Velvet Hammer

There are two things I love about PDX, the Portland airport. One is the free wifi. The other is Coffee People.  Coffee People used to be a chain of coffee kiosks in Portland that made things like Black Tiger and the Depth Charge. My favorite was The Velvet Hammer, a rich espresso cinnamon mocha.  They did milkshakes, too, some with gritty powdered espresso beans. Very nice.

Despite the fact that Coffee People's product was better in every way to a certain chain that shall remain nameless but has the initials STARBUCKS, they pretty much died out. Except at the airport.

A really good coffee can take some of the sting out of saying goodbye. A little, anyway.

I think these long (deployments? missions? aah- absences) absences would be easier if I didn't love my family. That's probably obvious, but it doesn't work out that way.  The people who have the hardest time with the separation live with this fear and mistrust of what their spouse or children might be doing.  In that sense, it is much easier for me. I miss my family, but I don't worry about them much. The usual worries that bad things might happen, but no worries that they might instigate badness. It's not in them.

But still, I miss them. Some of it is the greedy missing of not having someone to hold at night or children to pounce or people to share stories with. Some of the miss is deeper. My children are turning into extraordinary people very quickly right now.  I am jealous of every second that I miss.  My wife is making great strides personally and professionally.  That's part of the rub and part of the depth of our love- I also like them an awful lot. If there was no blood or marriage tie, no years of shared experience I would still be fascinated and work to be friends with this incredible little group of people.

That's pretty cool, but it makes it hard to leave.

Even though it wasn't hard to leave. Leaving is moving and as long as I'm moving it's pretty easy just to do what needs to be done and I don't really feel the musing and maudlin emotions that hit me later.  Like now, sitting in an airport.

Territory

Again thanks to Steve-

"Sound suspiciously like you are saying not only is the map not the territory, the territory is not the territory, either ..."

Not at all, but this is huge.  If we needed examples we could draw them from tracking or martial arts or social contacts or anything, but this is really simple and doesn't need that.  No one sees everything.  The world is too big and each instant of time is almost infinitely complex. Even if you could process the whole range of colors, sounds and smells simultaneously, you still couldn't see behind your head or hear the noises beyond human range.

In the same place, different people look at different things.  Two very good observers can see the same event and point out entirely different suites of critical information. How they observe, their styles, are often habits and can be trained. This is good.

The territory is the territory. An obstacle is an obstacle, but whether your first inclination is to look for a way over, around, under or through is largely a matter of how you look at the territory.  

There is value in learning different ways to look because some problems are easier to solve from a different perspective than your regular one. I was a very visual learner.  That is still there, it is still a tool, but there are situations, particularly close-quarters fights where kinesthetic thinking -touch- is superior. Faster, more sure. I can tell you how to move someone to the weak side of their base and draw diagrams and demonstrate, but once you feel it as sort of a 'gravity hole' it is obvious and everywhere. 

There is a side effect/bad thing that gets thrown in here and it is something that I write about a lot.  In this post I am talking about accurate observers and tools for them.  Be very aware that some people (I think most, in certain circumstances) are not observing when they think they are. They are treating their plans and preconceptions and templates as data. They believe so strongly that X is the way things happen that they will respond as if X were happening when Y is.  This isn't limited to "you guys" or amateurs or martial artists.  Everyone brings something to the table- sometimes it is experience and some times it is knowledge separate from experience and sometimes it is folklore masquerading as knowledge.  The only defense against this is to let it go as soon as you realize you are wrong.

E.G. If you knew X was going to happen and it didn't, let go of that belief and find a way to survive. You can reconcile shit later.

Otherwise, though, experience and knowledge add to the process.  They are how you choose what needs to be looked at and how you interpret what you see. Some people work hard on being exposed to enough different things to help with interpretation.  That's great.  I've seen far fewer who practice different ways to see.  There are huge gains to be made when you learn to see things that are invisible to you now.

Changing Views

When you look at a rock, you see a rock. Except not really. You are seeing light in the visible spectrum bouncing off the rock and triggering some cells in your eye which translate...
Philosophers can argue about whether what you see is really the rock or not, or whether the rock exists and they can eventually drown in the bullshit that they generate. That's not where I'm going here. The visible spectrum gives you some information. Touch gives you some information and the information may well be different than sight. Same with taste. Same with different lights. Same with touching moving weight versus static texture.

How you look at things are models.  The model, the map, is never the territory. Maps (it is getting harder to use words sometimes- the map, the vision, the expectation, the construct, whatever you call the thing in your head that you deal with) are useful, they are not real.

A good friend, someone I admire very much, said he would love to train with me.  It tickles me, because I'd love to train with him, and also because he is the 'perfect student'-  he's done the years to get technique and movement down and would be ready to play with the things that are intriguing me- that's one of my weaknesses as a teacher. I'm selfish and want to learn: classes wind up being something more like exploratory playgroups than anything else. I'm okay with that.

My mind started racing right away, and this is the part I want to share.  Once you strip down techniques to what they are as opposed to how they seem, there's maybe two full days of techniques.  Everything there is to know about jointlocks takes about an hour. Maybe two for take-downs. Timing, targeting and weapon conformation for striking is pretty simple. Power generation can be done in a couple of hours depending on how well they get the feel of some of the bone/structure or internal types, but the big high-gain systems are easy. Another hour, maybe, for contact/response ambush survival. And on and on, moving bodies on the ground and standing...

It seems like a lot, but it also seems like short shrift. To someone who has spent years studying a locking art and still gets surprised by new things it can get taken as an insult that 'everything' can be covered in an hour. It can, though. It's just a different way to draw the map.  The advantage of working with a really experienced martial artist is that he has already done the thousands of reps and knows this stuff.  It then becomes a way to get a simpler and more stream-lined concept into his or her head.

That's background. This is what I would like to play with- starting from just a mixing it up sparring/rolling session:

• Just go for it and break it down- techniques and tactics. Did you have a strategy? Look at how critical reflexes and conditioned specific responses are here.
• The exact same thing, but think of it now as energy coming in, not fists. Instead of manipulating a body, manipulate the energy. See what this makes easier, how you have to think and not think differently.
• Oh, by the way- talking about manipulating bodies? You've been moving your fists and feet. Now move his. Own him, make everything he does part of your plan.  When you get this for the first time, it makes you giggle.
• Find and exploit the dead space.  There are active and inactive parts of his body- can you get all or part of you in the inactive spaces, find the areas where the active parts aren't?
• Point of action. Almost everyone is naturally drawn to what is going on. Sometimes your best opportunities are nowhere near the struggle. Move your attention away from where it is drawn.
• Start to bring in the third factor- environment. Start playing with walls and tables and clutter and found weapons. Frisk fighting, where you maintain the full sparring/rolling mode but are also going through his pockets looking for weapons you can use. (Somewhere there is a picture of a guy named Steve- we'd been doing judo newaza and I suddenly sprung away and he tried to follow but he couldn't since I'd used his obi to tie his elbow to his knee. It was pretty funny).
• Some of this is easier blindfolded.

That's just playing from sparring.  There's more: Violence dynamics, how and why fights happen. The patterns, what to look for. Longitudinal violence- where did this really start and where will it end, if ever? Changing the question- is this a fight because I decided it was going to be? Because the threat did and I'm blindly following? Can I change that decision?  Changing the context- similar, but much broader- if the fight is about X can I change the value of X to something not worth fighting over?

This last is the big part because fighting is not about physical skills so much as it is about people.  This man has a lot to teach me about people and I would love to see the synergy of the two of us playing with this stuff- and playing is the key.  It's the best way, IMO to learn deeply.

Costumes and Jewelry

There's a lot going on right now- with a lot of travel time and transitions. Middle East desert to rainy (but beautifully clear and windy yesterday) Pacific North West. Too little time alone with family, followed by a huge weekend (three days, about nine hours sleep) at the Oregon Science Fiction Convention- Orycon.

There will be more to write about that soon. There are good friends that I seem to only see there and some to whom I owe great gratitude for short talks. More later.

Costumes and Jewelry. It's been said (a lot!) that whenever an agency sets up a Tactical or Negotiations Team, the first order of business is to design a new patch. I never really understood the impulse but I saw it, fairly frequently, and whenever the gear guys (and it's usually spearheaded by the guys who are into toys) started talking about a new uniform or patch or badge or making challenge coins I would shut it down by saying, "That bullshit is just costumes and jewelry. What are we going to do about training?"

Just walking down the street, there are people wearing clothes and people wearing costumes. You have a 'swoosh' on your t-shirt, it's a pretty good bet that you grabbed a t-shirt that fit. You're wearing clothes. Every single thing you wear has the swoosh, plus maybe some jewelry, it's probably a costume. If the colors match, definitely a costume. More subtle, but you will find people with signature clothes- always wear black shirts or BDU pants or a specific hat. It's only subtle for people who don't see them every day.

It all boils down to identity. Your identity, who you think you are (and in many cases that has very little bearing on who you actually are) comes from somewhere. Maybe it is like writing fiction. Good characterization involves some depth- action and history and different ways to think and relate to the world. That can be a lot of work to write. A signature hat and a few stock phrases are much easier. Two dimensional is easier to write than a real human. Is it easier to live, too? Safer?

