Road Stories - my glimpses into the incredible #1 (Patreon)

This is Sylvie's husband Kevin writing, starting a series of perspective pieces that will be part description and story telling, part scene-setting, a little bit of technique discussion, and all Muay Thai, in the biggest sense, because I'm stitching together the bird's eye and on up close in the incredible adventure Sylvie is having, and that patrons are all a part of through their support. One of the difficulties we have is just sharing how many amazing things are happening through that support, so this is something in that direction. Road Stories, is a kind of half- Ode to what is happening, and a chance for me to extend myself, to expand. I hope you enjoy it.

Road Stories #1

My eyes lit up. The sun had been falling rapidly in the last 15 minutes, and I wasn't sure if I would get the photo I wanted. We were hurtling up to Chiang Mai at a fast clip. We had already been in the road for maybe 6 hours of the 10 hour trip we do usually twice a momth, and now we were up in an area that boasted surreally green fields, cut out in the big squares. Crop of cane. Highly organized banana trees, tightly grouped in dense row would filmstrip frame click across the eyes as shadows lengthened on the highway. To our left the sun was dropping in an oily sky that seemed smeared, on the right the green played out, with emerald fire. I wanted to catch some of that green. I had a new, advanced, daunting camera and I have committed to using it daily - you can find my experiments on Instagram.  This was one of them. Having run the u-turn, and pulled to the shoulder to stand in front of the green, big trucks were blasting by sending the occasional shudder my way, and it just wasn't looking like what I had glimpsed from the road. The green wasn't speaking to me at all. But these trees were. Go between them. That's how progress feels. You catch a glimpse of luminescence, but when you get there right in front of it its angle changes. It doesn't really look the way it did when your mind was racing by. But now that you are there a whole different world opens up. One you couldn't see from the road.



This another image from the camera, double exposure, slow shutter, set in a strong Chrome color mode. It's more or less out of the camera, as is. It's a happy accident. I couldn't see it when I squeezed the trigger, but standing there, framing up, leaning into the ropes at Petchrungruang as Sylvie clinched rigorously with her Thai training partner, it happened. I think this is how progress is as well. You just position yourself. You assume protocols that are beneficial. You stand in the space, and open up event to what could be.
Somehow these two photos dovetail into the life of Sylvie, my wife devoted to reaching unequaled heights and experiences in the Muay Thai of Thailand. 100 fights, done. 200 fights, done. Filming countless legends, many of whom could find their particular kind of Muay Thai, what Sylvie calls their muay, lost. She's pounding out endless hours in the training ring, standing in the stream of Thai boys that are raised in the gym on their way to becoming Lumpinee fighters, and even in some cases very big stars, every year or so her main training partners literally outgrowing her and her 100+ lbs of fighting spirit. They are all rising waves that will break on a beach beyond her, and she gets the privilege of training through them in that arc. They start out smaller, inexperienced, they grow and refine themselves and eventually are just so strong and over-big, they shake out to bigger partners, usually other Thai boys. She is in a way a gatekeeper to Lumpinee in the gym, part of the process of growth, while she herself is quietly, secretly growing. There's a thing about clinch in Thailand. It is almost never "taught". Its like surfing. You stand on the board, you fall off the board. You stand, you fall. And you watch the other surfers. Your body learns. 
Right now Sylvie is at the crest of her two main training partners, Mek and Bao. In about 6 months they may have grown past. She's fighting through it all, seeking her waterflow. This is what that photo is about. Sylvie tells me it looks like how clinching feels like to her. She's clinching like this the day before we set to take our 10 hour drive up to Chiang Mai. Near the end of the drive she would develop a huge and splitting headache, so painful she would become nauseous. We would pull over to the side of the road in the dark, the headlights speckled with drawn up dust, the engine rattling in idle, as she wretched. Two hours to go to Chiang Mai. 
This road makes up a great deal of our life in Thailand. Twice a month we drive up to Chiang Mai from Pattaya because there are no real female fights in Pattaya, and none in Bangkok as well. There is no female fight scene. Instead, Chiang Mai is thriving, full of experienced fighters with female fights every night in the city. We lived there for 2 years, Sylvie cutting her teeth. Now we drive there in long hauls. A day of travel. Fight the next night. Take a day of rest (this is new for us, we are making a big deal about sleep now), then drive back down. Usually we try to fold in filming with a kru for the Library, up or down from the fights. This time it is just the fight. In fact we managed to book two. She's fighting tonight in Chiang Mai, and then we'll drive 4 more hours further north, and fight the next night in Chiang Rai. There's a promoter up there who loves Sylvie. 
So this is the life, aside from all the video editing, the articles she writes, and deeper work done on becoming a better person, a more capable person. It's the training ring, loads and loads of hours. And it's the road with all it's fights. This is what it takes to get to that shooting star. 


