Illusions of Mastery

I'm re-reading a book, one of the ones that came out in the seventies that makes me want to puke every time I hear the word "warrior", especially applied to a non-violent lifestyle. You know the trope- it's always the first person account of a young, shallow, outwardly successful american college student who meets the quirky old man with seemingly mystic powers in an unlikely place. The quirky old man puts a finger on the vague disquiet that the protagonist feels in his life and challenges him to take a journey or follow a path or (insert cliched metaphor here) to become (insert euphemism for someone really special- warrior, shaman, "man of knowledge", healer, sorcerer, initiate, scout... there are dozens).

The protagonist is always extremely stupid and unobservant. The crazy old man (sometimes a woman) is always deft and subtle and, between the lines, smugly and self-righteously humble. That's humble with a capital H. Like in Horseshit. The protagonist eventually feels 'awakenings' and sees things that he has never seen before and rejects all that he has been taught about the false and plastic and shallow and spiritually dead mainstream culture.

As an aside, if you read these as potential cult initiations, you can get a good feel for the "Jim Jones" moment when the protagonist would have drunk the Grape Kool-aid of Doom as an act of proof of faith.

The whole premise is false and cruel. I'm really sorry that at some point the protagonist stopped smelling grass or tasting food or watching sunlight on water. I'm sorry the protagonist felt empty and unfulfilled. I'm really sorry it took two hundred pages of crappy writing for the author to get it clear to the protagonist that those were all individual choices. Ooooops. I didn't mean author and protagonist. I forgot for a second that these were all GENUINE First Person Accounts! Sorry. I obviously meant it took two hundred pages of crappy writing for the enlightened warrior mentor to bring the protagonist to this gate of understanding. That's what I meant. And they always seem to teach the last lesson on their death beds, which kind of makes it hard to verify anything. That's always convenient.

The need that inspires these books is also false and cruel. They can dress it up any way they want, but seeking mastery, at any level, is about seeking control. The world is a big and scary place. Not everything will go your way. Any way that you can measure happiness can and will be taken away from you- health, friends, posessions, experience will all fall away in age or senility or death. But so many people want to believe that there is this thing, this place, this discipline, this truth that will in some way transcend the inevitability of their own death, their own insignificance in the face of luck. They want an answer. People are lining up to provide answers, for a price.

Here's another persistant and obviously false belief about mastery: that if you truly achieve mastery in one thing, you have achieved it in all things. For the sake of argument, let's say that I have achieved absolute mastery in unarmed combat... you don't want me performing open-heart surgery on your child. Not if you have any brains at all. On the other hand, unless he's really special, you want me coming to save your ass from the bad guys, not your family doctor. The reply, of course, is that a true master has transcended such things as skills... which is a way of dodging and excusing the fact that the world is BIG. You will never know all of it and no matter how good you get at how many things, there will always be hundreds, thousands, millions of things that you don't know and can't fix.

But you can know and fix yourself, the enlightened ones say with smug, yet humble, superiority. To an extent, I agree. You can work on yourself. In any given situation you are the one variable you can control. To that extent, I agree. But if the self was truly mastered, all these final lessons wouldn't be happening on death beds, would they?

You can't beat time and you can't beat death. Get over that. But you can sure live while you're here. That may be the key, the one real chance at immortality lies in the stories you live and leave behind.

Too Busy

I've been really wanting to write- the difference between the small world and the big concepts behind it; how pushing someone into a leadership position is so much like teaching a child to ride a bike; how a sociopath can set the agenda without either him or the others around him realizing what is happening; storm clouds in the gorge...

Too busy. In the last four (or is it five now?) Two swing shifts, two and a half day shifts and two days off; two days of training; one night spent in the ER; a tactical operation; a day and a night visiting and talking with my oldest, closest friend.

Still to do- four reports, two investigations.

The Other Side

This is a prelude to something I've been needing to write for some time, and it touches on one of the major themes of this blog and my life. You've been warned.

There is an "other side" Actually, there are lots of other sides. There are events in life that change the people who experience them on a fundamental level. These events change how that person sees the world, how they interact with the world-- the events change who they are. Mine, usually, have centered around risk or violence or exposure to subcultures that most people prefer to pretend don't exist. There are others, though- years of focused introspection in a monastary; immersion in an alien culture; surviving in the wilds with nothing; being diagnosed with a terminal disease... many others.

FYI- There are others that I consider invalid- the weekend meditation retreat, the 10-minute consultation and enlightenment with the guru, the guided survival camp with the emergency radio, the interview with the serial killer (who lies anyway). The good ways all have certain things in common- real risk and/or real deprivation and/or real fear.

There are people who have been to this other side and returned to the normal, comfortable 9-to-5 world. From that time on, the world never fits quite right. People from this side look at you and sense the difference. Some sense the otherness and respond with fear... nothing overt, usually, just an obvious discomfort. Sometimes they sense the insight gained and they wind up sitting at your feet like cultists (and some of the fakes and wannabes crave that for some unknown reason).

You want, so badly, for people to understand what you have learned on the other side... but. A big 'but'. I want my children to understand me, to really know me, but I will give everything I have so that they never see the whiteness of their own bones on a frosty morning, never see the eruption of meat and blood from someone they have just shot, never hear a man scream from a torn ear and never smell brains.

Until they see those things or something like them, though, they will not understand me. More importantly, they will not know who they are in the harsh times or what they will do. They will not know themselves until they have been to the other side.

Sometimes we are driven to share, some more than others, in the hope that with words we can create a few people who can understand without going through the events. But our words can become the fodder and the scripts for the wannabes and we recoil when we recognize our words coming from the mouth of a slick talking man with soft hands.

Breaking

Muscles grow through exercise, I am told, because the effort causes tiny tears in the fibers. They don't actually grow during exercise but through the healing process during periods of rest. Learning is like that too- under good instruction and through dedicated effort there is a growth process composed of microscopic acts of destruction.

A punch is not perfected by doing something 'more'- it is perfected by removing every motion, every tension anything and everything that is not a punch from the motion. The hallmark of good fighting is simple efficiency- if my line is simpler, my distance shorter, my power generation cleaner, my targeting more efficient... I will win.

Teaching, at least for what I teach, has more in common with a sculptor chipping away at any piece of marble that doesn't match her inner vision than at a mason building a rock wall.

Those are the minor acts of destruction. Teaching, at the edge of life and death, involves major acts of destruction. Since part of the skill of real confrontation involves internalizing risk and fear, the student must be exposed to real risk and real fear. Whether it's at the high end of two man kata training where a slight lapse in concentration shattered a collarbone or boxing and breaking ribs or a drill with safety equipment and rules that still sent a third of the participants to the hospital, it had to be faced.

We make training as safe as we can, but for the few for whom this is not a hobby they eventually need to reach the edge and spend some time there. Still, the destruction that arises here is peripheral, accidental. Injuries happen when you play hard, but the injury isn't the point.

But sometimes the injuryIS the point. Usually it's a psychological break, not a physical one. A good instructor carefully brings a student to the edge of this cliff, gives them all the tools they need to fly, and pushes them off. Some fly. Some don't.

It's important to be clear here, but very difficult. For every physical inefficiency that slows and weakens a strike, there are psychological issues caused by history or inclination or false information that can cripple you before you even move. Illusions that must be faced and shattered. Once he has them to a certain skill level, Mac puts his students through a multi-man drill with the intent of immobilizing them to helplessness and then to continue the beating. For a young, strong, male fighter it is psychologically crushing... but the only thing that is crushed is a stupid illusion of invulnerability. Some learn, dropping one of many illusions. They fly at the edge of the cliff. Others never return to class, imagining what they will and should do to prevent it ever happening again, rescuscitating their illusion.

I remember some of my breaks- when my judo instructor showed me the old follow-throughs, turning a fun sport into a frightening art, I thought about quitting... but chose to accept the responsibility. When my shoulder dislocated in a match, I learned that pain and injury weren't that big a deal. My first Bull-in-the-Ring I learned that my instinct, even when I was too tired to lift my arms, was still to fight. My last Bull, just after knee surgery I learned that I would rather be crippled than let the team down. And I learned that if I was scared enough I would pray.

They were shattering, but shattering an illusion is like shattering a constricting shell. It's not like breaking a bone, something structural. But when you, as an instructor, push it to this level you don't know who will fly and who will fall. Whether what breaks is a shell or a bone isn't up to you. The student decides. That's scary.

Basic Jailin'

Frustrated today, and I'm going to try to turn it into something useful.

Today, off the top of my head, subject to change without notice, Rory's Rules of Jailin':

1) Being a jail guard is a very easy, very safe job for smart people who pay attention and a very difficult, dangerous job for stupid people who don't pay attention.

2) The officer wants the dorm clean, quiet and safe. So do the inmates.
Corollary- if all involved parties basically want the same thing, it shouldn't be a daily battle.

3) Asking an angry or upset crook what his goal is can cut through a lot of bullshit- "What's your goal, son?" "I want out of this fucking cell you piece of shit! Let me out or I'll kill you!" "How does yelling and making threats work for getting you out of your cell?" "Oh."

4) Keep your word.
Corollary- don't give your word if you will have trouble keeping it or it would be wrong to follow through.
Second corollary- ALWAYS follow through.

5) Being a talker (which is 90% being a good listener) is good.