Do people do this to themselves? Becoming a cowboy means eating a lot of dust. Hard work and long hours in shitty weather. That's without the hours of practice it takes to become a Doc Holliday with a revolver. Much easier to just buy the hat. Marine BCT is TOUGH. Much easier to shave your head and get a tattoo... some of which are outside of regs, anyway. Want people to talk about you? Doing something amazing is hard and often dangerous. Growing a huge mullet and then slicking it back with fistfulls of grease also gets people talking about you (saw this in the airport. OMG it was funny!). Sure, they aren't saying good things, but they are talking...

I have my own tendency to go the other way. I have a duster that I love- it's warm and dry and I love the feeling of it flapping in the wind and, were it ever to become important, I could conceal a freakin' cannon under it... but it looks so much like a costume, draws so much attention that I rarely wear it. When I first started teaching seminars I wore black BDU pants and a black polo shirt- Mac had suggested it as a good cross between stuff that looked professional and stuff I could move in. The first time I heard students refer to me as "the man in black" it was time to retire the clothes. It wasn't my intention, but it had become a costume. My aversion to costumes (and my fetish for functionality) is possibly just as much a glitch as someone else's need for them.

Are costumes bad? Maybe. If you have a message and they get in the way of the message, if your students are talking more about what you wore than what you taught, yeah. If your boots are shiny and your rifle is dirty, yeah, it signals some messed up priorities. If the costume is something you hide behind- "if I dress like a tough guy people will respect me" yeah. Tell you right now, when you walk into the gym tatted up and chewin' and strutting, people are thinking 'punk' not 'ooh a real man!' they are just too polite to say it out loud. If you are relying on your costume to send a message that you can't with your words or actions, it may work for you but from my point of view it's false advertising. It becomes very bad when you start to believe your own bullshit.

NOTE- this is not about the Con. People dressing up for fun is a whole different animal- FUN, that's the point.

Perfect Moments

Something I wrote during the long period when internet access was limited:


A few years ago, in Boston out walking with Jeff and Sioux. It was early spring but the sun had been shining and it was warm but with the fresh rain smell. We were walking through Little Italy, a little hungry, and the owner of a restaurant (wish I could remember the name) corralled us and brought us in. The entire front was open, for the first time that year, he said. The restaurant was empty, too early for the dinner crowd, light Italian music. We had a bottle of wine that wasn’t on the menu, something special, the owner said. I had proscuitto-stuffed veal.

Smell of rain and sunshine, sweet music, good friends, good wine and food. There was a lull in the conversation and it hit me, body mind and soul, that this was a perfect moment. Absolutely content, there was nothing else that I wanted. Every nerve and muscle felt completely at peace. A perfect moment.

Yesterday I had another, drinking cardamon tea and eating flat bread with cream cheese and jam in a noisy, crowded office. A gun strapped on, speaking only a few words of the language and only three people there spoke mine. Thick choking dust. No music, no wine… and it was perfect. A feeling of peace as deep and profound as the wildest battle-joy.

Numbers

40 reviews on Amazon so far. Not bad.

Kami talked me into doing Nanowrimo this year (see how I blame everything on her?) I think the actual conversation was more like-
Me: Should I do nano this year?
K: If you want to.

So it is her fault. I can rarely bear to read fiction and now I'm writing the stuff. It's a typical action adventure psychothriller magic realism erotic cross-cultural love story. 27,197 words as of today.

Single digit number of days before I board a plane for a brief trip home.

The Truth Will Set You Free

Kris Wilder is putting together a new book, tentatively titled: "The Deeper Questions: Why We Train in the Martial Arts." He kindly asked me to write a section for it. I finished writing it and I am afraid that most people will see it as dark and depressing, but it isn’t. It, like many truths, is a key to a wonderful freedom. There are a handful of hard truths, very real, very powerful things and it seems that most people’s lives and civilization itself is often a sad and desperate attempt to make these truths less true.

The most famous? Possibly, from the Buddha: “Life is suffering.” Or, my favorite paraphrase, from The Princess Bride, “Life is pain, Princess. Anyone who tells you different is trying to sell something.”

Maybe that’s a big truth and maybe it’s dark and maybe it’s scary, but it is profoundly liberating. Getting handed a shit sandwich with life isn’t that big a deal… but the idea that it’s not normal, that the sandwich of life is supposed to be roast beef with bacon and cream cheese lightly toasted with brown mustard… The little cry baby belief that it is personal, that it is about YOU, the illusion that the universe knows or cares who you are…that’s the part that hurts. The suffering, if it is that, lingers in the gap between the expectation and the reality.

Most humans through most of history have had a pretty rough deal. You don’t see it in America much (no matter how hard you try to convince yourself that the country is awash in poverty and homelessness and violence- the math doesn’t work when the greatest health risk to the poorest Americans include complications from obesity). We are programmed, it seems, to think that our lives are hard, and they are. But only compared to an ideal that never really existed. Things, stuff, money, don’t mitigate suffering (though they can mitigate pain or deprivation, but those aren't the same) , they just focus your imagination on different things to suffer about.

I’m trying not to talk out of both sides of my mouth here. There is real pain: tasers hurt. Old bone breaks and medically installed hardware hurts in your joints when things are cold and humid. You will lose friends that you love. But most of the suffering comes from elsewhere, from an expectation that joints aren’t supposed to hurt or that friends are eternal. That is the difference between grieving and wallowing. Both are about you, but one is honestly about what you lost and the other is about what you thought you had a right to keep.

Accepting this truth and a few others allows you to live…more? Harder? Better? It allows you to love harder because you are busy loving instead of whining that things aren’t perfect and love is ‘supposed to be perfect’. It allows you to play and learn getting better every day instead of wasting time and emotion trying to figure out how good you are or if you are ‘good enough.’

What do those phrases even mean? What is a ‘perfect love’? What would it look, feel, taste, like? It can’t be both perfectly smooth and exciting. And ‘good enough’? For what? To who? If you ever perfectly achieved it, then what?

Most of the big truths are like that: the totality of the statement is bleak: “Life is suffering.” “You will die.” But each of them is a key. When you quit wasting energy attempting to evade the inevitable; when you quit building a structure of lies to protect yourself from the truth you can live at the level of truth.

Caveat emptor, though. It’s really not for everybody.

The Power of Decision

There are things that don’t translate until you have done it. We all had very clear ideas about what kind of parents we were going to be right up until we actually had kids. You can’t really explain being a parent to someone who has never done it.

I was thinking today about working out. I’ve been working heavily on cardio and flexibility, but honestly it is mostly out of boredom. Fitness is important to survival, even to combat (though not as much as you might think) but for me, in my personal experience… not so much. I’ve taken down bigger, stronger, faster, more flexible people.

How? I just decided to.
That’s such a weak statement.

Sometimes people expect decisions to have power. They tell themselves that if the stakes were high enough, they would never give up. That they could give it one more rep “if I had to.”

They expect magic because sometimes it works. I can pretty much decide what kind of day I will have or how a given conflict will end. But it’s not the decision. It’s the sensitivity to hundreds of variables that I missed in the past and paid for. The ability to change the question in the process of seeking an answer. The ability to know the difference between what is true and what I think is true or what the threat thinks is true.

And the price. This alone may be why crunch time comes to failure so often. If you make a hard decision “I WILL take this guy down!” it’s probably going to hurt. Some decisions hurt a lot. Some cost far more than a sensible person is willing to pay. When it’s just words in your head, “I’ve made up my mind!” it is easy to forget that everything comes with a price. When you are paying the price, sometimes in pain and blood with the decision not yet done, it’s easy to change your mind. Which is pretty much the opposite of making a decision.

Decisions, for most people, never really go beyond words in their heads. They aren’t really decisions about actions and consequences so mush as statements of belief and self-worth: "I would never stand by for that!" But most people do stand by when things are risky. Who stood up for the people sent to Auschwitz? Even when the risk is not physical or not present. How many people just watch Kitty Genovese be murdered?

Statements of self-worth in the comfort of your home are worlds away from the actions and the risks of actual application.
Once you have made decisions at this level, though and in your soul understand the price and have already paid it, decisions are a different thing. They carry weight and power.
But it is completely different than just saying the words.

Character

Reading a mass of stuff right now. Clausewitz' "On War". I've tried to plow through it before but it is dense. The pattern is that I read it and the sheer quantity and quality of information; the concepts he was able to put into words that pure theorists never get; the connections between what he saw in 18th century big war and what I've seen in brawls, blows me away. But the density: between the language, the amount of information... when I catch myself skimming without really understanding, I put it away for a while. I think I will be able to finish it soon.

Also reading a collection of Hadith, and working on the Arabic script (where I have discovered that if I go slow it sticks, but if I try to memorize three letters in one day I lose five). But the lettering is beautiful and I can sound out (approximately, the short vowels are omitted) most of what I see around me.

And "The Unthinkable" by Amanda Ripley. I think it will be a good companion to Lawrence Gonzales' "Deep Survival."

The point- there are a bunch of subtle things that I have found to be more and more important over the years. I've written about concrete thinkers and how they have trouble dealing with force issues and why inexperienced people try to get too much information (or rarely too little); they often don't clearly understand when they should be planning and when they should be moving.

