"Let us stop talking falsely now...

...The hour's getting late."

What is your responsibility when you see a martial arts instructor teaching his students how to get killed?

My answer is a cop-out. It's achingly true and deadly accurate, but it is a cop-out: Not one martial artist in a hundred, maybe a thousand, will ever use this stuff and the fantasy is more valuable to them than reality.

In my heart of heart I hope that the information I put out will fall on the one person who needs it. I hope that the people who come to me for lessons or seminars or lectures will be the people who think in possibilities and costs and odds and tactics.

But it's not true and never has been. Looking out over a mat full of eager martial artists, almost every damn one of them is just picking up details for a private fantasy. If you've ever been an adolescent male you know the fantasies, too: saving the beautiful woman from her abusive boyfriend or stalker ex-boyfriend in the bar and she asks you to see her safely home; or saving the beautiful scared woman from the gang with your steely eyes and efficient, deadly kung-fu.

What are they really getting from me? When they lie awake fantasizing later that night, the gang leader with the knife won't do the wild slash they practiced in martial arts class, he'll do the close range stab I say is more likely, more real. But each gang member will still attack one at a time and lose.

Instead of dispatching the ex-boyfriend with a spectacular crescent kick it will be a leverage point, elbow strike, spine drop with a little thought thrown into the legal justification and maybe an extra scene where he deals with the police cooly and professionally, winning even more admiration from the damsel in distress.

Training competitors is different. I don't have a lot to offer people training for competition- there are better coaches who understand the rules and how to use them than I do- but they know why they are training and it is real.

And I like talking to authors about violence because they know that they deal in fantasy and the best writers work hard to make the fantasy as true as possible. No illusions there.

Cops, of course. My core student base.

But the pure martial artist is the one I have the hardest time with. There is something odd about choosing "playing at violence" as a hobby. It's not real violence because you work hard not to hurt people and yet kicking people in the head or slamming them into the ground is, undeniably, violence. Play violence as a hobby. The martial artists I like working with this have felt the oddity of this concept and are moving from a hobby to a study.

Beating Up Children

The weekend started a little strangely. We have a brand-new jail completely empty. The voters passed the levy to build it, but the people who run the county decided not to even allow a vote for the money to run it. Great big empty clean jail that doesn't smell like criminals.

Someone got the really cool idea of letting the Boy Scouts hold an over-nighter there. Even cooler, someone decided to have a group of deputies give brief little classes on what Law Enforcement does... but only the cool stuff: K9, night vision, special weapons...

I was asked to do the DT (defensive tactics) portion. Six twenty-minute classes for 40-50 Boy Scouts.

You can't give a refresher to an experienced officer in twenty minutes. A 1:50 instructor/student ratio? With children? I like children but even privately I won't teach them.

(Aside re: "Not teaching children". At its most basic, what I teach is about violence, fear and damage. Percentage increases in chances of surviving moments of real chaos and real evil. Kids don't understand that and more importantly it's not even healthy for them to learn of that world unless they are already secure in a separate, real and loving world. Very few kids can accept or understand the responsibility of taking a life or maiming another human--hell, if they can accept and understand it, they aren't kids anymore. The deepest reason, though comes in two parts- children can be affected on a deeper level than all but the most damaged of adults. A good teacher can become parent/love object/messiah to a child all too easily simply by caring and paying attention. That kind of power scares me. The second aspect is that I prefer students that already have a base of knowledge and experience, who are for the most part formed. I want to interact, not to mold. I want to give them tools and insights and not personalities. I want teaching and learning to be a partnership.)

Anyway, fully aware that this was just a step beyond babysitting and more entertainment than instruction, I agreed.

I arrived at the site and something was wrong. Sounds of shrieking and laughing and running penetrated the concrete block walls of the jail. I met the lieutenant inside. He said, "There was a slight miscommunication. Remember I said Boy Scouts and Eagle Scouts, mostly fourteen to eighteen? It turns out they're Bobcats, Cub Scouts and Webelos. Ages are mostly six to nine. You OK with that?" Hmmmm.

The Chief Deputy took me aside later, "I trust you and everything, but you might have to modify your terminology a bit."

"No cussing, sir. Got it."

"I actually meant don't say anything like, 'tear his arm off and stick the wet end up his ass' or describing 'the wet ripping noise of tissue parting'."

"Except for that one zombie movie I don't think I've ever advocated using a dismembered..."

"Rory..." in the warning voice.

"Yes sir."

I went to check out the DT room and saw a herd of munchkins who had gotten into some of the training equipment- some were dressed in grossly over sized pieces of HighGear armor with padded batons and kicking shield- running all over the mat beating merry living hell out of each other with no adult supervision whatsoever. Adults were there, but they surely weren't supervising.

"At ease!" I yelled, "No shoes on the mats!" They seemed startled, but scrambled to get their shoes off. Half hour to kick off time. If I left them alone, they'd wreck the place.

"All right, gentleman. We're stuck here for a half hour. You wanna screw around or you want to learn something?"

"Learn something!" they shrieked. Shrieking seemed the basic mode of communication. So I got the entire group of them, as well as a couple of dads and others that drifted in playing at a sparring flow drill. By the end of half an hour they were working on blindfolded infighting. Not bad. One learning moment: A kid asked me if I worked there and I said I did. He asked what I did and I said, "Mostly, I beat people up for a living."

The kid started running around to all his friends, "This guy has the coolest job! He beats people up all day!" Some of the parents looked disapproving.

There was a brief ceremony before things kicked off where the Sheriff administered the oath of office and swore in the kids as junior deputies. I remember my oath of office pretty well, but I seemed to have forgotten the parts about doing my homework and listening to my parents.

Then the classes. First a talk about how fighting isn't like on TV and cops have to fight one of two ways, either putting handcuffs on someone without injuring them or fighting for their life. Then, if they were well-behaved (and only one group of the very youngest didn't seem up to it) the sparring flow drill. Then back to talking: "Okay, gentleman, the next part is all about PAIN. Who wants to learn about pain?'

"Yeahhh!!!!!" While the parents, especially the moms, cringed in the background.

Some pressure points, maybe elbow locks. "I don't want to hear about anybody using these on their little brothers or sisters or keeping everybody awake all night practicing. To make extra sure, I'm going to show your parents the pressure points I'm not showing you, including the one that will give you a headache for three days."

"Show us the headache one!"
"No."
"I won't use it, I promise."
"No."
"Can you make people go to sleep like the Vulcan neck pinch?"
"Yes."
"Show us that."
"No. I don't even know you."

Two kids over the course of the night took a concept I'd presented and ran with it. One took the elbow lock principles and applied it to the knee all on his own. The other realized he didn't have to use his hands for locks, he could get the same effect with his legs or belly. I announced that these two young men were my heroes for the night for thinking for themselves. One of the kids started glowing and presented every idea he come up with after that to me as a precious gift. Most of them were good, too.

At one point, showing them how to use a philtrum point to unpeel a wrestler, I realized that the kids were too small to get the really spectacular effects that you can get with adults. "I usually beat up adults. I need more practice beating up children." Unfortunately, I used my outside voice. One of the moms looked pretty horrified.

It was fun, in its own weird way. My ears are still ringing a bit and it might be days before my voice comes back completely, but the time was good.

Don't Give Me No Hand Me Down...

The trouble with thinking all the time, the trouble with being the only species that uses symbols to stand in for objects is that the symbols can have more power and impact than the objects they represent.

Symbols are important and powerful and they can be good. Mathematical models allow us to sometimes predict the future. Without words and pictures there could be no communication or history or teaching. I will never see Marcus Aurelias or Castiglione or DaVinci or Lao Tsu but through the power of symbol I have their words and pictures, little pieces of their minds. The ability to argue and fight and die and kill over things that have no real meaning seems tragic, but it is also the same passion for things not yet real that will some day bring humanity (and life itself) to the stars.

Due to the press of time, our own specialization and the complexity of the world, we trust the symbols of the experts. We take the word of scientists about very small and very large things. We take the word of doctors about our bodies. We take the word of farmers and teachers and bus drivers and cops on the things we don't know, don't have time to learn or will never directly experience.

There is a thing that gathers a lot of symbols. I don't care whether you call it 'meaning' or 'god' or 'religion' or 'life'. But as real as it is, it surrounds you and permeates every aspect of your world. It is the one thing that if you look has always been there, something you have direct experience of. You do not and have never needed someone else to explain it to you. You deserve better than a second hand god.

Bonding Over a Corpse

There are things that are supposed to be filled with power and mystery, big events of Life and Death that are supposed to have this huge and never-ending impact on how you see the world and how it relates to you. Some of it's true, some of it's not. Sometimes it's what you expected and sometimes it isn't. Sometimes the expectation is more real and more powerful than the event. Sometimes....

Long ago a relatively ingenious killer was paralyzed from the waist down during his arrest. Not wishing to go to prison for the rest of his life as a paraplegic, he looped an end of his sheet around the base of his hospital bed, threaded the sheet through the rails and looped the other end around his neck. He then used the bed's motorized controls to raise himself to a sitting position, strangling himself.

The body was discovered within a half hour and I was tasked to watch the body. To block the door, keep an eye on the crime scene and allow no one to enter or touch anything until the investigators got there. I stared at the corpse for hours until the detectives and the ME got their and did their thing. First professional body. Should have been a big deal. I don't remember who the ME was and just remember that the detective was really professional. My most detailed memory is of the report.

