Burning Dead Wood (old)

Moved

2011-05-31T21:59:00.001-07:00

to here:

http://burningdeadwood.blogspot.com/

Why?

2011-01-08T21:56:00.001-08:00

One of my goals is to hike the Oregon section of the Pacific Crest Trail. It’s 430 miles from Cascade locks to the Oregon California border, and I plan to walk all of it, carrying about 40 pounds of gear most of the way.

I realized yesterday, that none of my good friends have ever asked me why.

This may mean that my good friends are as crazy as I am, or at least that they understand me well enough that they don’t even need to ask. I take for granted that walking 430 miles (not all at once, reality makes me break it into sections), is a perfectly sensible thing to do.

Not to some. I was on the East Coast recently (work), talking to some folks from all over the country. I mentioned my PCT plans, and one man gave me a genuinely perplexed look, the kind reserved for children who have just done something inexplicable like put Play Do in the garbage disposal. He stood there, with his head cocked to one side for a second, before asking, “why?”

The question took me a back for a second, and I realized the mental world in which I live isn’t the only one. That’s a good thing to remember occasionally. I do a fair job of not living in a bubble, but I realized just then that most everybody close to me challenges themselves, either physically, mentally, or spiritually. Even my friends who have never backpacked a single night get why I want to do the Oregon PCT. They understand it intuitively, without me having to explain.

When the guy asked why, I fumbled for an answer. Not because I don’t understand my own reasons. I can articulate them quite well. To be honest, part of my fumbling was due to a desire to be pithy. I was tempted to whip out some Hillary. “Because it’s there,” has a certain bravado to it that shouldn’t be attractive to me, but is anyway.

But the main reason I fumbled was that I became, in an instant, acutely aware of the space between us. I knew a little about this guy, from listening to him talk. He valued comfort, doing as little as possible. He would be happiest if life was one endless sporting event, not one in which he played, but one he watched, preferably while drinking endless amounts of beer and sitting on an infinitely soft recliner. He looked for the easy way out of everything at work, substituting being charming and light hearted for the brain sweat required to deeply grasp the complicated material we were supposed to be learning.

I was contemplating walking 330 more miles with a backpack, sleeping on the ground (albeit with a pretty high speed sleeping pad), getting footsore, and facing an outside chance of dying. How the hell was I supposed to explain to this guy why this seemed like a good idea?

I settled for short. “Because there’s a difference between being comfortable and being happy.” This guy always had a cheerful, affable expression on his face that always struck me as fake. I didn’t suspect anything sinister behind it, didn’t think behind that exterior lurked angry or connivance. Rather I suspected that under that expression lurked nothing much at all.

For a second that expression slipped into blankness, as if all his processing power was being used up to try to digest what I’d just said. It was almost like watching someone trying to parse something in a foreign language they barely understand.

Then the grin was back. “I’m not sure I understand, I’d love to hear more.”

For some reason, I wanted to try to communicate. I’m still not sure why. At one point in my life, I would have blown this guy off as somebody I didn’t care to connect with. But slowly, I’ve become less judgmental, come to value connection more. So I tried.

I talked about how I liked a healthy challenge, how I liked an element of risk in my life, but didn’t want to be a blind adrenaline junkie. I talked about building a true connection with the place I lived, a sense of place that was much more significant than the one gained by today’s shopping mall and housing development existence. I talked about the benefits of reflective solitude. I talked about the humbled, spiritual existence that being a human in the wilderness brings.

I wasn’t getting anywhere. This guy was nodding his head at the appropriate spots, providing the right conversational cues, but I could tell he wasn’t getting it by the blank look.

So I switched tactics. I talked about scenery, about mountains and lakes and quiet forests.

“It’s really pretty in Oregon,” I finished lamely.

He brightened at this. “So you must have a really good camera then,” and launched into a bunches of questions about megapixels and SLR’s and gigabytes. He seemed deeply disappointed when I told him I had a cheap point and shoot camera and the battery door was held on with duct tape.

But it took the conversation out of the realm of spirit and into the world of stuff. We talked about my backpack, my tent, my sleeping bag. Food was discussed in exacting detail.

Despite my initial enthusiasm, I found myself wanting this conversation to end. The other guy was determined to connect. I’m not sure if this was just out of ingrained habit, because he is the one who quoted more than once, “people don’t remember what you did, they remember how you made them feel,” or if he regarded me as some weird, foreign creature that he wanted to understand. I suspect it was a little bit of both.

I was just frustrated. I was discussing things that are deeply personal to me, with stranger, and it wasn’t going well. Over the last couple of years, I’ve had two competing impulses. On one hand, I’ve reaped tremendous benefits from true, deep connections that have enriched my life. On the other hand, I’ve become quieter, with even less interest in small talk and water cooler style BS-ing.

I regretted even trying to explain. I felt like I was taking something sacred to me and trying to share it with someone who couldn’t appreciate it. I started trying to think of some way to end the conversation without looking like a jerk.

Finally I was saved by the end of break. When we parted, I think we were both confused about what had just happened.

I’ve spent more time than I’d care to admit dwelling on this encounter, trying to draw some wisdom from it. Every time I start to feel superior to this guy, for some reason I just stop, because it doesn’t feel right.

It would be easy for me to judge this guy. He’s fat. He’s lazy. He’s shallow. But I’m trying hard to not judge people anymore. Mostly, I succeed. I’m not troubled by who he is, but I’ve spent a bunch of time being troubled by the gap in understanding between us.

I don’t understand his life. My life is probably around half over, and the thought of narrowing my world to the endless pursuit of comfort and entertainment, of coasting through the second half in a recliner, living unexamined and reflexively, scares the hell out of me.

In the past, I would have blown him off, deemed him unimportant. But that isn’t true. We really are all connected (cue the kumbaya track), even though we’d like to pretend that we can all live in our separate bunkers and not influence each other. For one thing, this guy votes, or at least he can. If I’m going to enjoy things like the Pacific Crest Trail, I need as much political horse power on my side as I can.

Beyond those practical concerns, I’m troubled sometimes by how disconnected I’m starting to feel from the culture around me. The trail feels real. The people I hike the trail tend to be authentic, and deep. But this guy’s life: football, beers, and bullshit;, seems like more of an imitation life, and it seems like those folks are the ones who are really calling the shots, and that doesn’t bode well.

It’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking that if everyone else was just like me, the world would be a better place. And I have to admit, sometimes I think that’s true. But I also can admire people who think deeply, live wholeheartedly, and come to conclusions I don’t agree with, because at least they are paying attention.

But I’m having trouble though, connecting with folks who seem to just want to be comfortable, entertained and responsible for nothing. Maybe instead of feeling frustrated by a lack of connection, or being frustrated by a lack of understanding, I need to just be grateful that I understand that there is a difference between being comfortable, and being happy.

2010-12-29T08:14:00.001-08:00

For those of you that have asked: yes, everything is fine. Thank you for asking. My blog writing tends to go in cycles. Lately I’ve been fully engaged in living life, and have spent less time writing about it.

You’ll notice the blog has changed. Burning Dead Wood, is the title of The Next Book. This one is going to take a while, mostly because I’m not done living it yet.

There isn’t going to be anymore fiction, at least not for a while (sorry Briggs.) I haven’t even read much fiction in the last two years, much less written any. I feel very much estranged from the idea of making up stories in my head, and very much engaged with the idea of living this moment fully. We’ll see if the two come together again in the future.

No more martial arts, at least for now. Life goes in a cycle, and it’s entirely possible I may find myself in a gi thinking martial thoughts again, but not right now. I very nearly removed some old posts, but they are part of the story too, so they stayed.

This coming year is gonna be a doozy. Stay tuned.

First trip 2010 (From Burning Dead Wood)

2010-06-12T20:08:00.000-07:00

My first trip of 2010 was up the Herman Creek drainage, in the Columbia River Gorge. I couldn't remember looking forward to something this much since Christmas when I was a little kid. It felt foreign, but welcome at the same time. In the past I'd anticipated trips as problems to be solved, which gave some satisfaction, but this was different. This simple, blissfull excitement had been missing for so long, I no longer noticed its absence from my life. Feeling it again was like having a long lost relative, one forgotten from child hood, step through my front door unexpectedly.

I spent the night at Ainsworth State Park. I could stay there for free, because I was a “Disabled” veteran. Ainsworth was sort of a boundary land. It has a campground, but I wasn't camping there so much as “sleeping outside.” I was maybe a quarter of a mile from the Interstate, and I spent the night listening to the lonesome drone of 18 wheelers out on the interstate, and the rumble of freight trains hauling wheat from west from Idaho and Montana, and TV sets and plastic lawn furniture East from the freighters that docked in Portland.

I had plenty of neighbors at the campground, most of whom had trailers and motor homes. RV's that cost upwards of $50K seem a little offensive to me, but then I'd known men who only got to go camping with their families because they owned such a thing. What do you say to a guy like that? Get a new family?

I feel asleep to the hum of generators, and bursts of laughter from around campfires. At one time that would have annoyed me. The woods were a place for quiet, dammit. But people annoy me less in general these days, and besides, I wasn’ t really in the woods yet.

The next morning, I had the entire Herman Creek drainage to myself. Herman Creek doesn’t have the eye popping scenery and waterfalls of nearby Eagle Creek, but I didn't care. I don't usually backpack “for the view,” although it can be a bonus. I was actually uncomfortable with that idea, because it reduced wilderness into an amusement park, as if the purpose of the woods is to provide me with eye candy. I never expect anything from the woods, rather I try to be grateful for what I’m given.

I'd worked over the winter on my gear. I now had a pack weight of less than 30 lbs. I had also worked on my body. My core strength was good, my back didn't hurt and my feet were in excellent shape. I fell in love with the rhythm of the trail. The pack settled easily on my back, and before I knew it, I was half way there.

I did a fair job of staying present. For most of the day, I managed to be present, in the moment, an integral piece of the woods I was walking through. For fifteen, maybe twenty minutes at a time, I just walked, and breathed, walked and breathed. I saw everything, often without focusing on any one thing.

But my mind still had to have a story occasionally. Mostly I anticipated the next thing. Thinking about the next creek crossing, what I would do when I got to camp, how much mileage was left. The hard part is to not label that as failure, to just accept it, say “that again,” and move on.

The trail took me up the Herman Creek gorge. It was narrow in most spots, with a usually sheer drop to my right, and a cliff side to my left. I lost count of the number of creeks I crossed. The uphill climb was gradual, but steady.

I didn’t take many pictures. I have an odd relationship with photography. You can stand me in front of a beautiful view, with four other people. Two of the other people will take great photos, maybe something you can publish. The other two will have nice photos, maybe something you can frame. I will walk away with a snapshot is blurry, washed out, or at very least poorly framed.

So I tend not to take pictures, not just because of this, but because I no longer am quite so focused on “saving” moments. Even the best photos of my experiences, whether taken by me, or by somebody else, never do the moment justice, the best they can do is serve as a kind of mental book mark, a trigger for future recall.

In the Herman Creek drainage, there is a cedar swamp that had very recently taken some major lightening strikes. There were several fallen cedars that looked way too big to have ever succumbed to anything, and many more standing giants that bore huge, jagged black scars. I maneuvered around, trying to find a spot to take a picture, then finally just put the camera away.

I made camp just on the other side of the east fork of Herman Creek. I made the mistake crawling into my tent and laying on the sleeping pad, for “just a few minutes,” and fell almost instantly asleep. I was tired from eight miles, a little dehydrated, and probably a little hypoglycemic.

I woke just before dark and ate. As far as I knew, I was the only person for miles, and I realized how rare of an experience that was these days. Most people probably would go their whole lives without being farther than a couple hundred feet from another human being, and I was eight miles up the drainage.

I'd grown remarkably comfortable with myself over the last couple of years. I'd always been introverted and self reliant, but I had come to be at peace with myself. Earlier in the week, I woke up with a realization: there was nothing wrong with my life. That morning when I meditated, when I was supposed to be just observing thoughts and letting them go, that idea kept echoing through my head: there was nothing wrong with my life.

I was still turning that idea over in my head. I had grown accustomed to there being something wrong, some crisis to be solved. Not having a crisis seemed like a crisis itself. As I sat in my campsite and wrote in my journal, I realized I hadn’t had any significant symptoms of PTSD in weeks. Memories were just memories now, things consigned to the past, rather than competing with the present.

I didn’t dread the future. I realized as I sat there with the sun setting, as it grew almost too dark to write, that if the rest of my life stayed just like this, it would be a fine life. I could die and say I was living with honest intent. Instead of dreading the future, I was looking forward to stepping into the unknown. I no longer felt like I was living on borrowed time. Every day was still a good day to die, but I generally had other plans.

I eschewed a fire. I didn't need one to keep warm, and it somehow seemed wrong to burn a tree that had grown for dozens of years, just for my own entertainment. I realized though, that if someone had been with me, I would have wanted a fire. Sharing a fire with someone is a primitive, atavistic connection that seems hardwired into us.

As content as I was by myself, I could still feel a loneliness that was never far away. I sat there in the quiet, and thought how nice it would be to share this, to share an after dinner shot of bourbon with some one. It be wonderful to have this moment be part of a story shared with someone else, instead of just myself.

Darkness came quickly in the gorge. I went from having a little trouble seeing my journal to needing my head lamp to navigate my campsite in just a few minutes. I had packed a book with me, but had little energy for reading. Despite my nap, I was still tired, and sleep seemed like a good idea. Also, my head lamp seemed like an intrusion up here. It seemed wrong somehow to make the effort to walk all the way up here, like some humble supplicant, and then light everything up with a lithium battery driven LED.

The money I’d spent on a new sleeping bag and pad where well spent. As I laid there, I held two ideas in my head at the same time: I was both really happy to be here by myself, and yet it would be nice to have a a hip pressed against mine, to fall asleep wrapped up with a woman in a tangle of arms and legs.

It seemed like almost everything else I needed was coming my way, and just maybe, if I didn’t become too wrapped up in my own desires and push things too hard, this would come too. Faith isn’t a word that comes easy to me, but it seemed like little by little, every day I was getting a little more. It was faith grounded in the experience of things slowly getting better, and based on my ability to slowly live more skillfully. Maybe that’s the best kind faith to have.

I woke in the middle of the night, I’m not sure what time, as I’d intentionally not taken a watch, preferring instead to just live according to the sun for a day or two. I was cold and had a full bladder. I stumbled out of the tent, found a likely spot, and made a concession to the reality of not peeing on my feet by switching on my head lamp.

Two green eyes floated out in the woods ahead of me. It was far enough out that I couldn’t see to who they belonged, but close enough to catch a strong reflection. I stood there far longer than I needed to, watching those eyes. I had no reference to tell how far off the ground they were, but I had the impression I was looking at something big. They didn’t move and neither did I.

I wasn’t afraid, exactly. On a rational level, I knew that I was more likely to be mugged and murdered at the trail head than die in a cougar or bear attack. On a a deeper level, I just didn’t feel any menace. Instead, I felt humbled. Those eyes seemed to carry a message. “You are welcome here, but don’t confuse that with being in charge.”

I switched off the light and just stood there. For how long I’m not sure, but my eyes slowly grew used to the dark. First I could see the patches of snow on the ground, then, slowly I could make out my tent. I stood there and listened, hearing nothing but Herman creek.

I went back to sleep, and dreamed of cougars. I didn’t dream of being eaten by one, or chased, but dreamed of their mere presence in the world. It was comforting, somehow, to know they were there.

I hiked out the next day. It’s always easier on the second day of a trip to settle in and stay in the moment. I wasn’t trying to hurry, but I made record time. My body felt good. I wasn’t stiff or sore. Half of that I attributed to conditioning, the other half to the fact that I had invested in a high quality air mattress.

About four miles from the trail head, I encountered two women in their 50’s who were hiking up the drainage. They were both wearing tank tops and shorts. One of them was carrying a water bottle, but I saw no other concession to the fact that they were inside a wilderness area.

We had a strange, disjointed conversation. One woman kept asking how to get down to the creek. I kept explaining that the trail crossed the East Fork of Herman Creek, but it was still about 4 miles away. She kept insisting that she “just wanted to get down to the water.”

She’s passed two maps showing the trail stayed well above the creek, without crossing it until it was well up the drainage. I was standing there tired, but happy wearing 30 pounds of gear designed to keep me alive, while she was standing there wearing just enough clothes to die quickly of hypothermia, frustrated and indignant that I wasn’t giving her the answer she wanted to hear. It was obvious she was going to refuse to believe that she couldn't get to Herman Creek for another four miles, because, after all, this was the Herman Creek trail.

I realized we were standing in the same place, but having two different experiences. I’d studied wilderness survival, good backpacking practices, bought gear, and spent an hour or so poring over my route on topo maps and google earth. By all appearances, she had hopped in her car, decided to hike up Herman Creek because it sounded good, ignored two maps thoughtfully provided by the Forest Service that plainly showed she couldn't do what she wanted to do, and was ignoring plain evidence that the idea in her head didn’t match the reality in front of her.

I suddenly had a greater understanding of how search and rescue cases happen.

She finally said, “look, I just want to know how to get down to the creek. Would you just tell me?”
My good mood evaporated. I pointed straight down the cliff, “you can go that way, but I wouldn’t recommend it, or you can go that way for four more miles.” I pointed up the trail.

There are folks who, because of their education, family background, and position in life, aren’t used to hearing something they don’t want to hear, and don’t frequently have to deal with reality being different from their wishes. When confronted with an uncomfortable reality, there is a particular pained expression they get. I’m intimately familiar with that expression, because, for whatever reason, I’m often the one with the big bucket of reality.

She pursed her lips, took a deep breathe, and once again explained that she just wanted to get down to the creek, and since this was the “Herman Creek Trail,” there just had to be a way to do it without walking four more miles. Because, apparently, the problem wasn’t in her understanding of geography. The problem was the big scruffy looking guy with the backpack was just too stupid to understand the question.

I put my sunglasses back on, and just walked past her. As I trod down the path, I turned on my GPS, marked the spot and time, and memorized the two women’s physical descriptors. I did this because if I saw on the news that Hood River County Search and Rescue was looking for two lost women, this would be valuable information. It seemed like about all I could do for them.

There’s an expression from the stoner 90’s that came to mind: those two had “harshed my buzz.” I resolved to put it out of my mind, which was tough, because all my irritation aside, I was convinced those two were in over their head, and I’m a sucker for somebody that needs rescued.

I succeeded, mostly, in getting back into my groove on the way out. I started passing more people out on day hikes, and one overly friendly, crotch sniffing dog of indeterminate breeding. Many of the people had questions: how long had a I been out, where had I stayed, how much did my pack weigh, wasn’t I scared doing this by myself?

I try to be a good ambassador for backpacking, even though questions get a little old. One little boy stared at me, mouth agape, like I was some apparition from the woods. I took off my sunglasses and that seemed to help.

Finally, I was back at the car, and enjoyed that few minutes of feeling weightless that happens right after taking off a backpack. I sat there on the bumper of my car, eating the 11th essential, Oreos, for almost half an hour. I was tired, and didn’t feel like hiking anymore, but I wasn’t quite ready to go yet either.

There’s a peculiar re-entry that happens to me after being in the woods. It takes time for my eyes to acclimate to colors other than greens and browns. Industrial sounds seem way too loud, and cars seem to move way too fast.

Finally, I was ready. The traffic was still too fast, and too loud, but I managed. I found myself really looking forward to the next time.

Thinking out loud about writing

2010-05-30T21:46:00.000-07:00

I have been estranged from a serious writing practice for far too long. Before being Overcome By Events (Part I), I wrote two novels. #1 is a mess, a sort of good idea grafted onto a not terribly good idea. It’s unpublishable in its present form, and I can probably flog away at it for ten more years, and it will still be unpublishable. But I still love it, or more properly, love the characters. They may live again.

#2 was better, and an honest assessment says it might even be publishable, because it is, after all, genre fiction, and the bar is lower. But, I’m not sure I want to feed that genre, so there it sits.

Writing fiction is something I can't do write now. In the past, I had to check out on life to become fully involved in fiction. Right now I’m more fully involved in life than I have been in a long time, so that doesn't appeal. I may, someday, write fiction again as a form of truth telling, as Tim O’Brien does (although likely not as well), but now is not that time.

Writing is a perishable skill. The facile use of language is only built through practice, and just like any practice, if you stop for a while you get rusty. Picking up again has been painful, perhaps because I’m more attuned to clunky sentences than I used to be, but the skill has gone away. The only antidote seems to be writing.

Then there is material. I’ve blogged sporadically these last three years, mostly about things that happened long ago, or things that were cerebral and could be held at arms length. That was comfortable. Lately though, my writing has caught up with my life, and that is less comfortable. The last few thousand words have become a project, one I jokingly refer to as “The Dude’s Eat, Pray, Love.” I think it could fly, even though I’m not even done living it yet, much let writing it. I even have a real title: Burning Dead Wood.

It doesn’t lend itself, somehow, to the immediacy of a blog. It’s too close. Sometimes blogging isn’t considered “serious” writing, but I disagree. Rory made me vomit with his blog once*, and another friend changed my views of faith with hers. For some reason, putting all this in book makes sense but, right now living an experience and putting it on the net a few weeks later is too much.

It seems dangerous. All writers have an urge for an outlet, and the net is just too damn easy sometimes, because there are somethings that don’t need to be let out in the wild. Writing about relationships is off limits, even if done in the most elliptical sense. There are also some things that are just pure purging, what I’ve heard referred to as an “oh the pain” piece. When Natalie assigned three minutes of keeping the hand moving on the color red, I went for 15 on what it’s like to walk into a house three minutes after a suicide by .30-06. It’s good, descriptive, concrete writing. And nobody else ever needs to read it.

But the practice feels good. I’ve started moving life forward, and writing will be a part of that.

* Sometimes a piece of writing captures something perfectly. Rory did that with these words: “a mixture of very fresh, high-quality meat and Ivory soap.” I read that, and there I was again...

Peacemaking Part II

2010-05-03T19:07:00.000-07:00

I'm in a fallow period right now, a time when I'm thinking more than doing, which is not my natural state. But there's a Next Step I need to take, and I'm not sure what that is right now. So I'm studying the tracks laid by people who have gone forward ahead of me.