6) Being a fighter is good.

7) Being both and being able to switch between the two without hesitation is essential.

8) Your reputation as a fighter will prevent 50% of the fights.

9) Your reputation for being fair and consistant will prevent 90% of them.

10) Paying attention to the dynamics in the module and acting early will prevent even more.

And a general rule for life: You can take yourself seriously or you can take the world seriously but NEVER both at the same time.

MUQ-2006: Philosophy

Got back from Martial University late last night. Three hours driving, seven hours playing, three more hours driving on less than four hours sleep... just whining.

One of the participants, a karate instructor (and I did not get his name, damnit) got me after a session and asked "What's your over-all philosophy of self-defense?"

Hell of a question, isn't it? He noticed the hesitation and quickly threw in his to give me a starting point- conditioning and fitness are the key. Hmmm.

It's one of those things that is both so right and so wrong. On the right part, fit people look less like victims. They'll get challenged somewhat more in monkey-dance scenarios (in my experience), but predators look for the weak. Just being fit is an edge.

But.... as you age and fitness fades (who will truly be in fighting trim in their eighties?), you become a more appealing victim. When you are injured, you are a more appealing victim.
But fitness makes everything work better...
But...

I think if I ever develope true philosophy it will be a big step towards moving this from just a collection of observations and facts (a natural history) into science. The hardest part about writing about violence and self-defense is organizing the information. I've used artificial frameworks to make the information easier to remember and understand, but I hope that somewhere there is a natural framework that will snap everything into focus.

Here are some artificial frameworks that can be used like philosophies:

OODA: Observe, Orient, Decide, Act. Observation training would cover alertness and situational awareness. Orient would cover predator/prey dynamics, violence dynamics, violence escalation, legal ramifications and all that stuff. Decide is simple- find the student's 'Go buttons' and train them to act. Act would cover the physical part from verbal de-escalation to and through lethal force.


The Big Three: Awareness, Initiative, Permission. Awareness and Initiative are close corollaries of Observe and Decide. Permission addresses the fact that many people are not okay with hurting another person or doing what needs to be done and works specifically on this.

Traditional training: works the skills and assumes that the student will be able to use them effectively and appropriately in an emergency.

Scenario training: puts the student in a situation to experience and learn to deal with adrenaline effects... but does the student learn to deal with adrenaline or learn to see the training as a game?

Too many good ways to teach it. I would generalize (guess), that self defense has to center around a handful of things:

1)Awareness- if the person doesn't pay attention or doesn't recognize a problem, no skill in the world will help. They need to learn how to be watchful and what they are watching for, which will cover a lot of crime/violence patterns.

2)Skills- the person needs to have something they can do, in fact several things for different situations. But they must not be confused about the situations or by the number of skills. The skills must be simple enough to be resistant to stress and be effective.

3)Judgment- the student must be able to recognize the situation, choose the right response and do so quickly.

4)Decisiveness- the student must be able to act explosively and without hesitation.

5) Capacity- the student must be able to do what they have been trained to do without crises of conscience or subconscious pulls or squeemishness or social conditioning interfering.

There are more, but these are a start. I don't have a hard and fast philosophy about self-defense, but I think I do about teaching self-defense. The job is to check the student in each of these areas and work on weaknesses as they are identified. That's what the predator will do after all: the predator will evaluate each of these areas for an opening and attack on that line. Poor awareness? Blindside. No skills? Beat him down. Poor judgment? Trick her into vulnerability. Indecisive? Overwhelm with arguments, patter or fast action. Capacity? If the victim can't make himself hurt the predator, it's lambs to the slaughter.

Good question.

Heart

He talks a good game. He's got all the qualifications- a Black Belt, a security job, special team membership. He buys every piece of new equipment and every cool weapon that comes on the market. I asked his captain once what he thought of him as an operator. The captain gave a smirk and said, "He sure dresses nice." He has a reputation for freezing, standing there with a deer-in-the-headlights look while his partner fights and, once, was injured. When he plays the bad guy for training, he curls up on the ground the second the team enters... then says he thought getting him out of that position would be an "interesting challenge for the team". It also hurts a lot less than fighting.

You can have all the skills, all the recognition, accolades and approbation and still lack heart. Because it's easy to fake heart.

There was a new officer, a six-foot former marine, who called me to say that an inmate had challenged him and insulted him. He wanted to know what to do. He was hiding in the locked officer's station when he called me. The question, of course, is what should he have done, which was get the inmate cuffed and if it turned into a fight to win. He left the job after a year or so. He never got any braver.

The same week another rookie had her first fight. She was a 5'2" single mother who had no military training, no martial arts, and had never been in a fight or even thought to... but when she saw two inmates fighting, she jumped on the big one and when he threw her completely out of the cubicle, she jumped on him again. Over the years she became one of my favorite officers- she even, occassionally, scared her partners because she would jump into any fight and always picked the big one.

Heart is a big one for us. We know from bitter experience that there is no way to tell who, when the shit starts, will run toward the fight, who will run away and who will freeze. Size doesn't matter. Tournament trophies and championship belts don't matter. I've seen Marines run away and former SEALs unable to control their shakes or their tempers.

I've also read claims (we all have) that with this course or those DVDs you will learn to control your fear, be a master of combat, "fear no man"... I haven't seen it. I'm in a unique place for that, since I know people who go to those classes and then I watch them deal with danger. It makes the good ones better. A really good class can point out weaknesses. But I've never seen any training that can make a coward into a brave man.

Yet I don't think you're born with it either. I don't think I had any special heart when I was young. I was afraid of conflict, afraid of violence, afraid of being hurt- but I fought. I always fought because I believed I was supposed to, believed with the faith that children are known for. You protected the weak, even if you were weak yourself. You stepped between bullies and their victims. When you heard a cry for help, you ran to help. When you honestly believed that there were vampires in the cave (long story) you went in, because if you didn't they would get someone else, someone who couldn't fight.

It became a habit to fight, to defend, to go in. Just a habit, chosen by a child who read too much about King Arthur.

Finesse

The task today at the start of the shift was to explain to an eighteen-year-old violent serial rapist that it was no accident he was in protective custody. We had tried to put him in four other housing areas and he had "PC'd up" out of every one- asking to be transferred because he felt threatened. His isn't a particularly high-profile case. His face hasn't been on TV or in the papers. He just can't keep his mouth shut, can't stop talking about his case.

We had a conversation in his cell. Between his attitude and his crimes, this jail, a prison or something very similar will be his living environment for most of the rest of his life. He needs to learn how to survive in it. A big part of that will be not talking. He didn't get it. He only told people about his case who were his 'friends' so that can't be the problem. Too stupid to know that he's stupid... constantly whining for the world to change to his desires so that he doesn't have to make the effort to change.

That was the first part of my day, giving fatherly advice to a rapist.

The second incident was preventing an assault, investigating it, moving housing assignments around. Good, pro-active jailin'. Nothing happened. No injuries, no new charges. Finessed what would, five years ago, have been a balls-to-the-wall brawl with three involved inmates, two officers and 72 spectator inmates who could have watched or picked sides. I used to live for that. I still miss it.

Faithless

I was offended yesterday. In most cases, that takes some doing.
A friend and brother, someone I love and have long admired, introduced me to his biological brother. The conversation went well. From his stories he responded to challenges head on, as I usually do, and he likes a good fight.

The conversation drifted to wives and how difficult they can be to communicate with- particularly the balance of control, confidence, companionship and autonomy that a woman needs to feel. The line between taking us, as husbands for granted and smothering out of fear of losing us.

He shared his story- how his wife unreasonably kept bringing up an affair he had two years ago. What a bitch.

That burned me. I don't have a lot of deep sexual mores, beyond the ability for all involved to form informed and responsible consent. But I have serious issues with broken promises and trust. He felt it was natural- any man with the opportunity would act on it. Hiding it was only natural. Getting caught happens. The person betrayed needs to get over it...

The lack of integrity, that he would swear an oath (and marriage vows involve some very specific oaths), that he would lie to and hide things from someone who he has agreed to share his life with is enough, in my mind, to discount him completely as a man. That he would then turn around and blame the victim blew me away.

I guess I'm just old-fashioned.

MindShadows

I've been in a weird place for the last week or so. Almost every thing I saw, touched or did seemed to summon an image. I would see the curve of Kami's face, or the mist in the valley, the heat waves over a grill, wind blowing in the grass...

And things would well up- the face of a girl from nearly thirty years ago. A finger split lengthwise from impact, gray and yellow in death. Words from a rapist's private journal. The yellowing whites around a friend's eyes. A one-speed bicycle. The sound of water dripping in the back of a cave, sounding like vampires smacking their lips to a lone nine-year-old. A grula horse with Kiger stripes. A blank tarot card. The tracks of a beaver along the Washoe river. A rotting wolf eel on the beach. Looking into the eyes of a wild wolf. The feel of welded tuff. Old friends. Old adversaries. An obsidian hand ax. A purple tonka toy roadster.

When I'm not around people I don't think in words anyway. Images are nothing new... it just seemed that they were attached, coming from any sensation, part of that sensation. I would hug my wife and feel the exhiliration of a judo throw or hear the threats of some long forgotten criminal. It was like being in a room crowded with ghosts.

