Arnis Ta Bai!

My question is, "What motivates you to take up Arnis?"

Finally.

After more than a year in hiatus, I've resumed my training in arnis.

The experience back to it was quite long-winded actually. The story goes like this: I joined ("coerced" would be the right term here by the way) the Emerald tournament last 2007, held at the Jaycees gym, Davao City. It was a tournament participated by members of the Mandirigmang Kaliradman (MK) nationwide. Since I recently passed my Level 2 examination and I was unfortunately part of the crowd, I got myself participating in the tourney. The problem was: I didn't have any prior training.

To cut the story short, after the tournament, my right shoulder hurt like hell (at least, I know now how rheumatism/ athritis feels). It hurt so bad, I could not raise my arm. For months, I had to endure this. I stopped doing arnis as a result (my official reason was I had to devote time for my thesis, which was legitimate enough, come to think of it).

I planned to resume training after graduation but ended up in Manila by May 2008, as an employee for an IT company. I knew that there was an MK chapter in UP Diliman but for the rest of 2008, I was never adventurous enough to go to UP.

Then 2009 came and with it, a change of perspective. Last January, on a Saturday, I went on my first trip to UP Diliman. I ended up walking from Trinoma to UP's oblation because I simply didn't know the route (It was fun actually, except for the part where a man kept following me until I reached the Elliptical Road. By the time I did, he tapped my shoulder and asked me where the city hall was, which I didn't know. So much for assuming he was a hit man out to get me). When I reached UP, I tried looking for the building and the classroom where they practice (based on a text message I got from a friend). All was to no avail however. I didn't find any arnisadors.

But as luck would have it, I did find them. I surfed through some websites, found an email address, emailed these addresses, someone replied and gave me a number (which would be Joepot's number, an MK veteran in NCR). Before I knew it, I was on my way back to UP Diliman, with the correct info on when and where they practice (for your information, MK NCR practices are from 2 to 5pm every Sundays, at the Vanguard Building, Classroom 2, UP Diliman Campus. That's why I never found them on my UP Saturday trip).

I met the resilient few who have stuck it out with the art: Nico, Rin, Karin, Joepot (who are all in their mid-30s. So I'm the young kid, the "ruh-kee"). After practice, we went to a restaurant beside Conspiracy to unwind.

That's when the inevitable question came. Nico, my soon-to-be mentor/ instructor asked, "What motivates you to take up Arnis?"

My answer? Well, it was cheesy. The answer was all about doing something Filipino, the pride associated with practicing the art, for self-defense, friends urging etc. Simply put, I guess I blundered my way to an answer because I haven't thought of that question that well.

So what does motivate me to take up arnis? Why endure all the body pains, the blows, the seemingly sado-masochistic cycle of hitting with a stick and getting hit back in return?

The answer is quite simple, and cheesy too. I want to be a Filipino. And before you castigate and lecture me on the many ways one can be a Filipino, let me explain first.

I am a Bisaya. As a Bisaya, whose family are immigrants from Visayas, I have no unique culture to speak of. No heritage I can honestly declare my own.

I started having this acute feeling back in college, when I was doing our thesis on Dagmay motifs. We were studying the Mandayas then and I was simply impressed by what I learned. They had material artifacts, literature, and other cultural emblems. They had a vast cultural heritage, a heritage brought down from generations past.

I was humbled. Here I was, a person who claims he is a Filipino, but who is as culturally empty as the person next to him. I don't speak or write either Bisaya or Tagalog fluently enough. My drawing is basically influenced by Japanese anime. My thoughts and speech are inherently Westernized. In sum, there is nothing I could claim as my own, nothing that posed as my badge of Filipino-ness ( if there was ever a word). Nothing, except Arnis.

It's hard to explain really. It's tempting to say it's a mystical experience. But every time I hold a stick, it does feel good. It makes me imagine the countless Filipino men and women who wielded the same objects of weaponry as they faced enemies in the premodern jungles of the Philippines. It makes me think of the generations before who, through their blood, sweat and tears, perfected indigenous systems of martial arts which are still being taught and admired around the world. It's as if I'm holding something from history, something that if I let go of, will surely be lost for good (right now, I'm taking this statement literally. Nico let me borrow his sticks, sticks which came from the grandmaster himself, the late Manong Ben Lema!).

So there you go. Forgive me for being cheesy once more but I have become really passionate about this art. If I were asked what defines me as a Filipino, I would say it is not my complexion, my surname, or the language I use. It will be arnis.

And I believe that's reason enough to continue on training.