Anshin's book was transformative. His story resonates with me, even though his solutions probably aren't mine. He became a mendicant monk, and it saved him. The monastic lifestyle doesn't appeal to me (although I remain open to the idea that match.com might drive me to it), but just knowing he is out there has been good for me. He isn't "just" a monastic, but is engaged in the world through his Zaltho Foundation.

Tich Nhat Han is a beautiful soul, and his peace work is informed by witnessing things I can't imagine. I will probably return to his works periodically. There are some thinkers who I have to digest slowly over time.

Bernie Glassman made me much more at peace with the idea of Bearing Witness. His is no cloistered, ethereal Zen. The engaged Buddhism of his Zen Peacemaker Order is something I respect deeply.

Aidan Delgado's Sutras Of Abu Gharib hit me much harder than I expected. Delgado's background, and experiences are different than mine, but but somehow I saw my own confused twenty something self in his narrative. I was lucky that someone suggested the Coast Guard to me, so I didn't wind up in the Army (at least not at first), and there was no war during my time.

O'Briens In The Lake Of The Woods, was fiction, but it was still true. This book, and its meditations on character, left me disturbed for days.

Rosenberg's Non-Violent Communcation was problematic. Rosenburg labels as "violence," actions I would describe as "unskillfull," or maybe just "being an asshole." I understand that violence begins in how we think and what we say, but when I hear the word "violence," my visceral expectation is something more than a snide comment. I expect to see blood and hair on the walls. It occurred to me as I read this, that just like the English language needs more than one word for "love," maybe we need more than one for "violence," as well.

There is gold in Rosenberg's book. A process that makes people responsible for their own feelings and reactions, and makes them own the process of clearly articulating their own needs is conflict reducing, relationship enhancing, and marriage saving. But I choke on the word violence as he uses it.

I will, however, give Rosenberg a second read. I was still somewhat Overcome By Events during the first read, and thus distracted, so I'll try again before making final judgement.

Then there is Ueshiba, who sits patiently on my bookshelf. I've held The Art of Peace in my hands more than once these last few months, then put it back on the shelf. I'm saving Ueshiba for the fall, when I have decided I will make my decision about whether I will wear a gi again.

There are more. I have some Marcus Borg I've been holding at arm's length for a while, for a couple of reasons. There are some other Christian writers, a book about compassion, the true title of which escapes me. Plus there is the sitting, and the walking, and new connections.

This post is more of a brain dump, a check in, than a report of resolution. It's also a request for help. How about it friends: thugs, former thugs, and others, what else should I read? Who else has ideas I need to absorb during this fallow period?

Peace Making

2010-03-30T20:35:00.001-07:00

I keep getting reminded that peace is not just "the absence of conflict." There are a bunch of quotes that all riff around that theme, but it's taken me a while to figure out what that really means for me.

It has been good for me to not go to work everyday prepared for violence.It's been three years at the new gig. It used to be, if I showed up at work without weapons, I could get in trouble. Now I work in a place where they don't allow pocket knives in the building. Other conflicts have faded too, and that is good. It has all lead to a lessening of defensiveness, a more reasoned perspective on the idea of "threats," and the beginnings of the ability to relax.

But it's not enough. Merely walking away from conflict is not the same thing as creating peace. Rejecting one thing often leaves a hole, until you embrace something else. I've been in that in between state for a couple of years now.

Peace is not just the absence of conflict. So to have peace, Ihave to study peace making.

It's hard to say when, exactly this "crystallization of conscience" happened. I wish I could say there was one singular moment on the cushion, or some profound experience that led to an epiphany, but it's not quite that easy. Re-reading Anshin's book was part of it. Spending time with a beautiful, but troubled, spirit, was another. Simply being still, and not on the alert, has been huge. But there was no moment of the kind we all like to read about.

Gradually, tools of the old ways have been sold, and used to buy freedom. Surgical Speed Shooting and Green Eyes and Black Rifles have been cleaned off the shelf, replaced by Ghandi, Tich Nhat Hahn, Bernie Glassman, and Marshall Rosenburg.

There is trepidation. Many of my old friends would dismiss these ideas out of hand. Too pie in the sky. Sounds wonderful, but the REAL world doesn't work that way.

Maybe. But...

People who practice peace making know things I don't. There are valuable things here, new perspectives from people who think beautifully and deeply about the same issues I've wrestled with, and come to very different conclusions, conclusions that revolve around things getting better, not just keeping them from getting worse. I feel like I'm drinking deeply from a new well.

I stumble over these ideas occasionally. I would make a poor pacifist, and I can't imagine that changing. I balk when the definition of "violence," gets stretched to include behavior I would categorize as unskillful behavior, or just being a jerk. I understand that the seeds starts small, but still...

This is an opportunity to approach things with a beginner's mind, to both retain what I've learned, but also stop doing things that aren't working. Life hands us that opportunity occasionally, but you have to be paying attention to notice it, and have the courage to change.

A quick note...

2010-03-16T21:27:00.000-07:00

For those of you who have asked, yes, there is more coming. I had the wind knocked out of my sails and have taken a tactical pause. For those of you who advised me to "get back on the horse that threw me," I've taken the advice, but am starting to think it wasn't a good idea...

To the guy from Germany who emailed me: Dude, I was deleting a bunch of other emails and yours got lost in the shuffle. Resend?

The value of exceptional friends

2010-02-28T15:42:00.000-08:00

One of the best ways to find out who your friends are is to change, to shift your world on its axis and see who is left standing once the dust settles. I'm lucky enough to have a group of friends, who instead of packing it in and moving on, have been willing to stand there, bemused, and say, "well this should be interesting."

Another way is to firmly plant your head in a dark, and noisome place occasionally. The true friends are the ones who let you flounder for just long enough, then show up, and hand you a crowbar.

It's been an interesting six months. The year before that wasn't all that interesting, just trying. Now that the dust has settled, I realize how vital the connection to friends has been.

Thanks guys.

Martial Arts Revisited

2010-02-18T12:37:00.000-08:00

For the first time in years, I am formally without a martial practice. I quit Krav.

There are all sorts of reasons not to quit. I still don't have much of a ground game. My clinch work still isn't very good. Even after years of practice, I am essentially a tank. When answering a poll about "which martial artist do you most resemble," I mark "other," and write in "Godzilla."

There are lifetimes of work to do: the ground game, integrating combatives, multiples, flow, positional fighting, FMA, BJJ. That's before we start dealing with the "ologies." There's no end to this. I could keep my little monkey mind busy with shiny new ideas for years. It's a giant puzzle where one solution leads to another.

And I don't care.

This tension has been mounting for the last year. The shift away from the defensive world view, toward something more open and accepting, perhaps even gentle, has put me increasingly at odds with this martial practice, which focuses on living in condition yellow. That's a place in which I lived for too long, and still fall into.

Part of the problem is that I haven't really been doing "Martial Arts," in the strictest sense. I've been doing combatives, or defensive tactics. When I was doing "martial arts," I had enough dirt time that I frequently found myself thinking "this isn't gonna work." I was frequently right. Not so with Krav. It fit with my experiences, not so much because of the techniques, but because of the mindset.

But I don't care.

Life is different now. 90 seconds at Burger King was two years ago, and unlikely to be repeated. I'm accumulating peace. I'm less afraid of dying, and more afraid of not living well. In my life, from the second grade until two years ago, fights were just a thing that happened from time to time. I'm looking forward to spending the rest of my life without one. If I have to let those skills outside the box again, then so be it, but I'm not going to spend much time on them.

There is the crux: time. My life is short, and precious. I could work my ground game, integration, FMA, BJJ, or I can spend my time studying non-violent communication, permaculture, intentional living, finding ways to make things a little better instead of focusing on ways to keep them from getting worse.

There are people I will miss. Apparently they will miss me more than I ever would have thought. Sometimes I'm not good at seeing the regard other people have for me. They are fine folks, well intentioned in their own way, but their way isn't mine anymore and my presence there is feeding the parts of me I most want to change.

I will continue to teach "self-defense," when offered the opportunity. I feel like I am bridging two worlds there. I've an invite to a Violence Prone Play Group, which I would be a fool not to check out.

And then there's Budo.

This summer I rescued a bag of obis from my parent's attic. They were of various colors and I considered keeping them all, but in the end, I kept only the white. The dogi that goes with it is long gone, but the belt remains. I've held it in my hands a couple of times, and once, couldn't resist the urge to see if I remembered how to tie it. I didn't do a bad job.

That white obi sits in my closet, and there's a picture of it on my Facebook. It's a reminder to keep the beginner's mind, that one I start thinking I'm skillful, that I know something, that's when I screw up the worst.

That obi is twenty years old this year, and I wonder if it's time to turn the wheel back full circle. I went out with an Aikidoka this fall, and while that relationship didn't get off the launch pad, some of the discussion reverberates still. I've held Aikido with equal parts fascination and disdain. I still contend sometimes, that nobody should be allowed to study Aikido until they've been in one fight where they were in serious danger of dying, but that's a discussion for another time. Besides, I've got that ticket punched.

My fear has been if I stepped back on to an Aikido mat, that voice that says "this isn't gonna work," will kick in. But work for what? A return to Budo would be a turning inward. When I stepped into a Soto Zendo, it seemed almost tailor made for me, an antidote for reliving sights, smells and sounds that should have been comfortably in the past. Likewise, Ueshiba may have given the world a road map that works for me, in wrestling with the martial part of myself.

But for right now, enough. This spring I am going to plant tomatoes. This summer I am going to backpack. In the meantime I'll occasionally, look at that obi, sitting on a shelf in my closet, and maybe by fall, there will be a hint of which way to go.

Hero Myths

2010-01-31T22:50:00.000-08:00

The Greeks had their myths with their gods. Our larger than life heroes mostly live in movies, books and television. Call it what you what: popular culture, zeitgeist, whatever, it matters. I've lost track of the number guys I know who are in their 60's, who will admit their world view was shaped by John Wayne, only to have those illusions blown away in a Vietnam rice paddy. We get sold the hero myth from infancy, which is convenient every time we need a new batch of 20 year olds to go die somewhere they can't find on a map.

Hero, in most myths, mostly means "warrior." That's become a slippery term these days. The first definition is, "a person engaged or experienced in warfare; soldier.," but we've co-opted it to cover many things, and created a second definition "a person who shows or has shown great vigor, courage, or aggressiveness, as in politics or athletics.". In popular vernacular, soldiers are warriors, which makes sense. Cops are warriors, which makes sense, but slightly less so. Firefighters, maybe even less. Then we get to teachers, "spiritual warriors," even, "peaceful warriors." The term has stretched to the point I don't even know what it means any more. Because, apparently, if you aren't some kind of warrior, you're less.

It's powerful stuff, these stories of heroes who confront evil, save the day, make stuff happen. It's not all bad. It inspires great sacrifice, great discipline. I've met people who, despite their involvement in wars with which I disagree, have done things I admire.

But it's also a flawed, or perhaps better yet, incomplete, view of the world. The mantle of hero, of warrior, is intoxicating, and in it's own way, toxic. The only way to be that person is to have some Other, some enemy to prevail against. With no conflict, there is no identity. The temptation, always, if a conflict doesn't present itself is to find one, or even create one. The whole thing becomes narcissistic, more about your own individual valor, more about the number of coups you have counted, than any sense of service to anything larger. "Service" can become a veneer, an excuse. This was readily apparent to me in counter-drug work. Lip service was paid to "keeping dope off the streets," and "saving the children," but in reality it was about the rush and keeping score: pounds seized, dollars seized, guns seized, people arrested. It was a big boy game of cowboys and Indians, where the ultimate reward was the rush of being special, a modern day cowboy.

Few things feed the ego more than that special status. After a while "special" becomes "separate." Some of it is voluntary, you start to prefer the company of your own kind, and some of it is involuntary, our society has uneasy relationship with its warriors. It likes watching them on television, but they make people uncomfortable at parties.

Sometimes, something comes along at exactly the right time. More popular culture: I saw the movie Heat for the first time at exactly the right time. It's a movie, but as a metaphor it works. McCauley and Hanna are the same, they just get their paychecks from different places. It's not a new trope, but it was well written in this version. Hanna's conversation with his wife Justine, (the one where talks about the eight ball hemorrhages), is pure gold.

Always, these myths give us "closure." The hero wins. All the questions are settled. The big climactic showdown imbues all the violence, all the sacrifice, with meaning, makes it all worthwhile. When you're trying to live this myth, it seems to make sense, but held at arms length, it's almost embarrassingly juvenile.

Even more pop culture: I read No Country For Old Men, at exactly the right moment too. The violence that blows through that book (and the movie too, it's faithful) is, in the end, meaningless. No one wins. No one is redeemed by it. It just is. McCarthy denies us the fundamental tropes of the hero story. Llewellyn Moss is gunned down unceremoniously. We don't even get to see his death on screen, and in the end, it means nothing.. There is no big show down, no great final orgy of violence that brings us "closure."

Most of the time, Our Hero doesn't get to retire until The Final, Ultimate, Very Last Showdown. But Ed Tom "wins," simply by walking away from it all, and more importantly walking towards a quiet life with his wife and his horses. But then what?

That's an uneasy question, with no easy answers. Because all this is, fundamentally, an identity. And it's an attractive one. One that makes you feel special, better than lesser men. You've gone and seen the elephant, on one fashion or another, and it's hard not to feel superior in some ways. Without that identity who are you?

Again, sometimes things come along at the right time. Claude Anshin Thomas, has the hero cred: at least one DFC and a couple of Purple Hearts to serve as bookends. He also had the head full of snakes to go with them. At Hell's Gate landed in my lap at just the right time, read from cover to cover on a hot July day when I was supposed to be deer scouting. I don't even remember how I became aware of the book, I suspect some martial arts connection or another. But I do remember shutting it at the end and crying for the first time in years, and not long after, starting a Zen practice.

Anshin figured out a way to stop living a myth and start living a life. It's quieter. Less exciting, and both more certain and less certain at the same time.

I typed the sentence, "there's no roadmap for this life," but I don't think that's true. Siddharta gave us one. Jesus another.

The issues are the same: injustice, evil. But the first step is to look inward, find the injustice and evil in there, and then radiate outward, instead of trying to control and conquer. "First you must conquer yourself," is a piece of martial arts fortune cookie wisdom that to which we all pay lip service, but I rarely see it enacted. I'm not even sure I like the word "conquer," in that sentence. Maybe "befriend yourself," is a better term, and from there you can befriend the world, instead of conquering either.

There's a temptation to call guys like Anshin "spiritual heroes" or "spiritual warriors," as if what they are doing needs to be legitimized by those labels, as if we don't give them that same "warrior" or "hero" status, they are lesser. But how about if we just don't? How about we just honor that life without making the comparison?

Because I'm not sure how to compare living a myth with living a life.

Order and Justice

2010-01-29T16:33:00.000-08:00

There's a big difference between order and justice. That's probably not a big revelation for most of you, but lately I've been ruminating on exactly what that means in my life. It's an idea I've kicked around off and on, and meant to write about, but it got blasted to the front by this.

I used to deal with Stan when he was a kid, doing out of control kid stuff. Fighting, stealing, spitting on the sidewalk, stuff like that. It was pretty obvious at the time that he was a victim of his own circumstances, and now it's obvious, as these things go, that he's become the victimizer. It's a slow, inevitable process that I've watched happen before.

The Old Gig was like living in a different world. Portland and Eugene both have a cheery, progressive reputation, but I often felt like I was living in a completely different city. Both are hubs for human trafficking. Teenage runaways get fed into a giant machine of porn and prostitution and ground up, to either wind up dead, wasted, or part of the machine themselves.

It's ugly, violent, and self perpetuating, and most people really don't care. When I brushed up against this world, talked to some of the kids, dealt with some of the adults running the show, I wasn't surprised so much about the fact that it exists, so much as I was surprised at the lack of outrage.

People really care about order. A traffic problem can generate dozens of irate calls to city hall. A bunch of unruly teenagers hanging out downtown, ruining business, can result in an entire downtown being re-engineered.

We do a good job of keeping order in this country. The streets, are, for the most part, safe. If you aren't in an abusive relationship or engaged in criminal enterprise, you can walk around blithely unaware of your surroundings and not be touched by violence unless you happen to be statistically unlucky. That's no mean feat, one to which many places can't lay claim.

But how about justice?

I used to hold the term "social justice" at arm's length, mostly because I heard it used most often by people who really did think, despite actions and evidence to the contrary, that I did things like pull people over because of their color. But lately, as I start to examine the thought of getting my life in line with my values, I'm holding that term a little closer, turning it over in my hands.

We have a "criminal justice" system, that I think is mis-named, and more importantly unfair to the very people who work inside of it. One thing I was always encouraged to do was to recognize when I couldn't "arrest my way out of," a problem. We have a system in place that is supposed to promote justice, but we give the people employed by it the tools only to create order.

The cops can create and maintain order, but it takes everybody to create justice. Stan is going to go to jail. Hopefully his socially sanctioned time out will last a long time, because once somebody reaches a point where pimping out underage girls makes sense, I think they've reached a point where they are fundamentally broken.

But that doesn't give us justice. Justice is looking at what got us here in the first place. Justice is looking at why we have so many throw away kids running the streets. Justice is also looking at some uncomfortable facts about "normal" people. The Internet is, first and foremost, a giant distribution system for porn. There is essentially no regulation, and guys, those girls you're looking at are mostly vulnerable, exploited and frequently underage. You're part of the problem. Save the libertarian arguments please.

What isn't mentioned in the newspaper article are the dozens of men who paid for sex with these girls. They work with you, ride the bus with you, and yes, some of them even probably go to church with you. We criminalize the pimps, even the prostitutes, but quite frequently when it comes to the customers, well, boys will be boys.

It's slowly starting to change. Shared Hope International is working the rescue side. Even more encouragingly, The Defenders USA is working the demand side. If you are looking for opportunities for charitable giving, fire away.*

Order can make us feel good, because that's when somebody else, some Other is getting arrested, and that makes us all feel safe and righteous.

Justice is a little harder, because suddenly, we're a part of it, through our action or our inaction. We can ignore something and we don't usually contribute to dis-order, but the act of ignoring, the act of not-acting, can contribute to injustice everyday. Silence is consent and a lack of outrage sometimes makes us all complicit.

So what to do? Our government does a good job of maintaining order, but I'm deeply distrustful of it's ability to promote justice. Personally, it all comes back to the same thing: paying attention, and trying to make sure my life reflects my values. On a personal level, I'm not sure there's much more I can do on this particular front: I'm not a customer and I slide both Shared Hope and Defend USA some bucks whenever I can, but for me, it creates some larger questions. What IS "social justice," by my metric, and more importantly, what am I gonna do about it?

Guess I'll just have to sit with that for a while.

* please use some caution. The Defenders USA is the group I'm talking about here. "Defend USA" is a different organization entirely, with a different focus.

On the bus

2010-01-29T10:31:00.000-08:00

Public transportation has become my favorite laboratory. It's a perfect exercise in non-control and non-judging. I was talking to a co-worker the other day who also used to have The Old Gig. He still can't take the bus. It's still too much loss of control, too much exposure. When all your threats are people, people become threats.

I've reached the point where I enjoy it. The human parade on the bus is a source of fascination, and sometimes, involvement. Every day I get an hour's worth of lesson in the human condition.

Sometimes it's more extreme than others. A few inches of late afternoon snow really shouldn't have turned into a five hour bus commute, but it did. All cities have a personality. New Haven was a mean racist bastard dressed in a nice suit monogrammed with the Yale crest. After 8 years I think I have one for Portland: usually well intentioned but frequently incompetent. I think that's fair.

It becomes obvious, right away, that there's no easy way out, this is just going to take a while, and I decide to use it as an exercise in choosing my mood. I've forgotten my phone, on this day of all days, but a woman who sits across from me is kind enough to let me use hers. A quick phone call and I know my kid is arranged for the night so all there is to do is wait.

So I wait, for the next five hours, and I observe. I like to sit in the back of the bus, on the left hand side, in the seats that face inward, so that's where I am tonight. I wonder how many of you reading will understand intuitively why I sit there, and how many won't.

Non-judgment is my goal, but the guy in the very back looks like an asshole. He has chosen the back row of seats, dead center, and has expanded to fill the seats on either side of him, and glares when any body walks towards the back of the bus. I see guys do that frequently. Part of the "public" in public transportation is that somebody might sit next to you. The bus isn't quite full, but I wonder if he'd make somebody stand rather than yield.

Over the next five hours he makes nine phone calls, all to home, presumably to his wife. Each is a little more bitter. She needs to do this. He knows he won't make it, but it's not his fault. She shouldn't be mad. Sprinkled into it are lots of instructions on how, exactly, every thing should be done, while he's not there but she is. The phone gets slammed shut a little harder each time.

It's annoying, but mostly I feel sorry for the guy. He's making his own hell, from his own actions, just like the rest of us. It sounds like some other people are on the trip with him.

The woman sitting next to me is probably in her late twenties, sort of goth looking. The book she's reading looks interesting, and I'm tempted to chat her up about it, but she seems pretty involved in the book, and besides, I'm leery of doing that on the bus. Part of it is my own shyness, part of it is because I don't want to be "that guy," on the bus. She makes three phone calls. During number one, her and her partner change plans with a rapidity and flexibility that most emergency services outfits don't achieve. Number two is a status check: no I'm still on the bus, yes I miss you too. Number three is to say good night to some kids, I'm not sure exactly how many.

There's a bunch of bitching and kvetching, which I try not to join in, even in my head. It beats walking. My biggest relief is that I'm not sitting in traffic burning my own gas. I do wish I'd brought another book, as I finish mine pretty quick.

The woman who loaned me her phone started out bright and cheerful, but by the end has decided everybody at Tri-Met and ODOT should be hung. It's an interesting transformation to watch.

Two people start pinging my radar. I wind up on the bus pretty frequently with cops and Feds, and they usually aren't as incognito as they think they are. One is sitting in the back right corner, with a space between her and asshole man. She's fifty? Maybe sixty? I don't know because I'm bad at judging ages. She's working a crossword, but watching the other passengers with one eye, and when somebody lets out one of the more ill-informed statements about how emergencies work, I see an eye roll. I can't quite place her

The other guy is sitting in the back left corner, again with a space between him and asshole man. He's younger than me, I'm guessing just my side of 30. He looks like he's flaked out, barely awake, slumped over in the corner. But his eyes are switched on and watchful, and it's pretty obvious he's getting tired of the bitching. Short hair cut, jeans, hiking boots. The shell is a Snugpak, which is suggestive, but not definitive. There's a MOLLE pouch rigged to his backpack. Vet? Current cop? I can't quiteplace him either.