you can see a short video of Sylvie scrapbooking here, and another of her book of fight programs here.
Before the drive up Sylvie started organizing some of her own history. Her parents are visiting from Boulder, CO, where Sylvie is from, and it is triggering perspective taking. Her aim is just an incredible 471 fights, the most professional fights ever recorded by man or woman, a record set in the 1940s. That's the glimmer. Sylvie's becoming something. We aren't even sure what, it's a trajectory. It's like that glimmer of green and light I saw on the side of the road. You just get to that place where you saw it, stand between the trees, and look. She believes she can get to that part of the mountain, because she's already climbed where nobody has before. She can see it from here. And with the support of patrons, we are going to try and go there.

The Technical Challenge - Don't Be "Technical"

Part of where she is going, right now, is into her Muay Khao style, digging into the often hidden techniques and qualities that embolden the style and raise it up to an artform. Much of that relies on continuity, working through the natural breaks the Mind wants to take. She's talked at length on the needs and quality of Continuity. You can watch this 50 minute interview with her on the subject. A great initiative in this has been training with the legend Karuhat. There are several sessions with him in the Muay Thai Library, browse the Library here, and if very interested you can watch over 30 hours of their work together documented in the Karuhat Intensive one of the archivist side projects made possible through this Patreon, raising money in support of an individual legend. But, a lot of what she's moving toward can be seen in this free clip of the most recent Karuhat session.
You can watch the FULL session as a patron here.

It suffices to say that working with Karuhat for 30 hours, in addition to working with him regularly for more than a year, worked in concert with Muay Khao instructions coming from knee fighting legends in the project. Dieselnoi, Langsuan, Chamuakpet, Samson, krus like Kru Ten, all of whom are in the Library (search: Muay Khao). Everything is about Continuity. That is where she is reaching as a fighter. I wrote a little about this on Sylvie Study in a post on Flow: How to Stand: Listening to the Music Not the Words.The technical challenge she faces as a fighter is reaching for that degree of continuity in her knees, in her clinch.
This is the gauntlet we are facing. Maintain the arduous ring training as usual. Maintain the fight rate of 2 or 3 fights a month, including long drives twice a month, cushioned around the Muay Thai Library archive project, all the while reaching for a new self, for a Self that lies beneath all the knowledge and experience.