The SAR body recovery was important because it hit me right between the eyes afterwards that I no longer had much in common with regular people. But the event itself was different. One of the enforcement deputies was so freaked by the condition of the corpse that he called for a "critical incident debriefing". That's basically a group therapy session for people who have been through "interesting times". It can be useful. This one was led by two detectives. It became clear, right away, that the veteran SAR 'kids' had seen more bodies and more nasty ones, than either of the detectives. So it was: a man with brains splattered on a cloud -wept evening; a deputy so freaked he was demanding psychological help; an SAR rookie (me) toying with meaning and more disturbed by the reaction of friends than by the dead; and the SAR veterans, two young women, probably no more than twenty years old who are comparing this body to many others in terms of "ick" and "smell" and the sheer danger of recovery and wondering why they were wasting their afternoon. It wasn't the same event and didn't have the same meaning to anyone there.

I saw someone the other day. She was smoking outside the jail. A couple of years ago we stood in the driveway while detectives and the ME examined the body of a woman who had shot herself in the head. The woman was a friend of ours and a co-worker. We talked that day and hugged and reminisced. Then I went back to work, back to watching my deputies and listening to them and maybe listening a little harder for any words that might be hints about dark times. The smoking woman didn't go back to work, not for a long time. She was 'too stressed'.

So I saw her the other day. If you had asked me ten years ago what would happen if two people spent hours over the corpse of a friend, I would have said that some kind of bond would be forged. I was wrong. We shared a moment, nothing more. There is no connection, no similarity, no bond.

Buttons

The inmate first approached me early in the shift with a yellow medical form. He stated that he was paranoid and was afraid he would hurt somebody (he flexed his chest when he said that) and needed to be given a cell all his own.

"You aren't paranoid," I said.

"I am too. People make me uncomfortable. I've been dignosed."

"If you were paranoid, you wouldn't have walked up to me, you wouldn't be standing this close, you wouldn't be making eye contact... your body language and voice are all wrong... and anyway, where'd you get the idea that jail was supposed to be comfortable?"

"Well, maybe I'm a little close but it's really hard for me to do it."

"Whatever. Put in your kite (any written request in the jail is called a 'kite'). Address it to me. We'll discuss you at the team meeting day after tomorrow."

"You aren't going to move me now?"

"No."
Just a flicker in his eyes- for half a second he considered doing something stupid, then chose to avoid the pain.

In my few minutes of free time over the next hours, I ran the inmate. No psych history. Claimed to be a gangmember and thoroughly dangerous fellow. Throws chairs when he's upset. Sex offender. The last was probably key, he was afraid his charges would get out. Maybe.

Fifteen minutes to end of shift and a horn sounds, strobe lights flash and solid steel door after solid steel door slams shut with a crash. Fire alarm.

I was running for the weasel's dorm before Central announced where the alarm originated. The puke had reached over the officer's desk and pulled the fire alarm. I was there first, the only officer. The puke was standing by the officer's desk and 74 other inmates watched from their bunks...

And the puke did nothing, just turned around and put his hands behind his back. I wanted him to fight. I knew he was too much of a coward- that's why he wanted out of the dorm so bad. But I really wanted him to fight. Something about his behavior made me despise him and I wanted to hurt him. But I was a professional. I did call him a coward when we were alone in a cell later and I was describing the disciplinary process. He just flexed, trying to be hard. I though about how easily his bones would break.

Anger is rare for for me. It's been a long time since someone pushed my buttons this thoroughly. Long ago, when I was dealing with adolescent emotions, my brother told me that you never hated anyone unless they reminded you of you. He was right, at least for me...it takes a lot of closeness to make it personal for me. (RIP, Rick, and thanks).

So, did this puke remind me of me? A little. He had an ability to carry out a plan and manipulate the situation he was in to get exactly what he wanted. That's part of what made me angry, this ability to plan only being used for his own benefit. That's it though. I didn't hate him.

So what were the buttons? Entitlement. That he felt he should get what he wanted and if he had to inconvenience over a thousand people to get it, he didn't give a shit. Inconsistancy- he wanted to be a tough guy but did everything he could to avoid any hint of danger, damage or fear. And the cowardice itself, which just makes my skin crawl.

Hmmm.... and what are the three virtues I most prize? Mystery solved.

Gamed

Two incidents today, (one for sure, one probable) of inmates manipulating staff. The volunteer instructor for the writing class had contact information for an inmate's relatives and had agreed to make contact. That's an old game, an old con and it usually ends very, very badly but there is the tiniest chance that she really had gathered the information in case the anthology was published.

The other one was a professional who should have known better. We work in a crowded jail. We have large dorms set aside for inmates with mental health issues. Some of those beds get filled by inmates without mental health issues due to crowding. Most of the time, it's not much of a problem- the 'normal' inmate realizes he's in a "crazy ward" and wants to get out, which happens as soon as a bed opens up. Some times it's an immediate problem, where the 'normal' inmate throws a fit and tries to bully his way out... so he goes to the hole. The worst, though, are the fairly sophisticated criminal who realizes that the psych dorms are relatively calm, quiet and a very safe and easy pool of victims who can be threatened or scammed for drugs, food or other favors and services. These predators will fake psychiatric issues or just request to remain there.

One of the staff members suggested that we keep an inmate in the mental health dorm who wasn't classified to mental health. We do that frequently, classifying some as "stabilizers" who can model mature and sane behavior and others as "PC" protective custody, inmates who because of size, gender identity or charges might be in danger in a normal dorm.

The staff member said that the inmate had requested to stay in the dorm because he was a federal inmate who was being hounded by the Attorney General because of a personal grudge based on a bar he used to own in the Pacific Northwest. Furthermore, the inmate claimed he had been living the high life as a fugitive south of the border for about a decade and was afraid it would hit the news. He thought he might need protective custody if he was on the news.

Let me get this straight- Alberto Gonzalez, the USAG has time for a personal feud with a two-bit dealer on the West Coast? Furthermore, the dealer feels that if other inmates find out he's been having fun in Mexico while evading US custody he's going to be hated? He'd be a celebrity. It's not just that the staffer fell for a story, we all fall for stories... but this was a stupid, illogical, senseless story. The staff member was gamed.

Here's something that even some experienced members of the law enforcemenet and criminal research fields miss:

Criminals do not see you as a person. They see you as a resource.

Not just the super predators, the violent robbers, the rapists, that ilk. The average low level hustler, the conman, the dealer and the prostitute sees you as a source for stuff that they want. Money. A feeling of power. A few minutes or a few days amusement.

They have no more feeling for you than you have for the can that your soup came in.

It's harsh, and so alien a view point that even right in your face, most people deny it. But it is a fact. If you are a really good, caring, compassionate person the person who rapes and murders you or robs you or cons you will not feel worse about it than if you were an asshole. If anything, he'll be happier because you made it easier. Like the soup cans with the pull tabs.

If one of two people had to die, an innocent child or a multiple murderer and you were forced to choose, you would use one of two criteria. Either you would decide who most deserved to die (whose absence would cost the world least) , in which case the murderer would be executed or you would decide who most deserved to live (whose presence would benefit the world more) in which case... the murderer would be executed.

A criminal's thought process would be totally different. One of them has to die? Which would be easiest and safest? The murderer might kill me back. Kill the child.

It's not quite that simple. Criminals live in society and most know the words to blend in. You have to read their secret journals or listen in when they think they are alone to catch them openly thinking like this- but you can see the tracks of this decision making process in every aspect of their lives.

Also, they aren't always stupid and can weigh the social repercussions of their actions- in which case they would execute the murderer so that they could blend in.

Years ago a new nurse- kind, loving and compassionate- asked my advice. She wanted to take an inmate home and wondered if she would get in trouble. Duh, yeah. Fired. She explained that the inmate was a "really sweet girl" who had never been in trouble before and had no family and no place to stay... she got all this right from the inmate who had "no reason to lie" and had no idea the nurse was thinking about offering her a place to stay. When dealing with criminals, always check facts.

I brought the nurse over to the computer and ran the "really sweet girl"'s extensive criminal history over the past ten years. Drugs, theft, prostitution, domestic violence... she'd lied about every last detail and nearly gotten a really nice person to throw away her career on a good deed just so she could have access to a home, a place to shoot, money through theft, intimidation or (once the nurse realized she could be fired) blackmail. Gamed.

Zippy

At one of the Mental Health Team meetings last week, the senior counselor noted in passing that an inmate was no longer with us. He'd been sentenced to two years prison time for burglary.

"He couldn't have been much of a burglar," Ed blurted out, "The dude is stone blind."

Which reminded me of Zippy. Used to come to jail alot, a talkative young man in a wheel chair. He was usually quick witted and funny, but sometimes sullen and he could be a real ass.

He's been in a lot lately. I could have looked it up, but I decided to just ask: "Zippy, why do you keep coming to jail? You're in a wheelchair, what kind of crimes can you do?"

"I usually come in on UUMV, sarge. Stealin' cars."

"You steal cars?"

"Nah. But my friends, they know I'm bored, see, so they take me along when they go joy-ridin'. When the cops show up, they all run off, but I can't run so they leave me there. I get charged with posession of the stolen motor vehicle."

"Zippy, you need some better friends. They just leave you there?"

"That's all right, sarge. What jails gonna hold me tighter than this chair?" He'd been flip and funny and laughing until this sentence, and there was a little glimmer of anger or resentment, something dark. He could stare at his walls and watch TV in his chair at jail just as well as at home.

With my dedicated, military "no man left behind" background I'd expected him to feel anger at his friends betrayal, but he felt greatful for the hours of excitement.