I read a theory long ago that the phenomenon of "life passed before my eyes" in a near-death experience is an attempt to go through history seeking a solution for the present problem. Without the problem, without fear, I've had that sensation for the last week. It seems to have no meaning, no triggering stimulus. It's faded now, enough that I can write at least.

It was a very odd week.

Kime

This is one of those epiphanies based on the shades of nuance in language and translation. Take it for what it is worth.

I first learned the term 'kime' in a karate class. It was explained as total commitment when every fiber of your mind, body and spirit were focused on a single moment of a single act. If you could strike and in the moment of impact be ONLY striking with all that you are, that was kime. I have felt that intensity and it is everything it is advertised to be- when you achieve it, you are not just a person hitting, you become impact itself, the essence of damage, inhuman and unstoppable.

Just finished reading Tony Reay's book on judo. As an act of discipline, I force myself to read whole books- introductions and acknowledgments and even glossaries. In his glossary, kime is translated simply as "to decide".

I knew that! The Kime-no-kata, the judo self-defense kata (old style) is called the Form of Decision. I just had not seen it before.
The big three concept was a huge piece of the puzzle fitting together (see here):
http://chirontraining.blogspot.com/2005/10/big-three.html

It is humbling to find so much of it so elegantly stated in the first art I ever studied. What is the most important thing in self-defense? Make a damn decision. Everything else predicates on that.

Every so often there is something that you know in a few minutes... and begin to understand in a few decades.

Stuff You Notice

Fresh human brains smell like a mixture of very fresh, high-quality meat and Ivory soap.

The common daisy was used by the Romans in a poultice to slow bleeding and help heal wounds.

When a tendon snaps, it can sound like a pistol shot.

If you shine sunlight through a ruby it will throw a spot of red and a spot of blue light onto a white surface.

A ligament snapping makes less of a noise than a tendon and there is little pain, just a watery, weak feeling like the joint isn't there.

You can rappel with no equipment but a rope and ascend with nothing but a good pair of boot laces.

Bones make a dull snap noise when they break, and the pain of a hand is sharper than a rib is sharper than a leg. The pain of a healing bone is a dull ache, especially in the cold.

When you are a door gunner in a helicopter and the pilot is flying knap-of-the-earth and he banks hard, you have no sensation of movement: it looks like the earth just moved in front of you, turning into a wall.

The pain of circulation and sensation returning after severe frostbite is intense and it seems it will never end, it feels like a fire in a nightmare.

The Mayans never developed a true arch, so their walls are thicker and chambers smaller than we expect.

Crepitus is the crunchy sound of broken bone ends grinding against each other. There are other things that make that sound, too.

In an outer ring around every thermal is a downdraft.

There are different "flavors" of concussion. Some are fun, like being mildly drunk and hungover all at once.

Milking cows strengthens your grip like nothing else.

Your own bones look very white when you see them.

Right handed people tend to take slightly longer steps with their left legs.

The Spanish term for parasites is bichos. Not sure if that is spelled right.

Chichu is an Ecuadorian native chewed beverage. It tastes like weak beer mixed with milk.

Finger joints take forever to heal because they keep catching on things. I hate that.

Peacock tastes a lot like alligator (and neither tastes like chicken).

Once you get to the point that you can go hand to hand with a real criminal without the adrenaline effects, you get them again when it is time to shoot.

Water won't stick to a diamond.

What a cool world.

Impressions

People make first impressions. That's not really true. I create the first impression from a medley of subconscious detail- how others react to them, how they carry themselves, what they glance at and what they watch, what they say and how they say it, their general health. Most important, probably, is what they try to subtly influence me, as a stranger, to see.

The impressions can be detailed, even complicated, but they aren't labels. Like most of my thinking they aren't word-things. Perhaps they are like maps: symbolic, never perfectly accurate but usually good enough to plot a course.

Met a near-legend recently. There's a depth to him, but a veneer too, and places where the veneer is wearing thin... and he's laughing at that, because the veneer isn't him. It's the legend people have created around him and he looks forward to the illusion shattering and the freedom it will bring. He would be fun to sit and listen to and laugh over people's needs for mystery in their miracles.

One of my co-workers is like a slow river. His appearance- bald and goofy with ostentatious hearing aids- hides a depth of compassion, intelligence, raw strength of spirit and amazing skills of observation. His laughter is like a child's, honest... or like a river bubbling over rock.

An old man today, an old criminal, had a stroke. "Fuck the world, live or die, all the same! Don't care what happens, I'm going to live hard!" The shadow in his eyes when he thought not of dying in some romantic outlaw fantasy but living, paralyzed and drooling, was a depth of fear like a paniced animal's, only to be fought with more bravado. He was like a sand castle, constantly building himself.

No time to write more.

Glitches

It seems my primary teaching modality is "training to the glitches". Put the student in a scenario or a drill and watch for the subtle hesitations and freezes. The things they either can't do or have to consciously force themselves to do. Each of those little freezes is a problem, a place where the mind and the will aren't working together. It's all about integration.

Obviously, you have a body and a mind. You have had them your whole life. I will not be able to teach you anything about how to move your own body that you don't already know...unless you have (deliberately, though subconsciously) either hidden information from yourself or ignored it. So combatives isn't and can't be about teaching you how to move. Side effect of having a body and being active is that you have hurt yourself in hundreds of ways over the years- so it's not about teaching you how to hurt a human body (not that there aren't nuances or information at the upper ends of force, e.g. what brains smell like, that you probably haven't and don't want to learn first hand).

If it's not about moving or hurting, what is training in combatives all about? Integration.

Mauricio Machuca talks about capability versus capacity. As you train, you become more and more capable of certain actions, but it doesn't automatically affect your capacity. I can teach you how to break a neck in a few minutes. Whether you could actually do it to a real person who was breathing, struggling, crying- that's a matter of your capacity, something training doesn't automatically address.

Capacity is largely a matter of integration and clarity. If your tactical mind says killing is the appropriate response, but your conscience has never clarified when it is acceptable to kill, you will glitch. If your reasoning and observation leads you to believe that a calm, neutral expression is your best option but your panic makes your voice squeek, there is a glitch.

So you look for glitches, for inconsistancies.

Here's an aside- have you ever watched a martial arts class where hours and hours are spent on basics, and then when they spar it looks nothing like the basics? That's a glitch... but the ugly truth, for the arts that I am thinking of, is that the techniques that work well in real life look a lot like those basics, and nothing like their sparring. FWIW.

You watch the talented student who can knock the shit out of the heavy bag but can only lightly tap a person. That's a glitch. Is it moral? Spiritual? A conditioned response from childhood? Decades of expectations?

The officer who gets hit with the ConSim paint bullet and 'dies'. Who trained him to die?

Adults who freeze when they get slapped in the face. Or when they suddenly see an unexpected knife in a drill. Trained martial artists who try to get control of the weapon when they know they need to shut down the brainstem. All glitches, all things that came from somewhere. Too often, they came from training.

Just a Big Old Softie

"I feel guilty," I said. I had just given the new baby goats their shots and held them while Kami slid a tight rubber band over their testicals to castrate them.
"Hmmph. Considering you're planning on butchering them, I don't see why this would bother you."
"This is way worse. If I snuck up behind you and shot you in the head, would you hate me forever? Would your identity be shattered? Would you be miserable for the rest of your life?"
"No."
"If I wrestled you down and put bands around your breasts so that they would hurt terribly and then slowly go numb and then wither away through lack of blood and literally dry up and fall off like shriveled pieces of meat, you'd hate me for the rest of your life, right? I feel way more guilty about this than I do butchering."

I had racoon shit all over my shirt today. We went to the vet to get some innoculations for the goats. While we were there, we met a very nice Scottish Deerhound and a Newfoundland puppy named Gus. The Deerhound was nervous, waiting for his owner, not sure if he should let this strange person in this strange place pet him or not. Gus wasn't shy at all. Only three months and already big with huge webbed paws, he was in my lap getting his tummy scratched in a matter of seconds...and me, the middleaged, balding, tactical team sergeant thug was down on my knees happy to pet the cute little puppy. The vet then said that she had three orphaned racoon kits in the back room if I wanted to see them.. Oh, yeah. I'm a big softie. Tiny little things, making a wide array of noises, purring and chattering. They suckled at my fingers and climbed all over my shirt, nestling into my neck... and one just dumped on my shirt, a big slimy goop of mustard yellow racoon shit. Didn't matter- even with all my common sense and experience with racoons, I still would have taken them home if it was an option.

Beast, the airedale, gave me a strange and betrayed look when we got home. He's okay with me smelling of other dogs and cats. He's used to it and no longer gets jealous of my time with other animals. He's pretty much written me off as a slut. But a racoon, his mortal enemy. That was going too far.

Bivy Sack

The last week has been busy. Lots of hard work on the property. With tons of unused vacation time, I burned some to spend fencing pasture, cutting down blackberries and pouring concrete. Much of my time now is spent indoors, communicating and subtly balancing the dynamics of 400 or so criminals (most with mental disorders) in an enclosed space. This week is a reminder of how good it feels to get up early in the morning and spend a whole day sweating in the sun and the wind. I miss living and working on a ranch.