That stuff. In Clausewitz he talks about character. He talks about some pretty specific traits and I've bookmarked a lot of the book. But one of the things he talks about is that in a battle, you have no idea what is really going on. You have reports, but you have no idea how reliable those reports are. The more information you have- and check this, some of the information will be good and some will be wrong and you often have no way of knowing which is which- the MORE uncertainty is inherent.

Clausewitz uses the word 'character' to, in essence say: some personalities are okay with that. Those personalities won't necessarily be great or even good generals, they will make mistakes. But the ones who aren't good with that, who maintain denial that big decisions (or, in personal combat, quick decisions) happen in an information fog, they are effectively paralyzed.

One way to train around that is scripting- 'x means you do y' which is a very good, very reliable system- except that when it fails, it tends to fail catastrophically. And it can be used against you and...

It also, IME works differently at different levels. Magazine changes and immediate action drills can be scripted. Small unit tactics are awesome when they are drilled. But the actual actions, what you are going to do when you get shot at, has too many variables to script. Larger scale group activities increase chaos which increases the role of luck, and adaptability becomes one of the key character traits in a leader.

Clausewitz states that of all human endeavors, war is the one in which chance plays the biggest role. It's big in fast, close ugly stuff, too- and one of the things the aggressor tries to minimize. One of the things that you limit when you are winning and you introduce if you are losing. Managing chaos- that's a deep subject.

Character. I'm only a little way into "Unthinkable" but already it has come up. There are types of people who die and types who survive. For all the allegations in the news, the people who stayed in New Orleans when Katrina hit and defied the evacuation order were NOT disproportionately poor or disproportianately of any ethnicity. They WERE disproprtionatey old. They did not like changes to their routine (as if 5 feet of water wasn't a change). They were inflexible.

How fast you flip out of denial might well determine if you live, and it reflects Clausewitz' writing on war and my experience with bad guys. Flexibility as a character trait. Ability to act with minimal data, as a character trait. Ability to jettison a plan as a character trait. Comfort with unreliability as a character trait.

We see our character, our personality, as 'who we are'. Amanda Ripley points out that very, very few people have ever seen themselves in a major disaster and have no idea about their own 'disaster personality'. So that aspect changes.

The question for me- I see these traits as critical skills. Physical skills are important too, but you need these traits (and some more I will have to list someday) in order to access those physical skills. Can these be taught as skills? In psychology, some of the basic personality traits are considered very 'robust' meaning they rarely change much. Do these fall into that category? Is that category a truth or a convenience? How do you give or awaken these in someone who may never have felt real fear and give them permission to act?

Doing It Wrong

I see the flash of steel and I close, automatically, x-blocking low, keeping the arteries and tendon side of my forearms on the safe side, using the contact to pivot to the safe place off his flank. The near hand stays in contact, I am actually controlling his weapon arm with a touch behind the elbow. Left hand slips up fast to take his chin and through his chin his spine while my knee flexes to pop his knee….

“No, no, no, “ The instructor says. He demonstrates once again- a telegraphed swinging thrust coming too big and from too far away, snatched out of the air with both hands. Done at full speed and power there is a good chance that both of his thumbs would be dislocated without stopping the thrust.

A bad start to a bad finish. These are level four techniques for a level six situation. Iffy wristlocks when lethal force would be not only justified but prudent. Are we stupid, slow or monolinear? No, of course not. So why pretend the bad guy is? Because he must be for the techniques to work.

I’m in a bad mood anyway. I want some pain. I want to feel some impact. I would like a couple of guys in armor so that I could unload just a little. I get like this sometimes- craving something real, even negative as long as it is both intense and real. I want to be slammed into walls and slam back, stand toe to toe with someone bigger and stronger just to prove that the normal subtle stuff I put him down with last time was choice- I’m willing to play big boy games with big boys, too.

Yeah, I get like this sometimes. It will pass and I will be my usual mature and low-key self soon. Maybe in the morning.

Mud

Since I arrived in country I've heard dozens of stories about the rainy season mud. It was prsented as the horrific, epic, man- and truck-swallowing morass of goo.

It's nothing. I mean it's mud and there's a lot of it and it's thick. If momma told you not to get your feet wet, you'll get in trouble. It might be a good idea to leave your shoes outside...but it's just mud.

Which got me thinking. People aren't used to mud. A lot of the people here, outside of camping or mountain biking (both recreational activities where you take the weather into account) probably have spent most of their lives on pavement and in places engineered to draw excess water away. It's not that this mud is special, this is just the most serious mud they have seen.

Cue the music and fade to flashback: Where I was raised it was a mile and a half to the nearest stretch of pavement. It rained there sometimes and between the dirt roads and the animal enclosures and having to tend a garden (deep rich soil makes for deep rich mud)we got a lot of mud. We drove in mud that was slicker than black ice and pulled vehicles out that were buried up past the axle.

One of my best memories is of a varsity football game in Spray, Oregon. Spray played in their rodeo arena. It was their homecoming game and there had been heavy rain the night before. The entire football field was deep, thick, nasty horse and cow shit mud. It was the funniest game I ever played- we were only able to move in slow motion and at the same time we couldn't stop. It was hilarious and we had the added bonus of ruining Spray's Homecoming by stomping them. Take that, Rocky!

Mud here is mud, no doubt about it. There's probably a ghastly amount of fecal matter in it, too. But it's just mud. For the fantasy writers out there- this was normal: slow and uncomfortable and slippery and things getting stuck.

Mud and chaos and blood and stuff- the regular stuff seems epic if you are seeing it for the first time. Sometimes we don't appreciate the distance that civilization has managed to keep 'normal' away.

200 years ago if you had a sibling, it was a less than 50% chance that you and the sibling and the mother would all be alive at adulthood. People write and whine about the trauma of losing an elderly parent when, in most of human history, few got the chance to be elderly and by the time that became a problem you would have washed and prepared other corpses, people you knew and were related to.

Same with violence (I really hate not having my library here) an anthropologist working in (melanesia, micronesia, indonesia or polynesia) was impressed with the peaceful tribe he was studying, since he hadn't seen a murder in the months he had been there... until he started asking and found that almost every woman in the tribe was a widow whose previous husbands had been murdered. Same with war- how would we deal with something like Sekigahara today with 60,000 killed in six hours hand to hand?

Sorry, off the subject of mud. But the principle is the same- normal measured by your experience can make things seem epic that are just normal. That's the way it is. Not much pavement, no storm sewers and you get mud. Mud is slippery and dirty and you can get stuck in it. The epic thing isn't the mud, it's a society that has been able to bring itself to a place that people are shocked and horrified by mud.

It's a very good thing. Just a little weird from my point of view.

The Other

Read a review today of the book and it got me thinking- more about ripples, more about what each person brings to an experience. The review was positive and even said I was insightful- uncomfortably so on some of the gender differences in violence. But the reader was disturbed at the way that I presented violent predators as "other". That this attitude, taken to extremes could justify terrible abuse. That it might be something I need to do because part of my job has been to use force on another human being and, separate from policy or law, I have to justify it to myself.

Good points, and these are things that I do have to keep in mind. You have to step back, you have to be able to step back and remember and see what things looked like before you'd seen them a hundred times.

But there is an assumption here, (or maybe I am reading it wrong, but I've heard it enough that it is worth discussing here). At some point a lot of people decided that all people are pretty much the same. Whether it is Sting singing, "The Russians Love Their Children Too" or a thousand different variations on the idea.

It's one of those things that is both very true (we couldn't communicate without a huge amount of commonality) and very untrue (which may be the source of a lot of miscommunication, FWIW).

There are- or so I have heard I haven't actually met one since the seventies- people who will say that men and women are just the same and any differences are purely cultural. That's horseshit, obviously. I apply this to violence and it is uncomfortably, but usefully insightful. The reader is cool with it because of familiarity with men and women. Intimate familiarity allows you to understand and appreciate the similarities and the differences.

If you count waking hours over the last 17 years, I have spent more time with criminals than with any other group. That is not an exaggeration in the slightest. I know them and they know me, well enough that force has become very rare. I know the common ground and whenever verbal communication has a chance, I work from the common ground. It is very effective.

But a predator is different. I go back in my head to one of my first criminals. He raped and sodomized an eighty-year-old woman. Who among your friends, the people that you know really well, could do that? Most wouldn't be capable of it even (or especially) with a gun to their heads. That is a difference, a profound difference. Almost all normal people experience a feeling called 'shame' and it is a different feeling than regret for the negative consequences of an action. Even most low-level, non-violent career criminals do not feel or even truly understand the concept. That is a difference.

Linguists and anthropologists have theorized for years that language limits cognition and conception. That is something that is very apparent when you find yourself working with a different culture.

Riddle me this: What's the difference between management and leadership? Only managers think they are the same thing. I can't write about stuff I learn here, but a very huge implication hangs from that question.

"Your" doesn't mean the same thing all the time to normal people. Your shoes you can use or throw away or trade for drugs. Most people recognize that these rights, derived from 'your' do not extend to 'your' daughter... but I've had a criminal completely unable to grasp why there was a difference between using his shoes and using his daughter. They were both 'his'. That is what 'his' means, right?