Moral Victory

Here's a simple, ugly truth with a lot of important conotations. People are almost never physically beaten. They give up.

There are exceptions. Sometimes in cases of "excited delerium" the threat (who is often on drugs, withdrawing from drugs and/or has a history of severe psychiatric issues) will literally fight until his heart gives out. Occassionally you break enough bones that the person can't move or do enough damage to the central nervous system that the threat is shut down completely, but it's rare.

Even most "knockouts" are, in my opinion, a matter of heart. I've been hit just right and left dizzy and puking for three days; hit so hard that my helmet broke off and flew across the room; but only once did I lose consciousness and that was for only a second... but I lost consciousness twice more in the next two hours, sign of severe brain trauma. The "get hit, fall asleep for awhile, fine later" Hollywood knockout doesn't happen, in my opinion. It can seem like that, because I've seen it happen with strikes that really shouldn't have caused any damage, but in the incidents I can remember the person knocked out was essentially a coward who didn't want to be there. The "knockout" gave an honorable excuse to stop and leave. IMO.

So fights are won, usually, because someone gave up. I'm finishing John Keegan's "The Face of Battle" and he makes a similar statement about battles and wars. "It requires, if it is to take place, a mutual and sustained act of will by two contending parties, and if it is to result in decision, the moral collapse of one of them. How protracted the act of will must be, and how complete that moral collapse..."

Fighting, from the nastiest smelliest jailhouse brawl to WWII is an act of will. A contest that unless complete destruction happens is only ended when one side gives up. When they suffer a moral collapse.

Moral, in this sense, is not about ethics but about will, esprit, morale and a feeling of righteousness and duty, patriotism and honor. It is this sense of 'moral' that Napoleon was referring to when he said, "In war, the moral is to the physical as three to one."

Losing sight of this is a common modern weakness. I know some of our soldiers. They are hard working, dedicated, well-trained and mostly well-led. Despite facing insurgents who can hide in crowds and have access to advantages of appearance and language and local customs our soldier are kicking ass... and they are also making friends, if you read their e-mails.

By every objective standard- body count, territory held- we are winning, spectacularly. Urban anti-guerrilla warfare is about the most dangerous possible infantry situation. In any other place and time in a similar situation, the American casualties would be astronomical. In one year (1968) in Vietnam we lost 1,919 men to non-hostile actions- accidents and diseases*. Using stats from an anti-war website: in Iraq, from from the Iraqi election 1/31/05 until now, nearly 21 months, there have been 1360 killed. Objectively, in a given year, we lost more troops by accident in Vietnam in a year than we lost by all sources combined in 21 months in Iraq. But that's objective.

What we lose sight of is that war isn't objective. Conflict at any level is psychological and 'moral'. The winner and loser in this war will have nothing to do with the body count or the technology or the efficiencies or the training. The side that loses will be the side that gives up. The side that says 'uncle'. That side will walk away with its tail between its legs and the other side will congratulate themselves on a moral victory.

I usually try to avoid politics- I voted for people who have access to more information than me. The majority of the people voted for person X, so he gets the information and it's his job to make the decision. But right now it's as if groups of people- political parties, the media, all the usual boogie men, are lining up to try to sap our moral fiber, to make America feel ashamed for acting when no one else would (though, if you count the number of UN resolutions everyone seemed to think that somebody should do something, like the neighbors who watched when Kitty Genovese was stabbed). Will, in any form, scares them. People with will stand up. People with will make decisions and right wrongs. People with will are not sheep who will blindly listen to their newscasts and vote for the media's sheep-friendly picks.

Is this the great battle of the 21st century? When I was a kid, it was Communism versus Capitalism. Later, more subtle and sophisticated, it was Collectivism versus the Individual. Is it now as simple as sheep and their herders against Men? Is the eventual goal of the shepherds to destroy will itself? The victory we need is a moral one.

*14,594 killed by enemy action for a total of 16,511 US soldiers killed in 1968.

Duty to Act

There have been several local "in-custody" deaths in the last little while, each of them stirring up their own cadres of pundits and Monday-morning quarterbacks and armchair experts. One of the commentators described one situation: the officers see someone behaving strangely and when the officer approached, the mentally disturbed person ran. The injuries that resulted in his death came from the tackle and force used to end the chase.

The commentator asked a very good question: Was it necessary to chase the person in the first place?

Lots of things come together in that question, important things that describe part of the rift in perception between emergency services personnel and citizens. The biggest may be the concept of "Duty to Act".

Let's say you see someone in your front yard, acting strangely, staring and shouting and singing songs about John Lennon and Satan. Instead of calling 911, you go out on your front porch and yell, "Hey! What are you doing? Get out of my yard!" The EDP (emotionally disturbed person) takes off and runs. As a citizen , you've solved the problem. He may be in somebody else's yard, but he's not in yours. You aren't responsible for him or for his actions.

The officer has a duty to act. This can be really specific or really vague depending on the policies of an individual agency and current tactical training. One way of thinking about it is that once an issue comes to the officer's attention, he's not only responsible for what he does, but for what happens if he does nothing.

Crazy guy runs and leaves a citizen's yard because the citizen yelled, fine. Crazy guy then slaughters a few people at the neighbor's house, no liability or responsibility to the citizen.

The officer has to think of consequences- crazy running guy might launch himself in front of a bus. Or hurt some one else. Or be wanted for a previous crime. Or just desperately need psychiatric meds.

There are clues, too. Most people don't run at the approach of an officer, hence it's reasonable to believe that if someone runs, there is a reason. The reason might be a mental stability issue, in which case the officer may need to get them to medical help. It may be because the runner has a warrant out for his arrest (no one wants to be the officer/agency who let Ted Bundy go because they didn't take the time to check for warrants). It may be because he has weapons or drugs on him that he is afraid they will find...

So the officer chases, and it is reasonable.

(Caveat- local readers will know the particular case I'm referring to. I don't have any insider knowledge or special insight to decide or even clarify the right or wrong of the issue. I'm not writing about that. I am writing about the differences in perception between officers and the people that they protect.)

People have been fed a half-lie that violence only breeds more violence. In order for someone to start to use violence as a tool, they must see violence and they must see that violence works. That much is true.

In that narrow sense it is true that someone who has never seen violence will not think to indulge in it, therefore violence can not come from non-violence, therefore violence can only come from violence therefore violence breeds violence. It is one of those sweet, logically valid (and hence true in a philosophical sense) ideas which is utterly and completely wacked. Because everybody sees violence, whether it is a bird pulling a worm out of the ground or a cat playing with a mouse. Since times before life, since the first complex molecule absorbed another simpler one, violence has been with us.

In general, peaceful and non-violent places are more pleasant for most people. I believe there are huge costs, but most people would rather live in a city where they felt safe than live in a city where they felt fear. Unfortunately, people without fear make great victims and attract predators (the dodo were wiped out because they weren't afraid of people and they were good eatin'). A second unfortunate fact is that most people, especially peaceful people are often reluctant to use violence even in the defense of their communities... and when they do, they tend to suck at it. They are amateurs.

The most damning aspect of the violence-breeds-violence platitude is that in most cases, violence (force) is the only thing that can stop violence. Appeasement just allows the violent to get more, rewarding their violence. Ostracision just makes them feel righteous in victimizing the ostracizers and proving that the shunned are important. Trying to "fix" the psychological make-up either 1) gives the violent more tools and excuses (self-esteem training has been shown to make criminals MORE violent) or 2) fails because the violent don't see themselves as having a problem. Since when was being stronger and more dangerous a problem?

That leaves Force as the only viable means to stop immediate violence (some other things can work, if given time, but most require more time than exists in a violent crisis).

Hmm, the problem. Need force, but society at large is both reluctant and ill-equipped (psychologically) to deliver it. The solution: create a group who are trained and prepared to use force for the good of society.

This creates an incredible gap in understanding between society and society's defenders. A citizen who hits someone with a stick is breaking the law (usually) and more important, going against their socialization. The officer may be required to hit someone with a stick. Or shoot. A citizen handcuffs you and throws you in the back of the van, it's kidnapping. An officer does it and it's an arrest.

This is especially hard in America. We've been trained from the time we are little that everyone is the same and all rules should apply to all people, but it doesn't work. Football games need refs. Lifeguards need to be able to swim into "off limits" areas to rescue people.

And the system has worked to an amazing level. Fewer people are touched by violence than ever before. That brings it's own problems, as people try to analyze and even judge an act and environment that they have no understanding of. Some try, extrapolating from schoolyard fights in the distant past or what they've seen on TV or read in "true crime" books, but it is very weak extrapolation. It allows some of the craziest myths and misinformation and really dumb ideas to be given currency.

It's a gap of understanding.

Bad Date

I'm not going to try to defend or explain or justify prostitution. It's not a victimless crime- by living outside the law, prostitutes become victims, prey to the stronger and more vicious. It's also not victimless when you see the world their children are raised in. It's not like "Pretty Woman" and I have yet to meet the "whore with a heart of gold."

It's also not just a lifestyle choice that happens because of economic concerns or poverty or...it is just a piece of a very self-destructive montage of abuse and addiction and many subtle or not so subtle attempts at various types of suicide, some physical, some emotional, some social.

It is a hard life. I have pictures of meth prostitutes (first big fact, my friend: there are meth whores and crack whores and heroin whores and even alcohol whores but you will search this great nation from coast to coast and never find a prostitute who doesn't use drugs. This has been a running challenge, an informal contest with cops from coast to coast for decades.) ... where was I yeah? Pictures. Meth prostitutes. Anyway, the same woman early in her career and five years later. She looks like her own grandmother- toothless, wrinkled, with shrunken, hollow eyes.