The above is a series of tractors we saw on the side of the road driving up to fight 228, against a huge opponent, giving up probably 10 kgs or more (22 lbs). These tractors are just a series of progressions, a geometry of growth. You have to line them up. This is what we are continually doing, lining everything up. All the work. All the filming. Staging the experiences so that they could inform us, and trying to make it so it can all be seen by you, by patrons and casual readers. The thing that strikes me again and again is that there is just too much to even convey, to relate. One morning she's standing with Dieselnoi who is imparting a knee technique we've never seen before despite filming with so many legends, then the next day she might be fighting in a village festival fight giving up 5 kgs against an opponent who really knows how to clinch, and then two days later she's doing voice over and analysis on a session we shot the month before, and then throwing herself into sparring with the Thai boys who are thrashing her, just trying to "grow eyes" and turn of the judgement mind, getting ready to fight another giant the week that follows. Its insane and intense. 
Add to that that she's attempting to climb on ground that nobody has ever climbed up to, taking all her readers and viewers up with her along the way. The 471 fights, the most pro fights ever recorded , she's reaching for things that will change Muay Thai forever, and open it up to new audiences and possibilities. Things like opening the door of Lumpinee for women, winning the first woman's Olympic Gold in Muay Thai. This is not even to mention compiling the greatest documentation of a fighting technique ever in the Muay Thai Library. The mass, the gravity of experience and self-transformation is tremendous. And as her husband I stand here in awe. 
I'm a little bit shaken by it all, like when I was standing by the green field and those trucks would rumble by at high speed, shaking us, as I pointed my camera between trees. You just need to stand there and point the lens. See what you can see. For that reason we've made a big reinvestment in the Muay Thai Library, and all of what this Patreon is about. We purchased a huge upgrade in camera, and a gimbal to smooth out camera movements. We want to capture more, and share more of what is happening, and photojournalism seems to be an important thing to move towards. You'll be able to find and follow the photographic work on my newish Instagram, and in more posts like this. 
Thank you everyone for following, and for supporting these immense projects in whatever way that you do. I feel that opening the door to Thailand, to Muay Thai and the world of its techniques, and to the heart of what my wife Sylvie is attempting is one of the most meaningful things I can imagine. 

UPDATE:

Sylvie faced an opponent giving up nearly 30 lbs, and delivered an elbow KO in the 2nd round after beautiful knee swarming and clinch. It amazes me that she is able to control such large fighters, mostly through technique, and now through burgeoning continuity. You can see the fight as it was live streamed on Facebook.

She also upped her stitchcount to 200. 

If you enjoyed this article, this was my writing. You will like even better Sylvie's writing, check out any of these articles as a patron:
Little Blue Champion - The Next Generation of Fighters - I'm just taken by a little blue fighter at a local fight in Chiang Mai, round, pudgy, a complete visual underdog. It speaks to coming of age as a fighter. read it here 
Alley Tears: The First Time I Cried After a Fight In a Long While - it had been years since I had cried after a fight, maybe even ever, but something in me broke down after a loss to a World Champion several weight classes above me. read it here 
The Storm That Overtakes The Boy - Giving In | The storm within us, the storm outside of us. It is our choice. Or, this could be called "Learning to ride the donkey, and not look for the donkey." read it here 
Insisting On Left - The Space Between Pi and Kru | The story of how it is a delicate balance with my Kru when insisting on changing my stance to southpaw read it here 
Arjan Surat: The Unbreakable Breaker of Bangkok | Maybe the toughest, hardest man in Thailand. Arjan Surat is 63 and made of the stuff that feels like it's from 100 years ago. The unbreakable breaker. read it here 
When I First Met Dieselnoi: A Giant in my Soul | The powerful impression the legendary Dieselnoi made on me right from the start, a resonating impact that has made on me as a person. read it here 
The Perfection of Festival Fights in Thailand | A trip to the clinic to receive a boosting IV leaves me drifting through thoughts of belonging, as I listen to my kru talk about me to the nurse. read it here 
Cheet Yaa - "if there were no cuts it wouldn't be Sylvie" | A trip to the clinic to receive a boosting IV leaves me drifting through thoughts of belonging, as I listen to my kru talk about me to the nurse. read it here 
The Hurting Game - The Psychology of Hurt | Even though I've fought over 200 times being the one who hurts others, that the game is hurting, is still a psychology I need to embrace. read it here 
A Girl and Her Bag - the Intimacy of Work | Every fighter who has spent a long amount of time in the gym has to fall in love with their bag - how bagwork contains its own beauty. read it here 
Jai Rohn - My Story of Blood, My Pride and Stitches | My heart was racing, I was upset at my performance, and then there was the pain of stitches, more painful than any stitches I've had before. read it here