Some of these differences are so fundamental (the shame one, for me. It was right in front of my face for ten years before I read Fleisher's "Beggars and Thieves" and suddenly understood that all the bullshit talk about 'respect' had everything to do with face and status and nothing to do with conscience) that they are almost impossible to see, the way that some people miss a near-by elephant because the mind sometimes won't wrap around an animal that big.

No two people are completely other. No two are completely the same, either. To deny either of these facts is to leave yourself vulnerable. Probably more important, to deny either of them is to blind yourself to part of the world. Not all differences are to be cherished, nor are they to be feared- but if some one cannot see something that is obvious to you, such as the difference between management and leadership, there will be a disconnect. To ignore that disconnect in the name of brotherhood will prevent you, forever, from bridging that gap. This is common ground that has to be built, not found.

Simultaneously, if someone has a capacity that you lack, especially a capacity that you lack specifically for the good of society (because if you have the power and the inclination, there is no difference between your daughter and your shoes until somebody steps in and stops you- this is a brutal jungle thing and the distinction is implanted for the good of society. It is artificial, but right) to ignore that difference not only maintains your personal vulnerability but empowers the predator and makes it safer and easier for them to move among prey.

Ripples

Having the book out is like watching ripples in a pond. I’ve now heard things discussed- the flaw in the drill, fighting to the goal, the complexity matrix, the monkey dance- as if they were just stuff. Stuff any martial artist should be aware of, just basic things.

I don’t know how many people have read the book or how the concepts spread- over the internet, in discussions, in classes, at seminars- but with the power of the web I can actually see them spreading. I don’t know if you can have any idea how cool that is until you do it. Makes me feel useful.

Side thought- reading the reviews it’s amazing how much stuff people choose to see in there, too. How what everyone reads isn’t a book, but this weird mix of any given book and their pre-existing worldview. I would have expected that if it had ever occurred to me to ponder on it.

Punishing Success

Heard a story last night. In various forms I have heard this story many, many times. It is a piece of something that Asher and I are discussing so I want to think about it here.

Currently, the man is an instructor in his martial art of choice. The story happened several years ago when he was a talented novice (he would never use the word talented- he is far too modest, but I have seen his appetite for work and if he trains this hard at this age he would have been called 'talented' when he was young).

He was the only student that day and the instructor invited him to spar. He still speaks with awe of his first instructor’s speed and skill (I would bet that he has far exceeded his instructor, but we never see our own growth clearly). The instructor toyed with him, a fast flurry (ah, I thought, you tried that trick with me- spiking the OODA loop). Again and again.
The kid was good, though. He thought about what was happening, made a plan, and executed the plan. He tagged his instructor solidly.

His instructor did nothing right away.
The next time there was a class with more students he called the young man up ‘to demonstrate’ and proceeded to beat the hell out of him. All, of course, to teach. No evil ego-bound payback here.

The message was received. Not just by this student but by all of the students. The student, now an instructor in his own right, sincerely loves the art. Decades later he still justifies and defends what his instructor did.
You can’t justify it.

The purpose of any combatives is to teach you to effectively apply force to another human being. It covers a lot of levels and one of those levels is to figure out what is going on, make a plan and execute the plan.

He did that. He did it so well that he almost knocked his instructor down. Not only did he do what he was trained to do but he specifically did what that instructor had taught him. What would have been cause for celebration with my students (and the first time you nail your instructor is a very good thing!) was a cause for punishment bordering on –no, bullshit- clearly abuse.

Do you really believe that the lesson learned that day didn’t stick in the back of this man’s mind? Wally Jay says, “Pain makes believers.” It also conditions people more deeply than almost anything else. It only takes once to learn that the stove is hot and it will take an act of will to touch the red hot burners again. It only takes once to teach a student that success is punished, that winning is pain and humiliation. Winning.

There’s a lot of tactically and technically screwed up things in that particular style, but those can all be overcome or adapted. But this- beating your students so that they are afraid to win unless it is on your terms, and your direction, your way…

I don’t even have words for the disgust that I feel.

How many martial artists have been through this? I have, fortunately always from an instructor I already had some contempt for and I could see where he was hiding behind the rules… what lessons would I have taken away if I had been a naïve kid who thought this was IT? How many students are being taught to win, but conditioned to loose? Do the teachers even realize it?

Wonderful

I’ve written some dark stuff, some important stuff lately and it will be posted here as I get time and access.

Today is so not the day for that. It is a truly glorious day. Maybe not just a day, everything has probably been going on for some time, but the accumulation hit today like a happy avalanche.

My son, who I love dearly and probably don’t tell enough, has taken the initiative to contact a Marine recruiter. It’s not a done deal, of course, and the (many) choices will be his. I am so proud. Maybe he is trying to outdo his old man- taking a tougher course younger (Marine at 17 or 18 versus Army at 22). So what? Orion, if you read this: From the moment that I held you in my arms and took you out in the rain while you were still wet from birth I knew that you would be better than me in every way. One of the great joys in my life has been watching you choose the kind of man you will become. Sometimes it brings tears to my eyes and swells my heart just to see the power, grace, intelligence, will, and possibility in you.
Never doubt my love or my faith in you.

My beautiful wife, the one with the power to make or unmake my world has sold her first story. Magically, she is now an author, no longer ‘just’ a writer. I have watched the struggle, the work, the discipline that she has spent over the years. She has always been one of the miracles of the world, a soul that you could feel like the essence of peace, even while she struggled or hurt. Now thousands and maybe some day millions will catch tiny glimpses of the heart that she has shared with me. They will see it in words that she has spent years learning to polish. I envy everyone who will come to know her for the first time.

I learned today that Mike has finally been promoted to sergeant. If there is one act that stirs some hope for the future of my old agency it is this promotion. Mike is one of the finest men I know: tops in integrity, intelligence, courage and even a sneaky compassion. Tactically and technically proficient. Hands down, even as a deputy, he was the best leader in the agency. His unbelievable competency actually seemed to engender fear in some and I have no doubt that it delayed his promotion. That is over now. It’s still a jungle, but the agency now has a true leader, a meat eater to deal with the dark stuff with skill and even nobility.
So Mike, if you are reading this and you are willing to do me a great honor, head down to HQ and ask Ron if you can have my old badge. The sergeant’s badges aren’t numbered, but you’ll recognize mine from the scratches down the face. That would be cool, and even feel a bit like I am still there. Welcome to the club, Sgt. Phelps. NPNBW!

Last, very small, the book hit #1 on Amazon for MMA books (that’s odd) and #4 in martial arts. It doesn’t seem to mean anything, Amazon rankings change so fast I can’t figure out what they are based on... but #1 still sounds cool, meaningless or not.

Great, great day.

Facing Facts

I think I need to face the fact that I am no longer a martial artist..
Dead time here gets pretty dead. Not much room to wander, working out more then twice a day feels excessive. I like to read and lay in the sun, but there is a limit. If the internet was up, I’d be calling friends at weird hours or researching.
So in a fit of boredom I stepped into the only martial arts class going on base. The instructor is skilled at what he does. It’s a decent class and a good workout. But it’s not me, not anymore.

I used to love this stuff- the precision, the repetition (sort of) the feeling that I was learning to do stuff exactly right. Now it just all felt slightly off. Artificial.

From the very start- warm ups. I quit doing warm ups over a decade ago because, tactical operations aside, I have never had a chance to warm up before a fight and I want to train with the body I will have. It’s also an incentive to stay slightly warm and stretched constantly- doing isometrics whenever you are sitting, stretching the spine and hips in such a way that no one notices.

Then basics- there has been some degradation there. It’s been a long time since I practiced punches or kicks or “blocks” on air, in a static line, or in bare feet for that matter. After years on ballistic and structured striking and infighting, I’m slower and less precise in my basic tsukis and ukes than when I was fanatically training under watchful eyes.

I didn’t really feel like an alien until the instructor started explaining things, talking about "bad guys" and "real fights". On every single particular, he was wrong. Let me amend that, to be fair. Every single description he gave of ‘what will happen in a real fight’ or ‘what a real opponent will do’ did not come close to matching my experience.

It was hard to keep my mouth shut, and that, in and of itself is reason to go back- the double discipline of keeping my mouth shut and emptying my cup to learn something else.

It’s a balance, though, because time spent here will actually degrade my ability to defend myself unless I put it in a different part of my brain. I used to love this kind of stuff, but it is so clearly not what I am any more. For 27 years I've been a dedicated practicing martial artist. Over the last years it has changed. I'm still practicing, still learning, but what I do doesn't look or feel anymore like 'martial arts'.

So if what I do isn't martial arts, what is it and, by extension, what am I?

Thanks...

I think. For the little poem(?) Peter.

There is a possibility that I might have semi-reliable internet access in the near future. Without the 1/2 hour time limit and the inability to cut and paste from a memory stick.

No guarantees, but I may be able to post some of the stuff I have been writing soon.

Dust

At about 35,000 feet as we approached this area there was a haze. It looked like a cloud bank, except it was the wrong color. "Is that smoke?" I asked, "It can't be dust this high." But it can, of course.

When the dust storms come in, the morning light looks yellow, not quite a lemon yellow, more sickly. In the evening everything is a bright orange. It looks like a bad science fiction movie special effect for the surface of Mars. It is eerie and beautiful and alien and exotic.