Finally we are done. I've been doing the math: I can do 2.25 miles in an hour, on broken ground with a 30 pound pack. I was guessing I could have done 2.5, even on snow sidewalks. We pull in to Tigard in almost exactly the time it would have taken to walk. That might be an interesting experiment

There's a stampede off the bus, except for me, and the man and the woman in the two corners. Asshole boy practically runs everybody over, the three of us lag behind. We've been on the bus five hours, another 45 seconds to avoid the crush of bodies doesn't matter that much.

She goes first, then the two guys. When we step out the back door, she turns to both of us. "Ok, I have to ask. You guys are both cops right? I work in records and I don't recognize either of you, but I'm guessing."

I'm gobsmacked for a second. Then I throw my head back and laugh. It's all I can do. You think you're done, and then you find out you're not.

I explain, that no, I'm not, at least not anymore. The other guy mumbles something about working in IT, and is off, high tailing it across the lot to his truck.

We both look at him and raise an eyebrow, and bid each other good night.

I could have walked, but my feet would have been cold. I ride the bus to learn about how I see other people, but there's value in learning how other people see you too.

Just Walking

2010-01-18T12:54:00.001-08:00

I'm no longer "walking it off," but just walking. That's a good thing. The past is in it's rightful place, the dead are buried and staying that way. About five minutes in, I realize I'm no longer going to the woods as an antidote for something. It's no longer the "other place." That's a good thing.
This isn't really wilderness. It's a park, albeit a big one. But I've seen plenty of deer here, up close, and I've seen bear scat, elk tracks and what I believe are bobcat prints, so there's a reality here, compressed into a small area, that I like to step into for a little while.
I'm out of the car for five minutes when I see a doe and a fawn. Junior gets a spit bath for quite a while. I had no idea young deer required so much grooming. It's early morning and they are content to amble through cover, browsing here and there while I follow. They both know I'm there, but I'm polite enough to make a pretense of stealth: freezing when they look in my direction, timing my movements to the sounds of the planes flying over head. They don't seem to mind. There is no hunting here, and no dogs, and they seem to know it.
The beach by the river is a great place to track. At some point a doe and a fawn have broke cover to go drink. Maybe it's the same pair I saw earlier, although I doubt it. The fawn I saw earlier was a big boy, and the tracks I see here are dainty, but it's hard to tell in the sand. I wish I was good enough to figure out how old the tracks are. I guess older than this morning, maybe last night? I don't know.
I sit there, and realize every move that's recorded in the sand makes sense. They broke cover at a particular place, because it offered the shortest exposed distance to the water. They chose this spot because they only have to watch one direction for threats, up the beach. It makes sense, if you are paying attention.
Walking through the woods has become, almost, but not quite, kinhin. This is good because my misfiring amygdyla still makes zazen difficult at times, and still commits the occasional hijacking, although these days I'm having more more moments of eustress than distress. The problem is, the limbic system doesn't know always know the difference between the two.
I move down the trail, finding bear and coyote scat that looks fresh. From last night? One advantage of living a particular spot of woods is that you know what was there last night and what is new. When I was a kid, the woods were out the back door, and any change was easy to bookmark. Now going to the woods is another thing to be scheduled, fit in between work and other commitments. Someday I will leave suburbia.
I see an ear flick, and realize I'm 30 feet from another doe. I think I've probably surprised her in her bed. The grass is matted down but she's standing, staring. I didn't see her stand up. I stand still and avert my eyes. I've found from long experience the best way to make an animal bolt is that direct, predator stare. She starts browsing, with one eye cocked in my direction. She tolerates me moving closer, the whine of the camera as the lense extends, with just the occasional tail flicker. Then my stomach growls and she's gone, hopping through the obstacle course of the woods with that impossible speed that I always find incredible. Apparently having a big human near you with a camera is ok, but a big hungry human is not ok.
I move back into the main part of the park, with the picnic shelters, horse shoe pits, and parking lots, and somehow I know I'm done for the day. I could stay longer, I have no plans for the day, but it's enough. Life has become quieter, more about paying attention than making things change, and that's very welcome.

Teaching

2009-12-21T21:24:00.001-08:00

I used to hate this expression:

“You don't have to know everything to teach, you just have to know more than the students.”

It always smacked of laziness, that it was ok to be less than an expert and still be a teacher.

But now I find myself not knowing everything, but teaching anyway. The last couple of years have left me thinking about what gifts I have for the world, as opposed to what I'm taking. I don't think I have much to say that would be useful to cops, even less so soldiers, but I've stumbled on something I can offer: translating the Land of Chaos to normal people.

I realize I don't know everything, but what I know IS valuable. Things I take for granted: the amygdala hijackings, OODA loops, IntentMeansOppurtunity, power comes from the hips, don't be afraid to make a scene. I feel like Moses coming down with a third tablet sometimes. These things are new, a glimpse into a larger world, even to the two TKD black belts, who know far more about martial arts than I do, but don't seem to know much about violence.

I also notice that just about everything I know, somebody else knew first: Rory, Craig, Marc, Boyd, Geoff, DeBecker. But that's ok, because most of what they knew, somebody else did first, as well. I remember not to rip off anybody, and try to give credit where credit is due.

Designing a curriculum isn't an exercise is deciding what to teach, but deciding what you can not teach, and not short change your students. The first class started out as eight, one hour classes, with a two hour ConSim at the end. Not Enough. At the suggestion of the first class, the second class grew to eight, one and a half hour sessions and a two hour ConSim. Still Not Enough. The next class, by suggestion of the second, will be eight two hour classes, with a two hour ConSim.

It still won't be enough to cover all the reasonable “what if's,” much less the unreasonable ones. It won't be enough to build 3000 good repetitions of one of the techniques, never mind all of them.

It will be, I hope, enough to make people know what they don't know. I hope it will be enough to provide people with a path they can start on. I hope it will be enough to give my students the awareness to see it coming from a block away, and just cross the street.

This is the next chapter in my life's adventure. In both classes, I've learned as much as the students. We've just learned different things.

Yeah

2009-12-14T16:08:00.000-08:00

It's been awhile.

Things I've learned in the last 12 months:

1)Years of cumulative stress build up slowly, and you don't notice the effects until they start to go away.

2)One of the effects is “cognitive impairment.” Has anybody seen my jacket or two hats? At least there haven't been any car accidents this time around. (but nearly, see #4)

3)I need more processing time than I've ever realized before, and now that I'm older, I'm real comfortable with that.

4)Results of putting a 3000 lb automobile through three complete 360's, almost hitting two cars and narrowly avoiding going over a hill in the snow: during the event annoyance at the thought of repairs and injuries, 80bpm pulse rate at the end.

Results of a good night kiss at the end of a date in your late 30's: mild adrenaline rush and pulse rate of 110bpm as you drive off in the car after.

I have a weird amygdala.

5)Life is too short to be miserable.

Looking forward to seeing more of y'all.

Not Hunting

2009-12-14T15:45:00.000-08:00

I've said more than once, “If you're not conflicted about hunting, you're not paying attention.” If you eat meat, I think you should experience the process of turning an animal into food, at least once. If you hunt regularly, you need to pay attention to the fact that you are not, “harvesting game,” or “taking a trophy.” You're killing.

It's important to me to “be in nature.” This creates the question of how, exactly, is my day to day existence different form “nature.” Where does one start, and the other end? And, maybe more importantly, why? I think the re-wilding folks, at their core, are trying to make that dichotomy go away.

My longest backpacking trip this season was 50 miles over three days. That was way too fast, both for my body, and for a sense of belonging. Maybe if I had stuck to the original plan, to do the fifty miles over five or so days and spend time stopping and just sitting in the woods, following animal tracks, figuring out where every body ate, slept, drank and hunted, it would have been different. I traveled that 50 miles, but I don't know that 50 miles. It was better than driving 50 miles, but I'm not sure how much. I felt like a visitor, a tourist.

Hunting is different. You know things. You know where everybody has been moving, eating, drinking, and pooping, even if you never see them. You know that if you walk 20 yards over that way, there's a little depression that could hide you, or deer almost as big as you. You know what time every body gets up, when they go to sleep. You know if you point your gun that way, there's too many skinny little branches in the way, so you shouldn't pull the trigger. You know that over in that direction, there's a clear lane.

But mostly, you know what it is like to just sit in the woods and breathe.

At least, you're supposed to know those things, if you expect to be blessed with an animal in your sights, and meat in your freezer. Some people don't know these things, and they get lucky, or they cheat, and hire a guide to know them for them, but we're back to the difference between hunting and shooting animals.

But this year, the desire to be there, to know those things was perfectly balanced by a desire to not go. There were the “reasons”: scant time that I thought I needed to invest in a relationship, a foot fracture that had opened up on the 50 miles, money, lack of a truck, lack of a freezer, laziness, lack of pre-season scouting.

Those were “reasons,” but the real reason is that moment of noise and blood didn't attract me this year. It wasn't revulsion, or a change of heart. I still hold that if I eat meat, I should hunt, even if just occasionally.

As the season was half over, I realized I didn't miss the hunting, the stock still moment of a sight picture behind a shoulder, but I missed the knowing, the being part of the drama, and not part of the audience.

This will be one of the Things To Figure Out for next year: what's my place on the stage? Is it with a rifle sometimes? Would a bow change things? A camera? Or should I just go and sit with my brothers, with no intention or reason.

I'm no closer to an answer than I've ever been, but at least I'm paying attention.

Walking it off

2009-06-21T13:44:00.001-07:00

I haven't done this in so long I'm embarrassed to admit it. Hunting last fall was different. I had a truck, a cot, a tent bigger than my first apartment. In an hour, I could be out, and eating a cheese and beef enchilada combo.

This time it's just what I can carry. It's been a long time and it feels right.

The trail follows the river for the first couple of miles, and its easy to keep that loping, ground eating pace going. Camelbaks are new to me, and I don't know why I haven't owned one before. My body adjusts quicker than I thought it would. I hit the sweet spot in the pack adjustments and I don't feel the weight anymore.

The mind though, has another agenda. Lately, it's full of “if onlys,” “should haves,” bad memories and worries about the future. The Inner Critic has been busy lately. Plus, many of the bad scenes, the stuff I see sometimes when I close my eyes, the stuff I'd like to forget, all seems to have happened in the summer, when the weather was hot. It's a trigger that I've been dealing with for years, and have just lately come to realize.

With each step makes a little more fall away, until finally, blessedly, I'm in the moment, in my body, not in the “other place,” the place with the bad scenes, or the place where things should have happened differently.

Four miles in, I enter the official wilderness area and let that idea just roll around in my head for awhile. Wilderness. I like the word.

The trail seems to go straight up from here and half way up, I have a gut check. It's pleasant. Cubicle life brings with it no opportunities to hit a wall and keep on going, to think about turning around but charge forward anyway. I miss that. This time, I don't have a fight or an accident waiting for me on the other side, just a really nice view.

Here is a truth: as toxic as it was for me, although I was ill suited, I miss the Other Life. Sometimes I hear a helicopter, or a siren, or smell gunpowder, and today's life seems a little beige. Wilderness may be the way I keep the good parts of the Other Life, without many of the toxic pieces. If nothing else, the scenery is a hell of a lot prettier.

I like it up here. It's real, physically, atavisticly real, in a way the world of paper and electrons just isn't.

I'd planned the beginning of this trip throughly, but not the end. The last measure of my capability was in my late teens, and I have no idea what the man in his mid-thirties can do. I'm pleasantly surprised at how far I've come, but I also recognize that it's getting late, I don't have a firm plan for ending my evening, and I'm starting to display some of the fuzzy thinking that comes with fatigue, a little dehydration and a lack of carb loading.

Camp is spartan, and I like it that way. It's less to keep track of, less to fool with, and most importantly, less to carry. I've indulged in an extravagance: I carried two books, Gary Snyder and Ueshiba. I was unable at the last minute to choose one and leave the other. I wind up reading neither, instead I just lay there, in my bag before it is even full dark, listening and breathing.

I didn't used to eat Motrin for breakfast, but that's the way it is now. I pack and head back, but I don't want to. The urge just to keep going is strong, to just keep putting away the miles, always living in the moment and always ready for whatever comes over the next rise. I wonder if that's what happens to some lost hikers, if they are overcome by some wilderness version of the rapture of the deep, and just keep walking until they are no more.

But I go back, regretting on the down hill not buying new boots. I suspect I'll have bruised toenails and it turns out I'm right. Today, it's easier to quiet the monkey mind with a kind word and a smile, and I wonder if two day trips are just too short, if I'll always spend the first day or two just getting my mind right.
It's hard, stepping back into the “real world.” For a little while, I want to gnaw on that, to explore that dichotomy, but then I decide to just enjoy the air conditioning and get a sandwich.

Myth #7 You can understand violence vicariously.

2009-04-26T11:59:00.000-07:00

Yeah, it's been awhile. I'm moving on to big and better things, so hopefully I'll have some more musing to do. But first, let's clean up loose ends:

You really, really, can't understand violence vicariously. Everybody thinks they can. I blame television. But, you can't. You can think about it all you want, read all the books you want, watch all the movies you want, talk to all the veterans you want, but you can't understand violence vicariously. One of the smartest things you can do is know that you don't know.

Somehow, I've become a “self defense instructor.” Now the task of explaining violence to people with no experience is no longer theoretical. The clumsy analogy that I use is that it's like “trying to explain sex to a virgin.”

Let us take this a step further,

Friend Rory says, “violence is bigger than me.” Those of us with experience, and how have perhaps allowed ourselves to be impressed by it, need to make sure we remember that. If you're a big, professional thug with a gun, badge, and tazer, your experience may not be real useful to the 5” tall woman who's walking across the parking lot with her two year old while she's being woofed by two guys in a Camaro.

Right now, I'm learning as much from my students as they are from me. One of the things that I'm learning is that the fight they may face in the future isn't going to look much like the ones I've had in the past.

Myth #6 Violence has to be an inherently shattering and guilt producing experience.

2009-01-21T13:47:00.000-08:00

I don’t argue at all, that experiencing violence, either as a the person who delivers the violence, the victim, or even as a witness, can be shattering.

As a society, we are completely comfortable with the “wounded warrior,” the guy or gal who has seen the elephant and returned shattered and guilt ridden. I think for some folks, this is the only way they can find empathy for, or relate to a veteran or a cop.

But some folks see horrible things, or do horrible things, and they’re fine. Sometime’s they’re more than fine, they’re proud, as well they should be. Sometimes it isn’t the experience itself, it’s how others react to it that cause the problem.

I know of at least one police officer, who was involved in an extremely clear cut shooting. He performed an extremely competent feat of arms under incredible pressure. He was proud, and he should be. But he was told that his lack of horror, guilt and remorse was just “denial.”

So the folks who are shattered are, normal, and the folks who aren’t fine are pathological. If they aren’t shattered they are either in denial, or worse, sociopathic.

This is a change, at least, from the old John Wayne mentality, where you were supposed to be able to kill a bunch of guys in the morning, eat a rare steak in the afternoon, have a shot of bourbon and a blowjob in the evening, and fall into a blissful sleep. But, 180 degrees from sick is still sick. Telling people they have to be shattered, is just as toxic as telling them they should be fine.

The experience of violence doesn’t “have” to be anything. Just because it was one thing for you, doesn’t mean it is the same for somebody else. Just because you can only imagine one outcome, doesn’t mean there aren’t other possibilities.

Myths of Violence #5

2009-01-10T20:19:00.001-08:00

Myth #5 The only people who train for, prepare for, or engage in violence are morally bereft, uneducated, or mentally defective. This one pisses me off. One of the great conceits of some of my “lefty” friends is that gun owners, martial artists, disaster prep people, “aren’t educated enough.” Can we have the idea that it’s possible for someone to be equally moral, thoughtful and educated as you, and just have a different opinion?

I take a perverse pleasure in letting people get to know me as a compassionate, moral, family guy who likes puppies, small children and NPR, who believes in equality, tolerance, health care reform, saving the environment and drug law reform; then revealing that I have a CHL, own an Evil Black Rifle, and love practicing my uppercut/hook/elbow combination on Thai pads at lunch.

If your head isn’t big enough to hold that view of me, which one of us is the narrow minded one?

Myths of Violence #4

2009-01-10T20:16:00.000-08:00

Then there’s the flip side:

Myth #4 Violence is Never Necessary. In the strictest sense, this is true. If you are willing to let anything happen, and only stand there and “bear witness,” violence is never necessary. But I’m no pacifist (although I encourage it in other people) and there are things I will “not stand within my sight.”

This is the “180 degrees from sick is still sick,” method of dealing with a problem. We all, in some fashion, make an accommodation with the violence in ourselves and in other people.

This is basically magical thinking, that if I’m a good enough person, if I’m socially adroit enough, believe the right things, support the right causes, put the right bumper stickers on my Volvo, violence will never happen to ME. This ignores the fact that many of us aren’t exposed to violence on a daily basis is an accident of birth and socio-economic class. Oh, that and those guys you look down upon deal with it so you don’t have to.

There is a duty to equip yourself with skills OTHER than violence, being emotionally intelligent, being calm, being compassionate. This is wisdom, but there is also wisdom in knowing when you’re there, when your only option is to put blood and hair on the walls.

A brief interlude....

2009-01-02T22:13:00.001-08:00

... for a quick paragraph from novel #2. (Yes Virginia, I'm writing again):

"I pulled the car into an alley and searched it. In the trunk I found a bag of crack, a bag of money, and a pistol gripped shotgun. I dumped the crack down the storm drain and counted the money. Now I had nearly eight grand in small bills, three hand guns, a shotgun, and a stolen car. Things were looking up."

Nothing big, but it tickled my fancy.

Myths of Violence #3

2009-01-01T10:47:00.000-08:00

Myth #3: Violence makes us men. A hold over, perhaps, from when you had to kill an animal, or fight The Other, to be a man. The concept of an “initiated male,” is an interesting one, in that it posits that some outside event or ritual flips the switch, and you go from the binary state of “boy,” to the binary state of “man.” I don’t buy it, as I’ve run into to many 40 year old boys who have all the holes punched in their man card, but still can’t manage to behave in a way that deserves my respect.

I’ve got a lot to say about manhood. Most of it is for other posts. I would argue that the ability to deal with conflict in a healthy way, with situationally appropriate skills, is part of being an adult. Sometimes those situationally appropriate skills include violence, but most of the time, for most of us, they don’t.

Myths of Violence #2

2008-12-28T11:34:00.000-08:00

Myth #2: Violence “builds character.” This is a tricky one. The process of learning to fight can involve discipline, and understanding yourself and how you fit into the world. Whether you get drawn to the “light side” or the “dark side,” depends largely on the amount of humility and humanity you either keep, or create, in the process.

I don’t think the actual violence builds character, but is sure as hell can destroy it. It’s vital for people who are living a martial way to focus on their character for two reasons: 1) because training to hurt people brings about a responsibility to think about how you might use it, and 2) you need to have something left of yourself when the fights over.

This one is popular on a national, not just a personal level. In the books, War is a Force that Gives us Meaning, and From Chivalry to Terrorism: War and the Changing Nature of Masculinity. It has been popular at various points in history to declare our country (or another one) “soft,” or “complacent,” and decide that what we need to return ourselves to mythic heroism is a good old fashioned war.

Myths of Violence #1

2008-12-28T11:31:00.000-08:00

In William Gibson’s book Pattern Recognition ,the protagonist is allergic to advertising, not quite in the “breaks out in hives and runny nose” way, but more the “existential heebie jeebies” way.

Lately, I’ve had similar reactions to violence as entertainment. I stopped unconsciously consuming television a long time ago. Anymore, if I watch a show or movie, it’s usually a DVD that I’ve consciously chosen to seek out and consume. But occasionally, I flip on the TV, I guess out of a perverse need to satisfy myself that it still sucks (mostly).

The other night I landed on “The Crow,” remarkable for the fact that it is the movie that killed Brandon Lee, and little else. I couldn’t finish it because of the violence. I wasn’t shocked or disgusted. I just couldn’t hang with the myths of violence that were being presented.

Violence has become a myth. Friend Rory uses the metaphor of the Rhino that becomes a Unicorn, and I think that fits mighty fine. We use violence in our entertainment to create dramatic tension, to give the Hero something to both overcome and to use. That’s ok, in a way. The problem starts when those myths become unconscious, and start shaping how we approach the real world.

So let’s start a list of the myths, as I see them:

Myth #1: Violence is redeeming. We see this all the time in the “hero kills a bunch of people and becomes a better person for it, or makes up for a past transgression” story. I don’t think it ever works that way in real life. I will agree that violence can keep something worse from happening, but that’s different from making things “better.” Maybe we need words in our language for making things “less bad.” I’m tired of the myth of everybody being happy and ok after a round or two of good old fashioned ass kickin’.

On a personal level, this leads to the delusion of, if I can just win this fight, or if I can just win a fight, I’ll be ok. But after the fight, there’s a tomorrow, and a tomorrow, and a tomorrow, and all of the things that made you who you are still exist.

Meditations On Violence

2008-12-20T14:21:00.000-08:00

Friend Rory’s book Meditations On Violence has been out for several months now, and I’ve owed him a review the whole time. I actually had to write two reviews. The first one boiled down to “ditto what Rory said.” This is review number 2, written after a second reading of the book, and I’ll still say “ditto what Rory said,” but hopefully I’ll give you some intelligent reasons why.

I don’t trust people who are sure. The smartest people know that they don’t know everything.

I don’t trust people who are sure, who think they have a subject all figured out, who tell you something is “simple,” that you “just,” have to do some simple technique. People who say these things are usually hand waving their way past all sorts of complications, and engaging in the all too human, and the quite possibly fatal, error of trying to make a nuanced, complex subject, simple.

If anybody who should be sure about his knowledge of violence, it should be Rory. He’s been a Corrections Officer at a major metropolitan agency, and most importantly, he thinks and pays attention.