Change of pace, today- we are due for a dump run, so we spent time cleaning out the garage. So many memories there. Climbing hardware that has sat unused for a couple of years. Caving outfits. Waterproof bags, covered in dust were a reminder of kayak camping years ago...my first open water kayak trip was forty miles solo of mixed lazy river and white water from the Willamette valley to the coast.

I threw away a long expired box of erythromycin, legacy of two weeks in Ecuador bringing medical supplies to villages and military bases on the Rio Napo.

The bivy sack got to me, for some reason. We'd been doing a lot of hiking, bike trekking, kayak camping. 'We' is a little off- much of it was solo. I'd just gotten a real job and the bivy sack was the sign of the transition- I could now afford something that provided great shelter and could be slung from a bike or stowed in a kayak without taking up space or weight. I never used it much- the job that made it possible also took a lot of time and involved switching from shift to shift and changing days off, weaning me from the few climbers and recreational explorers who were willing to play at my level. I set it up, just to make sure it was all there, then stowed it away.

So many dusty things in that garage- head lamps, harnesses, crampons. The goretex cover that Kami made for my sleeping bag. Combined with the fleece insert (which I didn't find) it transformed a mediocre, inexpensive bag into something that could handle snow camping in comfort. A gift of great love from someone who knew me well. An old love-letter too, that I had been too self-absorbed at the time to recognize for what it was, only seeing a friend's stab at poetry. A pair of small knives to match a kukri I can't find. A dutch oven full of parafin that we used to melt to harden leather for armor. An Argentinian bayonet. Two bags of obsidian and knapping supplies (I never spent the time to get decent at that). A collection of fire starters including the cool military sun screen that acted as an alcohol gel and could be used as lighter fluid or a fuse. Threw away some military stuff that I've been keeping for too long and for no reason.

It's good to clean things out, good to dust off the memories once in a while. Today was beautiful day for it.

Smelling the Spring Wind

Wind whips over the tall grass. Last night Mt. Hood was a pale blue shadow against a barely darkening sky. Brilliant stars in the darkness, shiny white clouds in the blue.

The sky, the universe, is all as it should be. If the gate to Heaven, bliss, nirvana were to open right now I wouldn't enter.

I love being human and living in a human-sized world with human problems and human joys. I love the connection of humans with compassion listening and helping each other, even if the problems aren't that real. I love the taste and feel of good food and the burn of honest, real pain. What could paradise offer that could equal a drink of cold water in the back of your throat?

I love being flawed and challenged and struggling. That is what life is and I am loath to give it up. All around are beautiful, passionate human people, too often blind to their own wonder.

If angels and gods are watching us, they are watching us with envy.

Martial University

Received the class schedule for Martial University over the weekend. Damn.

Once a year Kris Wilder, a goju instructor in Seattle puts together MU. It's a cool seminar. He hand picks a variety of local instructors. Each hour, five of them step forward and describe what they will teach for that hour. The students who signed up thus get to pick from five possibilities each hour. That runs to six classes plus the noon bonus. The last few years the noon bonus has been a lecture from off the beaten path. This year it will be a kendo demonstration

Kris assigned me to teach five classes. Crap, do I know five things? We'll see. We won't have the lecture room this year, so I'll do mostly mat time. I'm thinking a class on pain. Everyone knows what pain is as an event, but most haven't thought it through as a tool. It will also allow some segues into strategic and tactical thinking and the tactical matrix.

Then a class on entries, requested by John Migliore. He asked what I teach/do for a sudden ambush. It's a good skill and allows an intro to the strategic matrix as well as operant conditioning as a training method.

I want to do a knife eye-opener. I don't claim to teach knife defense largely because I have so little confidence in most of what is taught. I'll print out some pictures of knife wounds and then we'll play two games- the Manson Drill, designed by Tony Blauer and my Reception Line drill. They're both myth busters. Then we can talk about the tendency to tailor training to create unrealistic success.

Love to do a class on Sosuishitsu-ryu kata, let them see some true koryu stuff. Not sure who will be up for it, but it will be cool for me at least.

That's four. In the past I've done principles-based classes on joint locks and takedowns and lectures on violence. If there hasn't been a big turn-over in student base, that might be boring. Maybe infighting strikes? Blindfolded infighting? Power generation at three ranges?

Should be fun.
http://www.westseattlekarate.com/martialu.shtml

Martial University, May 20th. Bellevue Washington.

Theory

The incident is months old. One of our officers was attacked at close range with a knife. He parried, pushed the threat away, drew his Taser and lit him up. This deputy talks about it, critiquing the incident. He wasn't there: he saw it on TV like everyone else. This deputy has opinions, strong ones. He's careful to be respectful, saying over and over again, "I don't want you to get the impression I think he did anything wrong, it turned out perfect. But..." Always a 'but'. Always a what if. There are always 'buts' and 'what ifs'.

He quotes from our use of force and survival training- aren't we taught to never go up against a threat with a lesser level of force? Won't you always react the way you trained?

I reply that we are required to use the lowest level of force that we reasonably believe will stop the threat. That you will react the way you were trained, maybe, until your fiftieth or hundredth Use of Force- then you will exceed it.

He lets that pass, going on about the things he will never do and what he WILL do if he is ever in that situation. Aaah.

I ask him how many fights he's had. He hesitates. He hasn't had any yet. Times have changed. Assignments have changed. The kid's been on five years. I think I was approaching two hundred by my fifth year.

So this is all theory, I say.
Am I wrong? he asks.

I shrug. Get fifty fights down and you quit using words like 'never' and 'I will'.

We teach, I teach, not to use a lower level of force than the threat. You shouldn't bring a knife to a gunfight or try to wrestle a knife away. The very fact that someone thinks he can reliably do it is a sure sign that he's too ignorant to let try. So, to keep the people from letting their fantasy skill levels endanger their lives, we teach them 'never'.

But the best and the most experienced go beyond their training. You get to a place where a vast number of variables are handled subconsciously. The right decision seems to be made by your body. You can, in an instant, choose the Taser instead of the gun or to push at exactly the right angle instead strike. You can take the knife away.

But only in that moment. The more moments you have, the more you realize that because something worked last time doesn't mean it will work next time.

I don't know who said it first: "In theory, there's no difference between theory and reality. In reality, there is."

Revisiting the Past

We are all products of our history. Genetics, sure, but how we interact with the world, how we see it is, a product of the events we have survived. We are the result of our triumphs and our losses.

Everything you have been through has culminated in a YOU, pure and perfect. Not flawless, not perfect in the sense of a symmetrical crystal. Perfect in the sense that you are the ultimate you. There are no imitations, no one who will ever out-do you in youness. In this second, you are exactly what you are.

But humans just can't seem to be satisfied with that. It's not enough to survive, remember, grieve, cherish, assimilate and grow. They have the power of memory- fragile and corruptable as it is, more a composite created than a recording. They use the memory, revisiting the past. It's not a bad thing, for most people. Events need to be remembered to be assimilated. They need to be analyzed to discover their lessons. It is important to check your actions and be sure they are in line with what you think are your ethics (the action, not the thought, will always be the truth, but you can will action to thoughts and create a new truth).

But sometimes people revisit pain to little purpose. To learn, to forgive and grow, to understand and to heal are good reasons to revisit pain. To hold onto pain as a shield and an excuse serves nothing but the little chattering conscious mind that wants to hide from its own strength and never risk growth.

The conscious mind is the weakest aspects of our brain. It is merely the words on the computer screen- the actual thinking is much deeper and in a far older and simpler code. What we "remember" is what our conscious mind can dig up and share, and research has shown again and again that more of it is created than actually recalled. The memories have been subtly (or grossly) twisted to fit our present needs.

This is the first danger of introspection. The unexamined life may not be worth living, but often what is being examined isn't the life at all, but an edited and airbrushed child's painting of the life.

Combined with the human mind's need to find patterns and our infinite creativity, excessive introspection brings a second danger. Seekers who continuously strive to go deeper and deeper into their own consciousness at some point are no longer finding insights but creating them, manufacturing not just a psuedo-enlightenment but even entire imaginary problems and life-altering events.

There is a reason why true meditation disciplines are based on silencing the monkey chatter in the mind. That is the conscious part, the weakest part, the part that can't tell an object in your hands from the idea or the word. Because everything is already assimilated... just not in the 'word' part of your mind. And the word part is too small to handle it anyway. But it's there if you can just keep the chattering monkey's hands off it.

Blood and Leadership

There's a new leadership book out that our management has fallen in love with. Most of the upper-level management has read it and they recommend it and even have several copies to hand out. 1) Highly recommended, 2) will have an influence on my supervisors and 3) free... definitely need to read it.

The Captain asked what I thought of it. "Another book written by a manager who thinks he's a leader," I said.

That's not exactly true. There are a lot of leadership books out there that I have a hard time connecting with. Why? There's good stuff in this book, some stuff I will use. Some weaknesses that I'd attributed to circumstance or environment that are actually internal and controllable, changeable (different perspectives help me to see the blind spots). Why my personal disconnect? Opposition and stakes?

When Lee Iacocca turned Chrysler around, who really wanted him to fail? Even the union, who too often is at war with management, didn't want all those jobs and their reason for the union's existence to disappear. The government probably wanted Iacocca humiliated and begging, wanted one of the most outspoken critics of government intervention in business to be seen begging for government help... but no one in the government wanted to lose the tax base or for those jobs to disappear. Who was the enemy?