It's a dangerous life. Rapes, beatings, robbery. Some have nowhere to go for help or support, others turn to a pimp who must be worse than her other predators and she just has to hope he won't be worse to her.

Knowledge is power, and in certain section of Portland (including the health clinic at the jail and some of the female cell blocks) you will find slips of paper, usually in colorful pastels, headed "Portland Bad Date Line!"

It is a warning newsletter from prostitutes, by prostitutes and for prostitutes. A list of events and horror stories:

"ON BICYCLE "GENE" - Downtown, W Male 29 or 30 y.o., bright blue eyes, goatee, tatoos on face, hands, and left leg, 5'6", scars from broken back, skinny. Knocked out, bit, restrained, cut, sedated, raped/sodomized, ejaculated on. Wrkr released 32 hours later"

"BURGUNDY VAN- NE MLK & Shaver. Male, African or Cuban with thick accent, 6'3", dark complexion, clean shaven. Offered $40 for BJ, pulled out big butcher knife and cut worker. She got away."

There are warnings about known predatory sex offenders in the area, requests for information in cases of severely beaten women, a request from a police officer who is working one of the cases- a "W Male big, thick glasses, beats w/ pipe, rapes" who has attacked five times.

This is a monthly newsletter put together by women who want to save themselves, want to have some power in their lives. In such a little space are hints of stories that would horrify Hollywood, acts of savage survival (heroism?) reduced to a few words: "kicked him in the face and got away".

Shooting Reporters

A few weeks ago, deputies at a neighboring county shot and killed a young man. Yeah, he had a knife and yeah, his family had called for the police and yeah, they'd specifically said that they were afraid he was going to kill them,but...

But the minute he was shot, he magically transformed into their darling boy who would never hurt a fly. The ranting and raving and threatening and shrugging off bean bag rounds and finally charging towards the place the family was hiding from him has become "a bout of depression."

The ignorance surrounding incidents like these truly astonishes. Both sides of the controversy- I found out about the incident when scanning through the radio and heard a talk show host say that any decision the police made is fine with him and his caller say that every time he heard about these incidents, the person died so we must be doing something wrong. (On the off chance you can't figure out why that is ignorant, you need to understand that incidents with armed drunk people happen almost nightly and almost never go to shooting. If they don't go to shooting they just don't make the news).

Since then I've heard that two trained officers should easily be able to disarm a younger athlete with a knife (unless they have complete surprise, unarmed against the knife, even two on one almost always will result in serious or fatal injuries), that they should "shoot to wound" (try threading a needle some time while you are terrified and someone with a deadly weapon who is crazy looms over you) or that a little more training in crisis intervention verbal skills would have helped (when was the last time you successfully reasoned with a screaming drunk? You have to shout just to be heard.).

So I sent a note to the PIO (Public Information Officer): Jason, why don't we invite the media to attend some classes? Say, the Use of Force policy class and the Uncontrolled Environments scenario classes.

Jason ran with it. Two days later I was shooting reporters.

The bitch of this whole situation is that I haven't seen the news report. I heard it was good. The deputies said the message got across... I just happened to be dealing with a rookie officer in crisis and missed it. Higher priorities.

One of the scenarios is a distraught person sitting in a park. Clearly upset, crying, bystanders are urging the officers to do something, when the ED (emotionally disturbed) pulls aside a jacket laying next to him and exposes a gun.

The purpose of the drill is to gauge when the officer feels threatened and what they will do about it. The ED is going to escalate the situation into a classic suicide by cop- first expose the gun, pick it up, point it at his own head, start waving it around closer and closer to the officers, then finally aiming and firing if the officers don't fire first.

There are two goals inherent in that- we will show directly after this a drill about the action-reaction gap. Two officers will point weapons at my heart, fingers on the trigger and I will have my weapon dangling from my hand. They will give me verbal commands to drop the weapon. I will shoot both of them before either can twitch to pull the trigger. He who moves first gets the first shot off. They need to know that just because I am pointing the gun at my head doesn't mean that they are safe.

The second goal is to show them the dynamic of this type of suicide.

Like most beginners, the reporters couldn't bring themselves to fire until after I did. They had their guns out, at least, which was better than some. I had to be a little slow since I wanted every one of the Sim rounds on the reporter's armor and wanted to miss his hands (just being polite and safe. Sims can hurt and I didn't want any crying). So, being slow and careful I shot him in the belly three times before he could return fire.

We then did the debrief- what was the threat's (my) Intent? Means? Opportunity? That made me a threat at what level? What level of force does that justify? What level did you use?

We talked about tactics and the difficulty of making the decision to fire. The reporter was upset about getting shot, wanted to know if he should have given the order once and fired, or three times or... Had to tell him there was no right answer. Sometimes, sometimes not...

He was really upset. Not just kicking himself, but actually showing some symptoms I associate with officers who have been in a real shooting. I took him outside to talk.

"Are you happy with what happened."
"No. I got shot."
"What could you have done differently?"
"I suppose I could have ordered him to drop the gun, given him a three count and shot him before he could shoot me."
"You could have. Now tell me, if you did, if you shot this depressed man, would you be happy with what happened?"
"No, I guess not."

That was the point this whole class was about. Sometimes there are no good answers. Sometimes it's simply a choice of who the orphans will be. Sometimes it's a choice between shooting a stupid drunk kid with a knife and going through the legal hell and psychological damage or not shooting as he runs into the house and listening outside while he stabs a little girl and her mother and father and then maybe having to shoot him anyway. Then going through the legal hell for your inaction.

If the reporters took one lesson home that day, I hope it was this.

Mechanisms of Injury

This will be thinking outloud, a random and not very scientific overview of damage. I went to get some words down to reread and research and clean up later.

There are two ways that heads get hurt by blunt trauma. Make that brains. The first is the contre-coup action. The head is moved very quickly and the brain slams against the inside of the skull. Imagine people without seatbelts in the back of a truck. The brakes slam on and they are still moving and are thrown against the front where they may hit hard enough to bounce back and strike the tailgate. Hit on both sides by the inside of their "protective shell" just like the same bruises that can appear on a brain after an impact.

In essence, this is a hard, fast push. Not a strike at all in the sense I normally use the word. This is the mechanism of injury that is forced by the use of boxing gloves and why the body mechanics of a strike in a gloved sport differ from those in an ungloved sport.

The second is by deforming the bone and literally pushing it into the brain case, eg a depressed skull fracture. That's hard as hell to do with a fist. The little bone/big bone rule usually prevents it (the hand is composed of small bones, the skull of fused big bones. In general, when the little bones hit the big bone, the little bones break with almost no damage to the big bone).

There are variations and refinements of these- strikes in certain areas increse the concussion and contra-coup effects by adding a circular or spiral vector to the motion of the skull or using the leverage to put shearing force on the top of the spine. Either bouncing or intrusion can tear the membrane around the brain or the blood vessels in the brain and cause further concussive symptoms or death.

So- first thing- there are systems of striking based on these two mechanisms of injury (MOI). Most grossly "time on target" or "follow-through" concepts apply to the contra-coup ideal, and "snap back on contact" apply to the intrusion system. (Research- heel up lends itself to bounce /ground contact to break?) The power generation system of one will not work for the damage system (or strategy) of the other.

The intrusion systems work far better for body shots, especially against bone and ribs, than the contra-coup MOI. There's nothing hard for the organs to bounce against.

Extremely vascular organs, such as the liver, can be seriously damaged by direct injury/intrusin. The surface of the organ essentially bruises and begins to leak. On the other hand, Contra-coup damage must literally tear the organ or the blood vessels free of their surrounding tissues, which is hard to do in a soft, massive and relatively liquid medium.

If the body has no where to "flow" with the strike, more damage is absorbed (that's a vague statement, try again). Though they are actually attached at many points, organs are suspended in a semi-liquid medium and are themselves extremely flexible. They are pushed aside by pressure. If space to be pushed aside is limited, the organ takes more of the damage because it can't get out of the way. Same if it gets hit from two directions. Also if it is hit too fast for it to flow. (Question- can a strike develop a wave action that does damage distinct from the physical impact? I have been told it can, but it may just be an attempt to explain contra-coup action. Hmmm....)

They can also be damaged by breaking the bones over the tissue and having the splinters of bone do what is so hard for blunt objects to do, directly tear the organs and blood vessels.

Joints can be torn by using the leverage inherent in the attached long bones to either force the bone out of the socket (ball-and-socket joints and some hinge joints) or to tear the ligaments holding the bones together (all three types of lockable joints).

The lungs can act as a big shock absorber for body blows, which is why striking at the bottom of the opponents respiratory cycle is so much more devastating. With training, the spine, knees and feet can also act as shock absorbers.

Knives are not the same as sticks and it is a fundamental mistake to train them the same way. Most telling is that knives damage soft tissue by severing it. Unless very heavy and used to shatter, they do very little damage against bone. Blunt object, on the other hand damage soft tissue by bruising (breaking tiny capillaries) unless they are penetrating to try to damage organs. Blunt objects do their greatest damage to bone. A knife to the meaty part of the forearm can sever tendons and arteries. A knife to the bony part causes surface bleeding. A stick to the meaty part cause bruising because the meat cushions the bone, but a good strike to the bony part can break the bone. With a knife you cut the inside of the elbow. With a stick you break the outside.

