CLAYFIGHT PART 1

Many a subject of my notoriety would refer to me as a broad street bully. I divert from such labelings, in part for the high level of stereotype they connote, as well as for reasons specific to this very term. The phrase implies that I would be performing my powerful bursts of destructive emotion in very much open spaces. This is not true. My fists do not warrant the flesh they impound on to possess any means of escaping. My opponents have almost exclusively found themselves stuck between a closed area of some kind – say, the corner of a brick building – and the concrete fury of hand to hand combat so sophisticated and precisely delivered, that my very movement oft bring the audiences to conjure up allegorical mind images of cranes ascending lakes at sunset, or a violent supernova casting its millions of light years long tails of stunning, cosmic shock.

What's more – broad street bullies are rarely Nobel laureates.

I am yet undecided as to what came first: my initially childish and naive hopes and wishes for answering the deeply disturbing paradoxes of Quantum Gravity, or the likewise boyish and naive urges to inflict physical harm on real or imagined foes and adversaries. Ever more sure am I of the fact that both strivings diligently grew mature and manifest along with my aging and its gathering of experience. I am fifty six years of age, but with the mind of the twenty five year old, unholy hell spawned angel of a union of the flesh 'tween Einstein, Bohr, Newton and Galileo – and the body of a star born from the celestial collision of Hercules and Bruce Lee. However unmodest and bold such a self description may seem, I take great comfort in knowing that it is indeed true, for the words are not my own, but those of a Haitian seer, reading my being from out dismembered cattle parts and chickens' heads in a Port-au-Prince shantytown tin shackle.

Years I spent on formulating the Theory of Quantum Relativity, beginning at the University of Oxford – where I was often regarded with slight contempt from my colleagues and companions for my traditionally nonacademic interests and behaviors – to the island of Everia, where I resided in solitude for nearly a half decade, where moments away from my desk with a pen not in my hand, are but the most scarce of memories. The Pacific Ocean did me well, clear of thought and with no stressful responsibilities, I was struck with the most important solutions in one and the same day. Incidentally, this occurred at the first day after which I had decided to break my hermetic streak, to venture across the water  to Nicaragua. Reaching shore, slowing down my sonic solar boat and ascending the small wooden bridge taking me to land and on to a small village just outside of Managua, I lay eyes on the most beautiful woman I had ever seen. A sun shutting my head inside a heat bubble as soon as I popped up my head from under the surface - the white sand repeatedly hit by the glowingly turquoise waters – a sky so blue that it seemed but inches away – rain forest in the near distant, calling one into the shade – a wonderfully charming little tree hut by the bridge entrance – her white and black hair, arcane wisdom in her brilliantly green eyes – her thin blue-orange-red dress, decorated by copper and gold ornaments – Air! That was her name, and at standing before her, the most profound and hopeless problem of existence was clear as magic ponds. It was so obvious that I needn't even write it down at that time, but could go on to spend three wonderful days with Air and her family, before asking for her hand and returning with her to Everia, where I could effortlessly put the last pieces of the puzzle of Quantum Relativity in place.

I procrastinated for almost two months before publishing it, went to Nicaragua to leave off Air at her family, and traveled on to Brazil. It had been so long since last I had felt the blood rushing and muscles pumping, that at my arrival – by midnight, with a ghastly moon passing the sun's light over the narrow streets of Rio De Janeiro – I could not resist the urge to take a nocturnal stroll through the shantytowns. As I had expected, it did not take long for the fighters to take notice of my presence. Defeating the first one – he came alone, which was a mistake that cost him a kneecap – I jaunted feverishly through the slums, urban concrete meeting nature's jungle – Ah! South America! - and took on opponent after opponent, only to blast off in speedy motion as soon as firearms were deployed. The following day, tarnished, dirty, sweaty, I stood before Christ the Redeemer, imitating his stance, closing my eyes. Two days later, I was back on Everia with my beloved wife.