Even Churchill and Lincoln (who the author uses a lot) who definitely had enemies and led a state at war, didn't really deal with the enemies. They dealt with the government and the press and the electorate. They inspired people who wanted to be inspired and led people who wanted to survive and maintain their way of life. The people who faced the opposition, who dealt with people trying to kill them, were the soldiers. The people who led the soldiers were the NCOs and the low-level officers who were tasked with taking the grand strategy and making it a reality in the forests and the swamps and the snow. The men who gave those orders had to be loud enough and close enough to be heard over the deafening roar of the artillery and the screaming of the wounded. Close enough to really see and to risk along with their men.

The stakes, too. Market share? I know it's important globally, but this is what I imagine: "In order to save the company, we have to implement my plan. If we make an error, if I've made an error, we stand to lose 20% of the market share and the company will go under. Are you with me?" How does that compare to, "Team, we've lost the eastside facility. Four hostages that we know of, about 170 threats. Here's the tactical plan. We're undermanned for this mission but time is critical. Four lives on the line now, plus us if anything screws up. If anybody wants to opt out, go now." (Caveat- no one in this business would actually make a speech like that or go running into a mission without good planning and resources. I was trying to make a point about the stakes.) A CEO makes a mistake, no one dies. A president or a general or a senior administrator makes a mistake, even if people die, it's not anybody that they know. And it's not them.

The author uses examples from business and sports a lot. That's part of it. There's an aspect of adrenaline to those, but I don't imagine an NBA player, even a rookie, dealing with white-knuckle fear or making sure that his will is in order before warming up for the big game. Thinking about how their kids will turn out as orphans.

So that's the source of the disconnect. I see nothing in this book about how to train AND empower people to make quick decisions under stress while operating independently but still staying on the game plan. There might be something about setting a good example, but nothing about keeping cool under fire and letting the troops see it or how to model dealing with post-incident stressors. It's a concern because. like violence, so little has been written about that extreme edge of leadership and, like violence, most people have the luxury to believe that anything that falls under the label must be the same thing.

It's also a concern because politicians and administrators who either never spent time on the line or did so very long ago will see the word "Leadership" in the title and think that it will help them communicate with and influence the front line.

Details

I have three types of dreams. Most are just entertainment, my subconscious screwing around. Rarely remember those. Some are literally training exercises: my subconscious sets up a scenario and lets the conscious mind solve the problem. Some of these are memorable, and most are bloody with military situations, monsters... but they're never nightmares per se since I never feel helpless or defeated.

The symbolic dreams are very rare, but I always remember them for a few days and they are easy to recognize. A few days ago, the dream was about a group of people (familiar in the dream but I almost never dream about people I actually know) in the high desert of Eastern Oregon near a shack, a mine and an outhouse looking at the carcasses of vultures. I was admiring the intricacies of the skeleton and others were complaining of the smell or wondering what to do.

I didn't get the dream. It was clearly symbolic and my subconscious never does this unless there is something important in real life that I'm missing. Usually it's a fairly quick interpretation. I didn't get this one and Kami couldn't help.

So the next night, the subconscious lobbed an easy one- Trying to teach someone to interpret tracks there was a place where a bird had tried to land on a piece of snow that looked like a perch and the snow had broken. The broken snow perch and the light marks of the feathers told the story and I was badgering the student to SEE it. The whole time I never noticed that the bird, a very young robin, was lying on the ground beneath the interesting track, freezing.

Too much time spent on details is the message. Look at the big picture. Trivia is a distraction when people are hurting around you. The tracks are important, but not when what made them is right there...

Cool to have a subconscious that that can dumb down when I need it.

Compulsive Competence

Decades ago, in an upper-level class on personality difference the professor would interview a subject each week and we would analyze the subject. Tom was an outstanding teacher and therapist with absolutely no voice inflection or visible emotion. That's an aside. One class he interviewed a young man. When he was done and the subject left, he asked for our first impressions.

I jumped in, "He's the healthiest person we've seen so far. He's getting good grades, keeping a variety of healthy relationships, maintaining athletics and an obligation to the military. He has a long-term plan for his life. We haven't seen anyone doing that well in so many areas. His life seems balanced."

"You're exactly wrong," Tom said, "That kind of compulsive competence is a sure sign of early childhood trauma."

I'd never heard the phrase 'compulsive competence' before and it had to bounce around in my head for awhile. Let me get this straight- if everything is going well, you're screwed up? Taking control of your life and forcing yourself to do your best is a sign of being screwed up? Hell with it then, I'm proud to be that screwed up.

Tom was right in a way, though. And Kevin was right in his comment on the last entry- you don't become strong or smart if your life is easy. All of your strengths arose from your hardships. The most interesting and the best people I know (like you, Kai) outgrew and overcame. They outgrew and overcame real problems. They categorically did not create problems in their head so that they could fit in with their angst-group peers.

So cherish what made you You. It wasn't easy. Good. Cause I don't know anyone who had a perfect childhood who was worth a shit as an adult.

To all the Compulsive Competents out there, welcome to the club.

Currency

Epiphany again, something that happens a lot with this student. Not a martial epiphany or even a teaching epipheny, a regular old epiphany.

Why does it seem that the best martial arts instructors don't teach for money?

Read that sentance. Re-read it. Then point out, in detail, how the sentance itself is designed to mislead to a forgone conclusion. (Homework).

It's an old debate in certain circles. Everyone knows an amazing instructor who teaches out of his garage for little or no money. Everyone has been exposed to the glitzy schools that will sign you, if they can, to a contract totalling thousands of dollars that guarantees you a black belt whether you attend class or not.

From these common examples, they conclude that business sense is incompatible with "true" martial instruction. Maybe. I was in this camp for a long time, largely because 1) the best instructors I'd seen didn't charge; 2) One of the instructor lineages I was most impressed by made it a formal part of their philosophy- you didn't pay for the instruction in money now, you paid in the sweat and heartache of teaching the next generation; 3) I was told, and I believed without researching it for myself, that the Japanese Bushi class was incompatible and antagonistic to the merchant class and that there was no greater insult than to be a warrior for money.

Am I Japanese? No. Is this even true? No idea. Didn't the bushi recieve at least a stipend for their armed service? Hmmm. When all is said and done, aren't I paid and paid well to fight (in the most controlled, restrained and civilized manner possible, of course) for money? Damn right.

The person who actually got me thinking was Barry McConnell. Barry is one of those Hapkido/Arnis guys. He's also wicked, mean, funny, intelligent and sensible. Very much worth listening to. He asked, if you can't make money, maybe it's because what you're teaching isn't worth anything. Harsh, but accurate. If you feel your panties getting in a twist, take a moment and make sure it's not because he's right.

Barry got me thinking, but I can't honestly say I thought much about it. I don't need to teach for money and I've never cared for dealing with finances and accounting, so I just didn't bother charging.

On to the epiphany. This student really isn't a student. She is working on a project about teaching and I'm very eager to read what she has to say. She mentioned that in certain types of teaching, money is almost a taboo. She pointed out that I never talk about it and that not talking meant something. She plans to write a section on this. She asked the right questions to open up the back of my mind.

It's not about money. It never has been. It's about the relationship between teacher and student. In most endeavors, you hire a teacher or a guide with a pretty sure knowledge of where you want to go. A piano teacher will teach you to play the piano. If I was teaching a style, if I was _only_ teaching the motions of Sosuishitsu-ryu, it could be done this way: Give me X amount of dollars and I will show you the syllabus.

The relationship to teach about combat or survival is very different. I'm not an employee. I can't be. At some point, the student got to know me and I got to know the student and the student said, "Take me there." Take me to a dangerous, scary place that I have never seen. If I was an employee and the student was the boss, they could skip the rough spots and avoid the dangers and they would decide when they had arrived, even if they did not know what the destination looked like. The old relationship, the true relationship, has to give the guide, the instructor, the sensei freedom to push the student when the student wants to stop, freedom to force what the student most wants to avoid and freedom to terminate the relationship at any time. Sometimes because the goal has been reached, even if the student does not recognize it.

(Note- without an instructor of good heart and great experience, this system is ripe for abuse. An ignorant instructor of good heart can do nearly as much damage as an evil instructor).

She said that there is always an exchange in the student/teacher relationship. Both sides benefit in money or ego gratification or insight or skill or something else. There is always a currency exchanged. What is yours?

Borrowing Trouble

When my father died, it wasn't a huge blow. It was sudden, it was unexpected but it wasn't devastating or crippling. He'd never been one of those fathers who said, "I'll always be there for you." He had always been clear that someday he would die and someday mom would die. That someday, each of us will be alone. He said that his entire duty as a parent was to prepare us for that. Death had never been anything special in our house. The proper attitude to mourning was to focus on the ones who were hurting most and help them.

Dad's wake was a big affair and in many ways it clued me in that there was a lot about his life that I didn't know. One memory of that night, however, still pisses me off. A well-meaning pair of relatives, an aunt and uncle took me aside to tell me I was taking dad's death "too well" and needed professional help.

That stayed in my head for far too long. When someone with a medical degree or counseling experience tells you that there is a problem, it's hard not to second guess yourself. It's easy to "borrow trouble", to create a problem because you expect one.