"Everything Life Has to Offer"

I escorted an inmate from his program room to his dorm a few days ago. As we were working, he mumbled something too quietly for me to hear. It didn't have the rhythm of the insults or threats that some (very few, at least with me) inmates mutter when they want a confrontation but don't quite have the courage.

"What was that?" I asked.

"I want everything life has to offer," he repeated.

I smiled. "I can't even imagine that."

"I can," he said with a big grin, "I got a big imagination."

"So do I. But the world is a big place, with more to see and do than I could get to in a lifetime. And there are so many ways to see each thing. And every choice removes some choices."

His grin changed a little, still a smile but very thoughtful as his eyes unfocused slightly. "Thanks," he said.

Not Quite the Same

We have an officer who is terrible at this job. She is a wonderful person: intelligent, easy going and compassionate. She is a very nice officer. She just isn't a good officer.

Nice and good aren't the same thing. Sometimes it seems that they are mutually exclusive.

A good person does the right thing.

A nice person tries to be liked by everyone. It's almost impossible to do what is right and and not upset someone. But it's relatively easy to do nothing without ruffling feathers.

Maybe good is a matter of intensity and depth and nice is a matter of perception and gloss. Maybe.

Don't get me wrong, in most cases, in day to day life, it is possible to be good and nice at the same time. As your strength, confidence and abilities increase you can be nice in more situations because you have attention and energy to spare for feelings. Like most things, it's a matter of choice: if you are teaching an officer a basic skill and he screws it up, a good instructor's first instinct is to instill the skill. A nice instructor's first instinct is to leave the student feeling great about themselves. False self-esteem is a product of spending time around nice people. Self-confidence comes from spending time with good people.

Another thing- I am absolutely not saying that if you are good, you can't be nice. I repeat, as your skill increases, you can be nicer in more situations. Just because someone is an ass doesn't mean he's good at anything. In general it means that tearing others down has worked better for him than building his own skill.

Safety and righteousness are two other things that are both important but don't match well. I see this a lot in my profession and it is a constant friction between management and line supervisors, between "risk management" bureaucrats and officers. In a dangerous job or a dangerous world, the safe thing can be very attractive... but doing the right thing is rarely completely safe.

We make it as safe as we can, we value safety, we want to go home tonight and hug our kids and wives and we will use every bit of cunning, every resource and all the strength and skill we possess to do that. But when you see someone attacked, the safe thing to do is to walk away, and the right thing to do is to run in. In a dangerous job, there's no absolute safety, and the safest thing you can do is not to do the job.. and that is not righteous. You do the job.

This goes as deep as security and living. Perhaps the way to great longevity is to avoid all extremes and live a life of calm balance.. but how much calm balance can truly be called living? When have you felt the most alive with every sense tingling and absolute awareness and breathless exhileration? Was it in freefall? In battle joy? Pitting yourself against white water or a granite cliff? Cause it sure as hell wasn't eating yogurt and doing twenty minutes on a treadmill at your precise cardiac workout speed. Which would you choose- one hour in the top of a pine tree in a wind storm or four days in a safe, climate-controlled split level?

K

The first memory is of friends showing me a series of pictures of the old gang from when I was out of state. One new face in the group, so naturally graceful that she and she alone looked like she was posed in each of the pictures, looked as if the sunlight treated her a little better than everyone else.

First meeting, left alone, cooking... discussing the probable nutritional value of the fat fly circling the chili.

Ice on Dixie Mountain. The jeep spun around and for a few seconds I thought I could regain control and then we were off the road, the jeep on it's side, my elbow slammed through the side window and she was hanging above me in her seat belt and shoulder harness. The first words out of her mouth were "Are you okay?"

Walking into the gym to check on my old judo team and looking down, thinking "Who is the new blonde? She's gorgeous!" And she turned around... I hadn't realized how quickly her hair bleached in the sun.

Another mistaken identity, seeing a beautiful woman on a bike smoothly and slowly coast on the other side of a parked car. When she got past the card I noticed two things: 1) that it was her and 2) that she was on foot, but moving with such grace that I had mistaken it for coasting on a bicycle.

Sparring with staffs, balanced on railroad tracks. Three times in a row she knocked me off.

Sitting in the corner at a party in Cape Cod, watching as people slowly gathered around her, just basking in her presence.

In a cave, watching her climb and coaching her on hand and footholds beyond her tiny circle of light and suddenly realizing that every single member of the caving party had his head lamp focused directly on her ass.

It took over twenty hours of hard labor to produce our son. When it was over, I fell into an exhausted sleep, even though she was the one who did all the work. I was awakened by a soft rattling as she got herself up to stumble to the bathroom. "What are you doing?" I said. "You looked so tired I didn't want to wake you," she answered.

Coming home from a National guard weekend, bringing a friend for dinner- she met me at the door and hip threw me onto the floor. I counter threw, dragging her down and kissing her. Robert stood at the door, "You two had better never break up. She's gonna kill the next guy she goes out with."

Coming home from Hostage Negotiator training and she meets me at the airport with a dozen roses. Never saw that coming.

Arriving at Rileah for NBC training: "Are you SPC Miller? We have a message for you. You're wife is hemorrhaging and has been taken to the hospital. You're relieved. We'll reschedule." The longest most terrifying drive of my life imagining a world without her.

The first time we were separated for a weekend we spent the next four days in bed, leaving only to shower and order pizza.

Testing a new electrical system at the jail, unsure whether doors would open or close, whether nothing would happen or six hundred inmates would have free access, I called her and asked her to bring my tactical bag. She dropped it off at the door, said "Call me when it's over," and left. No questions, no worries, no cries for attention- perfect trust and faith. The perfect SWAT wife.

So many memories.

So this is for you, K- to the one who has heard all the stories, funny and sad both. Who has held me when I only wanted to sit in the darkness and rock. Loved me when I was dripping with blood and also when the pepperspray wasn't quite washed off. Who keeps me in the world of humans, and tells me when I'm wrong.

"Four minutes? Piece of cake."

A Nice Short Vacation

My beautiful wife wanted to go on a trip for her birthday. Of all the places we could have gone my city-girl Czech refugee wife picked... Klamath Falls.

I never did figure out why. I just felt happy and grateful.

I miss the high desert and sometimes it is a literal ache in my heart. The smell of sage and ponderosa pine. The burning sun heat and icy water. Graceful antelope, small quick lizards, scorpions and ant lions. Tracking deer and coyote and racoon and porcupine in sandy soil that is made for teaching children how tracks form and how to read them. Ice caves. Obsidian. Thunder eggs. Lightning storms and full moons red from wild fires. The song of coyotes.

She wanted to go and we went, just for a few days. She'd never seen Crater Lake and her jaw dropped at the sapphire blue, the impossible cool color under the desert-tan rock of a shattered mountain. Kami took endless pictures and marveled over all the plants that she couldn't identify.

We journeyed a little south to the Lava Beds National Monument and walked some of the battlefields of the Modoc War. We went through five caves and saw many, many petroglyphs.

The kids saw their first rattlesnake and I was very impressed with them. They gave it room, not afraid but not stupid either, treating the snake just like what it was- an animal. Not a mystery or a toy or a horror. Level headed teen agers. Kami had to remind me it was a national monument- I wanted to show the kids all the neat tricks- how to catch a rattler alive with a fishing pole and then how to skin it and preserve the hide... just flashing back to my youth.

Note to self: You are a 200 pound forty-two year old, NOT an eighty pound twelve year old.

At the big petroglyph point, I found a tumble of huge boulders that might have been from my childhood and taught my son my favorite game of all time: Rock Tag. As kids we would play tag, running along the boulders, jumping from one to another, leaping crevasses. Sometimes the falls were well over ten feet and the ultimate test of skill and showmanship was to stand on a very wide precipice with two possibilities for jumping and lure "it" into charging you then leap away at the last minute when it was too late for him to avoid running off the cliff... Good times, baby.

Anyway, at 200 pounds when you jump to a rock six feet below and land with cat-like reflexes on the narrow edge you get this big freaking bruise on the sole of your foot that leaves you limping all weekend. I'm an idiot. It's still fun, though.

The waters of Crater lake were icy cold on the bruised foot (we went through again on the way home). It was a beautiful weekend- fun and adventure and fine meals and a loving family.

Happy Birthday, Kami.

...I Never Knew

Not sure I want to write about everything just yet. I'll be leaving the jail soon and for about four years I'll be doing investigations. It will be a whole new world and frankly, I need a challenge, something completely new.

When it was announced, L, a sergeant I have worked with off and on for seven years said, "That's really surprising. I thought you would be the absolute last choice." She was really concerned about hurting my feelings, but this is something I've been curious about for a long time- why so many people see me in such a specific way.

"Oh, you know," she said, "You're one of those tactical guys. A maverick. Always on the edge. You don't get along with regular people."

True or not? Part of me is thinking "consider the source: This lady got lost in a building she'd been working in for two years" but more important than right or wrong is that this is how I'm seen.

Background: I tried for a position a few years ago. Walking into the selection process I was the only candidate who had ever run a unit and the only one with any experience in the field at all. I was just coming off teaching seminars in the field on both coasts and being asked to use my material in a state police academy on the East coast. The first statement from the selection panel in my interview was, "Rory, you're clearly the most qualified candidate, so we have decided it would be unfair to consider qualifications for this post." WTF? Another very senior administrator was overheard to say, "That sergeant needs to realize that there are office people and line monkeys- and he's a line monkey." This isn't an 'oh poor me' sentiment. It's become very apparent that senior administration sees me a certain way and I've wanted to know for a long time what they perceive. L was telling me.