So, on the 28th of August  2013, I had every physicist in the world simultaneously shaking their heads, murmuring: “Of course!”  Then shouting it. Riddle unriddled, veil unveiled, mystery solved. The great Richard Feynman was a bit too pessimistic on this account – the answers of quantum gravity proved itself not to lie hundreds of years into the future of humankind. Dark energy and matter illuminated – I put more people out of work than the 2008 credit crunch. Suddenly, I was on every front page of every magazine, from New Scientist to Time magazine, I was dubbed the 21st century Einstein. I would always insist on having Air with me on the photographs, and usually got my way. We would dress in traditional Everian folk costumes and paint tribals on our faces. We traveled the world, starting with Stockholm and the Nobel prize dinner – the cuisine rather mundane, to be perfectly honest – and on to an endless stream of interviews for TV-shows, magazines, and Internet sites. Naturally, I flew with my solar plane – the climate crisis I do have yet to remedy. 



Quantum Relativity is real, and you cannot escape it, as little as some anabolic street dweller can escape my carefully administered Neck Wreckers. Ever since the publication of my Theory of Quantum Relativity, where I prove that the universe is a cloak that wraps around some yet-to-be-discovered entity, the world is slowly starting to accept this new and alien notion. The commonly used example – also proposed by yours truly – is the invisibility cloaks that started being distributed at the end of 2010. This piece of state-of-the-art technological clothing is devised in such a way that light is bent around the person wearing the cloak, much like water in a spring, finding its way around a small rock. The light is then reflected into the observer's eyes, seeing no cloak, but only the surroundings. The universe works akin to this premise – with gravity serving as the bent light, the universe being the cloak and its reflection, and the person inside the cloak – well, I believe that I will solve this most distressing mystery at some point in my life. Going on, I proved that the subatomic particles with their ghostly displays of superposition and entanglement is somewhat generated from within this cloaked stranger, wearing our existence as a piece of garment. Since the Stranger is, according to the theory, a local figure that owns no distance between its parts, non-locality is solved and need bother no more post graduates, writers or philosophers. The world owes me a big one.

However, knowledge is a slow process, while ignorance and stupidity travel faster than the speed of light (dear Albert knew this all too well), and from what I reckon, there will be many years before QR is embraced, understood or even noticed by common folk, despite its entrance into the awareness of the public with headlines and in-depth explanations on television. I am afraid that only a few months after my sunshower of attentive appreciation, Stephen Stone has been passed into the shadows. Alas – Air will always be with me.



I do not care much for colleagues who thrive on the pessimistic conviction that this milestone in human intellectual thought is no more than a possibility. The theory is solid and have yet to be disproved by experimental data. Rigor follows from vigor, and I elongated my thought to absurd lengths during those isolated years on Everia – yet the doubts grow, unfounded though they are. Testing to verify the theory and its postulates is one thing, but right out attacking it as lies, bespattering and ridiculing it without cause or compassion, I cannot tolerate. That is why I leaped across the podium and quieted the no-go ramblings of a professor emeritus in quantum mechanics during the New York science fair of 2014, which – incidentally – lead to the beginning of my being all but ostracized from the science community. 

Against untrained  - and unsuspecting - rivals, brute force is rarely required. I tell those inclined fools who wish to study my arts, and who is constantly apt on excessing in brutality against opponents who wish for not more than the violence to stop, that you need but a milder variation on the Whisk of the Weakling (which is mild as it is) to pacify these targets. For they are not likely to strike back in any threatening manner, and you may even gain performance points in letting them wallow in the pity of having been defeated by someone with the proverbial blindfold as well as hands tied behind their back.

Let me make it clear to you, dear reader, that I do not condone violence for purposes of silencing those with contrasting opinions to my own – but neither am I comfortable with the Whisk of the Weakling being denoted as violence. And isn't it so, by the way, that if a thought expressed shoots at your heart like vicious stings from the bees of the hives of hell, is the liberty not in your possession to make the source of this pain be removed?

My counter attack was, to no surprise at all to anyone with the slightest knowledge of world events, filmed and published on Youtube, after which I felt it best to stay on Everia and enjoy the company of my wife and the occasional visitor. After a few months, the storm resided and I could once again make my monthly incognito trips to fight clubs and street brawls all over the world, releasing my fury on rivals breaking into tears from my Litter Lunges and Concrete Cutters. Those nights were always veiled in the beauty of arts martial, street lights flickering, screams of joy and sorrow, cheering crowds and interlopers who had to be dealt with quick. Licking up my less than moderate wounds in cheap motel rooms the following mornings, I would move onto where I had situated my solo solar plane, and ascend the skies to one again come back to my home – Everia.