Rory has been in more fights than most of us have seen on television. But simply being exposed to something over and over again doesn’t mean you learn from it. I’ve known folks with “10 years of experience” on the job who have just lived the same six months over again 20 times. Miller has the particular blend of psychological and physical skills to be good at corrections, the observant mind that it takes to learn something, and the communications skills to teach it to the rest of us.

So if anybody has the “right,” to be “sure”, it’s Rory. But he isn’t.

He freely admits the subject of violence is bigger than him. He understands classical martial arts, understands the criminal mind, and understands the kind of street violence that criminals perpetrate, but freely admits that his knowledge doesn’t extend to other arenas.

That’s huge. I’ve watched classical martial artists try to shoe horn their knowledge to fit a modern military context. Likewise, I’ve watched military people bend the map to get their experiences to fit a civilian self defense situation. People get the idea that being an expert in one area of violence makes them an expert in all areas of violence. Not necessarily so. All violence happens in a context, and training for one context may not work if you try to stretch that context to cover another one. Shooting skills that work for “Tier One” operators in the Hindu Kush, may not be the best thing for defending your suburban home. A martial system that was designed to help an unarmed man knock a charging attacker of his horse may need some tweaking to help you defend yourself in an alley.

But Miller knows that, which is one of the reasons why you can trust him. He starts by taking on the idea that violence has become a myth, that most of what you know about violence is wrong. This book was originally named “The Rhinoceros and the Unicorn.” It seems that the people who actually saw the Rhinoceros did there best to describe it as a big, scary, gray beast with a horn, but as Miller puts it “over time and distance and by word of mouth, the reality of the rhinoceros slowly changed into the myth of the unicorn.”

The problem is, of course, that the unicorn is imaginary. If you train for the unicorn, but get a rhinoceros, you’re in trouble.

It doesn’t take much to become a “self defense expert.” I find that interesting. If I want to teach people to become doctors, I need credentials. If I want to cut hair, I need a cosmetology license, in this state. But all I need to teach people how to defend their lives is the desire and the hubris to call myself an expert. Liability insurance and some certificates with Asian looking writing on them are a plus, but not mandatory.

It’s easy to train for the unicorn. It’s easy to mistake an intense experience for an authentic experience. Well meaning self defense instructors train their students for the Unicorn all the time, and usually get away with it, because despite what the news will tell you, we live in a safe place. The few students that meet the Rhino may win anyway, through luck, or because they adapted very quickly, which tends to validate training for the Unicorn. The students that meet the Rhino and get gored can be dismissed as unlucky, or maybe they weren’t training hard enough.

Miller will introduce you to the Rhino. All violence happens in a social context, and if you don’t know the difference between a “monkey dance” and a predatory assault, if you don’t have a plan for each one, you’re planning for the Unicorn not the Rhino. Where most discussions go wrong is they focus on one “style,” or another. Internal vs. External, Chinese vs. Japanese, whatever. This book will make you challenge your mindset, and your assumptions.

This book may be of the biggest benefit to accomplished martial artists who know nothing about violence. That seems like an oxymoron, because, the martial arts are all about violence, right? These guys really know what it’s like, right?

Not necessarily so. The problem with most instruction about violence, the problem with most books written about violence, is that there is no reality test. Anybody can say anything, teach anything, and sell it to nice, well meaning folks who can afford monthly lessons, or a $15 soft cover and there are no repercussions for being wrong.

Most people that consume this information don’t get into fights, and when they do, and lose, it’s easy enough to write it off that they didn’t “train hard enough”, or even that they “got attacked wrong.” I’ve yet to hear of anybody suing a self defense instructor or author for malpractice, but it might be a breath of fresh air for the industry.

Short of actually getting involved in a violence occupation yourself (I suggest bar bouncing for the part time dilettante), you have to depend on those who have not only actually seen the rhino, but understand what they saw, and articulate it well enough for you to learn something. That would be Miller.

The book doesn’t offer easy answers to hard questions. He doesn’t tell you to “just” do something simple and it will make the bad man go away. He makes it clear you might train hard, more importantly train right, and you could still loose.

If you’re lucky, by the time you finish reading this book, you’ll know that you don’t know, which is one of the biggest gifts anyone can give you.

Hunting 2

2008-11-09T12:01:00.000-08:00

I’ve missed this. For much too long, I’ve let my connection to the natural world, the real world, slip. I realized the other day, that I’d been “meaning to,” to get “around to,” becoming part of the woods again for most of my adult life. I’ve been poking sleeping lions with sticks for months now. I’d expected some of them to be ready to eat me. I’d somehow forgotten that some of them could be friendly. Somewhere in the last six months I came across the word “rewilding.” I’m not sure exactly what it means to me yet, but I think I like it.

This is walking meditation of the finest kind. The “success” is in stand hunting: find your spot (the experts say in a tree), blow your calls, manage your scent. What kind of tree stand do I use? What kind of cover scent? What kind of garments? What kind of attractants? Game cameras. Aerial photos. GPS… This can quickly become an exercise in buying all the right shit, in getting results.

The “success” may be in stand hunting but I love the still hunting. It’s called “still,” even though you’re moving. But if you cover 100 yards in an hour you’re moving too fast. If you move with a rhythm you’re doing it wrong.

If you do it right, with your full attention and mindfulness, you see everything: the slightest print, the tree 30 yards away where the buck has been rubbing the velvet off his antlers. The quietest way through the brush becomes obvious.

On Tuesday I figure out they’ve been eating mushrooms and find the happy hunting ground: the steep slope of a drainage that doesn’t get any sun. There are mushrooms everywhere, paths every where and unbelievable amounts of scat on the ground. I find plenty of rubs but no scrapes. I’ve read some opinions that black tails don’t leave scrapes. I’d desperately like to know the answer to that question, not because it will make me more “successful,” but just to know.

I stop on the edge of the mushroom patch, hungry and thirsty. I realize it’s almost noon and I’ve been at this for six hours. Lunch is a couple of power bars, already unwrapped to avoid the crinkle of foil and water. Between bites I blow the doe call a few times, still not convinced the damn thing works, still wondering if the whole calling thing is a giant joke, and a way to separate hunters from their money.

As I eat, I make a mistake. I come out of the moment and begin to plan, begin to have intentions, start “nexting”. I’ll move this way, and then do this, and after that, I’ll do this thing. I start imagining my outcomes.

I get up and start moving a little too fast. My mind isn’t completely in the moment. I catch myself and stop, blow my call, try to re-center myself.

I jump when the buck snorts back, jump and jerk around, so I can see him. We look at each other, both surprised to see the other. The first thing I think of is “I guess the call really doesn’t scare them away…”

And then he’s done his 180 and he’s going away. I flip open the scope covers and shoulder the gun, knowing all the while the moment has passed. At best, I’ll crank off a round and miss, scaring him and everything else into the next drainage. At worst I’ll hit and connect badly, punching through his guts, leaving him capable of running for miles, only to die tomorrow or next week. My family isn’t starving today, so I’ve made a promise only to take the right shot.

A few seconds and he’s gone. I stand there, wanting the moment back, wanting to hear that snort again and react coolly, to move slowly, to get a sight picture between all those intervening trees, get a sight picture and squeeze, become a hunter again.

I spend the rest of the day trying to make that moment happen again, looking for that buck, or another one. I find my place again, seeing, moving, just being, no intentions. I don’t see any more deer. At first I choose to be disappointed, but then I realize it’s ok. I somehow become satisfied with that moment, satisfied knowing I crept in that close and that my call works, that I was almost there. I feel like a connection has been made again, and my “failure” to walk out of the woods with a deer didn’t break that connection.

I remember, not for the first time, that there is a difference between hunting and just shooting animals. I realize that while I didn’t shoot an animal, I’ve taken a big step back towards being a hunter again.

Wednesday is a mistake. I go into town, for reasons I can’t recall now, but seemed to make sense at the time. I’ve been in black timber for four days. Everything is too quick, too loud. The color red hurts my eyes. Wal-Mart is like another planet and I keep thinking people are looking at me like I’m the alien.

Friday the other hunters show up and set up camp 300 yards from where I’ve been hunting. I’ve been keeping a quiet camp, a mile away. No fire. No smelly food. No radio. I try not to even slam the doors on the truck too loud. My new neighbors have remembered their stereo, their mufflerless ATV’s, and their generator but have apparently forgotten to sight in their rifles, as they crank off at least 30 or 40 rounds right down the road from where I’ve been sneaking into the woods to hunt.

I’ve been attached to the idea of having the world to myself all week, and after having visitors, it takes a while to get my mind right. The deer have moved. They’ve moved up the drainage, away from my new neighbors, and I spend a whole day trying to find a way to get to them. The sides of the canyon become almost vertical and I marvel at a game trail that seems to go straight down. Even if I get in there, there’s no way to haul a deer out, and if I break a leg down there, that’s where I’ll stay.

I find my new neighbors have also pushed the deer one ridge over, to where I’m camping. Apparently my efforts at a quiet, scentless camp have paid off, as I now have deer tracks and fresh scat fifty yards from where I’m camping.

Sunday is the last day, and I’m exhausted. I wake up with mixed feelings about going out at all. Maybe I should just sleep in.

But I get up anyway, dress in the dark, and on a whim decide to just go for a walk down the road to my campsite. I’m halfway to the river when I hear him. I step to the side and take a knee. There he is, standing broadside to me, on the side of the road, scenting the air. A wild hope tells me it’s the buck from Tuesday, then I realize he’s a yearling, either a spike or a fork horn, nowhere near as heavy through the body as the guy from Tuesday.

A couple of million thoughts race through my mind. I can see the crosshairs well enough to lay them right behind his shoulder, but I’m not exactly sure it’s late enough for a legal shot yet. It’s an easy 50 yard shot. I can connect, but I’d be shooting along the road. The meat cutter isn’t open Sundays. He’s a yearling. I’m exhausted.

All those things matter, but the real reason is I don’t feel like I’ve earned this. It’s a chance encounter along a road. If I pull the trigger I’ll have met the goal of shooting a deer, but I know I’ll be disappointed in the process. There’s a difference in hunting and shooting animals. If I pull the trigger, I will have shot an animal, but I’m not sure I’ll be a hunter again.

So flip on the safety and just watch, realized that, again, I’m satisfied with an “almost.” I take great satisfaction in watching the young buck walk off, knowing I’ve blundered into his path almost by accident, but he never knows I’m there, even when he looks right past me. The half step to the right and the drop to a knee gave me both a stable shooting platform for the shot I didn’t take, and put my silhouette right in front of a tree.

He looks around, scents, decides its safe to cross and vanishes up the impossibly steep slope on the other side of the road. I hear the skitter of a few rocks and then nothing.

He’s gone and I’m done. I unload the rifle and sling it. On the way home, I pass a clear cut I’ve been avoiding all week. Deer love clear cuts and sometimes its “easy” to sit there and pick one off from a couple of hundred yards away. I’ve thought about. It would be a way of putting meat in the freezer, but this time it just didn’t feel right.

There are some hunters sitting there, waiting. At first I’m tempted to judge them, then decide not to, as I could easily be there sometime in the future. Are they hunting, or just shooting animals? If I take a break from still hunting in black timber and decided to set up on a clear cut, will I be hunting, or just shooting animals? The answer might be different for both of us, and hopefully I’ll recognize my answer at the time.

Hero

2008-11-03T21:24:00.000-08:00

I’ve had the pleasure of knowing some extraordinary people: fellow knuckle draggers mostly. On more than one occasion I’ve found myself thinking, “what would so and so do”.

My almost 14 year old daughter is one of my heroes. Seven months ago, she was in a wheelchair after having her knee cut open and her patella glued back together. Two months ago, she got back in the pool for the first time. A week ago, she swam her first meet and got a little mad because, while she swam a personal best in one event, some of her times went up a little bit, and her knee was done before the meet was over.

After the surgery, even though it hurt like hell, she wanted to step down to the less strong pain killers and stay away from the hard stuff as much as she could. When she couldn’t make it around school on crutches, she went in a wheelchair. When it hurt too much to crutch forwards, she went sideways. When her knee swelled up to the size of a grapefruit, she just elevated and iced, and went about her business.

When someone is extraordinary every day, it’s easy to take them for granted if you aren’t careful. I took her stoic acceptance for granted. She rarely complained, and never once whined. It’s easy to forget sometimes that you’re dealing with a 13 year old when she acts more adult than many of the adults you know.

I read medical records all day. I read records of people who are older, and supposedly stronger, than my daughter. Some of them are people who have let lesser injuries derail their lives to the point they never recover. I’m one of those annoying people who believes that on some level, conscious or unconscious, everything we do is a choice, whether we want to admit it or not.

My kid decided to keep going. She kept going as much as she could, and just had to wait awhile for her knee to catch up with her. Some other things have come undone on her too. This year is going to go down in the books as the year where the hits just wouldn’t stop coming. But she’s been ok, even at times when it would have been more than appropriate not to be ok.

So my daughter, you are one of my heroes. I’m sure you will continue to amaze me. Here’s one piece of advice: about that thing with your times: give yourself just a little slack. Your times will catch up to you eventually too.

One of these days, I’ll probably have a problem in front of me and find myself thinking “I wonder what my daughter would do.”

Poking Sleeping Lions

2008-04-27T13:23:00.000-07:00

Yes, it has been awhile, and I’m sorry. There’s this post I’ve been working on that is being very stubborn about being born. It’s the equivalent of poking sleeping lions with sticks, and I will either wind up a digested gobbet of meat, or a scarred but better person for it.

But in the interim:

Sgt. Rory Miller (of Chiron Training) has a book coming out in June titled Meditations on Violence: A Comparison of Martial Arts Training and Real World Violence. I can hardly wait, and I’m sure it will be big with the Oprah Book Club group.
Friend Southnarc has released his Practical Unarmed Combat DVD, and I’m going to give it a strong buy recommendation, even though I haven’t even seen it yet. One more payday and it will be mine.

Self Made Man

2008-03-09T21:45:00.000-07:00

I just finished Self-Made Man: One Woman's Journey into Manhood and Back, by Nora Vincent. Vincent spent a year and a half undercover as a man, sort of a gendered version of Black Like Me. Among other things, she went on dates as a man, went to strip clubs, got a couple of jobs in very typical male sales jobs, went to a men’s movement retreat, and finally, had a nervous breakdown.

I appreciate this book in much the same way I appreciated Faludi’s Stiffed. When women write about the emotional lives as men, often the best you can hope for is that attributes we’ve largely declared “feminine” get declared as normative, and men are some how seen as emotionally retarded for not living up to them. That’s not the case in Vincent’s book. She walked into this knowing that there were things she didn’t know. Her writing rings with both compassion and respect for the men she interacts with.

I have a couple of quibbles with the book. The chapter titled “sex” was all about her experiences going to strip clubs. I wouldn’t have had a problem if it had just been titled “strip clubs,” but the larger conclusions she drew about men and sex were based on observing a group of men who have self selected to go to strip clubs. That does show us one of the unhealthy ends of the spectrum, but it isn’t the whole story.

The larger issue is that Vincent spent most of her time interacting with men that were in some state of dysfunction. I would have found it interesting to see a little more of her take on men who were a little healthier, a little better adjusted.

But in the end I can’t hold much against her. I think this paragraph from near the end of the book sums it up nicely:

“Men’s healing is in women’s interest, though for women that healing will mean accepting on some level not only that men are – here is the dreaded word – victims of the patriarchy, too, but (and this will be the hardest part to swallow) that women have been codeterminers in the system, at times as invested and active as men themselves in making and keeping men in their role. From the feminist point of view this sounds at best like an abdication of responsibility, an easy out fro the inventor, and at worst an infuriating instance of blaming the true victim. But from Paul’s point of view it means that men and women are finally agreeing on something: the system sucks.”

I read that passage riding home on the bus, and said “thank you,” out loud, which earned me some funny looks from fellow riders, but it was heart felt. I appreciate Vincent for her compassion, and for having the balls for saying something that more people need to say.

Grizzly Man

2008-02-24T21:57:00.000-08:00

Werner Herzog’s Grizzly Man is about Timothy Treadwell, a self appointed “defender of bears” who spent 13 summers up in the Katmai National Park, living among and videotaping grizzlies. He’s not the first person to do that. We’ve been examining ourselves by studying animals since the first hunter knelt to give thanks. Usually the story winds up being about both the bears and the man. That’s certainly the case in Doug Peacock’s Grizzly Years, one of the most beautiful books I’ve ever read.

While Peacock’s story is about both bears and humans, Treadwell’s story was all about Treadwell. Most nature photographers take pains to hide from their subjects, often employing camouflage and blind construction that would make the best hunter jealous. The keep their distance and shoot through a long lens. That’s both for their safety, and out of a fundamental desire to let the animals be at peace while they are being filmed.

Not Treadwell. Treadwell’s goal was to get as close to the bears as he could. Treadwell slowly habituated the bears to the point that he could touch not only them, but their young. I don’t know if he fed the bears, but I firmly suspect he fed a family of foxes that he had half tamed and hanging around his camp.

I couldn’t believe the fundamental disrespect Treadwell showed, both for the bears and his own place in the world. I’ve spent a small amount of time in grizzly country (nowhere near enough) and my skin crawled every time I saw him come within touching distance, all the while cooing at the bears and giving them anthropomorphic names like “Mr. Winky.”

I didn’t care so much about Treadwell getting hurt. When you are in bear country, the doctrine “Big Boy Game, Big Boy Rules” is in full effect. I was tremendously concerned for the bears, as that kind of habituation is only going to end one way.

I never figured out exactly what Treadwell was defending the bears against. Habitat destruction is a vital concern for grizzlies, but I’m not sure what Treadwell thought he was doing about it, other than some vague notion of “raising consciousness’ by showing videos of himself doing really unhealthy things with 900 lb predators.

The story has a predictable end. Treadwell and his companion, Amie Huguenard, were killed and mostly eaten by at least one bear in the fall of 2003. During the body recovery, two grizzlies were shot and killed, which I regard as more of a tragedy than the death of Treadwell. I’m not sure how to feel about Huguenard, as she’s remained an enigma. The family doesn’t talk.

Bear attacks on humans almost always end in a dead bear, for reasons that make sense. In this particular case, I’d be willing to argue that the bears should have gotten a pass. One of the ways bean counters justify hunting is that we are improving the species by culling the herd. Maybe that works both ways.

Ultimately, Treadwell was a narcissistic, troubled man who probably should have been medicated. The question remains if he had a death wish, and in many ways I hope he did, because it means he was more in touch with reality than he would seem otherwise. The only real surprise for me is that he made it 13 summers before the inevitable happened.

It would be easy to dismiss Treadwell as mentally ill, or as JAAFB*, but that’s putting him at too comfortable a distance. We all construct our mental maps of the world. The human brain is designed to do it. Our success or failure depends on how well we realize that “the map is not the territory” and adjust accordingly. One approach, driven by ego, is to continue to expect realty to adjust to your expectations. The other, driven by moments of Kensho (or maybe sometimes just common sense) is to surrender to the world, have a laugh at ourselves for having messed it up so bad, and drive on.

So whatever illness Treadwell had, we’ve all got it. He just had it in spades. Graveyards are full of people who thought the grizzly was their friend until it was too late. How many times have we banged our heads against the wall, dealing with that fact that what we’re doing isn’t working by doing more of it, and doing it harder, until finally the moment arrives where we say, “hey, maybe it’s me…”

That moment didn’t arrive early enough for Treadwell. If you watch the movie, go ahead and say to yourself “what a dumbass.” Maybe you’ll feel guilty if you say it. I know I said it, and didn’t feel guilty. But don’t push Treadwell too far away, because there’s a little Treadwell in all of us.

*Just Another Asshole From Berkley

What’s a man to do?

2008-02-23T12:51:00.001-08:00

I’ve come to the conclusion that the Portland Metro Area has Everything, and if you know how to Google, you can find it.

I may have met my match. I’ve had an interest in a long time in the spiritual lives of men, mostly through reading, and I decided to do a little digging around to find out what’s going on in Portland.

I’ve found things seem fall into a few narrowly defined groups:

1) Man as Christian. I’ve worn quite a few hats in my life, but I doubt “Promise Keeper,” is going to be one of them. I know not all Christians are the Old Testament kind, but taking charge of my family by putting everybody else in their proper place isn’t quite what I’m looking for here. The Unitarian Universalists do seem, very, well… nice. I wonder if they would find me scary.

2) Man as Gay Man. Also not a good fit. While I understand that this really isn’t supposed to be a binary question, I put myself in the “not gay” category. I think there are some things gay men and not gay men (or should it be “not so gay men?”) could learn from talking to each other, but that’s not exactly what I’m looking for either.

3) Man as Dysfunctional. If I wanted to deal with domestic violence, anger management, or some kind of other recovery, I could probably find something here. There are groups for men with PTSD. That fits, but damn, it gets a little old talking about that sometimes. Especially since if you aren’t careful, it leads you to…

4) Man as Victim. I did find out through perusing some of this that I’m supposed to be upset about my lack of a father (had a pretty good one, thanks), at wit’s end because of my lack of being initiated (don’t really feel that way, might be interesting to think about why) and deeply, irrevocably damaged over being circumcised (errr….).

#3 and #4 suggest to me that, as a gender, we seem to be better at making sure the oil gets changed in the car than we are at making some mid-course corrections before our personal lives get turned into giant smoking holes in the ground.

What I don’t see is a website that says, “We’re a bunch of mostly sound guys, who aren’t Christians, that want to talk about, well, spiritual stuff….”

Fall down seven times....

2008-02-19T18:35:00.000-08:00

.... get up eight.

This guy is my hero.

90 seconds at Burger King

2008-02-18T11:44:00.000-08:00

It’s been a weird couple of weeks. First was my one year anniversary at The New Gig and a bit of a revelation about man-hood (more on those later). Then last Tuesday I took a step back into The Old Life for about 90 seconds. It wasn’t much of a fight: short, tawdry and in many ways funny, but it did reinforce a few ideas.

There may be a line between “aggressive panhandling” and “attempted mugging,” but I really don’t care for either one.

I am a firm believer in verbal de-escalation skills. I’ve given away four copies of Verbal Judo and have saved my ass by using my mouth on more than one occasion. However these skills only work if you are in the mood to use them…

Preemption works. The bad guys don’t expect the good guys to hit first.