Change things slightly, a little darker, a little smokier. High on a wall are curls of razor wire. Caught in the razor wire are trash bags and tattered sheets of black pastic flapping in the wind. It looks like a clothesline in Hell.

To the naked eye in the orange dusk the motes of dust are invisible, too fine to even taste. The first pictures look bad and I frantically clean the lens trying to wipe off the water marks. The lens is clean of course. The flash is illuminating dust looking like light bubbles in the picture. I turn off the flash. I will treasure those pictures.

In Case You Haven't Noticed....

I haven't been writing here very much. It's a combination- very busy, sometimes long days and reports and projects, other writing (making some headway on the next book) and very intermittent, very limited internet access.

I'm also in a delicate place- this blog was originally a place I could go with some anonymity to write about my world, to try to work out some things on the screen that were hard to work out purely internally. In the last few months, I've felt obligated to post things, to keep writing for you, whoever you are. The internal motivations have been edging towards external- that's not something I need in my world right now.

The things that compel me to write are still happening- they have been significant and frequent, as you would expect in a place this different. But the things I would most like to write about, the OMG WTF just happened? stuff... I can't write about. Both common sense and my contract prohibit it. It's very cool, it just has to stay private for some time.

So, if you read regularly, don't expect a lot of volume for a while.

Weakness

This is one of the Twilight Zone posts. There is some weird stuff that goes on in the world and sometimes you just notice it, but sometimes you get a glimpse at a pattern... and sometimes someone gives you a clue.

I'm reading a book- not that unusual. But this one puts forth the premise that the body can sense things that are bad for it (ranging from toxicity to malevolent thoughts to negative people) and one of the body's reactions to that is for the muscles to go weak. It's hitting very high on my BS meter, hence no title and no recommendation in the post.

But...but... there is a phenomenon and you can see it in martial arts and real combat and conflict and a lot of places. It is a basis of some of the 'martial magic' or 'kool-aide' drinking set- you know, the stuff that only works on students who have been trained for it to work or the "no-touch knockouts" that require a detailed explanation before they will work. They don't work on people who don't know they are supposed to pass out. Stuff like that. But there's also another level. It's still a trick, sort of, but the kind of trick or ability or force that you can use on people in real life and sometimes in real combat.

A lot of it feeds into the concept of zanshin. I don't want to explain and quibble over definitions. For my purposes zanshin is an effect of internalized experience. The effect shows itself in a determined focus and it can be sensed by other people.

• Internalized experience: people who have been through a lot of shit and absorbed it are different than people who haven't.
• Determined focus- a fuzzy way of saying that they have learned to act decisively and with everything they have and are.
• All but the most oblivious people can tell who not to fuck with.

One example is the "no touch block" which works pretty reliably, but there are some people it doesn't work on and you can sense who they will be.

Another one is the body hardening techniques that Kris uses and demonstrates. They work pretty well and he can do them moving, which most of the "internal arts masters" I've had the opportunity to work with couldn't. But where he will let big strong people hit him, I notice that there are people he won't invite to test it. I'm not even sure that he is aware of it, but they fall into a certain pattern- big is fine. Strong is fine. Multiple black belts are fine- but the cold vicious and crazy, even when they are acting nice don't get the chance.

I have made people feel weak just by standing close to them and smiling. Grappled with people much bigger and stronger who couldn't seem to apply any of their strength.

I said this was twilight zone stuff, so here goes: the book speculates (actually states, unequivocally) that dangerous and toxic substances and even thoughts cause an immediate and measurable muscle weakness.

What if a person can develope the zanshin, the presence, to cause this weakness at will in another human being? (Or to strengthen them, it's all the same) What if these demonstrations of toughness are actually an ability to weaken someone else by becoming an elemental danger?

Don't get hung up on it. Any post that mentions the twilight zone is for wild speculation. So much could be explained by this- all the victims that said the attacker looked at them and they couldn't move; all the victims who struggled instead of fought. How fear makes you stronger most times, but in some interpersonal conflicts seem to make you weaker. My success at some stuff that, crunching the numbers, I had no right to walk out of (like today. Cripes.)

I've felt that weakness and know that if you fight anyway, you can recover. The weakness is an illusion that falls away if you can survive long enough to do it. Does it relate to permission? Does the human animal sense that this person is higher in the monkey hierarchy (read more zanshin) and it would upset the tribe to win?

This is at best a half-formed thought, but that's why I blog, to poke at stuff outside the narrow confines of a single brain.

Vested II

The days are long and full and lots of the nights are spent writing reports. Last night I had a rare chance at a "no time limit" internet access, so I went for it, dead tired and all. End result is that I wrote only part of what I intended. Here's what got me thinking:

We all believe certain things. I'm not sure whether belief is on a scale or binary. I think it is binary- one either believes in a specific god or doesn't; either believes that a specific political decision was good policy or self-serving corruption. I don't see a lot of people believing sort of in a god or that a decision was mostly good policy but partially corrupt. But maybe they do and the language just doesn't express it that way.

But people can certainly be more vested in a belief than other people with the same belief.

I was talking to a man the other day and we share a lot of the same beliefs and concerns. We have a similar vision of what a good life entails and similar concerns about how aspects of civilization endanger that vision. The obvious difference is that these are just things I believe and these are part of who he is.

(It doesn't matter what the belief is- whether he wears hemp and birckenstocks or boots and knife and compass, there comes a point when it is a costume, a person crying out "this is me, this is who I am.")

So that was the obvious aspect- how others will see you, identify you. If you are too vested it seems irrational and your opinions, right or wrong, are easy to dismiss. If you don't vest in your opinions (and I tend not to- many strong beliefs have vanished in the flames of real life over the years) you get read very differently.

Some, the self-absorbed, just assume that you agree with them.
Some see silence or a lack of strong opinion as wisdom. Maybe.
The thing that struck me though, is that the strongly invested mistrust people with less investment. As if they expect that being labelled is proof of belief.
It is a test, I think. Trying to find someone to join their mental tribe. Just a thought.

This probably should have been an edit to last night's post.

Vested

"Manage your expectation level," I was advised. Not 'manage your frustration' or anything of that nature. It is good advice- frustration comes only partially from events, a lot of it comes from expectations. What you do is what you do, but the outcome may or may not be what you expect. Martial artists work to limit luck- the floors are clean and uncluttered, the number and type of assailant is generally known- all things I've written about until they make me tired. But in martial arts, in fighting, in life and in teaching you can never control anything completely. You don't get to pick the ending of the story, not even of your story (except suicide, perhaps).
When the ending isn't what you wanted how much it hurts will depend on how much you were counting on your chosen ending. Invested. Attachment. All the same, see?
But you have to deal with the ending you get.

Today was rough. Things have been going really, really well and I was feeling very proud. Through luck or good groundwork done by my predecessors I had avoided most of the problems I had been led to expect. Until today. I asked a simple question and the answer didn't quite work so I asked another and another... when all was done I was a little sick and disgusted and not feeling my usual optimism. (I am an optimist here- I have a deep faith in what individuals are capable of when things hit bottom if they are only given half a chance.)
So I have to decide how disappointed to be. I'll let the feelings wash through me- they are useful, data points in themselves. Then I will get back to work. There is an opportunity for huge growth in this abject failure. I just need to show them, sincerely and persistantly where the growth lies.

This will work. I'll be optimitic again soon.

Thanks, Steve

For the excuse to tell a story. Steve just posted something here that got me reminiscing. Long ago, in my prime, when I was a martial athlete but thought I was a fighter (and thought the two were the same thing), I could do some pretty impressive tricks. At 5'8" I could jump kick a basketball net. I enjoyed sparring two people while handcuffed (loved kicking). If I was feeling froggy I would do ground fighting without using my hands (that's challenging, folks- but the expression on a black belt's face when you tap him is priceless).



I was much older and hanging out at Stan's dojo. Workout had been sporadic with over-time and on-call obligations and shift work so I was feeling old and slow. There was a new kid there. He had a black belt in something else and had come to Stan to fill some holes in his skills. I watched him warm up and I was frankly jealous. Very flexible, pretty fast (bragging again- in my twenties I had ever met one person who could approach my speed. Later, at James Demiles' kwoon I had the opportunity to play with some of the timing machinery he had developed and had tested a certain guy named Lee on... I was 14/1000 of a second slower than Bruce's record in a long punch in my mid/late 30's. Done bragging, for now.)



So the kid was fast and flexible and I was feeling like an old fart, not an athlete anymore, just a dinosaur, practically extinct and creaky... and the kid asked me to spar. Which I secretly wanted. I love playing, and for some reason I like it more when it looks bad.



So we bowed in and he moved... and I knocked him down. And he got up and he moved and I took his spine, and his dead zones and...



Basically, he was moving much faster than I was, but like Steve writes as you get older, you have to get better at some other stuff, and that stuff can be pretty good. Position, properly applied, can overcome some big disparities in size, strength and speed.

Ruthless timing mimics speed- if he is moving fast and I am moving at precisely the right time, the advantage is mine.

