I retained much of the actual kung fu. I had little need to defend myself on the road except for one occasion that I describe in first book, Hand to Mouth to India, when I tried to camp outside in Iran beside the Persepolis ruins; I had met two female Czech backpackers who were determined to sleep outside and I joined them. But when we climbed a little way up the mountain a drunk Iranian guy turned up making kissing noises. He wasn’t very big but he blocked our way and he couldn’t seem to understand why I wouldn’t join him in taking advantage of the occasion.
I found myself faced with the unmistakable need to hit him but I hadn’t done that with any serious intention since I was about 9. I relaxed into stance, fired off three punches and a kick and…missed entirely. The Iranian jumped backwards, picked up a rock and returned with it aimed at my head. Skill having failed I resorted to charm.
‘I’m sorry!’ I gushed with a big smile, holding out my hand. He took it suspiciously and then continued to persuade me that we should become partners in pursuing the Czech girls who were hurrying down the path. He took a short cut and managed to block us again and I wondered if I might have to try to hit him once more but instead I just yelled:
‘Help! Tourist! Help!’ I felt like an utter fool. But, moments later, torchlights appeared; the soldiers near the tourist office had heard us and our assailant sobered up in an instant and dashed off into the darkness.
About 15 years after I had last seen Carl, he turned up in my dreams for five nights in a row. I found a photo of him on the internet and the sight of his forearm gave me a visceral chill. I had been hit by that elbow many times before.
I got hold of Carl’s number and the next time I was in England I called him up.
‘Hello, Carl? This is Tom, an old student of yours.’
‘Good day to you, Tom. What can I do for you?’
‘Well, I’m in town and wondered if I might buy you a drink?’
‘Indeed. And what would your motivation be I wonder?’
‘Oh, I just wanted to say thanks for all you did for me when I was younger.’
He agreed and suggested I call around at lunchtime the next day. It was with some trepidation that I walked down that familiar street and pressed the intercom button to climb the same staircase I had fled down 15 years before. Carl had since become a full master of his style and I noticed there were now a lot more weapons in evidence.
‘I see you’ve got some new blades,’ I offered by way of greeting.
‘Yes, this one for instance,’ Carl said, standing up and taking down from the wall a sword which he unsheathed and put in my hands. ‘Be careful with it – it’s devilishly sharp. You could lose a finger.’
I made some approving murmurs and handed it back to him and he proceeded to demonstrate how to use it while I retreated into a corner of the apartment: watching a blind man wield a lethal sword against invisible enemies.
Formalities over, we headed to the local pub. Conversation was stilted at first as we sat at a table on the street but when a car beeped its horn nearby we both turned in unison to shout: ‘Oh fuck off!’
Then we burst out laughing and got merrily drunk.
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