I’m 2 for 2 with using the cradle blow to stop stuff before it really gets started. I’m not sure I am ready to deem it a high percentage, universal technique though. First off, I’m 6’3” and 260 lbs, so there are size issues. Both deployments were against untrained, wigged out guys who were smaller than me and still in the Monkey Dance phase of things.

Sometimes our model of predator behavior breaks down, although I’m not sure predator is the right word here. Jay and Silent Bob’s meth-freak cousins selected a fit looking guy who was twice as big as either one of them, then proceeded to ignore aggressive verbal commands, a palms out fence, and a step into a fighting stance. I assumed they had weapons. Turns out they were just stupid.

Violence is not for amateurs.

Failure In Training

2008-01-07T20:54:00.000-08:00

I touched on this in “Doing What You’re Bad At,” but some recent posts on a discussion board I frequent brought it back to mind. One discussion revolved around Chris Fry’s excellent article “Training To Failure,” the other was how some well known, “internet personalities” who also happen to be firearms trainers tend to fade into the woodwork when combatives training comes around.

One common problem I’ve run into is a peculiar form of binary thinking: either you are a defenseless “sheep,” incapable of defending yourself against a Girl Scout trying to garrote you with her neckerchief; or you are a “sheepdog,” a steely eyed gunslinger capable of handling ANY emergency, from street thugs, to a group of former Spetsnaz with a contract on you, to a zombie attack that follows a 10 point earthquake that struck during a level 5 hurricane.

Since you are either one or the other, anything that shakes your faith in yourself as a superhero is to be avoided. Anything that challenges what you already “know” to be the tactical truth is crap to be derided. And if you’re bad at something, it must be because it has no relevance, or would even be detrimental in a “real” fight.

That’s a dangerous way to think. While it is true that your average civilian’s coping skills would be overwhelmed pretty quick, it is also true that there is some level of shitstorm that well overwhelm the most barrel-chested CAG operator. Skills exist on a continuum, and the only way to figure out where you are on that continuum is to reach the point where you fail, and then get better.

I have crossed paths with some pretty dangerous people, folks who make my little adventures look like boy scout outings. Some of them, while employed supposedly on the “good guy side,” are still assholes, and all I respect about them is their abilities. Others, are true warriors, people who have developed their character as well as their skills. I respect these people as guides to have a whole life. Their martial skills are almost incidental.

But lately, the person I’ve learned the most from is somebody the assholes would deride, and even the warriors wouldn’t notice. She’s a soccer mom taking combatives training for the first time, and now has a full six months of experience under her belt. Skill wise, she’s probably closer to the “sheep” end of the continuum than the Delta Force end, but she’s made the most fundamental step of all: a willingness to accept responsibility for her own safety.

Because she has no investment in knowing everything, she can learn anything. She takes training with enthusiasm and an open mind, and above all, finds no embarrassment in failing. If she falls down seven times, she gets up eight. She’s not afraid to do something “wrong” while on the path to learning how to do it “right.”

This woman has something in common with all of the really good martial artists, hi speed military guys, and great cops I’ve run into: an egoless approach to learning, and a work ethic that constantly propels her to improve. One of the scary and exhilarating things about learning is when you realize you are never done.

After her six months of training, I still “know” more than she does, but she has “learned” much more in the last six months than I have.

Hunting

2008-01-01T19:38:00.000-08:00

It occurred to me, that this was the first time I’d gone hunting something with four legs in almost 15 years. It’s been longer than that since I made a habit of going to church.

It’s different here, but it still feels the same. Back there, the deer are bigger, the woodlots are much smaller. You find yourself a path that leads from a postage stamp size of woods to some farmer’s field, and sooner or later you’ll be asking yourself which deer you want to shoot.

Here, I’ve got a whole national forest in front of me, there isn’t a farm in miles, and I’m a little fuzzy on what the damn things eat out here, where they can’t get corn and wheat. The long leisurely pre-season scouting trip turned into a hurried last minute rush to get a tag and time off.

But its still good. Right now, life is a quest to live in the moment, in the outside world, not in the past and the footprints it left in my head. The woods are good for that, hunting even better. Everything matters. Each leaf, each branch, each inch of dirt, is a piece of your world.

Grandfather always said, “Hunt the bottom lands, especially near water. And if you look at a stand of brush and don’t want to walk into it, you’ll probably find a deer.” His wisdom holds, as usual. In a stretch of river bottom so dense and close, I sling my rifle and draw a handgun, I find big tracks, not just big for out here, but big. There’s a rub or two, and scat that’s fresh this morning.

But there’s no deer on this trip. No venison in the freezer. And it’s ok. The only way to enjoy hunting is to enjoy the process, which is anathema to a results oriented society. I had wondered how it would go, after fifteen years, and after a little bit of two leg hunting. I walk out feeling centered, and wanting more. It’s possible to be an adrenaline junky, but now I’m wondering, is it possible to be a peace junky too?

I’m not sure I can explain the connection between peace and hunting. I think its one of those things you either understand, or you don’t.

Speed

2007-11-24T14:06:00.001-08:00

One thing I noticed about traditional, Eastern martial arts is that they start slow. Students spend months, maybe even years, on fundamental:. thousands of reverse punches from a horse stance; the same kata, over and over. This is in stark comparison to the more modern, western theory of teaching self defense skills that I’m involved in now, where the focus is on getting people up to speed with some basic skills right away, focusing on “high percentage” techniques from the get go. Nuance and refinement come later, if at all.

I’ve asked around about the slow start in traditional martial arts, and gotten three answers:

1) The cynical view is that the longer you keep somebody in training, the longer you are sucking monthly dues out of them. However this doesn’t match my own experience. I’ve found the more mercenary, belt factory type schools to move their students along faster than they should, giving belt test after belt test in machine gun fashion.

2) A reason I find more believable, is that the training goals are different. Modern combatives systems are frequently designed to take a group of people off the street (civilian students, draftees, even cops) and have them all meet a minimum standard of training. Traditional martial arts is about, well, martial arts, which is taking things as far as they can go in terms of nuance, subtlety and perfection. There’s no such thing as “good enough” when you are trying to take things as far as they can go. Instead of training everyone to a minimum standard, the ultimate goal of martial arts is to let a few people who are willing (and able) to push the limits of human performance.

3) The third reason, which I found the most compelling, was this: character. Character in the sense of whether a person has the discipline to show up for lessons, do what they are told, and stick with it no matter hard it gets. That makes sense. Why waste time teaching them if they are going to flake out when things get tough? The second component of character addresses how the student might use the skills they are learning. Do we want to teach just anybody how to kill other people with their bare hands?

The more I work on this, I realize that many of the teaching methods in traditional arts are more about preserving the art, it’s history, lineage and tradition, than they are about any particular student. If a hundred students walk in the door, you may find only one or two who are really there for the long term, to carry the art forward.

Modern combatives is about preserving the life of the student, or at least helping the student preserve whatever institution he or she is working for. When a hundred students walk in the door, you need to get all hundred up to the minimum standard.

I’m really not sure which is harder.

Barry Eisler's Requiem for an Assassin

2007-09-07T22:23:00.000-07:00

I’m late to the party, but I want to get a quick blurb in for Barry Eisler’s Requiem for an Assassin. For those of you who are new to Eisler, it’s his sixth book starring John Rain, a half American, half Japanese Assassin who specializes in making deaths look like “natural causes.”

I have a funny relationship with thrillers. All fiction, especially stuff that stars one lone hero against organizations like the CIA and the Yakuza, require some suspension of disbelief. I accept that and I’m alright with it, but I’ve also thrown thrillers written by big name writers across the room after a few chapters. I’m willing to get the writers of movies get away with more than I am authors of books. I guess it’s because the pictures are in my head, and not on a screen.

Eisler’s books are what Graham Greene would have called “entertainments,” but they are good ones, and they ring with a certain verisimilitude that I find lacking in most thrillers. Part of this is because Eisler has genuine spook cred. He was at CIA for a while, and it shows in the writing. There’s plenty of good old fashioned spy trade craft: blending in, surveillance, counter surveillance and clandestine means of communications. The Rain books also have some wonderfully gritty fight scenes. Eisler earned a black belt in Judo from a little place called the Kodokan. I don’t know what his off the matt track record is like, but it wouldn’t surprise me to find out he’s done a little work there too.

I think what I appreciate the most about the Rain series is the characterization of John Rain. Eisler does a good job of making him exceptional, but not superhuman. He gets hurt. He gets scared. Most of all, he’s looking for redemption after years of swimming in deep dark water. While it’s sometimes fun to read book series where the character remains constant, I think the Rain series is better because the John Rain of book one is not the same guy as the John Rain of book six. Watching a character struggle to become a human being again sustains much more interest than just a thriller plot.

I also enjoy Eisler’s writing about place. I recognized Japan from my own visit there, and he takes us all over Asia through the series. As a writer, I’m constantly trying to figure out how to make place matter in my writing. Many people do it with a laundry list of details, but that doesn’t really take us any way. The trick is to pick out the right details, and Eisler does a good job of this.

Requiem for an Assassin is a humdinger of a read, but if you are new to the series, I wouldn’t start here. Go on back and start with #1, Rain Fall. If the thought of reading five books just to get current is daunting, don’t worry. They are fairly short, and they are very fast. I’ve read most of them in just a sitting or two, often staying up way past my bed time for “just one more chapter.” And if that isn’t a sign of a good read, I don’t know what is.

How martial arts schools fail their students.

2007-08-24T11:14:00.000-07:00

#1 Law

Teaching damaging, potentially deadly techniques to students without teaching them anything about use of force law is negligent. The next time I go shopping for a martial arts school, when I interview the instructor I’m tempted to ask “could you give me a brief summation of the Oregon Revised Statutes regarding the use of physical force in general, and the use of deadly physical force in particular, when it comes to defending both property and person from harm?” I guessing I’ll get a blank look from any instructor who isn’t also a police officer. I’m guessing a fair number of the instructors who are also police officers will be able to quote me what THEY can do, but not what I can do.

We live in a nation of laws. Acts of violence committed by cops are presumptively sanctioned. Acts of violence committed by ordinary citizens are presumptively criminal. Teaching violence divorced from the context of the law is stupid.

#2 Articulation

Closely related to #1. It’s not enough to understand the law; you also have to be able to articulate why your actions were sanctioned by it. You have to be able to explain it to the cop who shows up. Cops are used to the person who is still standing at the end of a fight being the criminal who started it, not the law abiding citizen who ended it. You have to be able to explain it to the prosecutor who was perhaps last in a fight in grade school. You might even have to be able to explain it to the twelve people who were too dumb to get out of jury duty and who have seen a bunch of fist fights on TV.

“Karate only for defense,” sounds good in the movies, but if you can’t do any better than that, “I want to speak with my lawyer before I answer questions,” is a better substitute. Even better is to be able to vividly articulate the threat versus defender factors, a lack of other alternatives, ability, opportunity and jeopardy.

A recent article in Black Belt magazine touched on this. In the article, the author discussed how if you tell a police officer that you used a high level of force because the suspect had you in a “headlock,” when you really meant a “choke,” you completely change the context of what you are saying. A headlock is something you do when you want to give your little brother a noogie. A choke is a technique that cuts off the air or blood to your brain, and is considered lethal force.

This is tough. Many cops don’t do as good a job at it as they should. The time right after the fight, when you have some ‘splaining to do, is the time where you can do yourself great legal injury. There isn’t any golden tongued magic you can unleash to turn a dubious use of force into an acceptable action, but if you aren’t careful, you can do the right thing and go to jail anyway because you said the wrong thing after.

I don’t know of a great way to tell people to prepare for this (other than the police academy, and that’s just a start). Many shooting schools do a pretty good job of teaching people about this subject.

#3 Pre-fight Contextualization

“Southnarc” from Shivworks calls this “unknown contact management,” which is a mouthful, but descriptive. I’ve seen very few schools go in depth into what do mentally, tactically, and verbally before the fight starts. In fights that aren’t ambushes, you often live or die during the phase where the thug “interviews” you to see if you are a suitable victim. If you see it coming, you can interrupt his script and make him choose somebody else, or you can choose pre-emption.

#4 Integration

I want to talk about integration on two levels. One is integrating your martial skill set, and most importantly, your martial mindset into your everyday existence. I know folks who “put their skills on” when they step into the gym or dojo, and take them off when they step back out. They only think about their skills in context (there’s that word again) of the training environment. I don’t mean that you need to walk around with a fist half cocked, but if you aren’t thinking about the 163 hours a week you aren’t in the dojo, you are cheating yourself. Your school should help you address this.

The second type of integration is the marrying of different skill sets together. There are very few places where you can study empty hand, impact tools, defensive sprays, edged weapons and firearms under one roof in an integrated system that all fits and works together. The lines between “gun nuts” and “martial arts freaks” are getting blurrier, but they are still distinct crowds in most places. If you want to put all this together, in most places you are on your own. It’s like having a big box of Legos and having to write the instructions on how to put them together as you go. We aren’t as on our own as we used to be, Shivworks and The Dog Brothers (in concert with Gabe Suaruez) have some excellent DVD’s that will get you thinking.

#5 Observation

If you don’t know about Col. Boyd’s OODA Loop, click on the link and learn. Observational skills are the cornerstone of fighting, and the entire foundation of not fighting. When I trained in classical martial arts, much attention was paid to paying attention to your opponent, reading his intentions through eye movements, shifts in body weight, subtleties like that. It was fun stuff for sparring. However, I found this of little value in real life, as the violence I witnessed and experienced consisted of full blown, Godzilla style attacks, with no “reading” necessary.

I did find observational, or awareness skills extremely useful in seeing stuff before it happened. Last week I saw a very sketchy situation in the parking lot of a restaurant that happened ten feet from the picnic table where I was sitting. The other three adults and two children I was with were blithely unaware. Had it gone sideways, everybody else would have been surprised, I would have at least seen it coming, but better yet, I exercised an opportunity to get everybody loaded up, and called the cops from down the street.

If you stick around martial arts long enough, you’ll here stories of advanced students, many of them black belts, who got into fights but got stomped into jelly or even killed anyway. Each situation is unique, and some fights just can’t be won, but I have some general theories on why this might be.

I’m guessing some failed the Observation tests. If you “get smoked in the back of the head with a socket wrench,” before you even know you are in a fight, you’re done.

The combatives system I’m studying right now often makes mention of the need for “awareness” before the fight. I think that’s good, but I’d like to take it a step farther. We have specific drills that we use to learn how to punch and kick, why not specific exercises on how to observe? I’ve never been taught any, but I’m working on some in my head. I’m interested in what anybody else has to say.

#6 Orientation

The second part of the OODA loop is the Orientation phase, which is where the “I can’t believe this is really happening” problem comes into play. The circumstances you run into on the street are substantially different than in school. The person attacking isn’t one of your buds you’ve know for years, it’s dark, there’s more than one, and you were just thinking about something else a second ago.

Martial arts frequently only teaches us the “Act,” part of the OODA loop, which is the last part. I’m guessing many of those unfortunate black belts failed the Observe, Orient, and Decide part of the test, so they stood there going “OO-OO,” and never got to the “Act” part, where they would have done just fine.

How do we train that? One solution is muscle memory, repeating natural flinch techniques over and over again, in the hopes of short circuiting much of the cognitive process. I think this does serve to make the OODA loop quicker. Anybody who has practiced blocking techniques can probably attest to that. But if the brain fails to orient, it won’t decide on the right action.

How do we solve this one? I think realistic scenario based force on force training is one way. I’m interested in anybody else’s thoughts too.

One thing that interests me is that all of our martial systems evolved through a process where students actually went out in the world and fought for real, so at one time all systems must have addressed these issues. #1 and #2 will vary according to the culture and time one is talking about, but the rest are fundamentals of conflict. How is it that some of these fundamentals have gotten deemphasized in favor of learning more complicated, more esoteric techniques? To me, earning a black belt should be just about the ability to throw a flawless jump spinning crescent kick, but more importantly, it should be about the ability to understand and contextualize those skills into the real world.

Surfacing

2007-07-31T19:50:00.001-07:00

Two people in two days have pointed out that throwing something on the Internet about PTSD and then disappearing for a month is a good way to make people worry.

Sorry.

I've been in intense labor negotiations with my amygdala. I think we're on the verge of a new, one year contract.

I've got some stuff rattling around in my head that will turn into blog posts in short order, as soon as I gain some traction on a few other things.

For now, here are a few random notes:

I'm reading two books right now: Creating True Peace by Thich Nhat Hanh, and The Bouncer's Guide To Bar Room Brawling by Petyton Quinn. The search for the middle path never ends.

When you take your family camping and it starts raining as you load all your stuff in the car at home, and it doesn't quit until you are leaving the camp ground, but you still manage to relax and have a good time, you are doing something right. Thanks family.

If you have an opinion about the Iraq war, and haven't been reading Michael Yon's blog, you should be.

While I need to finish Nhat and Peyton first, I couldn't resist opening the big box from Amazon to peek inside my copy of Complete Krav Maga. It has, after all, been delayed nearly a year. I saw the phrase "Krav Maga is not a martial art," and was instantly relieved.

The Internet chatters way too much about gear, so I've avoided the topic (although I do have a half written blog called "Why Jeff Cooper Was Right, in 1975" that will piss EVERYBODY off). However, I do have to report that I am smitten with XS Sights Big Dot night sights.

PTSD

2007-06-07T20:28:00.001-07:00

At the new gig I deal with other's PTSD pretty frequently, which may or may not be healthy. Time will tell. One theory of PTSD is that you have to identify the "stressors" which are generally, discreet events that cause the condition. Just for giggles, I started a list of my own.

I had expected enough for, say, a 105 minute movie script, something short and gory, best directed by somebody like Tobe Hooper. Instead, I wound up with a good TV mini-series, although it would certainly have to be on one of the cable channels.

I was surprised. I'd thought about these events singly over the years, but had never really looked at them in one big pile, all grouped together.

I don't know what to make of it.

Part of it is that inevitable question of "where do you set your baseline." Compared to people who survived concentration camps, or people who were POW's, how could I dare to stack up my paltry collection of dead bodies and an attempted stabbing here, a shipboard fire there?

Then when I was driving home, I realized I'd forgotten one. The 19 year old kid who had been ejected from his car while it was still spinning in mid air somehow had not made it onto the list.

He'd plowed into the ground at a shallow angle, digging up a furrow of dirt in front of him that reminded me of a picture I'd seen of a cannonball that had skipped along the ground on a Civil War battle ground.

When I ran up and shined the light on him, I just stood there for a few seconds. It wasn't because I was shocked. I had seen enough of this sort of thing not to freeze up anymore. It was because I couldn't make sense of what I was seeing. Looking at his head made sense. Looking at his torso made sense. Putting the two images together didn't make sense. Finally I realized his head was twisted almost all the way around, and the log jam of cognitive dissonance broke up, freeing me to move. As I was trying to figure out how to protect THAT airway, he gave up and died. It was obvious even to a layman that any attempt at resuscitation was going to be futile.

Any EMT or cop could tell a story just as weird and disturbing, and quite a few that are worse. The point is that I forgot about it. I didn't "repress it" because it was too painful to think about. I just forgot it for a while, as if the bucket in my head that holds this sort of thing is too deep for everything to be floating on the surface at once. I had to skim some of the other memories out of the way before that one could come burbling up.

Most Americans see this sort of thing once in their life, if at all. I know I've seen more than the "normal" person, but it just didn't seem like the sort of thing you should just forget.

Again, it's all where you set your base line. I compare my little mini-series of horrors against others, people who have been on the job for ten, twenty years longer than me and realize it isn't a surprise that cops, firefighters, EMT's and soldiers get PTSD. It's a surprise that some of them don't.

The label "PTSD" is new, but the phenomenon is as ancient as the mark of Cain. I wonder sometimes if we are doing a better or worse job of dealing with it in or society. There are certainly more drugs. There is better treatment.

One problem that people with PTSD have is a feeling of alieness, of separation from the rest of the herd. After seeing certain things, and certainly after doing certain things, you are different. But that isn't new. People have looked into the abyss forever. What is different about today is that most people don't have to. It's a good thing that our society is less violent, that people live longer, that we have wrapped ourselves in a cocoon of professional public safety workers and medical professionals.

But I can't help but wonder if in the days when the wolf was a little closer to the front door, when people still died at home instead of in hospitals, when babies were born in bedrooms and not birthing suites, your ordinary person was better able to cope with life when the wheels came off, and a less likely to judge the people who spent their time out on the frontier.

Martial Arts Part 2: Violence

2007-06-05T21:10:00.000-07:00

I’ve been wrestling with how best to articulate a dichotomy I’ve experienced more than once in martial arts. I found friend Rory does a pretty good job of summing up the difference between "martial arts and violence." Take a look. Its good reading.

Last time, I said I would talk about picking a "system" to study. When people start shooting, the first question on their mind is "what kind of gun should I buy." When people start thinking about training in "martial arts" or "combative," inevitably they ask "what should I study." There's Kung Fu, Judo, Aikido, Krav Maga, Karate, Tae Kwan Do, all sorts of Filipino Martial Arts I can't spell. It's dizzying.

When people ask me "what kind of gun should I buy," I counter with "where are you going to train with it, and how often?" Likewise, I think the system you train is less important than with who you do it, but since that's the first question asked, I'll talk about it first.

First, I think the system you are learning should focus on performing acts of violence on another human being. It should be very clear and forthright about this.

That may seem like a no-brainer. Isn't all this jumping around in white pajamas about hitting people? But if you visit many schools, or read their literature, you wouldn't think so. Depending on what slant the school takes, you'll hear about physical fitness, mental discipline, better self esteem, getting in touch with your chi, you name it. Sometimes any reference to self defense or fighting is parenthetical, merely implied or flat missing.

It just isn't polite to talk about hurting people. While all of the other benefits I talked about from martial arts exist (except maybe for that chi thing) all of these fighting systems were born out of the necessity to hurt or kill some other person before they hurt or killed you. Some of them didn't even make a pretense of being defensive. It's hard to describe any technique where you sneak up behind a guy and snap his neck as "defensive," although at times it’s perfectly acceptable to be "preemptive."