Efficiency is a source of speed and power, sort of: If you are twice as fast as me but I only have to move a third as far, I land first. This one sounds off- you and your opponent are at the same distance, so you have the same range, right? So his targets can't be farther away than your targets, right? But they can, depending on how you have been taught to see weapons and targets. An example using generic Mcdojo karate: Uke throws a left lunge punch at me and I parry it to the outside with my right hand. In this particular pattern, uke will then throw the reverse punch with his chambered left fist- I, however will let my parrying hand bounce off the first punch and palm heel him usually about in the orbital socket. Closest weapon, closest target. If he is really fast, it just increases the damage to him. Bonus. Other side of the equation- a tight ugly mix-up- a clinch but looser and dirtier. Almost every time I am in that position, one of the weak points in his knee is less than four inches from my own and they never (so far) see it coming- but there is a definite technique to it, especially if you don't want to cripple someone.

Hmmm. Where were we? Ruthlessness. Position. Efficiency...
Then there is telepathy. Sort of. Simple fact is that if you've played a lot, (with a wide variety of people) most things won't surprise you. People are pretty damned predictable. Don't count on it in real life- be prepared for things to go south- but most of the time you can see not only what is happening but what is about to happen. It's easiest to learn, IMO from blind-folded infighting, but you can get a taste with a staff. Generally, if you make an attack with a staff there are two comfortable directions to move afterwards and one is slightly more comfortable (natural, easy) than the other. Try it, if it isn't obvious- I think you'll see what I mean. There are more variables in a human body but not more than you can handle, most of the time. And people have fighting personalities that you can read in a few seconds and they very rarely deviate from those unless they have an excellent coach or a major epiphany.


NB- This has applications but I am NOT talking ambush survival here. Different animal.

So thanks for the memories, Steve.

Triune II

I am really missing my library. What follows is from memory, so don't get too upset if I get the names/quotes/sources wrong. I'm happy to fix them when I can.

I think it was in Desmond Morris' Manwatching that he put forth the triune theory of power. He postulated that there are three basic types of power:

The Power to Get Things Done: This is money and connections and political power. The movers and the shakers, the force behind all large change.

The Power to Decide Who is Cool: This is really social power, the power to make something a fad or to declare it passe. To decide who is "in" and who isn't. To decide what matters.

Atavistic Power: The ability to apply violence. Thug power.

He said (and I can think of a few exceptions, but remarkably few) that no one can hold more than one of these types of power. Political players and money men sometimes court Hollywood and are sometimes endorsed by Hollywood, but they never become part of that group. Hollywood could declare Bill Clinton "cool", but Bill couldn't declare anyone else "cool".

Conversely, for all of the actors pretending to know enough about world affairs to express an opinion and the various aid concerts and consciousness-raising events the social power group never seems to actually change anything. Maybe because they miss the fact that feeling about something is not the same as doing something. Hmmmm- and this may be the core concept here: action versus emotion, doing versus feeling. One type of power influences human assessments, the other influences actions.

"Atavist" means "throwback" and atavistic power is a throwback to more primal, violent times and emotions. Thugs, by themselves, don't change anything (Hitler had other people do his thuggery for him) [but this is one of the places I find a few exceptions. Saddam Hussein did change things and wielded enough power to cow an entire nation. He did a lot of that through informants and secret police and torture and rape camps. But he also enjoyed, sometimes very publicly, killing people himself. He was training his sons in the same vein. Vlad Tepisch was another.]

Atavistic power is generally incompatible with the other two types because it is a power to prevent others from doing, not a power to do yourself. Atavistic power controlled by a political animal can clear the way for some major change- but it usually (in our culture) triggers a very bad reaction from the "cool choosers."

Just thinking out loud, here. It's a model I have found useful- it sometimes explains some things. Like all models it may be useful but it is not a pure truth. Play with it.

Guilt

Sometimes, I feel a vague sense of guilt. A co-worker asked about my family, if I was married. I started to gush. It's hard to talk about Kami without gushing. I don't usually show much emotion, but even after all these years and being half a world apart just thinking about her makes me feel breathless and far away and something slightly different and better than human.

"Wow," The co-worker said, "You're really in love. How long have the two of you been together?"

"Twenty-two years."

Yeah. In a profession that sometimes seems to eat marriages like candy. Over the last weeks I've listened quietly to people complaining about their mates, their children. Sometimes angry, sometimes confused, sometimes just bitching. I listen quietly because I don't know what to say. If you won a lottery that couldn't be shared, what do you say to the poor?

Kami is peace and grace and beauty. I am sincere to the depths of my soul when I say that the universe exists for the sole purpose of creating her, and with all of the universe's infinite mystery,wonder and beauty she and she alone makes it right and complete.

Years ago: "They can't promote YOU to sergeant!" the crusty old deputy told me.

"Why not?"

"You've never had a DUII, you don't have a drinking problem. Hell, you're still on your first marriage. You ain't even a real cop, much less a sergeant."

14,000 miles a way I feel closer to her than some of my friends have with their mates ever. We have had more true intimacy holding hands than some have ever felt in their most ridiculous passions and obsessions. We have done amazing things together, but she makes even the simplest things amazing. Only with her have I felt the excitement that rivals free fall combined with a perfect sense of loving harbor.

When I first considered asking her to marry me it was all wrong. In my arrogant youth and stupidity I had seen a plan for my life: if I was absolutely dedicated, absolutely fearless and fought the good fights and if I was lucky enough to survive I might be rewarded in my old age with someone like this, someone I could only dream of.

So here I was, young and I had done nothing much and here I was being offered the gift and dream of a life time. The gods don't work that way. They are harsh and dangerous. It didn't make sense. So I vision quested and had a dream- a majestic woman, a goddess in robes and crown, beautiful but with the kind of beauty that could burn you if you looked at it. She was impatient and arrogant and asked what I wanted. I told her what was bothering me- I had not come close to earning a reward like Kami.

The goddess laughed, very cold and said, "You arrogant little man. You are a reward for her." And was gone. I woke up and have spent the rest of my life trying to be worthy to be her reward.

And so, when someone asks who is the most dangerous person I have ever met, the answer is simply "My wife." Anyone can kill me. She has the power to turn the world to ash.

Data Point

Conversation, end of day trivia, half business, half social. "Do you have plans for the weekend?" "Any documentation that you need?"

Gunfire. In the building. I am moving, putting stuff down, drawing weapon, moving towards the sound... No one else is moving yet, my head is crystal clear and everything is in slow motion. Tactics and odds. Data: Why only one shot? No return fire? Maybe nothing (relatively nothing, suicide or negligent discharge) maybe no one else has unfrozen yet. I feel my partner behind me as I clear room, room, room.

Last room. A weapon on a chair, a badly shaken man. Accidental discharge. Clear the room, make the weapon safe, check for injury. Then leave it to the person who owns the problem.

Return to the office, take up the thread of the conversation: "I don't think you finished what we talked about at lunch..."

Maybe??

One of the big puzzles in self-defense training is the big gap between how we will imagine we will act when the shit hits the fan and our actual performance. A lot has been written on it, a lot of good research and even good speculation. In our fantasies we are cool-headed and courageous, efficient and dangerous. All too often, in the reality, our hands sweat and our knees start to shake and our brains just won't work, not the way we think they should.

Here's a thought from left field:
What if cowardice is a habit?

What if the big mystery is not the gap between fantasy and reality? What if the big mystery is why we expect bravery when we practice a thousand tiny acts of cowardice every week?

Do you know what I mean? All the people that you love but have never said the words to. All the things that you want to try "some day." The big chance that you didn't take because even though you hated it, you were secure where you were. All of the things that you have done in the name of safety, security and comfort no matter how bored or dead it made you feel. The times when you thought "someone should do something" but decided that the someone wasn't you. It wasn't your job, wasn't your problem...and you lay awake that night thinking of what you wished you had done.

Little white lies- my father used to tell me, "Every lie is an act of cowardice. You never lie unless you are afraid of the person you are lying to." You can rationalize your way around it, but it is dead true. All of your little white lies are a fear of how the person you are lying to might react.

Maybe the mystery is as simple as that. Do the right thing. Live hard. Take chances, and take the consequences that go with them. Dare. Don't sit in comfort wishing for adventure. Maybe just the habit of doing the right thing even when it is scary will translate to self defense. And even if it doesn't, you will have done some fine livin'.

Live hard. Live true.

I wanted to add a quick edit:
Have the courage to listen to intelligent people you disagree with. Don't take the easy path of listening to what people on your said claim that the other side says. Find an intelligent person who disagrees with you on an issue you feel strongly about and listen. Just listen. You are strong enough for that.

Writer's Block

Just for the record, I don't get writer's bock. I can always put words down, it's just that sometimes they're crap. To me, anyway. Writing is so many things- recording events and interpreting them, therapy and teaching, sharing knowledge and emotion. I like my writing best when I am excited, when I am playing with a new idea or see a twist in the world that changes everything.

The things that I am finding now are sometimes big, shifting my view of how the world works several paces- and there are very few that I will be able to write about for a long time. I've always been taught that language affects and to an extent controls thought processes, but I have concrete examples now. Examples that some of our 'obvious' insights are culturally derived and culturally controlled. That some of the values we have been taught are universal are demonstrably not. Some of these I knew but until you see it up close, see the effects, and see the indifference to affects that would enrage or sadden you, you don't really know. I knew the words before, I hear the music now.