I've said it several times before, but most of the world is imaginary. What people think of you exists in their head. It only exists in yours if you let it. I'm not denying that people with power over aspects of your life can't change things based on their thoughts... but how important those changes are exists only in your thoughts. It is possible and far too easy to put so much belief and energy into an imaginary problem that it sucks energy and creates stress like a real wound.

It's said that the unexamined life is not worth living. That's absolutely true. To develop you must experience life AND you must integrate that experience. But humans are monkeys and are driven to play with things. We are genetically programmed to see patterns and can find or create patterns (or excuses or entire religions) in completely random events. And that's a danger with introspection.

The goal, for a lot of soul-searchers, is to clarify life to a point that there are no glitches. That things, even unpleasant things, are what they are but don't cause discomfort or a bad reaction when they come into awareness. You don't freeze on them. For people obsessed with clarifying parent issues (for example) they want to remember their childhood and see the effects without reliving the pain. They want to see the source of some of their problems, give themselves power to change their behavior.

Do you see that the goal, really, is to NOT think about it too much? Not wallow, at least. Simply, not borrowing trouble.

I've read a series of articles lately by people who didn't have a problem until they fell in with a group of people who existed for that problem. They were told that if they were a certain... (size, age, color, religion, economic class, social class, gender) they must have these problems, that any belief that they didn't notice or didn't bother was (egad!) repression...

After months of soul-searching and deep meditation, they found the problem. They found deeply buried resentments and hates and repressed acts of repression. Most disturbing, to me, the writing of these two people changed palpably from voices of strength and wisdom to voices of hurt and anger. I can't help but feel that there was less uncovering of hurt than creating of it, because they had been told by people that they love and respect what they were supposed to feel.

Rule of thumb- if soul searching makes you more angry and less loving, you're probably deluding yourself. Remember that the human monkey-mind likes creating stuff out of nothing and needs to be part of the herd... but a unique part of the herd... but not too unique... but special... but not ...

Brothers in Famine

For the first time in months I met with my team as a team. The present budget crisis (is it real or imaginary this time? What's the difference?) has been targeted at overtime and especially "specialty teams". We are a "specialty team". If you get taken hostage inside the jail or there is an inmate uprising, we deal with it- that's our specialty. We'll be expected to deal with it whether we have trained or not.

The last time this happened, it was eight months and it took everything Dre and I had to hold the team together. We did, and we came back stronger. As a team. Everything as a team.

We cheated to day. Due to workman's compensation issues and completely unfounded fears that the media will label us as a rogue unit or a cabal, we have not only had our training budget frozen, but we have been FORBIDDEN to train on our own time. We train on our own all the time- this is a group of men and women (woman) that live for training. We put in time in the gym, time at martial arts or shooting or climbing and most of us read.

Training as a unit, though, is hard. So today we cheated. It's time for semi-annual qualifications at the agency. We 'accidentally' signed up for the same day, on a day when all the instructors were team members. Qualification was budgeted for three hours. We kicked it out in a third of that for some time to work together on our own skills.

Not as much time as we needed and honestly, we didn't use it efficiently. We work three different shifts and seven or eight different assignments, so a lot of the time was spent catching up, reconnecting. With a little bitching about the lack of training.

It's a good crew. I miss them. For the first time in a long time, shooting didn't seem like a chore.

Silly Games

Since the kids were babies, we would play "Pounce". The idea is to sneak up on each other and suddenly leap in the air, grabbing your prey and yelling "Pounce!". I would stalk the kids and they would stalk me.

The kids are too grown up to play Pounce now, at the ages of 12 and 14. Not Dad, though. I still play.

Lately, I've been driving my son nuts by talking to myself while stalking him.

Slowly, stealthily, I sneak to the table where he is making notes for a role-playing game. He catches a reflection in the sliding glass door and says, "I see you, Dad. Knock it off."

"Ah," I say out loud, "the wary prey has noticed the reflection of the predator. The predator holds perfectly still, knowing that herd animals are weak and stupid and will soon forget the imminent threat."

"Dad, I can hear you. You're talking out loud. Go away. And I'm not weak and stupid."

"The prey, hoping to discourage the predator, makes weak bleats of protest. Secure in the stupidity of his prey, the predator slowly advances."

"Mom! Dad's gonna pounce me and he's doing that stupid talking out loud while he does it. Make him stop."

"Once again, helpless, the prey squeels for aid from an uncaring world. Soon, very soon, he will be but another nutritious meal provided by nature in the bloody struggle for survival."

He finally turns on me, trying to keep a straight face. "Dad, you are a very silly man who doesn't understand the concept of inner monologue. I see you and I hear you. Knock it off."

"POUNCE."

Tickling ensues.

It's a silly game, but it's really funny.

Shadows

I sit across the table and listen to this man. He has the flickering tongue of years of psych meds and the toothless grin of an old crack addict. He talks to me because I listen. He is so easy to dismiss as a crazy old man, a crazy old addict, a crazy old criminal. A couple of years ago, when I first talked to him, he was bursting with the crazy story of getting a medal for saving someone from drowning. He was laughed off and pushed away, crazy old man.

I got on the internet and checked. He had recieved a local life saving medal for exactly what he said. The article identified him as homeless and a Vietnam-era Marine Corps veteran.

In his mind, it was the Medal of Honor... but other than that his story was accurate.

Today we sat and talked. Not about anything specific, yet it was. It was about living to your fifties through things that had killed many people who you knew and liked. (Luck? A divine plan? Or were you just faster?) About following orders and moving fast. About doing what needed to be done.

And we talked about the shadows- the memories of smells and sounds that you can never share. The failures and addictions. The boredom of the heart (his concept, half words, half gestures as he tapped his chest time and again, saying, "Bored right here, bored and so tired.") When you transition from intensity of that level to... what? A job, family and white picket fence?

Once you've been beyond that veil, it becomes almost impossible to relate to civilized people or have them relate to you. They fantasize about it, write books and film movies about it- but they don't want to see it and if you really share what is in your head they flinch away.

There's a shadow to that too, because though they never want to see beyond the veil, they have no problem judging the people who went there.

Sometimes I think that for my age and era, I have experienced many things, some very dark... then I talk to someone like this man and realize that I've barely scratched the surface of darkness and its echoing shadows.

As I was leaving, the deputy working that dorm called me over to say I had the "patience of a saint" for listening to the crazy old man. I didn't know how to tell her that I was honored and awed. No matter how much or how little time he spent in-country, he is still paying for it. It was an honor to listen and maybe lighten his payments for a few minutes.

Homework

The rookie was asking a lot of questions today. He'd been on the edge of sending someone to the hole, balancing all the rookie concerns: Is it right? Is it justified? Will the inmates think I'm weak if I don't? Will they think I'm authoritarian if I do?....

He asked some advice and I made him make his own decision, which was to talk one more time and if it went bad, send him to Seg. It was a good, balanced decision, but it brought up more questions- if it had gone bad, then what? How do you cuff a real criminal? What if...

It's been a very, very long time. I told him the verbals I use and how the response tells you right away if there is going to be a problem; then I gave him a few verbals I use if there is going to be a problem to prevent it. Some were words to the inmate, some words to other people. I told him that in any group of 75 people your ability to read and influence was only limited by your imagination.

The rookie confided that he's been watching a lot of officers, comparing their different 'styles' and mine was very different (no!). He said it was calm. He said he's seen me talk down things he was sure were doomed to go down bad (it took me a while but I remembered he was the rookie who was hovering around when the psych lost it and needed to be transported (the Mac Moment). Then he asked how.

Crap, I've been doing this for fifteen years. I have no idea how I do it. Lots of experience and trial and error and clear priorities. Good teachers and bad ones and knowing the difference. Taking the failures as lessons instead of making excuses.

So I gave him homework. (Rookies will do anything you tell 'em to). You can do it too, if you want.

Step # 1: Write down everything that matters to you. It should be a long list and take some time. Not just people, but things like safety and duty and causes. Make it a good list. If you are doing it for real, take a break before you read any further and make the list. I never do that, but it might be prudent.



Step #2: Cross out everything on the list that is imaginary. Safety, my friends is imaginary. If everyone dies, you can't be safe, only safer. The social contract, every aspect of it, is imaginary. You don't have to be punctual, you happen to live in a society that chooses to value it and you choose to act on that value. Punctuality is imaginary. Very, very few things on that list are real.



Step #3: Look at all the things you crossed off. Choose the ones that you WANT to matter. Decide which ones you will act as if they were real. You are actually choosing your own ethical code. Choose them, live by them, but never forget that they are imaginary. It is your code. It's foolish to argue about imaginary things or to expect anyone else to live by your imaginary ethics. This allows for great tolerance- I can disagree on fundamental levels with murderers and drug pushers and vegetarians and still listen with respect. It allows me to deal with the issue of the moment instead of dredging up past events or my judgment of past events.

Does it make me condone murder? No. And if an inmate asks, and they have, I will say (and have said) "I think you deserve to fry for that." And they don't get offended.

Looking at my personal list of imaginary things, almost everything that I value is internal. Integrity is on the list, but reputation stays crossed off.

So why did I do this to the rookie? Because not one person in a thousand differentiates between their real values and their imaginary ones. Because humans will almost always serve their real needs before their imaginary ones. Because if you can clearly know your own real and chosen list, your entire reality is less cluttered, cleaner and you see and breathe and move like a wild thing. And with a little practice, you can see the line between other people's imaginary and real values, and then you literally can predict their behavior better than they can. This kind of clarity, well, it leaves rookies asking "How do you do that?"