Return to the subject: Where were we? Oh yeah. Maverick, blah, blah, blah. "You aren't the calmest person in the world, you don't really communicate, you set people on edge. You're good in a fight and really controlled and professional but I just don't see you doing investigations."

"L, I usually talk people down. That's why they have me do mental health."

"You do mental health?"

"Mental health. And peer counseling. And crisis negotiations. And teaching"

"You do all that? I never knew."

Yep. Done all that. For seven years right along side her. Probably four years of that in the same building. Completely invisible next to the barely contained savage in her head.

It's good to finally hear it in words.

Re-Framing the Question

The world, and our perception of the world, is incredibly plastic. It can be shaped and molded. Things are as they are, a rock is a rock, but whether the rock is an ugly lump or baroque beauty, whether it is an obstacle or a tool lies entirely in our perceptions and our choices.

Many people recognize the malleability of the world but it seems that few embrace it and actively practice using this amazing power.

One of the hardest things when dealing with new martial artists is that they want to learn to "fight" and they want to "win" and they hate "losing". None of those words have any meaning beyond the student's perception. They think sparring is fighting, for one thing, and it isn't. It is one of many training methods that increase some skills and attributes but can erode others. They think that ippon or a submission or a knockout is a win, but it isn't. It's a data point. If you were sparring with a friend and he suffered permanent brain damage, do you still feel it's a win? If you are having the best time of your life in a wild engagement with swords.. it's over when you score. How can ending something so fun be a win? And losing.. struggling against the best grapplers makes you stronger and smarter and more skilled. Few "wins" provide those benefits.

You try to tell them: "In the dojo, there are no winners and losers. There are teachers and learners and we are all both." But those are just words. Not as powerful, for most people, as the image in their head of winning and losing.

Everywhere. Some people lose jobs and they are crushed, others use it as the incentive they need to finally do what they always dreamed. Some are born into families of horrible poverty and abuse and use it to excuse every bad act and failure of their lives and a sibling born into the same situation says, "Not for me. My kids will have it better." For one an insurmountable obstacle, for the other a burning incentive.

This may be the most powerful expression of the human will: to choose what things mean and how to respond. Do you want to live forever? How many different ways can you define immortality? Some of those definitions are in your reach. Do you want to succeed? Would that be the "at peace with the world" success of a mendicant monk or the "material posessions" success of the business man? Or the "make the world a better place" kind of success? Or the "good father" kind of success? On and on.

Personally, I wanted to own the world. So I pissed on it. Marked my territory. It works for dogs. That world your standing on? It's mine.

Experience Concentrates

An avalanche works because a little bit of snow starts to slide and pulls a little more with it, which pulls a little more which pulls a lot more...

Life is like that too. When you step out of your comfort zone and see a piece of the wide world for the first time you will see other pieces of a wider world from your new vantage point. When you read a really good book and start poring through the bibliography you will find a bunch of books to read that will lead you to many others.

Growth cause growth. Learning encourages learning. Life makes life- and living makes living, which is not quite the same thing.

Combative experience accumulates and concentrates. Sean and I taught an instructor course for defensive tactics today. Most of the people in the course were instructors and veteran officers. A few were martial artists... but some were something else. We were talking about experience and what we had learned and there was this handful of instructors who gravitated to one group and the others watched them. It struck me that each of the members in our group had more fights than than everyone in the other group combined.

We aren't bad guys. No one in the group (except maybe Dave ;)) goes looking for a fight. But for whatever reason (inclination? dumb luck? attitude?) each of us were very successful in our early fights and consequently were called in for anything that might go bad. We were then assigned to the positions where bad things happened: booking, disciplinary, ad-seg. The little bit of experience quickly grew. That lead other places- the tactical team first.

Then Sean and I went slightly different ways. I got promoted and spent the next five years still fighting but investigating and evaluating even more. Went from being an operator to a planner. Took a side step into Search and Rescue and learned more about other stupid ways to die. Really integrated experience with martial arts- started writing and meeting people and teaching.

The avalanche is still building power.

Stress Debriefing

Maybe two years ago there was a young man in one of our tougher dorms haveing a rough time. It wasn't the inmates- he had a measure of respect and wore all the 'right' tatoos and knew the 'right' people... and he wasn't exactly new to the system. He was depressed and sometimes crying- not good or safe jailhouse behavior.

He wanted to talk and I listened.

He'd killed a man. He'd done other crimes, but he'd never killed before and he couldn't quite wrap his mind around it. He couldn't sleep. He would wake up from nightmares in a cold sweat, choking on a scream.

He claimed it was self-defense and I told him not to tell me anything about his case, but I would listen to what he was going through now.

He talked about his guilt, and I told him he should feel guilty. It was normal. We talked honestly about the enormity of taking a human life, how small and fragile it makes the universe. How much the world can change with a decision that took a fraction of a second.

We talked for hours over several days and I remember walking away once thinking, "I just did a post-traumatic stress debrief on a criminal. Weird." Has anyone ever considered doing that? What kind of effect would it have? Simple truth is that everyone comes to some kind of accomodation with their actions. This young man could choose to learn how to deal with the killing from other criminals or from me. He could have learned that it was cool and a mark of manhood and his emotional response was a weakness to be rooted out. He chose to work it through with me, and I chose to listen.

Did it have any effect? Will it have any effect? I'll never know.

In the paper yesterday it said that his plea of self defense was rejected and the jury returned a verdict of guilty in a few hours, as well as guilty verdicts on a string of armed robberies he never mentioned to me.

By the time he gets out of prison, if he does, I'll be long retired- sailing with my lovely wife or diving or climbing.

I'll never know.

Words of Wisdom

Feeling very grateful for old lessons.

Capt. Whalen (my first CO): "We have only two goals. Accomplish the Mission and Survive on the Modern Battlefield. Everything else must serve those goals."

Top, his 1Sgt: "When you have a hopeless mission, you send your best people. Your best people will always surprise you."

An instructor at Ft. Sam Houston: "A dead medic never saved anybody!"

Reinforced by Cecil at HNT training: "The operator is always more important than the hostage. If you get hurt or become a hostage yourself, resources will be wasted on you that could have gone into saving the hostage. You are supposed to be part of the solution, if you do something stupid you become part of the problem."

Ron, when he handed me my badge: "The second you put this on, you are never allowed to lose again."

Wally, one of my trainers: "If you can't walk solo into a tank with forty screaming inmates surrounding a pair who are fighting and drag the fighters out by the hair, you can't do this job."

Jeff: "The harder I train, the luckier I get."

Norm (a retired, burned out cop who I asked about the job): "No matter what any bleeding heart liberal tells you, three percent of the people in the world are scum. The trouble is, you start spending 90% of your time with that 3% and you start to think that 90% of the world is scum. You keep that in perspective and you'll be fine."

Mac: "You want to hear the deepest okuden (secret transmission) in martial arts? Just hit the guy. Strategy, tactics... it's all bullshit. HIT THE GUY."

Dave: "Not everyone can fight with this stuff. You'll be all right, though. You'll do the right thing or you'll make something up. That's ju."

Also from Dave, trying to explain the spiritual side of martial arts: "The dead guy doesn't get to go to church. Don't read too much into this."

Mike: "You want me to be a good loser? Show me a good loser and I'll show you a LOSER. I never want to lose enough to get good at it!"

Dep. USM Jeff: "Violence of Action Trumps Technique."

Dad: "Use your superior judgment to avoid using your superior reflexes."

Dale: "That was ugly, but an ugly win is still a win."

Ali: "It's better to be unarmed against a knife than go knife on knife, because if there are two people willing to fight with knives you have two crazy stupid people in the room."

Barry: "I'll cut you four ways: Hard, fast deep and often."

Hesitating to close this post because there are hundreds more bubbling just below the surface.

Groups

People belong in groups. I'm about as much of a loner as you will find who can still function in society, but even loners have their groups.

Cops don't see race as much as most civilians seem to believe. Sure, it's a data point. But it's not a huge one- if I see a black kid slouching and sagging and wearing a specific color and looking at certain things, I put a name to the gang. Change the race and it just changes the name of the gang. The gang membership or the 'thug life' is a relevant classification, and far more important than the color of skin.

If I see a skinny toothless woman with bad skin dressed in easy-access clothes on a cold street corner trying to flag down car after car without any sense of urgency I'll assume, with a high degree of accuracy, that she's a crack whore if she's black and a meth whore if she's white. You never seem to find prostitution without addiction, but that's another subject.

And the white whore will have more in common with the black whore than she will ever have with a white school teacher or nurse.

In a lot of ways, it's the same with cops and crooks. I understand better and at certain levels get along better with criminals than I do with clerks or CPAs. For that matter, better than other officers who have spent their careers behind desks.

Even more so with cops and cops. There's an isolation of viewpoint. Victims are kept out of the news, but when you've seen the victims (even of victimless crimes) and you've seen the bad guys in their natural environments (something even judges and prosecutors rarely see) and you've literally risked your life to save one person who you would never want within a mile of your children from another person who is even worse... the people you can meaningfully share your world view with dwindles.

So it is with the team- skin color and gender and religion and political view point and.... are so meaningless beside the fact that I trust them absolutely with my back. Here's the test- you make entry, button hook left and see a door in your area of responsibility. You cover the door and you hear gunfire behind you. And you don't look. Because the team is trusting you to cover that door and you are trusting, absolutely, that the teammate responsible for the area the shots are coming from will stop the threat before he gets to you.