Here is one I can share, in very vague terms. There are things that we look at from a world and culture away and interpret them through the lens of politics and big money when the decisions on the ground are made much lower on the Maslow's Hierarchy scale. In the United States we see the actions of others, high and low, through the lens of our own motivations: profit, power, acknowledgement. For the most part we have never been in a place where people starve (much less a place where it is normal). Everyone has an opinion, and we express it pretty freely (there are a few places in my home state where a republican bumpersticker will reliably get your car vandalized, but that's about it). In a place where associations and opinions result in murder (unpredictable to you, but far from random) politics and the flow of funds aren't the big motivators that we expect them to be. Simple survival requires a different attitude to what is said and when and to whom.

And one I will write about someday: Violent bloody butchery does not scar the sould of a people nearly as much as a lower level of destruction brought about through betrayal.

So, access is limited, many of the things that would be cool to write are off the table...and most of the rest doesn't feel fresh or fun to write, but I'll keep plugging away.

Sacred Space

Reading "Filipino Martial Culture". In it, Mark Wiley quotes an anthropologist discussing the concept of "sacred space": this is where you go to become something more, where you go to learn things that have a price, things that change you. He talks about crossing the threshhold and it reminds me much of my training in martial arts: bowing on entering the dojo wasn't about religion or even respect. It was a signal to myself to leave the mundane world outside. Out in that world existed relationships and money problems and minor frustrations. Inside this space was pain and sweat and blood and knowledge. Far more important things, far more real things.

There is a sacred space in combat, and in climbing and in, potentially, everything. I don't think the sacred aspect is about risk or even learning. It is about living.

Most people don't pay attention most of the time. How does your foot feel in your shoe right now? What is the nearest human movement you can hear? Whose breath, other than your own, can you hear? What are you smelling?

What makes training sacred is that you cannot do it in the usual mundane haze of inattention. I've seen oblivious students but they rarely last long under a good instructor. When you are learning dangerous things being stupid or being unaware is painful. It hurts and, in my opinion, it should.

This attention is what makes the thing sacred. A moment lived in attention is lived. A year passed in mindless repetition or safe in the comfort zone has only passed. It is wasted.

So it's the goal to live. Simply to live at all times. Dangerous places make that easier, long time spent where attention is required helps to make attention a habit. This habit of attention, in turn, makes the whole world sacred space.

Coffee and Weddings

Yesterday, there were clouds in the morning. Dust and haze are common but these were the first clouds that I have seen in a month- high and thin, maybe, but a shiny white. One of the interpreters said that he had only once in his life seen rainfall in the summer. But it snowed in Baghdad last winter, so anything is possible.

A package arrived- notebooks for practicing script, shirts and workout clothes, and coffee: San Fransisco Bay French Roast. This morning has been a little slice of nostalgic caffeinated heaven.

Having a regret. Missing the family is a fairly solid one- but Kami sent me pictures of Mike and Deirdre's wedding. I absolutely hate weddings, but I am sorry to have missed this one. Mike in a tux. That is power, Deirdre! The bride looked great (as always!). Mike is one of the people I most admire, the man I would adopt as a blood brother if I could and it is great, even in a picture, to see him look that happy.

Not regretting the other stuff I am missing- the dryer and pump both went out and my lovely, smart, wise wife has handled everything deftly.

Triune I

I like categorizing things in threes. Don't know why, just have for as long as I can remember. Others do too, so I'm not alone. Reading about something that I toy with writing about (The Triune Theory of Power) it got me thinking- about fighting, about Meditations, about where I am on this journey.

From a post last May:
I'm no expert. I'm a nearly crippled up middle aged man with some skill, some experience and some mean. But I'm consistently successful against people who are bigger, stronger, faster and/or more proficient than me.

That's the three-part issue. There are three things that make a good fighter: Physical ability or conditioning; technical skill; and the whole mental/spiritual component- the attitude.

When I started in MA, I was a farmboy. I was small and didn't think I was very strong, but I was used to chopping wood and milking cows and bucking bales of hay. The thing about ranch work is that you don't stop when you get your reps in or you feel tired, you stop when the work is done. Milking one stupid, stubborn cow I would go to total muscle failure in my hands and forearms again and again and again until she was out of milk. If rain was possible, you loaded hay until it was all in, no matter how many tons or how hot it was- At less than 110 pounds I was loading and stacking about 3 tons of hay an hour (110x55 pound bales an hour) throwing them up into the truck, jumping on the truck as it moved, stacking them, jumping down and throwing more up.

I was what my dad called "wiry". When I started in judo it was a help, but it wasn't enough. My instructors felt that weight classes had severely degraded the skills of judo, so I almost never randori'd with anyone my size, and there wasn't anybody smaller. I needed and developed technical skill to overcome physical disadvantage. You're bigger and stronger than me? Fine, then I'll be better than you! Hah!

So I've always been physical (I consider my own body my favorite toy and best tool, so I play constantly) but I became a technician. I had superbly skilled instructors and they drilled me on skill. They also taught me tactics and strategy, and those are a subset of technical skill for this discussion. Reading an opponent, finding a weakness and exploiting it or reading the flow of an engagement and guiding it so that it stays in your strong areas are skills. Dave Sumner was awesome at it, and it is one of the strengths of true jujutsu- striking, locking, gouging, throwing, grappling or weapons you could hold your own in any and use the one (or more) that your opponent wasn't skilled in. Or apply a technique in a range that most people didn't think was possible or... If you learned to see the problem broadly you could almost always hit it from a perspective that was alien to your opponent. The more you practiced seeing broadly, the harder it was to freeze you with novelty.

So two of three: physicality and skill.

But there is a third. Call it attitude or spirit or heart or whatever. It is powerful (read Sanford Strong's "Strong on Defense" where he describes situations where attitude, specifically a righteous rage, has allowed victims who were completely outmatched- bigger, stronger, armed predators with surprise- and not only survived but prevailed) and it is also vague (look for the posts on heart and where I try to list all the things that can make one freeze). You see its presence in everything from a mother protecting her young to the radar ping of two professionals. And you see it in the absence, when a skilled, athletic fighter is taken down by an untrained addict who was just meaner, more determined, less civilized.

In some people it is just a reaction to fear, to respond with focused violence. In others it is a disregard of fear and a professional need to get the job done. Sometimes it is anger, a beast inside. In other situations it is civilization or a lack of it, the presence or absence of a leash.

This third leg of the triangle is what has fascinated me lately. I've dealt with it, used it and seen it used, had its absence nearly paralyze me and dug for my own to force me to act. As I've worked on it specifically, it has become largely a tool or technique like any other. Making people feel safe and loved to prevent violence or making them feel afraid and uncertain to prevent violence. Attacking (or just affecting, really) spirits rather than bodies.

In the end, though, I don't think it is more important than the other two legs- it is just less trained, less understood. Because the level of conscious skill in it is so low, any gains can have powerful effects on the whole package. Because those effects are rarely understood or even consciously sensed by the opponent, the effect can seem mystical, bigger than it really was.

Then the fourth skill: the grand strategy of channeling conflict into a physical, technical or spiritual arena. Can you dig it?

"All Is Vanity"

At one time I was pretty sure I had my ego under control. I don't require or like a lot of attention. I don't have a need for credit if I do something good (though it does annoy me if the incident is minimized or someone else takes credit.) I'm happy to be an unknown, sitting in a corner and watching.

Until I taught my first seminar and started reading reviews on the internet. Not only do I have an ego, but I'm downright vain. The book has jacked that up a notch and so, purely to blow my own horn:

Amazon review page. 15x Five-stars so far.

Patrick Parker's three reviews on Mokuren Dojo: 1, 2, 3.

Jake's review on his blog. (And good luck in the upcoming fight, Jake. DO NOT psych yourself out with the waiting.)

Steve Perry, who I think was the first.

The Foreword Magazine review by Lawrence Kane.

The Uechi-ryu site has been discussing the book. The link is just information right from the publisher. The good talk is in the forums.

Yeah, I'll have to work to get my head through the door. Or find a time or place to sit down with some of the old guys (you know who you are) and get a good solid slap of what I don't know.

Thanks, to all of you.

Balances of Power

Knowledge is power, as they say, and information is knowledge. The problem, one among many, is discerning what you know from what you think you know. Telling the difference between facts and beliefs. Discriminating between information, disinformation and 'opinion presented as fact'.

Most people have a pretty stable comfort level for this. Most people assume that:
1) Other people need a reason to lie
2) People are about equal in their desire to share information
3) If information comes from multiple sources it is more likely to be solid

The first assumption falls apart in many of the environments that I spend time in. People who live extremely marginal lives, unprotected by society and surrounded by people they can't trust (most criminals) need a reason to tell the truth. Disinformation is habit. Giving people in power (not just might power, but also ego stroke power or emotional leverage power) what they want to hear is habit. Most of what you have read derived from interviews with criminals (or written by criminals themselves) have been self-serving lies. It just is. If that rankles and feels judgmental, that is a measure of your value system, and an indicator that you do not understand theirs. In that world, lying is neither right nor wrong, it is simply smart.

The second assumption falls down in some very important places and some very important ways. Sometimes the people with the most information are prohibited (by law, policy, or morality) from sharing that information. I am aware of a case of a fairly highly placed person in a certain local government publishing some pretty outrageous lies. The truth was well-documented, but was documented under a work-place disciplinary status. Completely forbidden to be shared. The lies went unanswered. In some venues, information has to be limited because leaks can cost lives. Simple as that. The people who could explain the best are afraid that even a slight, accidental slip could lead to disaster- and so they say nothing.