What Do You Want?

There's a constant interplay in our heads between the world and how we want or expect the world to be. Because of my interest, I see this mostly in the concept of martial arts versus the world of violence. I just read an article by someone describing 20 years of training- he's trained and trained hard for many years with people who most martial artists consider legends. One of his stories is about finding a traditional Chinese instructor with a small dojo. The instructor talked and trained mostly in the esoteric aspects of his art. When the author asked him about practicality, the instructor said that practicality was simple and didn't interest him anymore. The author, of course, asked for a demonstration. In a matter of seconds, he got his balls handed to him. By an older, slower, smaller, less athletic, traditional, meditating...

The author shook hands and chose not to study there. That puzzles me.

If he was looking for effective, why did he run away when he saw it? Was it because the fight (wrong word, it was more like a demonstration) that he lost so spectacularly didn't look or feel like the image of a fight that he carries around in his head?

Fighting for your life is very simple. It is very quick, or you lose. It is very ruthless, or you lose. It is maximum power and speed applied where it will do the most good. And all the while, someone is trying to do the same thing to you and he started first.

Sometimes the strongest wins. Sometimes the fastest. But usually it is the meanest. If you decide that you are going to beat me and I decide I am going to hurt you, hurt you so bad that you wake up crying every night for the rest of your life, I will win. If I decide that this is going to be the worst day of your life and I don't care what I have to pay to make it happen, I will win. When I embody your pain with absolutely no concern for my own life, I will win.

Most people have never faced this mindset. Most have never felt it. Thus, they can never comprehend it. And they are happier for that lack. Trust me.

So, when and if you look at your martial arts, think about what you want. If you want a good exercise program, go for the one that works. If you want trophies and belts, go for it. If you want to learn about violence and defending yourself, those aren't just words. Those are pain and fear and ruthless simplicity.

All day!

K fixed her steely gaze on me, obviously angry.

Still bleary, one cup of coffee down, it took me a second to notice. "You're in a pissy mood," I said.

She tapped her foot. "You haven't kissed me or tickled me all day! Of course I'm pissy."

"Babe, I just got up. All day is only, like, fifteen minutes."

"So? Get to work, Bucky."

Sigh. "I'm going to brush my teeth. Then I'll think about it."

"I'm thinking about kicking you in the testicals right now. I thought you should know."

I tried not to smile, but I failed. She was both dramatic and deadpan and perfectly cute. I brushed my teeth. I then pretended to have a hard time deciding between kissing and having more coffee. Kissing won.

That's cool. We've been together for over nineteen years now and still play and flirt. We still make up stuff to argue about to stay busy. We still tickle and cuddle and wrestle Life is sweet.

People and Problems

I don't have time to cover this in the depth it deserves right now.

http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/articles/060213fa_fact

This was the kernal that started an entire string of thought, added to fifteen years of dealing with criminals, the violent and the insane.

The 'Normal Distribution', commonly called the bell curve, is one of those statistical fundamentals that are everywhere. In a given group of people, some are very short, some very tall, and the majority make up the middle. Same with intelligence. Same with most things. The mistake we make is that the bell curve is so common that we assume it is universal until proven otherwise. Many of our solutions to big problems are based on this assumption even when the assumption is wrong.

Homelessness was one of these issues. Society as a whole has assumed that homelessness is a fairly long term situation that follows a normal distribution: a very small number are homeless for only a few days, a very small number are permanently homeless and the majority are somewhere in the middle, homeless for a few months to a few years.

That's completely wrong. According to the research done by Dennis Culhane, it turns out the most common length of time for a person to be homeless is one day. The second most common is two days. These short time, one-time homeless account for eighty percent of the homeless. People are people and they are adaptable. If they find themselves homeless and don't like it they will overcome and get on with their lives.

There were about 10% who come in periodically for a couple of weeks, usually in winter. The last 10% were the chronic homeless. It was this group that make up the people that most of us think of as homeless, whether you think of them as pitiful and severely disabled or alcoholics and grifters.

This means many things. First and foremost, it means the problem is small enough to solve, not just treat.

Philip Mangano, mentioned in the article, has a solution to the problem of chronic homelessness: it would actually save money to give them a nice apartment and provide for all their needs with a dedicated staff of social workers. It would be cheaper than it is to pick up their bills for Emergency Room visits and jail time.

I had a solution, too, but society isn't ready to let people die. I firmly believe that when a safety net begins to enable, it must be removed from that individual. If the person still continues to behave in a self-destructive way society should have no guilt when they suffer the consequences. But that's me- I'm aware that I don't exactly have a standard outlook on problems.

Side thought (and there were many side thoughts from this article) my instinct, when given a problem, is to solve the people (shut down the threat, train the rookie, counsel the errant) to change them in a crisis or help them change themselves... others, including Mangano, solve the environment.

More side thoughts- criminals also follow this distribution. Violent crime is committed by a relatively small percentage of criminals, and they do far more than we ever get them for. Solve the problem or solve the person?

The article applies this to police misconduct- the vast majority of officers do an excellent professional job, a small percentage are asses. The whole idea of the standard response to negative media attention (more sensitivity training) is based on the bell curve assumption. Mass training always is trying to shift the curve a little bit to the 'saint' side. The trouble is that when you have a distribution that runs closer to 30% saint; 25% hero; 20% good guy; 15% civil servant; 7% lazy bastard; and 3% asshole the training insults 75% of your people and the 10% you're trying to reach either don't care or won't act. Again, when the real problem is this small, you can solve it. I prefer firing, but our agency has a tendancy to put the worst officers in positions away from the public, which sometimes involves a promotion. Solving the environment instead of the person.

Not enough time to draw out all the things this article made me think of. Read it.

Did you get a visceral reaction to the idea of giving the worst of the worst everything: housing, medical care, special help? According to the article, if you got that reaction because it's wrong to reward people for being bad, you're a right winger. If the reaction was based on the belief that no one should get it unless everyone does, you're a left winger. I suppose if you're reaction was "Wouldn't it be cheaper to just let them die?" you'd probably get the cold-hearted bastard label.

One more: There is a difference between a policing problem and a policy problem. I don't necessarily want to tie this directly to the two statistical curves without more thought. However, given a problem, sometimes it can be solved by writing guidelines and sometimes it can be solved by enforcing the guidelines already in place. Writing more gun laws is a policy approach to a percieved problem: if we throw more words at it, define more actions as wrong or criminal, fewer people will die. In truth, almost evry bad thing you can do with a firearm is already illegal. The laws just need to be enforced. It is a policing problem.

Darwin, Hobbes and Synergy

This is what the last post was laying the groundwork for:

I'm reading Hobbes' "Leviathan," a philosophical treatise on the need for a State and why they evolved. If you aren't familiar with Hobbes, he's the one who said that the life of Man in his natural state was ,"solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short." Probably not an optimist, I'm thinking.

His premise and argument is that without a society that has standards as well as the will and power to enforce those standards, the strong will take from the weak not only because they can but because it is logically in their best interest to do so. Since trusting on any level leaves you vulnerable to the one you trust, mistrust is the best survival strategy and in this condition, without a State, the natural way of man is a war of all against all.

You can see the logic in this, but it didn't happen (much). Darwin stepped in.

In any given population there will be immense variation in any given trait. One of those traits will be trust. True, in most cases in the Hobbes World, trust is a negative. But if two people with trust hook up and form a partnership, their power- both to gather stuff in this eternal war and to watch each other's back- is a tenfold advantage over the other players in this war.

It is such an advantage that it counts as a change in the environment: With one or two of these partner units operating, the only effective survival strategy is to form one yourself. The farther you extend the trust, the bigger and safer becomes your unit. Betrayal can crash the whole unit- what might have killed one long ago now can destroy an entire tribe or culture. Natural selection moves on- the truer the trust, the longer lived the unit. Someone said that cooperation is the only hope for mankind. On a tribal level it already has been.

Thought for the day: There are things that we can do that are so powerful that they count as changes in the environment.

Darwin

There are a few people out there who don't accept or understand Darwin's theory of natural selection. That's too bad, because it is extremely powerful, elegant and simple. It is also something that we see every day and in all facets of the world- not just biology but in human interaction and economics and your own learning.

At the common sense level, the theory is this: In any given population of like things (cows or people or ideas or political movements or...) there are differences between the members. In any given environment, some of those differences are advantages. Though the population will maintain differences, the next generation will look more like the successful members than the unsuccessful ones.

It's statistical- if the temperature drops over a period of years, the hairier racoon has a slight advantage, produces more kits ...and in a hundred generations you get predominately shaggy racoons. For all the crap that free-market capitalism gets in certain circles, it's consistantly produced the higest standard of living and all other systems have drifted toward it or collapsed.

The principle goes even to personal behavior: you have many possible responses in any given situation, but over time this variation will drift towards what has worked best in the past.

This system can be manipulated- we have so many varieties of dog because of selective breeding, which can do in a few generations what would take nature eons to accomplish, provided it drifted in the right direction at all.

There's also culling, or "eugenics". If someone had the power and decided to kill all the blue-eyed children within a few generations humans would be brown-eyed.