Sometimes you’ll have an instructor that is keyed into these realities, but he or she won’t talk about it much. There are instructors who believe that talking about real world applications should be done only with "advanced" students. I believe this is a mistake. You may have to introduce some of the uglier realities gradually, but from the beginning violence should be contextualized for beginners.

There are those who want to practice martial arts, but never, ever THINK about hurting somebody. That's different than wanting to practice martial arts, but not wanting to actually hurt somebody. I don't want to hurt anybody, but will do it with great enthusiasm under the right circumstances.

I think many people studying martial arts have realized they need skills to keep themselves from getting hurt, but haven't wrapped their heads around the idea they may have to hurt somebody else to do it.

One way I see this manifested is the "true skill is not having to hurt your opponent" idea. Don't confuse this with a "use of force continuum." I agree that it is useful to have some skills to use on people that you don't want to put in the hospital. When your drunk brother in law shows his ass at a family function, it's good to be able to put him in a control hold and push him into the duck pond until he cools out, instead of giving him a concussion.

What I object to is teaching a bunch of students, particularly beginners, that when they are attacked, they should try real hard not to hurt the other person. I object to this for two reasons, one pragmatic, the other philosophical.

As always, I’ll put the pragmatic first. I don’t think this concept works because if you get attacked, you will likely be at a supreme disadvantage. You’re likely to be outnumbered. If you fail the awareness test, your first clue you are in a fight may be when you land on your ass. The people attacking you are likely to be far more comfortable with and experienced in violence than you are.

There are probably a handful of people in the world who, when attacked by three ex-con thugs in a parking lot, can solve the problem without hurting anybody. I’m not one of them. You probably aren’t either.

On a philosophical bent: why? Why should I place myself at a disadvantage to save some guy who is intent on hurting me? I practice compassionate behavior every day, but there are times I reserve the right to act solely in my self interest.

“Styles” are just systems of movements. At one time they were all founded with the mindset of hurting the other guy before he hurts you. At one time in their history they all “worked.” But over time, as the culture the style comes from becomes more peaceful, things become stylized, the true roots get lost.

So a first step, is finding a “style” that is still rooted in sudden, bloody violence. This is where it gets tricky, and becomes almost impossible to divorce the “style” from the “school.” You can walk into a school where they are teaching Style A, and find that it is all about self actualization, empowerment, and getting that promotion at work. You can go to another school teaching Style A, and find real fighting spirit and lessons taught in the context of violence, not just art.

"Martial Arts" Part 1: I'm not as dumb as I thought I was.

2007-05-14T17:31:00.000-07:00

I was looking forward to Martial University this year the way some people look forward to a fine meal. But three weeks away from home has left me hopelessly behind, and with little desire to be away from my family for another weekend, so it looks like it will have to wait until next year. That's a shame, because I was looking forward to what Rory had to show, was very interested in learning about chokes (err... ummm... that's "Vascular Neck Restraints") from Loren, and sampling the whole smörgåsbord. Next year, I promise.

I have been thinking about "Martial Arts" lately. It's good to do a self assessment every now and then. It keeps you from redoubling our efforts after loosing sight of our goals. I'm trying to decide if my current practice fits what I need.

First, we have to define our terms, as "Martial Arts" has plenty of baggage attached to it. For some folks, its structured very much like one of those self empowerment business seminars, and there's really nothing wrong with that. Breaking boards and testing for your 23^rd degree magenta belt has its place in the world. Its just not for me.

Other folks are more traditional, and I have a deep respect for that. Some of the ancient Budo and Chinese arts can go incredibly deep into what makes us human beings, and can be devastatingly powerful in practical terms. It is, of course all dependent on who you are studying with. I've found the contextual applications sometimes lacking, as some of these arts have either been frozen in time, or existed almost solely inside the training hall, for quite a while. But that's ok. All systems have blind spots, and if you can admit that you'll do ok. I think someday I may find the right Aikido dojo, and put down some roots.

But for right now, my nature is oriented more towards thuggery than Jedi, which takes us to the third group, guys who just want to learn how to fight better. There are ancillary benefits of course, self discipline, self discovery, and all that, but the bottom line is that we are interested in learning how to "Die Less Often," to borrow a phrase from Gabe Suarez and Marc "Crafty Dog" Denny.

I started out in Tang Soo Doo. It wasn't taught in a strip mall, but it should have been. Then a year of Aikido, which was a breath of fresh air, because the Dojo was full of nice, intelligent people instead of a dick house full of guys who were still living in their moms' basements. I had done enough brawling by then to recognize some of the holes in what I was learning, but wasn't attuned enough to pick up some of the subtle things. I had the feeling that if I were to stick with it for ten or fifteen years, one day the light would dawn, Ben Kenobi would appear to me, and I would be able to guide the proton torpedoes into the exhaust port with just my thoughts, but until that happened I was liable to get my clock cleaned.

Then came the military and then training as a "law enforcement officer" (being a "peace officer" is frowned on these days). They both taught me "defensive tactics," which is a misnomer. It would more correctly be called "how to gang up on some dude with a bunch of your buddies and arrest him without getting your agency sued."

Along the way, I've been in a fair number of fights. I've tried to put a number on it, but every time I think I'm done, I remember another one. The out come was not in doubt for most of them, but there were a handful where if things hadn't gone my way, I'd have been dead, or at least wearing a colostomy bag or something equally unpleasant.

I was never presented with the same fight twice, so it was hard for to draw any specific conclusions from my experiences that would be useful in the future. I did find out that if you are going to fall through a plate glass window, it's best if the suspect and the other officer go through first, but that's not necessarily going to be relevant for future events.

About the only two lessons I did learn from "all my Hellin'," as they would say in West Virginia, is that it is good to be big, and its good to be aggressive.

So these days, I'm a "civilian." I've been studying Krav Maga for about a year (the thugging kind, not the J-Lo kind) and I mingle that in with material picked up from Suarez and Denny, and SouthNarc DVDs, which is a poor substitute for actually training with them, but it does help. Hopefully they'll take a trip through the great NorthWet here soon and I can try it on for real.

I've had the time, money and interest to look at all sorts of stuff and I came to a rather startling revelation: I know more than I give myself credit for.

Sometimes I'd mingle with other "martial arts" types and get the itchy feeling that what they were doing was too complicated, too esoteric, or too "low percentage" to be worth spending much time studying. I'd usually chalk it up to my own lack of experience or lack of kinesthetic abilities. Lately I've realized that I wasn't giving myself much credit. Many martial arts technique are too complicated, too esoteric, and too "low percentage" to be worth spending much time on. Intuitively, I knew that, but since these guys were the "experts," I concluded I must be the problem.

Where you set your baseline is important. Since I had been in a military, law enforcement, or security I took some of my life experiences for granted. I've realized that there are plenty of people out there in the martial arts community who haven't been in a real fight, don't train people who get into real fights, and this effects the context they teach in. Every thing works when there is no test.

So that started the process of re-evaluating, of trying to turn what I'd learned into a paradigm, instead of making my own experiences fit somebody else's paradigm. Here's what I came up with.

1) If you get to pick the fight, things will probably go fine, but you rarely get to pick the fight. If you control where, when, and how the fight happens, and most importantly, how many buddies you have with you, you'll probably win, unless your tactics or intelligence really suck. But for Joe and Suzy homemaker, the fight will probably not happen on your terms.

2) Getting ambushed sucks. This is closely related to number 1. Those few time where I could have really "lost" and got killed were times when things went 0 to 60 in no time. In retrospect there were clues and "tells" that I failed to pick up on. Awareness is everything. I think it was Jeff Cooper who said he could forgive a Marine officer for loosing but not for being surprised.

3) You have to admit to yourself that violence is imminent, or is already happening. It's been a while since this has been a problem for me, but I see it over and over again on video tapes of people getting assaulted and killed (including cops). People want to bargain their way out of stuff, or believe that if they just do nothing for a little while longer, things will be ok. Don't get me wrong, I've talked my way out of more than one fight, but you have to realize when you've crossed over into The Land of Very Bad Things, and there is no turning back.

4) Stuff happens really fast. I mean really fast. Really, really fast. There really isn't much time to think about your response at all, much less diagnose the situation and pick from a half a dozen potential responses that are different only incrementally different from each other. "Let's see, his attack is somewhere between a number one and number 2 angle, so I'll move my lead foot out a few millimeters, and adjust my posture" is not realistic. "Oh shit, he hit me. Mongo smash" is realistic.

5) Fights aren't fair. If you aren't outnumbered, and you are equally matched with your opponent, you are very lucky, as that usually isn't how it happens. Gun Nerds usually visualize being attacked by one lone assailant with a gun. Martial Arts Nerds seem to visualize being attacked by one lone assailant who is unarmed. Both crowds desperately want to ignore knives. Criminals run in packs. Even if they aren't carrying weapons (and there's ALWAYS a weapon), sheer numbers counts as a weapon.

As I look at that list, it really has much more to do with psychology and "mindset" than it does with the mechanics of hitting people. That is exactly where my relationship with many martial arts has broken down. The assumptions they are based on seemed to come from a different reality than mine. I've looked at and studied stuff that would work fine for a mutually agreed upon, stylized duel, but breaks down when two guys explode out of a dark corner at you.

For many people in the "reality based" community, none of this was a shocker, but it was a revelation to me. It was hard for me to discount the sheer weight of authority that belongs to all those nice older men in white pajamas. The first step wasn't figuring out who to listen to, but who not too.

The next step involves two decisions: picking a "system" and picking a school to study it. More on that later.

Virginia Shootings

2007-04-16T21:22:00.000-07:00

I can’t say I’ve stopped watching the news about the mass shooting in Virginia, because in truth I never really started. The salient details can be learned in just a few minutes, and then it is time to turn away from the “news,” which these days no longer skirts the lines of emotional sensationalism, but is happy to blow right past it.

All the usual things are being said. All the people who have been asked how they feel, feel exactly the way you’d expect them too. One unusual aspect about this case is that, at the time of this writing, the shooter has not been identified.

I have a challenge for the world:

Let’s leave him that way.

Of course, law enforcement will conduct an investigation into the shooter, and glean as much as possible about what drove him to this. This will be public record, as it should be. He will be a fit subject for study for law enforcement folks, psychologists, security people. But the rest of us don’t need to know his name.

The news outlets will of course, wont’ be able to resist. We will hear about his family, his failures, everyone who was mean to him, where he got his guns, until we are sick of it. The head lines will be predictable: “What Drove Him to Kill?;” “Inside the Mind Of a Madman;” “Terror In Virginia.” Copy and paste will let them can use the same headlines from last time, and they’ll be able to use them again next time.

But we have a choice. Every time the news comes on, and says his name, change the channel. Every time there is a internet article about him, don’t read it. If you have a Blog, don’t write his name. If you hear his name, don’t let it pass your lips. Let his name die, and be forgotten.

There are many reasons why angry, disturbed men commit these outrages, instead of doing the decent thing and finding a small, easily cleaned room, sticking the gun in their own mouth and pulling the trigger. One of them is that for once in their life, they will matter. They will be the subject of attention. For the first time people will care about how they felt, about why they did things.

Don’t give him that. Don’t let him matter.

If we are going to speak of names from this atrocity, let’s find the name of a Virginia Tech student who, like brothers Nick and Adam Foss did at Columbine, helped get other students to safety, picking them up and carrying them when they had too. If you want a name to put in 72 point type, pick somebody like Thurston High School Student Mike Peebles, who saved lives by knowing good basic first aid skills the awful day there was a shooting at his school.

Think of the list of tragedies: school shootings, The Oklahoma City bomb, both World Trade Center attacks, serial killers. You can probably attach a dozen or so names to that list: killers, rapists, terrorists. We remember them like the boogey men in the closest. People know those men, even though we should be taking every effort to erase them from the human memory.

But these are the names that should be on our lips:

Hugh Thompson

Lawrence Colburn

Glenn Andreotta

Kenneth K. Hammond

Jason L. Dunham

Paul R. Smith

Gary I. Gordon

Randall D. Shughart

Bobby Muller

Tenzin Gyatso

Thich Nhat Hanh

Rafe Esquith

Bob Walliker

Josh Ryker

Jake Ryker

Doug Ure

David Ure

Joel Myrick

Oscar Romero

These men are heroes and we should often say their names.

Some of you won’t know any of those names. I doubt any of you will know all of them. These are the people we should measure ourselves against, in different ways. I could sit here all night making my list longer but that is enough to start.

There is power in memory. We still remember the names of people who lived thousands of years ago. Jesus. Leonidas. Socrates. Lao Tzu.

Like it or not, the internet has become something of a collective consciousness for all of us, even a collective memory. So let’s own it. Don’t write the Virginia shooters name in your Blogs. Don’t put it in a discussion board, or an email. Ten years from now, if someone Googles this tragedy, let the only names that come up be the innocents who died, and the ones who stood up and made a difference. Let the name of the shooter be gone, lost as if he never lived.

Bob Dylan....

2007-03-26T20:55:00.000-07:00

.... is a Cylon.

Who knew?

Barry Eisler's Requiem For An Assasin

2007-03-10T16:17:00.000-08:00

Ex-CIA spook Barry Eisler has posted an excerpt from his new book, Requiem For An Assassin, on his website. Barry's noir-ish plots are gritty and realistic, but his books really shine because he's created a complex, believable, and all too human protagonist, the half Japanese, half American, covert warrior and assassin John Rain. I probably put half the “thrillers” I've tried to read down after a chapter or two, either because the plots are too insipid, the characters too wooden, or the action just too unbelievable. But I've read more than one of Barry's books in one sitting, begrudging the time it takes to get up and go to the bathroom and get another cup of coffee.

The newest book isn't out until May, which is perfect, because it gives you time to check out the other books in the series. You don't have to start at the beginning, but I would recommend it.

Holy City

2007-03-01T22:22:00.000-08:00

I get hits on my blog from all over the world, and I'm always curious as to who those people are, and how they found me, as you all don't write nearly enough.

But I want to send a special shout out to whoever is browsing from Holy City, California. Drop me a line, whoever you are. You live in an interesting place.

Anchors

2007-02-25T19:18:00.000-08:00

It's funny how you can get knocked off your true path, and just as funny how you can get knocked back on. A couple of things have helped me lately: a piece of my own writing and two books written by other people.

I wrote my ethics and jobs blog a few months ago, and posted it in January. I wrote it to vent, as much as anything else, and didn't expect much to come of it. But that wasn't the case. One piece of advice I would offer to any one: if you have something in your life that is troubling you, write about it. It seems pretty silly that this would be news to a wannabee professional writer, but there it is.

The value in the writing is that it makes you look at things analytically and break them down. Once you write your thoughts down, they become more abstract, more amenable to being dealt with at an arm's length. That is extremely valuable. The hardest thing to analyze is your self.

The two books are On Combat , by Lt.Col. Dave Grossman and Loren Christensen, and Warriors: On Living With Courage Discipline and Honor, edited by Loren Christensen and featuring essays from all manner of martial artists, military people, law enforcement officers and just plain folks.

I'm hesitant to describe myself as a “warrior.” The term has gotten co-opted and over used to the point of being almost meaningless in popular use, much like the term “hero.” I'm uncomfortable with the mantle of “warrior,” but I often find my most useful road maps for life wrapped up inside of martial pursuits.

Both of the books, ultimately, deal with character, and the lesson that I had to re-learn from them is that character is derived from internal, not external circumstances. After reading these two books, spending some time reflecting, and re-reading my essay on jobs and ethics, I realized that one of my biggest failures in the last few years was letting my external circumstances dictate my internal character.

Warriors meant a lot to me. After reading stories written by and about people who deal with violence, hatred and human tragedy all day, yet still manage to maintain their courage, discipline and honor, it was hard to let myself off the hook for failing to do the same because of bad memories and a dysfunctional work environment.

On Combat is a little tougher. It touched mostly on the world of memory for me, not memories of combat, exactly, but similar things. Some of those memories are things that need to be unwrapped one layer at a time, as gingerly as if you were defusing a bomb. The hardest part to the process is often the starting.

I think one of the keys having a worthy life is anchors: things that you can always reach for in the middle of the night and know they will be there. Jobs aren't anchors. My time in the military is a memory. Every job I've had since then stopped having real meaning, the minute I walked out the door. Family is one of my anchors. The character I get from my martial pursuits is another.

I'm glad I don't have to do this by myself. Men like Grossman and Christensen are just men, no doubt they aren't perfect. But I'm grateful to them for tossing out anchors for the rest of us to hold on to.

Nantucket Sleigh Ride

2007-02-10T18:47:00.000-08:00

It’s funny how life works. Right after I posted my blog, (or self indulgent whine, depends on how you want to look at it) on work, I got an offer for a new job, one that I actually picked, as opposed to taking out of desperation or necessity. I took it with little hesitation, and managed to stick out the old gig for a two weeks notice, as opposed to running out the door cackling with glee.

Things are going well. It is, of course, a stressful thing to change jobs, even under the best of conditions, so those of you who have either written me asking what’s going on with the blog, or have assumed that, like most blogs, this one is going to fizzle out after an enthusiastic start, are going to have to bear with me. I didn’t have as much in the can as I wanted, so posts have been thin on the ground in the last couple of weeks.

I appreciate the feedback and discussions I’ve gotten from you all, so don’t run away on me yet (but feel free to use the “comments” section of the blogger page). There is more coming, for better or worse.

Josh Ritter

2007-02-10T18:36:00.000-08:00

If you aren't listening to Josh Ritter's new album, Animal Years, you should be. “Girl in the War” should probably be this generation's “For What It's Worth.” He's probably tired of being compared to Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, and Townes Van Zandt, so I, ummm.... won't.

Ethics, values and jobs

2007-01-21T11:33:00.000-08:00

One of the things that struck me as I read Rory's blog on “sins,” was his ability to clearly articulate what he valued. It also occurred to me that I can’t always do this.

It’s not that I live an amoral, directionless existence. Far from it. It’s just that I have allowed my moral centers, my core beliefs, to sometimes remain fuzzy, undefined and not clearly articulated. I can probably blame that on my resistance to organized religion, with its cast iron moral precepts and discouragement of questioning. Part of it is because in the rush to deal with what is urgent in our lives: bills, jobs, feeding the kid, etc; we sometimes forget what is important.

The biggest conflict of values in my life is my job. For almost a year now I’ve been trying to figure out why. At first the source of my unease was obvious: I was dealing with people who would manufacture evidence, lie, and conspire to advance their own venial agendas. But over the past eighteen months or so, some managers have moved around, other managers have expressed regrets that “mistakes were made,” things have settled down to a comfortable mediocrity.

The work is not challenging. No one is looking over my shoulder. I would probably have to kill some one to get fired. I’m not getting rich, but the pay is decent and the benefits are excellent. I could ride this gravy train for a long time.

Only I can’t. I finally put my finger on it a few weeks ago: my job isn’t honest and that makes me angry and ashamed. We wear the trappings of warriors, and advertise ourselves to the public as part of the line that protects them, but the values we actually practice are diametrically opposed. As an organization we are lazy and feckless. We should spend our time figuring out better ways to serve the public. Instead, the main pastime seems to be avoiding work and not attracting notice. Our “leaders” are marking time to pad their already cushy retirements, and that attitude cascades down through the whole organization. Physical or moral courage is absent most of the time, and likely to be punished on the rare occasion when it is exhibited. Despite a great effort to appear otherwise, we are not prepared to deal with any emergency bigger than a paper cut.

“So why don’t you change it,” you ask?

I tried. Really, I did. I fixed my bayonet, went over the top of the trench and charged the machine gun bunker. I banged my head against the wall, rocked the boat, and made some people extremely uncomfortable. I then discovered that people who couldn’t be bothered to do their job on a day to day basis were capable of tremendous bursts of energy in protecting their own turf, and had an incredible enthusiasm for retaliating against anyone who threatened their comfortable existence. People who spent all day gleefully stabbing each other in the back now suddenly closed ranks against the outsider.

So I quit fighting. Why? Part of it was sheer exhaustion. I found that there is nothing more demoralizing than fighting my own side, particularly when my allies were few and uncertain at best.

This was also not the kind of battle I’m good at. I’d rather engage a 300 pound crack monster in a wrestling match than dive into the murky unending war of words, backstabbing and betrayal. I was used to the car thieves, meth addicts and sex offenders I worked with on the street lying to me. I wasn’t used to being deceived by my own team.

I also arrived at this job with my confidence shattered by a previous defeat. I couldn’t cope with the idea of “failing” yet again.

Then there was the money. The money. The money. The money. It isn’t much money. It’s an amount some people would laugh at. But I refused to fail at supporting my family. I felt the black suction of poverty pulling from just a rung or two down on the ladder. At the time my faith in myself and my skills was so low I couldn’t imagine being employed anywhere else. The choice I made was to value supporting my family over having a work place I could believe in.

So I gave up. I don’t know who said it first, but it’s true: nobody can really beat you; you can only defeat yourself by quitting. It’s left me angry, ashamed. I feel sullied. I try to console myself by being “at” my workplace, but not “of” my workplace.

I’ve allowed my environment to compromise my values, given myself license to not hold my head up as high as I should.

“But wait a minute,” you say. “Aren’t you letting something as mundane as a job define too much of your identity?” That’s an excellent question and I’ll be honest, at times my job has been my identity. My first “real” job was the United States Coast Guard. What a fine job, and what a fine identity it was. We saved people. We trained. We excelled. I worked with people I didn’t like, but when the shit hit the fan, they wouldn’t think twice about risking themselves to save me.

I have the nasty suspicion that nothing I do will ever feel quite as good as that. I miss it terribly sometimes. I’ll never forget watching the Coast Guard rescue victims from the clutches of Hurricane Katrina, while I sat at my new job, where we probably would have been ordered to watch them drown. At times I want back in so bad I can taste it, but leaving was the right decision. My family deserves a more stable life than that, and truth be told, I’m a terrible “garrison soldier.” I have a blast when the actual mission is on, but during down time I’m too much of a free thinker for long term compatibility with the military.

So, yeah, I’ve had issues with my job being my identity. I think I could handle this job if it were just, well, a job. If I were loading stuff on a truck, delivering a product, producing charts and graphs, it would be one thing. I could punch my clock, shoot the breeze with my co-workers during breaks, and go home. I’m ok with not having a vocation these days. I’m ok with the idea of just having a job.