Not everyone sees the groups that they belong to. I don't think of myself as many of the things I get labeled as... but if you look at pictures of a seminar, you'll see me with the skeptical cops in the corner. If you see me at a Science Fiction convention (my wife drags me to one a year) I wind up with the scientists and the professional writers.

Conversely, some people see themselves as members of groups when who they are at the core something completely different. I see this most powerfully in people with an internal sense of control. People who set goals, work to control their own lives, make no excuses- I get along with them and understand them. People who wait for life to hand them the woman and job and house of their dreams, who would rather whine than work for their goals are alien to me.

To me the internal/external locus of control is one of the most definitive dividing lines... and yet I see many people with an internal locus of control who overcame great obstacles who feel such a kinship with the obstacles that they work and work and sweat and lecture and even bleed to help others overcome the same obstacles. And they never, ever see that the other person, no matter how much they want the obstacle to disappear will never do anything about it. With an external locus of control they are always victims, always passive always waiting for the universe to magically hand them what they deserve. The ILoC helper shows and guides and points... but the ELoC is waiting for more than that, waiting for the gift (which they will squander if they get).

Perhaps this is what makes a codependent partnership. One willing to give, the other merely unwilling to act.

Strangers

The widow wrote a touching and very private letter. She had been in a situation of escalating domestic violence and on one particular evening her husband got the gun. He held it on her chest, backed her into a corner. She wrote that looking into his eyes, she could see that he was going to kill her. She says that the look was unmistakeable.

She chose not to die and not to beg. She chose to walk out and force him to shoot her in the back. In one of the weird twists of this dynamic he couldn't put up with her making a decision. He said that he would leave and stepped outside. He had no less intention of killing her, you must understand this. This type of violence is about control and he couldn't let her make a decision, couldn't let her be an actor in this drama. He stepped outside purely to deny her the chance to be the one acting.

She locked the door and dialed 911 as she frantically locked up the other doors and windows. The husband began slamming his weight into the door, trying to shatter his way in.

This is why I'm writing this- in her letter she talked about how amazing and humbling it was that when she called for help, perfect strangers showed up to rescue her. Three men (one a brand-new trainee) who had lives and families and children showed up at her door step to save her from a man with a gun. She read the reports later and was hit hard by how they described what was going through their heads at the time, the fear and mission.

The husband decided to fire at the deputies. The woman is a widow now. The deputies stayed with her for the next several hours and it was the first solid information she had ever received on the cycles of domestic violence. They got her counseling. They took care of HER.

Remember this, if you can. That there are people everywhere who risk their lives and the possibility of orphaning their children every day to help strangers. Because the stranger called for help.

Training

So this is the crux, down and dirty specifics about training for violence... but I can't do it. Context is too big. Questions need answers: What are you capable of doing? What are you willing to do? What scares you? What freezes you? Do you even know when you are fighting for your life and when you are fighting for your ego? What tools do you carry for self-defense? How much time will you put into tools? Can you access them at close contact and under stress? What kinds of threats are you likely to face? With what weapons? At what range? Do you have a duty to act? Do you have a duty to retreat?

Any advice I can give can be negated by certain answers to the above questions as well as a million more. With that warning in your head, we can proceed. I'll give you some training methods, what they are for and where they can screw you up.

The critical things to train for are the surprise of a sudden assault and the chaos of the fight itself.

Patrick McCarthy has made a list of Habitual Acts of Violence, a compilation of common attacks. The list is long, though, and responses to ambushes have to be instantaneous. Learning and training that many stimulus/response pairs would take a long time. The key is to come up with a very few responses that cover a great many of the stimuli.

Operant Conditioning is the training method to help with ambush. You need a very small number ( I teach three per student and use about five myself) of high percentage counters to sudden attack. They have to be simple, powerful, based on gross motor skills, provide protection, close the distance (because I am an infighter- this is my prejudice, YMMV), do damage and better your position. Then they need to be trained to reflex. If they work with the body's natural flinch reaction, they will be learned faster. Students who flinch away and throw up one arm adapt quickly to the Dracula's Cape entry. Students who instinctively throw both hands in front of their face adapt easily to the spear entry. One of these is picked for each student and the response is paired to the stimulus of "any visible threatening action". In addition, they each learn one for attacks from behind (including being yanked off their feet backwards by the hair) and one for being powered off their feet forward from behind.

The kata of classical jujutsu are an extremely advanced training method for dealing with the habitual acts of violence of their time.

The problem with OC for ambush is that you must remember what it ISN'T. It's not good for or designed for sparring. It must be trained simply. It must be trained against an ambush style of attack: in other words one that is committed and done at full power and speed. If the students providing the stimulus are allowed to feint or switch attacks or get tricky it destroys the conditioning. A crook in an ambush doesn't swing the baseball bat halfway and then pause to see if you react so that he can react so that you can react...

Dealing with chaos. For this you need live training. You need to mix it up, to roll and brawl and box and spar. You need to spar with multiple opponents and with weapons and in cluttered areas and against people who have studied things you've never heard of and against people who haven't studied at all. Listen to me here: THIS WILL NOT TEACH YOU TO FIGHT. If you are paying attention and pushing yourself, it will teach you to be comfortable in chaos. In a real fight (or in real life) you are never totally in control anyway, and that makes people freeze. You need to know what it feels like to be overwhelmed and concussed and pinned and out of breath and surprised until it becomes just a data point. If you have put yourself through everything, suddenly realizing you can't move your left arm has no more emotional power than the smell of a new flower. You can literally become exhilerated that some one had the skill to hit you in the face and enjoy the sensation and the knowledge. (Mac put something on the board once about the stage of "getting hit and liking it" I've done it for a long time but I'm just starting to understand it now. Thanks, buddy.)

The problem with live training is that it is fun and alive.. and any bad habit picked up is hard as hell to get rid of. People who point spar have spent hundreds of hours practicing missing. People who strike hard but rely on gloves will do more damage to their hands than to a skull. People who practice the sweet ippon throws of judo have trained to reflex a follow-through that helps the opponent avoid damage. People who practice 'position before submission' rely on time they may not have. The harder you train for a specific venue, the deeper the habits are ingrained and the harder you freeze when things change.

But if you can deal with surprise and deal with chaos, the rest of training is cake.

You need to learn how to move someone else's body.
You need to learn how to move yours.
You need to learn how to generate power.
You need to learn where the good targets are and how to hit them with your eyes closed. (Not kidding here. If you can't fight blindfolded you can't fight with blood in your eyes).

That's it, really.

One more thing- the very essence of dealing with chaos is giving up on the idea that there is a solution or an answer. There's just whatever you can do right now. If you feel you have the answer, whether its a style or a training method or a technique, all that you have done is put chaos in a box in your own mind. Chaos doesn't fit in boxes and you have set yourself up for surprise. Let go.

Levels

This is complicated and I'm not sure how to write it. In "Code of the Streets" Elijah Anderson casually mentions a by-pass that allows people to drive above a violent and poverty-stricken neighborhood without ever seeing it. In a different article, the author talks about modern warfare and how the US is attempting to apply the concepts of modern warfare (an affair between states to further political goals, limited by treaty and international law) to the essentially tribal warfare of the terrorist networks (non-state, driven by deep hatreds, largely free of explicit goals, centralized leadership or critical infrastructure). Today teaching Use of Force policy I found myself emphasizing again and again how important it was to enter any violent situation at the right level of force and how critical it was to change the level when you found you were wrong.

Life is stratified in so many different ways and so much misunderstanding comes from refusing to recognize when someone is acting, fighting or talking from a different level. Missing that their goals, morals and strategies are not the ones that you think of as "normal".

This is readily apparent at the confluence of my two worlds. On the one hand I deal every working day with people who believe it is stupid to accept a responsibility you can avoid; that people who feel that working for your livelihood is proof that you are stupid and should be exploited; that using force is natural and right and the only reason everyone doesn't all the time is fear; that jail is a place to rest and take care of health problems.

These are not exagerations, not even slight exagerations. And these are not the super-predators. These are the attitudes of the day-to-day low level criminals- the addicts and pushers, the guy holding the sign saying "Will work for food" (who will turn you down if you actually offer him a job. Try it.)

This mindset is so alien to the other half of the people I know (the "citizens") that many refuse to believe that it exists. It makes them uncomfortable when someone they know to have good judgment and wide experience makes a statement like this because it strikes them as impossible or wrong. But the mindset isn't that alien- it's adapted to its environment and reinforced in its own subculture.

People get uncomfortable with anything that strays too far from their strata, and they'll do incredible mental gymnastics to justify and explain behaviors as "bad decisions" because they are more comfortable thinking that there is a connection, that under the right circumstances even "I" could be driven to kill a child and this poor criminal just happened to hit those conditions. This is more comfortable than believing that there are people who will kill a child because her crying might annoy a boyfriend who supplies drugs. Or might just not think of it as an event at all.

So we sit in our air conditioned, genteel, polite world and refuse to believe that there are people who will deliver a savage beating while deliberately planning how they will defend it in court.

We will look at politics as a matter for discussions and sanctions... and be laughed at and people will be murdered because we are trying to negotiate trade, land and access with an entity whose goal is the absolute extermination of a people.

There is talk of trying to deal with terrorism as a crime when our legal system is predicated on rights and priveleges; intelligent, unafraid and truthful witnesses and compelling evidence. No decently organized group that is willing to be lethal could be convicted much less defeated by our legal system.