This afternoon is scrumptiously delightful – the gauss from a sun hovering far above the redwood roof of my platinum encrusted, white chalk mansion, the view stretching far beyond my estates, spreading out over the shimmering surface on the waters and the intensely natural green forests, by sheer force of evolution and history laying configured as if were they a set of giant, camouflaged stairs.

Wine sparkling atop my cup, of the smoothest glass surface sculpted by a mysterious elderly woman deep within the forests of the Amazon (and by some claimed: a witch), I gaze from whence I rest on my patio, safely dispersed in a cool shade cast from the pillar-borne balcony, at my wife by the swimming pool. Beauty follows her as grandness does me.

She bathes her feet, face introverted and contemplative, yet not ceasing to absorb her surroundings, the sun so bright that it turns to white as it hits her back, leaving her face in a gray shadow hiding the fine, seemingly sculpted features. Hovering above each of her tender shoulders, our two winged companions – the jet black Raven Mamo, and the milk white dove Styx. Air domesticated them herself, and they hardly ever leave her sides.

I put my wine aside, stand up and enter the mansion – my glowing, blood red robe swaying in a sudden gust of wind - the golden symbols curling up and down along the tall, dark green doors. From inside, I make my way down into the damp and cool air of the cellar, ominous yet soothing echoes hollowly emanating from the steps of my feet onto the stone walls. I reach my training locale, where I start preparing for the day's exercising. 

My latest technique is a riff of sorts, on a theme named Chuvio, orchestrated by the Guna tribe of the Micronesian island Taramaneo. Chuvio is a discipline focused on exuberant blows of force. Attacking is all that matters – defending is learned and carried out within the twin discipline – Avio. You must adapt a merciless state of hostility and ill will to manage even the simplest of tasks devised by Chuvio, and when you have reached that state, you will soon start finding variations and tricks not to be found within the primary guidelines of the practice. Fiercely striking a metal bar with your fist, will turn into an execution of a prisoner of battle, where you clenched fist turns into a claw of fire, hitting transforming into ripping and back to hitting at ever increasing speed. When smoke billows from out the scratch marks on the bar, you are well on your way to ready yourself for the beginner's exercises. 

There are so many skills and techniques I have invented and refined in this room, the dully ruddy rubber walls holding memories of exploding Heel Hangers and catastrophically impacting Electric Elbows – the light wooden, man sized dummies gathered around me – over twenty of them – as a faceless crowd of equally faceless individuals, waiting for me to decide their destiny. Feeling the shock wave from my wrist coming down on their necks, cracking their bambooid structure,  I am invigorated - the humming from the air conditioner setting my mind further at ease. Flies on air strolls finding themselves stuck between my flexible fingers, punching bags punctuating from heavy strikes, dark, pebbly sand trickling out of their open wounds. If humankind knew these intense jolts of flow, the slow love that fast hate springs -  the problem of happiness would be as clarified as that of quantum gravity.

Running with sweat, veins bulging and pulsating – utterly at peace – I leave my gym, and venture back through the cellar hallway, with echoes less intimidating and if a threat, one that is warmly welcomed. The rich, high grass hiding my body from the sun, I go on to the cliff by the ocean, and stop. I strip off naked, bathe in the white light as some Aztec warrior raising my fists toward the skies. It is at this very spot that I make my decision.

Safe and tranquil everyday life leaves me begging for motion – despite the comforting fact that this everyday life is washed in wealth and creative stimulation. I feel a profound need to expand my experiences, from viciously beating up strangers coming out of bars, thinking they've run into an easy catch in the shape of an  annoying, elderly gentleman – and quickly having their reality shaken at its core by the swift, energetic puddlings of my Retardation Rush. Attending sports events, knowing that a drunken fan would at some point maliciously target me, and seconds later suffer the coma-inducing Oriental Orbiter – this is not the makings of great men.

Do you understand now, why I must become the Ultimate Fighting champion of the world?