But where I am now is like an “anti-vocation.” I feel like I’m part of a massive con job. We puff ourselves up as having a vital role in defending the public so we can obtain resources and funding, then actively seek to do as little as possible. If this were just a job, I would be ok, but sometimes I feel like I’m aiding and abetting a criminal enterprise.

So this brings me back to my values and my belief system. If nothing else, maybe I can use this whole experience as a mirror, to see myself in it and try to articulate a set of values from it.

First, I value honesty. Honesty of intent and honesty of purpose. I value the kind of honesty where the face you put on the outside matches our true agenda

Second, I value service. Service to the public, service to ideas that are bigger than ourselves. I don’t blame anyone at my workplace for getting the best pay, the best benefits, the best position they possibly can for themselves and their families. I blame them for not giving a second’s thought to how they are serving the public in the process, for not considering how we fit into the wider scheme of things. For being so wrapped up in their own fiefdoms that the idea of serving the public is so foreign that the public seems like the enemy.

Third, I value courage. I value physical courage in the face of danger, and as time goes on, I value moral courage even more. I’m also beginning to understand that physical courage is usually easier than moral courage. I think what haunts me the most about this place is that it is hard to see it as anything other than a failing of my own courage. I’ve been scared senseless a handful of times in my life, but almost always managed to do what I needed to do anyway. This job will be one of the times where I was scared, but didn’t do what I needed to do. It’s hard for me to see it any other way, and I’m still not sure what the effect is going to be.

Fourth, I value my own independence. I value the ability to think freely, see things clearly and speak my mind. I would like nothing more than to walk away from this job, and given enough time, I’ll be able to. It will take a while, but I want to create a future for myself where I have enough money, and enough portable job skills, that if I’m every morally compromised like this again, I can walk out.

Fifth, I value team work. That may seem like a contradiction to the value of my own independence, but its not. I freely choose to cooperate with others, and when it’s reciprocated I enjoy it tremendously. When I was in the Coast Guard, I learned how powerful a group of scared nineteen year olds could be, if they all worked together. At my current job, I feel like many of my co-workers would kick me under a moving bus, not to save their own lives, which I could forgive, but to secure some momentary, nebulous advantage.

Honesty.

Service.

Courage.

Independence.

Teamwork.

It sounds like a corporate slogan, or some kind of catechism, when I write them down like that. Maybe that has been part of my reluctance to specifically articulate what I believe in. Maybe I’ve been reluctant to reduce my core beliefs to something that could be put on one of those Orwellian motivational posters that dot my workplace.

But I think it’s good to have your values codified.

The challenge is to live them.

Know anybody who is hiring?

Comfort and Happines

2007-01-13T11:44:00.001-08:00

I read a quote a few weeks ago that has stuck with me. I can’t remember the source, but it was something along the lines of “don’t confuse comfort with happiness.” I gave a grin and a nod when I read it, then moved on.

That line has been floating just under the surface of my consciousness for quite a while. “Don’t confuse comfort with happiness.”

I think of comfort as being one step up the chain from survival. I can survive on very little. “A rice bowl and a sword,” is my favorite metaphor for the kind of minimalism I find very attractive. We have a very strong survival drive, burned into us by thousands of years of being the smartest, but in many ways one of the weakest, animals on the savanna.

The thing is, basic survival isn’t very hard anymore, at least not for those of us in the industrialized west. The logical conclusion of the survival drive is that it is best to live a life with no threats, no challenges.

The survival drive never really switches off. We’re the same animals we were a couple of thousand years ago, hardwired with a biological code perhaps better suited to life out on the veldt than modern industrial existence, which has been around for a mere fraction of an eye blink in evolutionary terms.

Now our survival drive has become the “comfort drive.” For most of us, our basic needs are met, and it seems like we are well on our way to an end state where we will live a life of constant entertainment and comfort.

But does this make us happy? I say no. If it did, the rich, who are able to buy the most comfort, would be the happiest. It seems like they have just as much depression, ennui, and angst as the rest of us. They just have the resources to screw up on television instead of in private, to afford better drugs, and to get better therapists.

Don’t get me wrong, I like to “sharpen my saw” as much as the next guy, and I think it was very kind of Stephen Covey to give us a fancy buzzword for what I used to call “goofing off,” but when I really look at my life, the times that I have been happiest is when I’ve been challenged. In a few cases, the challenge has been some threat to my physical survival. While I’m not the sky diving, BASE jumping adrenaline junkie that some people are, it’s one of modern society’s dirty little secrets that we really do feel more alive after we’ve rubbed elbows with death. In most cases the challenge hasn’t been physical, but some weakness in myself to over come, a lack of confidence, a lack of skill, a lack of understanding, “doing what I’m bad at.”

I’ve had some good challenges: boot camp, search and rescue in the Bering sea, staying married for 13 years, verbally de-escalating violent people, physically controlling violent people when the verbal stuff didn’t work, finishing two novels. I’ve also had a countless string of minor failures, and at least one spectacular life changing failure, but I learned from all of them because one thing I’ve found is that it isn’t the victory we learn from, but the process of being challenged. Most of the time, the only way you truly fail is if you don’t learn.

Compared to some people I’ve either met or studied, my challenges don’t add up to much. There are Special Operations warriors who start their career by passing a selection process most of us can’t even imagine, and it only gets tougher from there. There are people who climb mountains, people who change the world, people who lift themselves up out of poverty and abuse. I marvel at how much some people accomplish.

I tend to take my challenges for granted, until I run into people who have been “luckier” than I have been and led an even more comfortable life. I run into people who don’t seem to have ever had to overcome much. It sounds arrogant, but I sometimes feel sorry for them. One of my more profane former Chief’s in the Coast Guard used to say, “we have no control over what kind of shit sandwich life puts on our plate.” He had a point, we would be fools to seek out misfortune, but maybe we should seek out challenge.

I feel like if I don’t push myself, I’ll miss out on some vital part of my humanity, feel that I will have squandered my time. I think that is one of the biggest crimes we can commit: to waste human life, both in the sense of allowing people to be killed or die needlessly, and in the sense of allowing ourselves to be less than what we could be.

So like most things in life, I find myself looking for that middle path. I’m not going to quit my day job and go back in the military to be a Special Ops guy, but I don’t want to spend the rest of my life getting fat dumb and happy either.

For all his faults, Teddy Roosevelt had some good thoughts:

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”

-Theodore Roosevelt
26th President of the United States

CITIZENSHIP IN A REPUBLIC
"The Man In The Arena"
Speech at the Sorbonne
Paris, France
April 23, 1910

24-Hour Diners and Zombie Attacks

2007-01-07T11:19:00.000-08:00

Those of us from the Pacific Northwest are probably familiar with the Shari’s chain of restaurant. They are 24 hour diner type places that serve decent burgers, good breakfasts, mediocre dinners and excellent pies.

I’ve always found the architecture a bit odd though. All Shari’s have exactly the same building plan: a low squat angular structure, sunk partially into the surrounding landscaping. After we’d lived here for a while, it finally occurred to me what they reminded me of: bunkers or pillboxes.

This has lead to some wild speculation on my part that Shari’s are actually a front for some secret government, or other insidious organization and the pillbox/restaurants are actually secret bases they will uses as strong points during SHTF, TEOTWAKI, or other groovy, apocalyptic scenarios that make people want to listen to “The Man Comes Around” and other Johnny Cash songs.

It doesn’t quite work. The windows don’t stretch around 360 degrees, leaving the rear of the buildings with no clear fields of fire. I can find no evidence of hidden ports or removable panels. Also the big glass windows themselves are a hazard, being too open and hard to defend. That’s nothing that couldn’t be fixed with some sheets of steel that I bet are hidden in every Shari’s.

So I don’t know if my suspicions about Shari’s and some kind of Conspiracy are true, but as we all know, The Truth is Out there. It does get my little mind a turnin’ on one topic that I feel is gravely under discussed in these United States: Zombie Attack.

It’s every red blooded American’s duty to be ready for Zombie attack. Oh, I know, it’s easy just to hide your head in the sand, but believe me sister, it’s coming. It’s just a matter of time. The Second Amendment is most certainly NOT about duck hunting. Our founding fathers were not only concerned about self defense, providing a counter balance against the excesses of The State, but were also acutely aware of the hazards of rotting, flesh eating undead.

While the ideal place to ride out a Zombie attack would, of course, be an isolated compound full of boon companions, ammunition, and a nice selection of single malt scotches, we can’t spend all our lives there. If the Zombie Attack happens while we are on the road, we need to be ready.

As my Coast Guard Survival Instructor once said, “When the shit hits the fan, amateurs have to improvise 100% of their response. Professionals have already planned 90%, so they only have to improvise the rest. And that is why professionals live, and amateurs die.”

So I’m thinking that if I’m on the road when the Zombie attack hits, I could do worse than to hole up in a Shari’s. Since Zombies tend towards the dumb, uncoordinated side, the lack of clear fields of fire are not so much of an issue. The windows could be barricaded and I could easily see myself holding out against the rotting hordes with The Burly Blue Collar Guy, The Shifty Untrustworthy White Collar Guy, The Panicky Young Girl, and The Older Guy Everybody Listens To For Advice.

Unlike most American’s, I’ve taken the time to actually prepare myself by viewing Zombie Attack Training Films. Hopefully I can provide some leadership and avoid everyone repeating the same mistakes again. Anyone who suggests “let’s split up,” will immediately be kicked in the groin. No one will investigate suspicious noises by themselves, particularly not with a guttering candle or a mostly dead flashlight. And most importantly, if anybody sustains a Zombie bite, we will not entertain false hope that “this time it will be different” or try to stop the infection with an amateur amputation. Nope, we’ll just face reality, get ‘er done, and move on.

Aside from all the tactical concern, there’s one more reason to hole up at Shari’s: cheeseburgers. Nothing tastes better during a break in the Zombie slaying than a nice cheeseburger, extra juicy with some LTOP. Mmm…

And then there’s the pie.

So anyway, you owe it to yourselves to be thinking of these things. You either understand it or you don’t. For those of you that don’t, good luck. For those of you that do, I’ll see you at Shari’s. Bring extra ammo.

Rose City Freefall Excerpt #2

2007-01-07T10:00:00.000-08:00

The holidaze and and trip to the ER have left me a little behind in the blogosphere. I've got a couple of essays that are almost ready for prime time, but in the meantime I thought I would post an excerpt of my novel in progress.

In this piece, Our Hero, Detective Dent Miller, has a bad day at work, and comes home to an even worse evening of memories.

*****************************************************

All day long, I’d felt it coming, this memory, like something following my back trail. Memory wasn’t even the right word. It was more like a reliving, like I was being sucked out of my chair there in my nice warm living room, sucked right back into the past.

His name had been Micha Jones. He was a big man. Twenty years old. Black. About my height, 6'5", probably weighed 320 or so, a good eighty pounds more than me at the time. He'd been working at his uncle's furniture moving place since he was fifteen, and he liked to bench press big stacks of weights for fun, so a good part of that three twenty was muscle, not fat. He was, by all accounts, a pretty nice guy. Worked hard. He and a girlfriend had a baby on the way. There was talk they would get married, which was greeted with some relief by Micha's family.

Micha wasn't a criminal, not in the strictest sense, but he did have a wild streak. He liked to have a good time. There had been a few minor things with the cops, a couple of disorderly conduct arrests for being drunk in public, although to be honest, being black and proud probably had as much to do with it.

He'd slugged a guy in a bar once, over something stupid neither one could probably remember, nothing unusual. The bad part about being Micah’s size and hitting somebody was they tended to break. So unlike most bar fights, that one had ended with the other guy needing reconstructive surgery on his face. Micah plea bargained down to a thirty day stretch in the county lock up and probation. He'd been lucky to get out of that one without a felony conviction.

It had occurred to me, more than once, that Micah was the black, urban version of what I would have turned into if I’d stayed in Tennessee instead of joining the Army. It had been a like a road map laid out in front of me: get some job that required more lifting than thinking; marry some girl and knock her up, or maybe the other way around; spend your weekends partying and fighting. We didn’t have any cocaine in Tennessee, but we sure had plenty of liquor.

That night, almost fifteen years ago now, Micha had gone out with some buddies to The Oasis, a dive on Interstate Avenue. It was a blue collar kind of place. The beer was all American, with the odd case of Heineken stashed away for people with pretensions. People played darts, shot pool, and this being before the scourge of Karaoke, listened to mediocre live bands. The newspaper would later describe the place as having a "largely African American clientele," which was bullshit. Less than half of the people there that night were black. What all the folks had in common at that place, white, black or brown, was that they had hard, physical jobs that didn't pay very well. Usually they all got along just fine.

Tonight things were a different. It was payday and Micah and his buddies had scored themselves some cocaine, a nice fat baggie of virgin white Bolivian Marching Powder. They did that from time to time, like a great many people did in the early nineties, including some cops I'd known. People later said that Micah knew he'd have to settle down soon, be a dad to his baby, and he was determined to have one last blow out party before settling down into the ranks of the boring and blue collar.

Micah had done some coke before. In those days it was hard to find somebody who hadn't. But he was by no means an addict, which probably helped kill him that night. Usually by the time a bag made its way down to a working stiff like Micah, it had been stepped on so many times that there was more Mannitol, powdered sugar, and flour in it than cocaine. But not this time. Somewhere, somebody had fucked up. Drug dealers are not noted for quality control, but this time it worked in reverse Micah somehow got his hands on a baggie that was damn near pure.

Micah did the first big fat line in the men's room with his buddies, expecting the mild euphoria he usually felt from the low grade shit they snorted. But this was different. Micah was in a good mood, circulating through the bar telling everybody how excited he was to be a dad, how wonderful the world was.

At first everybody tolerated him. Since it was Micha's bag, he got the lion's share of it. And since a little of a good thing seemed to very, very good, more must have seemed even better to Micah, because later when witnesses were interviewed, they said he'd disappeared into the bathroom every few minutes, only to reappear in an even better mood. His eyes landed on a woman he found exceptionally good looking, a white girl, and in his state, he found no reason at all not to tell her how beautiful she was.

Her boyfriend was a biker, who had just finished a stretch in the Oregon State Penitentiary for an armed robbery charge, where he had made some friends with the Aryan Brotherhood. Racial harmony and diversity training hadn't quite trickled down to Oregon's prison population. He objected to Micah's attentions. There were words. There were blows. The boyfriend stabbed Micah in one giant bicep and Micah broke his nose with one a right and splattered his teeth all over the wall with a left hook.

The bouncers talked him down for a second, got him to go outside, while the bartender frantically called the cops. Outside something went south with the bouncers, nobody ever knew what for sure.

By the time I rolled up, and took in the scene that was lit mostly by the strobes on my police car's light bar, one bouncer was back inside the bar, having entered via the plate glass window that Micah threw him through. The second was hiding under a car while Micah circled it like a pit bull that had driven his prey to ground. He would occasionally take out some frustrations by smashing a window or hammering the trunk or hood with his fists. The car rocked on its suspension when he did that, and even from fifty feet away I could see the dents in the sheet metal.

I got out of the car, feeling very lonely. My back up was a few minutes out. We were busy that night. One of our officers had shot a suspect outside another bar, and half the shift was tied up at the scene. I'd been running from bar fight to domestic assault all night long.

Micah kept circling the car. I heard a funny noise that took me a minute to identify, then I realized what it was. He was growling, deep in his throat. He stopped for a second, then looked at me.

He was huge. His arms looked as big around as my thighs. Some where along the line his shirt had gotten torn off and I could see that he was covered in blood. Some of it was his blood from the shallow knife wound in his arm, some was blood from god knows how many people. He stood there, slightly hunched, his nostrils flaring as he breathed, and I felt a little electric jolt of fear run down from the base of my skull, down my spine. He looked like an animal just then, not a man. I said that to one of the detectives that investigated the incident. "He looked like an animal." I'd regret saying that later because it made it into the papers, just another piece of “evidence” that supposedly proved my racial motivations for what was to come.

He stood there looking at me. I looked at him. I knew I had to do something. I could see a big pool of blood under the bouncer that had flown through the window. The bartender said the biker was having trouble breathing. What I really wanted to do was get in my police car and drive away.

"Just fucking shoot him," the voice in the back of my head said. This was in the days before Tasers, before bean bag shotguns, before pepper ball launchers. We'd just started carrying pepper spray and I didn't know if I trusted it. The old Mace spray had worked none to well. I had a two guns, two knives, a can of Lucky Police Products Cap-Stun pepper spray, as of yet untested, and a PR24 side handled baton that I'd last had a training class on two years before. I also had a feeling that if I tried to go hands on with this guy, no good would come of it.

I had a reputation on the street back then as being a fair guy, a straight arrow who made a lot of good arrests. I also had a reputation of somebody not to fuck with. I didn't get in many fights, but when I did, somebody usually wound up in the Emergency Room at least; sometimes they got to enjoy a short stay in the hospital. This hadn't gone exactly unnoticed by the Bureau, but times were different then. Some of the wags had even had t-shirts printed up. They said "I got 'Dented' by PPB and all I got was this lousy t-shirt," over a drawing of a stick man lying on the ground with a bloody head. I was wearing one under my body armor. I would come to regret that too.

A bunch of other young cops I drank beer with had come up with the shirts. We all had them and we all thought they were funny, but when the investigations started, suddenly nobody had one of the shirts, or remembered where they had come from, or ever thought they were funny.

So I stood there, with part of my brain screaming to just unload some 230 grain hollow points into the man in front of me. But this was before the mall shooting. I couldn't definitively say I'd killed anybody yet and part of me wanted to keep it that way. And even though I knew in my bones this was going to be bad if I tried to go hands on, I also knew I'd be excoriated if I blasted an unarmed man to the ground, no matter how big and far gone he looked.

So I took a step forward, put my hands on my gun belt, and said, "Hey, let's talk" in the softest tone of voice I could muster. It had worked before. People expected to be yelled at by the cops, not talked to conversationally.

It didn't work this time.

Micah lowered his head and charged down the narrow lane between parked cars. I couldn’t believe how fast he closed the gap. I was quick enough to step aside and avoid getting steam rolled, but one of his long arms reached out and hooked me. The next thing I knew, we were on the ground, rolling and fighting. The world narrowed to a kaleidoscope of images: the flashing of lights of my car, an elbow headed for my face, pavement underneath me. I was behind the curve, reacting to Micah instead of controlling the flow of events. The only reason he didn't pound me into the ground and kill me right away is that he was acting out of sheer rage. There was no higher thinking going on.

I flashed back to what an older, grizzled cop had told me once. He said cops got into two kinds of fights. One was when you fought against a guy who was trying to get away. The suspect’s fundamental goal was to avoid going to jail. You could still get hurt, or killed by those guys, but their goal was escape, not a dead cop. The second kind of fight was when somebody picked you out in particular and decided to kill you. He told me in that kind of fight, the fact that you were a cop didn't matter any more. The badge, all the legal authority that went with it, didn't mean shit anymore. You were just a guy trying to survive.

I was in that kind of fight now. I found myself sprawled on my back, with Micah straddling me. I made a cage with my arms to protect my head as Micah rained blows down on me. I tasted blood. Somewhere along the line, my nose had been broken. It was flattened and pressed against my right cheek. Most of the time, I succeeded in taking the punches Micah was throwing on the arm, but even then my forearms were being driven back into my face. Every time one of his shots would get past my guard and land on the side or top of my head, it was like a bomb going off. I’d see a bright light flash like lightening.

You can't keep this up, I remember thinking. I was totally defensive, just laying there taking punishment from Micah. Sooner or later he'd slip one in and knock me cold. I wouldn't be able to maintain control of my guns then. He could kill me and damn near everybody else in the parking lot with them.

Everything was silent. My vision had narrowed to the point that all I could see was Micah's face and those two giant fists coming down, over and over. I wanted to reach down, pull my gun out, and empty it in him, but I couldn't make myself do it. If I dropped an arm down I knew I'd take one of those shots in the face. I was also deathly afraid that if I pulled out my gun, Micah would simply pluck it out of my hands. He had stopped being a person to me, had instead become some kind of mythic beast, some kind of un-slayable monster. I'd never felt helpless before. My muscles felt weak and rubbery. All the adrenaline was burned out of them. It hurt to breathe.

That was when I stopped being scared and starting getting pissed. I refused to accept the image of myself dying there, beaten to death by some coked up dirt bag on an asphalt parking lot rainbow sheened with motor oil and strewn with broken glass. The punches stopped hurting, somehow the fear went away.

I rocked my hips forward sharply and Micah slid forward a bit. His weight was no longer on my hips, but on my abdomen. I remembered a wrestling move Ira had shown me once, when we'd been horsing around and Indian wrestling. I flung my legs upward, managed to hook one ankle around his face and drove my legs back down. The muscles in my back and legs screamed as they stretched and tore.

I wasn't hearing very well. Part of it was the auditory exclusion that comes from fear, but later I'd find out that one of those punches had ruptured my left ear drum. I still heard the hollow thud of Micah's head hitting the pavement and if I'd had the wind left, I would have shouted for joy. In the pulsating light cast by my police car I saw his eyes flutter.

I launched my self at him as he fought to sit up into a squat. I hit him with all of my weight before he could collect himself, pinning him under me. Perfect.

I crawled up his back and wrapped a forearm around his neck. My higher brain was gone, shunted into the back of my mind by the primitive urge to destroy the enemy that a few seconds ago had been killing me. My tools, the guns, the knives, pepper spray, handcuffs, were all forgotten. I had a lot more in common with an ancestor from thousands of years ago right then, some man running around in an animal skin killing with his bare hands than I had with a modern police officer with hundreds of hours of training and all sorts of technology at his disposal..

I wrapped a forearm around his throat, leaned back and squeezed. He bucked for a couple of seconds then slumped, the blood supply to the brain shut off as surely as if I'd turned a valve. It felt so good to lay there with him under me, finally still and no longer a threat. I inched forward, trying to find a way to bring even more weight to bear. As long as he was still like that, I was safe. I wouldn't have to feel those hands coming down on my face anymore.

Time had stopped. Later, I'd find out that when the fight first started, my radio microphone had gotten stuck open for the first thirty seconds of the fight. After that the hand microphone cord got ripped out of the radio, rending the whole thing useless. The recordings were time stamped. From the time Micah tackled me to the other officers showed up was a shade over for minutes. Four minutes. I would have guessed a half an hour at least.