When your level of perception departs largely from the level of reality, a skilled opponent will note that and use it- so when the US pulls on Israel's leash and a cease-fire is declared, Hezbollah immediately reoccupied, Iran started shipping missiles and E-INT equipment... and we all pretend it isn't happening because a civilized country wouldn't violate an agreement and we are far too polite to call a terrorist group who kidnaps and murders and a state who supplies them "uncivilized". That would be rude.

In police Uses of Force there is a line that each officer must understand. There are different numbers and names assigned to it, but it is critical. For us, on one side of that line is Level 4, the restraint and control and pain holds used to get a threat into handcuffs. On the other side is level 5, survival fighting. If you attempt to resolve a level 5 situation with level 4 techniques, you will get hurt. If you try to handle a level 4 at level 5, you get sued. If the threat decides you are in a fight for your life and you decide to try to just control him a little, you will bleed.

So much of this comes together. In any area, mistaking the level of the situation, the level the threat is working from or assuming that the rules that you and your friends use at your level will be respected by someone who operates from a different level is disasterous.

Three Strikes

The inmate is asking my legal advice. He's heard there's a "three strikes law" in the neighboring state and he wants to know how he can get one of his two previous violent felonies expunged. He has no doubt and makes no pretense that he's going to commit a third. He just wants, desperately, for there to be no more consequences than he is used to.

I ask, casually, what his previous convictions in that state were. He dismisses them: "Can you believe the judge said that kicking a guy who happened to be on the ground was a felony? I didn't use any weapons and the guy didn't even have any broken bones, just some scarring and the judge said that was a felony. Can you fuckin' believe that? No way that's a felony."

But you were convicted of a felony.

"That don't mean nothin'. The same judge gave 17 months to a guy for being too close to a school and he had a perfectly good reason."

Hmmm. Illegal to be too close to a school? Child molester or drug dealer?

"Don't matter, that judge was way out of line. No way am I gonna be in a position where I raise one little finger to defend myself I'm goin' to prison for the rest of my life. No way. I'm getting that expunged."

It's blurry, this world that lays just over or just under the top of mine- where kicking a man after you've beaten him to the ground is only a little wrong. Where society is draconian and evil because the third time you've damaged one of their citizens for either fun or to take their possessions society decides to remove you from the victim pool. Where a child molester that a prisoner would normally consider shanking is a victim and example of common cause if you can ride the coat tails of their victim-hood. Where protecting children by removing predators is "way out of line". Where stomping a man into permanent scars is "raising one little finger to defend myself".

Normally, I deal with this well. Today I want to take a shower. Partially because this human reptile can't see his own evil but even more because there are hundreds of well-meaning people waiting in the wings who would love to champion this poor and oppressed and disadvantaged man. Who will sympathize over his fear of being sent away 'forever' and ignore the human wreckage he has left in his path and all the ones he will create in the future if he can only find or manufacture an excuse.

The Reverse Freudian Slip

It's bad enough that sometimes people say the wrong word, a word that sounds like what they mean but isn't... but sometimes it's even weirder to hear the wrong word.

Years ago, a bunch of friends were hanging out in a hot tub and the conversation went something like this:

K: The apartment has a hot tub, but it doesn't have a sauna.
D: Sonnet? When did we start talking about poetry?
D2: Poultry? What do chickens have to do with anything?

Yesterday was a bad one. Walked into a conversation where coworkers were discussing someone who played too many video games.
Person: We never should have introduced him to that. He's addicted.
Me: He's always been a dickhead. What do games have to do with it?

Addicted. A dickhead.

Kathy trumped that one today. "He said he was going into the backyard to mess around with the Trac-hoe and lay a ditch. I swear to god I heard him say 'mess around with a crack ho and lay that bitch.'"

The List

Last weekend, Kami and I were driving to Nate's wedding. There was a lot of talk and a lot of comfortable silence. In one of the moments of silence she asked, "What are you thinking about?" Mostly, I don't really think about anything. My natural resting state seems to be an inflow of what I see and hear and smell all around me and letting it flow through and leave. I rarely think in words and so I usually answer, "Nothing" but Kami knows me well and she picked the moment.

I was idly making a list in my head of all of my dead people. Dad. The twins. Rick. SeanMac. Detective Ben. Samson. Charlie. Chris Soto. Miro. Cody. Faces and images that don't go with any name. Some of the names I've forgotten, the ones from my childhood. And there were others, corpses I knew professionally in one way or another that I never bothered to remember their names.

This isn't meant to be depressing. It's just history, nothing more. The things that drift through your head sometimes.

Three more in the last month added to the list of my dead: Frenchy, Andy, Brad.

Brad's memorial was today. I was locked into a training day that couldn't be changed. Heard the service was nice.

Half-Second Freeze

Veteran fighter, both skillful and experienced. Also a pretty nice guy, good awareness, good verbal skills. He is an officer with good rapport with both inmates and other officers and he was just doing his job.

An inmate took his words, his expression, something as an insult. This was an inmate who had honed the blitz attack to a fine art. The officer was hit three times before he was aware an assault was underway. Then his first instinct was to grab the threat to try to slow down the situation and buy time to think.

It all ended well. There was a fair amount of blood, mostly from the threat. The officers injuries were cosmetic. The other 56 or 57 inmates watching chose not to get involved. The other officer did. Minor injuries all around.

But the officer is and will be mentally torturing himself for a long time. Because he froze. It wasn't much of a freeze- three hits for an average blitz attack is about half a second. He'll be turning it over in his mind, wondering how he let his guard down and how the threat had opportunity and why he didn't see or feel it happening in time to react.

This is the thing, the difference between a fight and an assault. The officer was behind the curve, trying to play catch up, trying to figure out what the situation was and how to respond when the threat already was well into the steps of his plan. This is where you start in an assault: fifteen points behind halfway into the fourth quarter and you don't know if you're playing basketball or footbal and you aren't dressed for either game.

Because he's done this for decades, he thinks he should have done "better". He's alive and mostly uninjured. The threat was dragged away in cuffs. It honestly doesn't end much better than that. But that freeze, that half-second, won't let him rest for a long time.

If you play with snakes long enough, you get bit. It's natural. But the human animal has to think 'why me, why that time, why why why'. A skilled officer will prevent 99% of what could happen, but when that 1% breaks through, he can feel like a rookie all over again.

The officer did good. What happened was normal and natural, and bad guys rely on it (honestly, they expect it to last for the entire assault). Anyone who thinks they can't be surprised or won't freeze for an instant when they are is.. wrong. I wish I could tell him in a way that will make him feel better.

Many becoming One

The kid's at one of the really complex stages. He's trying to block and strike and kick, occassionally attempts a lock or a takedown. If he's watching my hands he can't watch my feet. There's just too much to watch and too much to think about.

When you start, there are hands and feet, two of each. Four things. But the other guy has them to! That's eight! Eight things to keep track of! But there are elbows and knees and head butts, too! That's ten more. Shoulder and hip slams! Forearm smashes! Clothesline snaps! Knee pops and grapevines! Fingers! All the different ways to lock and take down! The environment- footing and armor and obstacles and found weapons and... then add more opponents! Crap!

You do have to take the time to learn each little piece. In the end, though, all of this list of parts and range of possibilities boils down to two bodies. When your mind can do this- just deal with his body (not the parts) by using your body (not the parts) you will be very, very good.

Then, of course, in the next step the two bodies become one dynamic interaction and you can control this. Two (or more) fighting people become a single entity, with you as the brain, all of their actions work to serve your purpose. Touched this a few times.

And then the environment (always the third player in any fight) joins the unity- or you join with it.

Then, theoretically, the Universe.

Negative Space

In "Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain" (read many years ago, don't remember the author and may be slightly off on the title) the author wrote that when drawing a tree you could draw the leaves or that you could draw the spaces between the leaves. For the most part, the resulting picture would be similar, but the mindset needed to work with negative space is quite different.

Tracking, in a way, is all about negative space. The tracker isn't looking at the foot, he is looking at the empty space where the foot used to be... with skill he can work from this empty space and reconstruct details about the animal far removed from the foot he has never seen. Reconstructing a tree from the space between the leaves.

One of the things that I've noticed with fighting, particularly with in-fighting, is that most people fight against limbs and bodies and a few very effective people work the spaces where there are no limbs and bodies. It's hard to control space if you don't think about and see space- fighting at close range is very much about controlling space, working and moving in the space between the leaves.

A friend asked an amazing question, recently: What is faith? Why do so many successful people evince so much of it?... I realized that faith was one of the things that is invisible to me except as negative space.

Faith in religion is a story we tell ourselves to lessen the fear of the darkness. I can't see it as a real thing. Faith in yourself is a transient assessment against an imagined level of problem. If your capabilities change or the problem you expected was a big bill and the one you got was a tsunami... do the math. Faith that everything will turn out alright in the end... I can't see any of these as real things.

But I can see the tracks. What I think faith is is the ability to let go. To not need to know the outcome before acting. People are risk adverse- they don't like losing, they don't like taking chances if there's a chance of loss. They like comfort and security.

One of the reasons most people can't do (or even really understand) emergency services jobs is this level of faith- how much information would you need before gambling your life on a decision? For us, it seems completely logical: "As much as I can in the time I have, then roll." For civilians (and some administrators), they always seem to want more even on minor decisions.

I've seen officers make the sign of the cross before entry and heard others say, "It's a good day to die." I've looked the team over and thought, "Yeah, with these guys, we can handle this. We're good to go." Leaders have said (often), "You've trained hard for this. You'll be fine." Faith in religion, in self, in team mates, in training... all just words to me.

What I do see is the ability to act in uncertainity no matter how they describe the source of courage. The ability to leap in the space between the branches.