This absolutely doesn't work the other way, and I am appalled frequently by some of the ignorance freely spouted on subjects that I am familiar with. The more I see the silence of the involved versus the voluability of the voyeur the more grateful I am for the quiet professionals who do the jobs we never really hear about. If you assume an equal desire to share information, the noise from one side will seem truer than the silence from the other.

The third assumption... people confuse different sources with independent sources. Radioisotope decay AND estimated mutation rates and changes in DNA over time AND geological layering AND the fossil record all independently support the concept of evolution. Different mythologies (and nothing else) support the theory of creation. Some of the more interesting pseudoscientific political issues are worth a look: in a few of them (I'm thinking of a specific example for this) you will find hundreds of sources. Those sources will quote other sources, who will quote others... but in the end almost everything goes back to a single opinion- and this guy has been known to quote people quoting him to bolster his argument.

This is a hard one to winnow out unless you are willing to do a lot of research... but in many of the hot-button topics it has had a definite influence. I think because it mirrors what the people who choose a side already believe, and people do not distinguish well between facts and beliefs. Full circle.

Selfish

"I could be blogging this," I thought. Then I selfishly kept it to myself for a bit. Sipping a latte- a good latte, much better than starbucks- in a giant ballroom in a palace while typing on the next book.

The palace- murdering bastards or not, megalomaniacs do some really cool architecture. The Presidential Palace- marble and inlay, hammered gold door, murals on ceilings forty feet high and domed. Isher-style optical illusions that aren't illusions because they are done in three dimensions... very, very cool.

Sitting under the billiards pavillion next to the swimming pool. Drinking cold water and thinking, just thinking.

It was beautiful and there is meaning in that. There is meaning and many lessons in every contrast in this land, in history and its consequences, in what is and what could be. Things I can't write here other than to make broad generalizations because each supporting detail is a story and a human, the very specifics that I can't share.

"Respect the Mud"

"When the rainy season starts, respect the mud. They build four-storey buildings out of it that last for three thousand years. Don't think for a second you can just scrape it off your boots."

Had to share that one.

Got to box and submission wrestle with a pair of young soldiers. It was fun, and they had good heart, but they were playing. Good kids having fun and maybe learning a little.

This is a strange environment. There's a thing called "pinging the radar" sort of a modern version of zanshen. Certain types of people walk into certain places and recognize each other--they 'ping'. They give a slight nod and either say "Hi" (rarely) or choose to leave each other alone.

This is the richest radar environment I have ever seen. There are kids, sure, and a few wannabes, but this is the highest concentration of truly dangerous men that I have ever seen. Very polite, very professional. Not a speck (that I have seen) of hatred or racism or cultural disdain... just some supremely skilled, supremely fit warriors here to do a job. Lots of good guys, some who have gone partially native, friendly and smart. But they don't ping the radar the same way.

This will sound weird, but I have to be careful to put some yin in my aura when I am dealing with people. Americans are often oblivious to the radar. Not so here.

So, respect the mud and tune down the aura. Good lessons for the week.

A Week

Almost.

I've seen sunrise in Kuwait and the half moon over palms in Bagdhad. Drunk Turkish coffee in a small shop and chai made for us by staff. Heat- the sky seems almost white with the heat, not the clear blue I am used to from my deserts. Sand and dust everywhere. And doves in the trees. A formerly feral dog who looks like a large, blonde coyote and now hangs around the base and a skinny feral cat. I enjoy the heat and often eat outside. One of the other rookies thinks I am crazy.

I won't write much, if anything, about mission. The stakes are high for people here and even an inadvertant slip could give away an identity. Which is sad, because in just a week there have been so many stories. So many small precious moments that I am afraid I will forget. Someone once wrote that the ten best stories of all time were lost forever because they were told to patrons of an Irish pub and no one remembered them in the morning.

This is just another example of the envelope I have been pushing all my life. Just as things settle, as I start seeing the world as a normal place, feel an attachment to all other people I'm compelled to run off and learn more about some odd corner of the universe. To learn things that will once again make my friends in their civilized lives seem a little alien and separate. That's not a bad thing, I love them just as much and relish the difference. Besides, if I don't go play on the edge and bring back the stories, who will?

Still getting my routine down- work, workout, read, write, language, culture. I'd forgotten how much time I would feel compelled to spend staying in contact.

What's Going On Here

Wow. For a second there I thought I would have to navigate the whole blog in Arabic.

Almost to the final destination. I've had a few short snoozes since 5 AM on the 4th of July. It's not as long as it sounds, I traveled over a significant number of time zones on the way. I could probably sleep now, but I would snap awake about 2300 local time and screw up my sleep cycle. That's why I don't get jet lag, I just stay awake until local bedtime. It works for me pretty consistantly.

I want to thank everybody for the comments and insights on the last post. That's what it is all about. Some of you feel it more than others- I don't know anything. At this stage training and experience are colliding so hard it seems that the world is composed of questions and exceptions. So this is the place I come to think about them. Sometimes it's a monologue and sometimes it's a discussion.

Sometimes, especially when I touch on the twilight zone stuff, it's a fishing expedition: who else has seen this, who has seen more, what the hell was it, what have I missed?

I haven't taught a regular class in years. The few people I work out with aren't students, just people exploring the places that I am exploring now. They choose me because they think I have something they want, and I choose them because I think they will help me clarify exactly what it is I have.

All right. That's enough egotistical navel gazing.

Does It Have To Be?

Steve Perry wrote yet another comment that deserves a lot of thought. He's right, and it's something I've wondered about myself: (See the August 5, 2005 post on New Ways- I can't tag from this machine) The essence- sometimes when you have done something for a long time, you forget the basics. You can do them, you just forget to explain them, or even point them out. Steve's instructor is really good (extraordinary by most measures) and gets a lot of experienced martial artists who need the shift in perspective that he offers. Ergo, most of his students would be considered very advanced in most schools and the basics are just assumed. When a new student shows up who doesn't know how to hold a stick or make a fist, it throws everything off-kilter. The instructor has to stop and switch gears.

Read the August 2005 post. The essence is that it takes a lot of practice, a lot of reps to get to some high-end skills. Every really good fighter that I know followed this route. But is it really necessary?

At this stage I sure don't know and don't really have an opinion on it. But here is a speculation, a possibility: What if you can skip that step?

Most people can move. Athletic people move well. Fighting is just moving. People already know what hurts and what can injure them. If it's not knowledge of those areas that makes a good survival fighter, maybe it is mental, attitude. Sanford Strong describes some of the survival mindsets that have gotten through truly hideous home invasion crimes. The attitude, the determination to "make this bastard PAY!" was a big factor, a huge factor in survival.

Isn't that natural? What if we are approaching this the wrong way and making a good survival fighter* is not about putting a mindset in but about taking one out? If it is not bequething a tool but removing a leash?

One example from my lovely wife: She is a wonderful dancer. A belly dancer, an exceptionally graceful woman. For years she couldn't and wouldn't dance. She was afraid she would dance poorly, that she "didn't know how." The second she decided to step on a dance floor, get into the music and have fun, she could dance. Classic ballet? Salsa? No. But she could move with power and grace to the music. She was dancing.

What if a huge gain in fighting skill could be made by simply deciding to 'let go'. That's the other thing that all extraordinary fighters (competition too) do. They let go. True, after they have spent the hours ingraining the skills... but is there any reason why the letting go can't come first? Would it allow them to learn skills without baggage?

Intriguing questions.


*Not the same as a competitor. Competition is a test of skill and will and technique and fitness and... Survival can be anything and everything

Layered Precision

It is possible to hit hard at lots of different ranges. The one-shot take out is rare, but it happens. When it happens, a lot of things have to come together in an instant.

Some strikes have a very specific range. Jack Dempsey described the natural power circle for a hook punch. The forearm extends off that line (increasing range) or flexes inside (decreasing) and the power bleeds away. Others are very versatile in range, or so it seems. Change the body alighnment of a jab and you get a "straight lead" which can be a very powerful, very long range strike. At very close range, the short jab can concuss handily with less than three inches of movement.

The thing is, though, that power isn't developed the same way for each of these ranges. To get brutal power in a short straight shot is a combination of structure and "bounce" (really hard to describe- and it sounds stupid, but let your body fall inside the skin and the skeleton bounce). The straight lead is structure and drop step. If you use the straight lead system of power generation, you get jack at super close range and not much at medium range.

Though the arm motion can look the same, power generation varies by range. This is why it is so hard to do serious damage with strikes in a real fight- you rarely are in complete control of the range. Clavicles and ribs can be broken fairly easily, but aren't broken often. In the same way, strikes to the brainstem (and the associated high-percentage areas) should be easy, but they don't happen very often.

Following this yet? To be a successful striker you need to put power in a specific place. That is much easier when the target holds still. The great strikers (I'm thinking sport, here) are not just putting the fist or foot in the right place when it is at the max on the power curve, they are also manipulating the opponent to be at the right place at the right time. personal precision plus the remote control precision on an opponent. That's cool.

The jujutsu solution, of course, is just to hold them in the right place.