Micah gave one last, convulsive jerk, and a little voice in the back of my mind told me that you weren't supposed to keep a choke on for more than a few seconds, that after that brain damage was inevitable. But I was afraid to let go, afraid that if I took the choke off he'd rise like some villain from a cheap horror movie and start beating me again. I couldn't take any more shots from those fists. My cheeks was swollen, both of my eyes closed to the point that I was looking out of narrow slits. My face and skull felt eggshell thin, like they would surely cave in if he hit me again.

It started to rain, blessedly cool. I felt so hot. I think I passed out for a little while, laying there with all my weight bearing down on Micah, my arm still locked across his throat.

"Miller! Miller! Dent! Wake the fuck up!" It was Sergeant Havens, now long since retired. He'd been an old fart even then. He pulled me off of Micah, no easy task since Havens weighed half what I did. I looked around and suddenly there were cops every where, pushing the crowd back, fighting with some of the clients who were screaming that I'd killed somebody. Bullshit. I hadn't killed anybody. I just put an asshole who wanted to fight in a sleeper hold. If he didn't want to get choked out, he shouldn't have fought with me.

Another cop came over, slid one of my arms over his shoulders.

"What took you guys so long?" I tried to ask, only it didn't come out that way, my lips had been split against my teeth. I'd just been too busy to notice at the time.

An ambulance rolled up to us, and I caught a reflection in the windshield. I wondered who the big asshole with the bloody, swollen face was, then I realized it was me.

The inside of the ambulance was warm and bright and antiseptic after the parking lot. I laid back in the gurney and didn't think about much. We were screaming our way to the hospital, and the medic was cutting my clothes off when my hearing started to come back, in one ear anyway. Havens was riding in the back of the ambulance with me. His radio was still turned on. I heard the guys back at the crime scene talking about "securing the body until the Medical Examiner gets here.”

"The bouncer die?" I managed to ask. Shit. It had all been for nothing. The guy who had been thrown through the window had died anyway. I might as well have waited.

"No Dent. The biker's fine. The guy you choked is the one who died."

I laid there in the ambulance, trying to connect Haven's words to what I remembered. There was no way the guy could be dead. I had just choked him out. I'd practiced the move dozens of times, in training or when I was screwing around with the guys. I'd had it done to me dozens of times. The guy would put the choke on. Your eyelids would flutter. Things would go a little gray and then snap back into focus when the guy let off.

Later Havens would apologize for giving me the news that way, said he hadn't been thinking. I remember laying there in the ambulance, the realization that I'd just killed a man with my bare hands sinking in.

Desires Part 1.1

2006-12-24T22:16:00.001-08:00

Here's a link to the PBS show:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/persuaders/

Desires Part One

2006-12-24T11:44:00.000-08:00

I don't watch television much. We don't even have cable, which these days is just about the equivalent of not having indoor plumbing. Usually when I watch a television show it's via a download (BSG rocks!) or something I've made a conscious decision to watch. When you only have six channels, and you have to twiggle the rabbit ears to get most of them to come in clearly, it limits the amount of time you're willing to sit there with a slack jaw and a dumb expression on your face, mindlessly clicking through channels looking for something to watch. After about thirty seconds, you're done.

My parents have cable, and every time I go see them, I fall pray to clicker disease. You start at the low numbers, go channel by channel, and by the time you've gone 'round the horn at the top, you forgot what was down at the bottom. Three hours later, you've watched part of twenty different programs, and you have 180 minutes less to live.

So I've resisted the temptation to get cable. Yes, I know there are good shows on The Discovery Channel, History Channel, etc, but they write books about that sort of thing too you know. I'm just ADD enough to waste too much time with a remote control in my hand. I've written about 1500 pages of fiction in the last two years, and I have a sneaking suspicion that I wouldn't have written that much if I'd had cable.

I've focused on how much inane programming I'm not sucking in, but the real benefit maybe the amount of ADVERTISING that I'm sparing myself. I watched a PBS program the other day (because, you know, PBS is different...) called "The Persuaders."

It's about the advertising industry, and I highly recommend it. One thing that struck me was how the product itself becomes largely irrelevant. Advertising is about creating an "experience."

The thing is, the advertising sells us an "experience" or even an identity, and what we really get is, well, a product. I was struck by how easy it is to create desire that has nothing at all to do with the product being sold. Sex is the easy one. It's used to sell everything from cars to orange juice. We're also sold masculinity, freedom, friendship, compassion, strength, but what we really get is cars, socks, deodorant and disposable razors.

If the definition of insanity is "doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results," then advertising has made us all truly insane. We continually buy stuff in attempt to fill in the gaps in our lives, stop our existentialist angst, soothe our inner children, whatever. And we continually find that what we bought just doesn't fit the bill. You would think that eventually we'd figure it out, but like Charlie Brown running up to Lucy's foot ball one more time, we just keep buying.

I watched the PBS show with my eleven year old daughter. I've often been amazed at the biting criticism she applies to advertising. She's pretty quick to throw the BS flag on advertising claims. I don't remember being that insightful when I was her age. She watched "The Persuaders," and got it.

It occurs to me that we haven't had cable, and haven't watched much broadcast television, since she was three or four. My kid has probably watched a third of the total number hours of TV as many of her peers. Most of her TV watching has been via DVD movies and TV shows, especially "Buffy The Vampire Slayer." I still worry that she watches too much, but maybe watching smart, capable women stake vampires isn't so bad, especially if it isn't accompanied by all the ads.

So I'm trying to take my rather accidental TV-free existence and see how close I can come to turning it into an advertising free existence. I've got the TV thing just about licked. There's no way I'm going without my weekly dose of Katee Sackhoff, but since I watch that via the 'net and sans ads, that doesn't count. That leaves radio, but I mostly listen to OPB, so I may be ok there. I'll have a moral crisis when they have their periodic fund raising drives. Does that count as advertising? I read a couple of magazines a month, Wired and sometimes Outside.

The Internet is a little different. I don't seem all that conscious of the ads I see on web pages, as I'm usually focused on the content. It will be interesting to see if I'm more conscious of them now.

I'm wondering if there isn't a critical mass, some tipping point below which you can safely ignore advertising, but if you get beyond it in sheer volume, it just creeps into you bones and your sub-conscious, making you a mindless consumer monkey, forever doomed to consume.

Last year I gave up smoking. This year it was junk food (well, mostly). Maybe this coming year I'll give up advertising.

Doing what you're bad at...

2006-12-17T08:43:00.000-08:00

We’ve all heard the clichés: "Nothing succeeds like success." "We need to reinforce success." Like most clichés, there's probably, well, a grain of truth in them.

I can shoot a handgun pretty well. A friend of mine says I'm probably well into the 90^th percentile of the human race when it comes to shooting a handgun. That isn't so impressive, when you consider that most people haven't even picked up a handgun. It's even less impressive if know how much better the people to the right of me on the bell curve can run a gun, but its probably a fair statement. I don't know if the number 90 is the right one, but I'd be pretty comfortable saying I'm far better than most people.

How did I get there? By "reinforcing success." I've probably put 30,000 rounds of ammunition down range in the last fifteen years, most of it paid for by your tax dollars. I've practiced my draw stroke thousands of times, dry fired, live fired, etc. That's given me the ability to get a handgun out of a holster quickly and shoot small targets. It helps that I have above average fine motor skills, but mostly it’s just been hard work.

Some people may see that as an achievement. Others may see it as a waste of time, or worse yet, some kind of psychotic obsession, but that’s a subject for another blog. What I'm beginning to realize is that partly consciously, partly unconsciously, I chose to develop those skills, at the cost of something else.

There's a finite amount of time in the day, and an even smaller amount of time that I can devote to my martial pursuits (I can't always make my self call it what it is and say "studying fighting"). So whenever I chose to devote time, money and mental attention to one skill, I'm de-selecting a long list of other skills.

So why did I pick that one? Because I'm good at it. By some freak of nature, I shoot guns well. Better than I play guitar, better than I dance, better than I do many other things, I can make .40 caliber holes appear in a target quickly. I was decent to begin with, and it was easy for me to get better.

That feels good. Being good at something, particularly from the start, is intoxicating. It makes us want to "reinforce success" by doing it some more, so we progress merrily down the learning curve. It's pretty cool to realize you've cut .05 seconds off your average draw time after a practice sessions, or that your average split time is down to .22.

But wait a minute. What wasn't I doing during those times I was standing on a shooting range? First of all, I wasn't studying world peace, developing effective communications skills, or learning to be more culturally sensitive, pursuits that many people tell me are more worthwhile than blasting away with one of those icky guns. I actually have studied world piece, communications skills, and cultural sensitivity but that's a subject for another blog, so right now let's focus on the "time budget" I've set aside for studying fighting (there, I said it.)

One thing I wasn't doing was working on my empty hand skills, called by some "martial arts" or by others, "defensive tactics." If you want to be an all around "fighter" type guy, these skills are actually much more important than firearms skills. Someone is far more likely to try to break my jaw than shoot me, and the law only allows a certain amount of disproportionate response when you're defending yourself. If you shoot a guy who was just trying to punch you out, you've got a lot of 'splaining to do.

So why have I developed one skill at the expensive of the more important one? Because I have all the athletic ability of an ox. My fine motor skills and hand eye coordination are probably above average, but when it comes to gross motor skills I'm in the klutz category. Basic movements that your average person can grasp in a few minutes, I have to practice a couple of jillion times to get right. I frequently run into the athletically gifted in martial arts classes. Often they are my instructors, and they don't get why simple stuff is such a challenge for me.

The interesting thing is that I've worked in jobs where the ability to go hands on with people is important. I'm lucky enough to have two saving graces. One is size. I'm big enough that I've managed to Godzilla my way through more than one fight. But relying on size alone is risky. It's an advantage that can be negated by circumstance, the other guy's skill, or even the other guy's size. There are people out there that are more skilled than me, faster than me, and bigger than me. So relying on my one trick pony is dangerous.

The other saving grace is that on numerous occasions; while under stress, I've performed with far more coordination and grace than I typically do in practice. This flies in the face of conventional training theory, which says that "you will never rise to the occasion, but rather will default to your lowest level of training." My theory is that in practice, my overly analytical, egghead brain gets in the way of my body. During the real deal, I've got too many other things to think about, and my body just moves.

The thing is, it doesn't always work that way, and while society doesn't pay me to be a professional, full time thug anymore, I still have a vested interest in doing this right.

I'm not doing it right. When it comes to empty hand tactics, I've stayed a perpetual beginner for a very long time. I don't mean "perpetual beginner" in the positive, zen-like way. I mean "perpetual beginner" in the sense that I've devoted just enough energy to frustrate myself, but not enough to make big progress. I know intellectually, if I buckle down and wrap myself up in this stuff, eventually I'll get some sort of break through. The reason my gross motor skills aren't developed is because I've never developed them. Just like we "reinforce success" we also have a tendency to reinforce ineptitude.

So why don't I buckle down and do it? Because doing something you're bad at sucks. It feels futile. You wonder if you're wasting your time. It's also a little scary.

But if we go through life only doing what we're good at, we run the risk of becoming hyper specialized, of becoming a less than whole human being. Here's the part where all that talk about fighting, and guns and all that scary stuff starts to relate to "real life."

I run into people who have spent their whole lives "reinforcing success." What that really means, for most of them, is that they've spent their entire lives inside a very narrow comfort zone. At my current workplace, we have quite a few engineers. They are very bright people. They also suck at talking to people who aren't also engineers. If you try to converse with one, you'll find that, since you aren’t an engineer, your opinion doesn't matter.

The thing is, we're a public agency. The public frequently wishes to opine about our quality of service, our strategic priorities, and most importantly, how we spend money. For years, the engineering mafia that ran my workplace ignored them. The engineers made the decisions because they were the experts. There was no need to explain the decisions, because well, they were the experts.

Some of those guys are unemployed now. Others are walking around with dazed, shell shocked looks on their faces. Some of them are angry. Because, for years they refused to do what they were bad at. They refused to talk to people who weren't engineers, and finally it blew up on them. They now have a boss who isn't an engineer, who is very interested in what the public has to say, right or wrong, and far less interested in what is most technically correct.

There's often a tendency to think that what you're bad at doesn't matter. That's the difference between me and the crowd at work. I realize I need to get better at empty hand skills. They crowd at work never realized they needed to wise up on the social skills, fast, and most of them still haven't. They are just walking around pissed off that the rest of the world isn't obliging them by running the way it "should" run. They are more worried about being "right" than being "effective."

If they had spent half the time and energy learning effective communication and negotiation skills that they spent on stone walling the public, they'd be much better off. I can't help but think a few dozen copies of "How to Win Friends and Influence People," might have made all the difference here.

I think doing what you're bad at is a survival skill. This is true both in the narrow sense of my Martial Practice (i.e., studying fighting) and in the larger sense. The world changed for the Engineer Mafia. It was a change partly brought on by their own behavior, and partly because sometimes the world just changes. Specialists are people who do what they are good at, and while I enjoy the Heinlein quote "specialization is for insects," modern reality is that society rewards the specialist more frequently than the generalist.

So go ahead and "reinforce success." It feels good. But don't forget to set some time aside to go do what you're bad at. I just shelled out money for extra Krav Maga classes every week. I know on some day, I'll look back on how hard it was in the beginning, and reflect on how much “easier” it has become. I just wish that day would hurry up and get here.

Eclecticism

2006-12-14T15:05:00.000-08:00

Here's my reading list. Of course it grows all the time, but I hope to be somewhere around the book that's currently at 100 by this time next year.

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Krav Maga (ordered)
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Dao of JKD (ordered)
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On combat, Grossman Christensen (ordered)

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the last mortal man (wish listed)
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Characters and Viewpoints by Orson Scott Card (ordered)

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Ludlum (library)
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John McDonald/ Travis McGee
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Donald Hamiton/ Matt Helm
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Thinker's Toolkit Morgan Jones (buy)
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Stephen Laws  (on half wishlist)
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Achilles in Vietnam (have)
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Grapes of Wrath (have)
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China Mieville (ebook?)
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Zen and the Art of making a living (have)

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Idlewild, Nick Sagan (library)
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The 38 Most Common Fiction Writing Mistakes:

Pattern Recognition  William Gibson (ebook)

Field Guide: Dog First Aid Emergency Care for the Hunting, Working, and Outdoor Dog

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Never Let Me Go
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Stanley Bing
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MJ Rose
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Grahm Greene
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JA Konrath
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Quiet Desperation: The Truth About Successful men  Jan Halter

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Labyrinth, Kate Mosse
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Self-Editing for Fiction Writers by Renni Browne

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Shooter
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The Art of Speed Reading People: How to Size People Up and Speak Their Language

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Raymond Chandler
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McMurtry
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Kylie Mills
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Ishamael, Daniel Quinn
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Art & Fear lit
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Book on Handwriting analysis, especially as pertains to employment.

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Manhatten project
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The  Visible Employee
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The Art of War
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Catch me if you can
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Harlan Ellison 
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Ghandi bio
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Thomas Pynchon
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The Bodhisattva Warriors
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True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle 
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Breathing Life into Your Characters" by Rachael Ballon

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Warriors Series
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Ninja: The True Story of Japan's Secret Warrior Cult (Hardcover)

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His Dark Materials
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Street E & E: Marc MacYoung 
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Eragon
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MLK Bio
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Vachs
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David Foster Wallace 
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Apocalypse Door
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The Translucent revolution
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Edward Lee Infernal Angel
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Natalie Goldbergs Monkey Mind book
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Under and Alone
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The Ace Factor: Mike Spick
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Mark Frost
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Rose City Justice: A Legal History of Portland, Oregon

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Charles Sheffield, Summertide
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American Psycho
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Mervyn Peake Gorgemghast
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Art Of Peace Ueshiba *
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Asset in Black" a novel by an anonymous author (nom de plume 'Casey Prescott')

Wilhelm, Kate : Storyteller: Writing Lessons and More from 27 Years of the Clarion Writers' Workshop

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Cultube of narcissim
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Manwatching: Desmond Morris
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Deshi John Donohue
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the lone samurai
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Paradox John Meaney
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Guitar Tim Brookes
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Dan Simmons Carrion Comfort
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The Ronin: A Novel Based on a Zen
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Spillane
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The Key James Frey
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Gift of fear, Gavin De Becker
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Nasty People: Jay Carter 
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L Neil Smith the american zone
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The House on Garibaldi Street
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reign of the dead
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The Tin Drum
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The Traveller John Twelve Hawks
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The War Against Boys
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Mythago wood
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Worlds of Wonder: How to Write Science Fiction & Fantasyby David Gerrold

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The Real Odessa Uki Goni
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Inside the Criminal Mind: Stanton E. Samenow Ph.D.

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The Howling gary brandner
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Justice, Not Vengence Simon Wiesenthal
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Hammit,
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Slaughther House 5
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David Gemmel
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The Lone Samurai: William Scott Wilson
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Stephen King
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On Writing Science Fiction: The Editors Strike Back

Hideous Dream: A Soldier's Memoir of the U.S. Invasion of Haiti  Stan Goff

Practical Homicide Investigation: Vernon J. Geberth

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James Rollins
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Hostile Takeover: How Big Money & Corruption Conquered Our Government -- And How We Can Take It Back"

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PC Hodgel
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A Light in August 
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Why Courage Matters: The Way to a Braver Life  John Mccain

Sharpening the Warrior's Edge Bruce K. Siddle

Starting

2006-12-11T07:58:00.000-08:00

Where to start?

I decided I'd have a handful of essays in the can before I started this blog, but somehow none of them seem right to start off with.

I think instead, I'll start with a piece of fiction. It's an excerpt from my novel (currently in second draft) Rose City Freefall. I liked this passage when I wrote it, and still like it almost nine months later, which probably means I'm growing dangerously proud of it.

I don't think it needs much set up. Our Hero, Dent Miller, former Army Ranger and current (although not for much longer) homicide detective, takes a moment away from things to contemplate his guitar.

**********************************************************************************

On impulse, I opened up the closet and pulled out my favorite, a 1965 Fender Stratocaster, made right before CBS bought, and ruined, the company. The body was Candy Apple Red. The neck had that broken in feel that only comes from decades of being played. I sat down on my stool and struck a g-chord. The damn thing sounded like magic and sex and thunder, all rolled into one. It was louder than any un-amplified electric guitar had any right to be. The tone was bell like on top, woody on the bottom. The strings were brand new, but the tuners and other hardware were all original, forty some years old, yet they still held perfect tune.

I shuffled my way through some blues licks, then made a pass at the first solo to Hendrix's version of "All Along the Watchtower." I'd been working on that one for a couple of years now. Sooner or later I'd get it down, all the way through.

I looked at my watch and realized I'd been sitting there, still in my coat, with my wet boots dripping on the floor, for almost twenty minutes. I had no musical talent at all, but a fine guitar could transport me just by its sound and looks alone. I stopped playing and looked at the Strat in the morning light. Most of designs that originally dated from the Fifties hadn't aged well, unless your tastes ran to kitsch, but that Strat still looked as fresh and sleek as it had back then. The shape somehow made me think of rocket ships and women both at once.

The paint was a little checked and crazed from the years, but it still looked cool. There was no other word for it. It wasn't "beautiful," it didn't have a "good aesthetic." It was cool. Cool in the way that hot rods, Harleys, and fighter planes were cool. To my Tennessee trailer court, blue collar eye, it was so cool it was art. I was thinking about having my truck painted to match.

I'd spent whole summers in my teens, reading Rolling Stone and Guitar Player magazines over and over again, looking at pictures of Strats. The magazines came from money I scrounged, mowing lawns, hauling scrap. I kept them hidden from my dad the way other kids hid their porn. He hated all those long haired, dope smoking assholes. He'd thrown my Hendrix albums out twice, when he was drunk, and I always scraped the scratch together to buy them again.

The only guitar I'd had back then was a piece of shit no name Taiwan import. I'd left it in the trailer when I left for basic, and since I never went back, I had no idea what happened to it. Months later, I walked out the gates of Fort Benning, right after graduating airborne school, my wallet flush with payday cash. I was passing the row of bars, tattoo parlors, and pawn shops, intent on getting a little drunk, when I saw my Strat, sitting in the window of one of the pawn shops. I looked at the price tag, on a card woven between the strings, and turned to go. I got halfway down the block before it occurred to me that I had enough money in my pocket to just walk in and buy it. That was a new thought for me. Back then old Strats were just old, used guitars. They weren't commanding the cork sniffer prices they do these days. But I had never spent that much money on any one single thing before, had, in all honesty, gotten used to my dreams being just that: dreams that would probably never come true.

I walked out fifteen minutes later with a guitar case in my hand and a nagging suspicion that I must be hallucinating. Despite having graduated basic, having gotten my airborne wings after jumping out of an airplane, buying that guitar made me finally feel like a man. This was something I'd dreamed about, lusted after, and I finally had it in my hands. It was a new idea, one I definitely hadn't learned from my old man. As I walked back to the base with my Strat, it occurred to me that I didn't know my father had any dreams, or if any of them had ever come true. It was the first time I ever felt sorry for him, and the start of maybe learning to forgive him.

I didn't get drunk that weekend, didn't get laid. I also didn't get a bad tattoo or a case of the clap, which more than one guy I knew did. What I got was a bad set of blistered fingers. By Sunday night, the night before I'd leave for Ranger school and have to put all my personal property into storage, I could play "Sunshine of Your Love" all the way through, and most of "Hey Joe."

Sixty eight days later, I had a handful of brand new Ranger tabs to sew on my uniforms, and a little more swagger, but secretly my biggest relief was that I could get that Strat out of storage. I'd reconciled myself to the fact that I would always be better by far at shooting an M16 than playing guitar, that I was probably never going to make it big in a rock band, but the guitar was mine, mine alone. It took me away from the bullshit of the Army, the sad desperation of the kids around me who needed to prove that they were men. Many nights during Ranger school, as I sat up to my neck in swamp water, or froze my ass off on the side of a mountain, I dreamed about having that Strat in my hands, the way other guys dreamed about their girlfriends. I knew it would probably never take me anywhere except in my own mind, but that was enough.