Rapid change in environment increases mortality and speeds up this process. Some people are lactose intolerant- if there was a disaster such that protein became very hard to come by and the only reliable source was a milk cow, lactose intolerant children would die of malnutrition in much greater numbers, fewer would grow up to have children...poof. Fast change in the gene pool.

We are used to thinking of this variation in terms of genetics, but it applies to much, much more than that. Even adopted children learn much of how to treat people from their parents. My students will teach more like I did than a stranger will. A good idea can grow and spread to the ends of the world.

Last point, for now- the teleological fallacy. Certain processes, like natural selection, are resource and environment based. In other words, things arise from what is there. This means that they can drift or grow in any way that works. Teleology is the belief that there is a reason or an endpoint to the process. That humans were the entire point of evolution, for example. People are very uncomfortable with powerful processes that don't have plans. They want someone to be in charge. The idea that we are just a stage in something that will go on forever makes some people profoundly uncomfortable. Get over it.

This process is not for or about you. The environment decides what is selected for after the fact. Who had the most babies who grew up to have babies? They are the winners. The next generation will be more like them. Someone who has no children has lost this game... except no one is keeping score.

A Mac Moment

This one's for you, buddy.

You have to picture the scene- the guy is 6'4", muscular, with a mohawk, USMC tatoos and buggy eyes. He's from one of our mental dorms and earlier had started to square off with another inmate. When the fighters were broken up and he was taken to Seg, he attacked the three officers escorting him. He then confessed that he wanted to die, so medical staff placed him on suicide watch.

My shift comes on duty. He is in the cell, slamming the lexan with his fist and elbow making the walls echo. Medical staff wants him moved to another facility. This means that officers will have to enter the cell, take him down, cuff him and carry him to a transport vehicle. It's not my area, but they call me.

So I wander down to the dorm where the sergeant in charge of the area is making the entry plan and a rookie deputy is running around getting belly chains and leg irons. I pull up a chair across from the lexan door, sit down and get comfortable. First rule: if no one is getting hurt, there is no reason to rush. It's not a macho game- whether I could or not, I have no business going into the cell in some kind of contest. I'll wait, stack everything I can to my advantage and go in fast.

The guy is screaming, spit flying out his mouth, slamming his fist again and again into the door, eyes locked on mine. Understand that this is calm for me. There are huge subconscious things going on with dominance and aggression that give most people an adrenaline surge when threatened even if there is no real danger. If you've ever gotten worked up over a phone call or an internet flame war, you know what I mean. For whatever reason, non-standard emotional wiring or experience, I don't get excited.

I'm sitting there, legs crossed, leaning back, hands behind my head and say, "What happened today?"

"I lost it!" He screamed, "I fuckin' WENT OFF! I need some fuckin HELP! MENTAL HELP!"

"That's pretty clear," I said, "Why'd you lose it today?" He kept screaming, but he was puzzled. The way his world works is: You get loud and angry, the other person gets loud and angry and then you get violent before he does. I wasn't working by his rules.

At this point I could feel a palpable rage. I'd been able to smell the adrenaline from the rookie, but this was different. There were waves of rage coming off the inmate, not just rage at me but rage at himself, just pure human anger. I decided not to work with the anger. The next part will not only sound weird, but corny. The kind of thing that only occurs to people who talk to Mac too much. I felt for the source of Universal Love and let it flow from me into the inmate.

As he was talking about his breakdown and making threats, I was projecting warm light and I was saying, "You did good. You did good for a long time. I know you don't like being in a dorm around people but you did it and you did well for a long time. No one can ever take that away from you. You did well and I'm proud of you."

He paused for a second and I said, "It's time for you to go. Will you let me put handcuffs on you?"

He said yes. He even said thank you.

Seeds of an Idea

Training for the Mental Health Team was conducted today with very mixed results. There's no doubt that Corrections staff who deal with the mentally ill need specialized training, the issue is that people outside the field don't seem to understand what we need. When we design and deliver the training ourselves it seems to work best.

Sometimes we have experts. I recall one outside expert we brought in. He was a retired street cop who had made his reputation from maybe thirty encounters with mentally ill people in crisis. It was enough of a reputation that he lectured nationally... it was less experience than one of our deputies will get in one year. The other end of the spectrum are the subject matter experts who try to cram a college psychopharmacology class into one hour.

What we need is very basic- how to tell if someone is mentally ill, and if so how much of their behavior is voluntary (it would be nice if you could be crazy OR an asshole, but not both. Reality is you can be both.)

What kinds of mental illness and what kinds of crises we can expect and how to identify them.

How to communicate with them, especially in crisis.

Honestly the deputies, especially the experienced ones, excel at these points. The next points are harder:

Give us the terms and dignoses for what we see so that we have a common language with the counselors and medical staff.

What medicines do we need to watch for? How long before a therapeutic level is reached (some medications take over a month to show an effect). How do we tell if someone is over medicated? What are the signs of an immediate medication-triggered emergency? What are the signs of long-term use (being able to recognize tardive diskenesia, the "thorazine twitch" can give you a big head start in knowing who you are dealing with). Which drugs are commonly sold to other inmates?

We also need to know what resources are available outside the jail. We're just a phase in the life of a mentally ill criminal. Where do they go and what can they access when they are on the streets? Where can we send them? If one talks about a program, how do we contact that program?

The lieutenant had an idea today. It can only work because all involved personnel have signed their federal medical privacy pledge: Take the booking pictures of a dozen of our regulars. Here's the picture. This is the behavior we see. This is the diagnosis, the medical term for that behavior. These are the strategies that have worked consistantly with those behaviors. This is the standard treatment. If you see these behaviors, think of this person.

It's brilliant. It encapsulates everything with an easy touchstone to personal experience. Even outside our agency, we could use silhouettes instead of pictures and names and still tie stuff together.

A new project. Cool.
Bipolar, paranoid schizophrenic, substance withdrawals, dual diagnosis, delusional, excited delirium; the common personality disorders: asocial, borderline, narcissistic....

The Decision to Kill

This isn't about deciding you could kill or some kind of soul searching or fantasy. It's also not about reflexive fire at a firing position or blazing away at a sudden ambush. It's about making the conscious decision to kill, with full awareness, up close and personal. I'm going to explore it here because so few people in our culture will ever be in this position.

I've made this decision four times.

The first, I honestly thought I was about to be killed and I decided and acted. I was very young and very lucky- one of the first to arrive had been a combat medic. There was no fatality. Had there been, it would have changed my life in ways that I can't even imagine.

The second and third time were similar, and what happened seemed very odd. Again, I was sure I was going to be killed and I made the decision. In both these instances the threat was very large, very close and staring in my eyes when I made the decision. Both times, the instant the decision was made, the threat went almost limp, in one case dropping me. They both staggered away, mumbling, eyes glazed over. I'm not sure what happened or how they were aware of my intent or why it had such a profound and almost physical effect... but I've heard similar accounts from two other people since.

The fourth was at a riot. We'd cleared out the "semi-combatant" and potential threats leaving four bad guys barricaded. For weapons they had shanks, used syringes and the blade of a papercutter. Then an administrator made the brain-dead decision that since these were juveniles, we would have to take them down with no weapons whatsoever. With our pepperspray and bean bag rounds and other toys, we could take them down with minimal injury. Without, it would be another story. We weren't dojo cowboys who can delude themselves that it's easy to disarm someone with a knife without injuring him.

"Today's the day I kill a kid," I thought. It was that simple. If ordered to go, I would. I would not let myself be killed or let any of my team be hurt. That meant I would use as much force as I needed, as much as I had. I made the decision and kept putting on gear. It was an easy decision.

That doesn't mean that it was a cheap decision. I have too many friends who had made the decision or had the decision taken out of their hands and I knew what it cost them. In a fraction of a second I had weighed the legal hell, the nightmares and depression...against my children being orphaned. It was easy.

Our commander talked the administrator into a semblance of common sense and we went in with the right equipment and no one was hurt.

Maybe this can't really be discussed here because almost none of this was words. The one thing I can say is that I've been very, very lucky to make the decisions with so few consequences.

Bored Bored Bored....

I've been complaining all week about how boring things have been.

What happened?

Around the house I burned brush, moved big rocks for my lovely wife's rock garden and graveled the parking area. We also re-explored each other in a way we haven't in a while. I taught my son the target areas for shooting big game and worked with him on power generation, striking and awareness- training that I didn't get until I was much older than he is now.

At work, very quiet. A primary source of boredom. Some good conversations with a schizophrenic; interviewing a developmentally disabled young man who may be the victim of fraud; interviewing several disciplinary inmates. Found some contraband where an inmate had inscribed a quote from an author who is a friend of mine. E-mailed Steve to let him know he has a fan in jail. Only one decent back-up call, which got me into a room alone with three fighting inmates- who immediately broke it up and sat down when I ordered them to. Did tameshiwara on a ten pound bar of chocolate. Yay.

Outside of work and home- one good workout; taught a weapons retention and DT course for a small town PD and met some cool people; worked out with the erstwhile "Friday student". Took some good hits, but not enough. I know what we need to work on next. Read "Protecting the Gift", "The Zombie Survival Guide" and almost finished Tacitus' "History".

Bored, bored, bored.

Writing- a little editing on the manuscript that's out, a few entries here.