There's a new kid on the mat, and I am having a kind of voyeuristic experience in helping him learn. He's one of those bright guys who lives mostly in his head. He's so bright, that anything he wants to do is easy.

But budo isn't easy.
I, too, came on the mat bright and strong and... totally retarded.
The other guy in class is a former wrestler/judoka, a real natural on the mat. I need someone like this in my practice, someone who makes me run faster than I can. He's got talent, he's got a terrific memory for kata and technique (I don't!) he's got this incredible Latin "panache" and a bold, wise and gentle spirit.

And I need someone I can beckon to.

The first taste of the mat is not a sweet one, not for many years.
The first year (1989) was for me one of complete innocence, and idiocy. A memorable moment was one of my second semester with J. Birdsong in Austin, walking down the hall in my old judogi (given to me by someone I wish I could meet again and talk to.. Terrell, you reading me?) and someone asked me if I was breaking bricks.
No, I said. I was learning to fall down. A lot.

The second approach (1993), at a university aikido club, was a more seasoned and intent-ful approach, though I still didn't have a clue. I did, however, make myself a small and quiet promise that I would see it through to shodan, black belt for the rest of the world. I did it, and in June of 1998 I tested for the black belt that I still tie around my waist when I wear a judogi. I will wear it until it falls apart. My ex-husband presented it to me. He washed a lot of dogi, for me to get that different colored belt. He deserves that credit.

The first days on the mat, the first year, are full of deliciousness.
Learning ukemi. Having it be easy for the first time. Learning sword. Having it be easy for the first time, after much struggle. Having a senior "make uke" for me and having the lights finally come on in my brain. Finding myself in love with the art, and having to separate that feeling from my attachment to my seniors.

The love of people who practice together successfully is incredibly purified.
We don't worry about a lot of things which people in other relationships worry about, because we have so much more at stake, and we have to keep things so clean and focussed. It's all about the art, and about our support for one another. If we don't work so closely and so deeply with one another, and yet hold enough distance to be combatants, we cannot do this work.

At this time, I have, and yet feel the yearning for, that sweet fresh feeling of something so very new. I am back in a teaching position after some time learning a new art, and savoring what I do, again, for the first time.

I am remembering Dan T taking huge breakfalls for my style of kotegaeshi. I'm remembering sitting and listening, having been told that the teacher I came for, the one I came to learn from, was 6 months dead of breast cancer. I sat there so close to tears, for me, for her friends, for everyone.

Many more times would come on the mat, that tears bided their time in my eyes.

Huge disruptions came from this choice in my lifestyle. In fact, it ruined everything I had planned, everything I had done. Renewal came from it as well, so the factors balance out and then some.

I remember the first time I met Brendan. Jim P pointed him out to me. "Go try to take that sword away from him" he said. Used to Jim's jibes, I took a look at the smooth efficiency of this throwing machine, and informed him that I was not THAT stupid. "No, go on. Go take that sword away from him" said Jim.

So I did.

A lifelong friendship/mentorship began, and I'm never sure where any of it begins or ends. Brendan took tremendous amounts of time and effort to forge this native ore into what may someday be something layered, sharp and resilient.

Jim would show up shortly after 5pm for "special practice" for those preparing for belt tests. There would be a beginners class at 6, an advanced class at 7:30, and Brendan would show up during it to bounce me off the walls after class. "Knocking the corners off" he called it, later, when we talked about it. I'd throw my cowboy boots back on under my hakama, throw on a shirt and run out the door, to keep from being locked in the gym. I still remember the smell of the halls, the feel of the elevators, the deep frightened nervousness before practice, and that exhausted elevation after practice. I also remember the black orchestra of the Texas summer night, and the stink of bats and dead crickets outside of the stadium in late summer and fall.
I remember earnest conversations, leaning on cars still hot from blazing Texas summer days, moments taken to watch bats, the ebb and flow of life on a college campus.

Now I am the sword geek, and he is still the master of kuzushi, kake and the throw you never see, or feel, coming. It's like practicing with an extroverted yogi master... except that I can stymie him now, then and again.

The change came with the move to Indiana and the "silent dare" to start training in something much closer to koryu jujutsu. Chuck has in his hands and in his heart, something truly rare and precious. Koryu is, in essence, a family art, and should be taught as such.

My first six months, every night was the one I wanted to walk off the mat, curse them all, and go back to aikido.
I hated it, I was awful at it, and Chuck constantly derided aikido. We had a couple of showdowns in which I informed him that if it weren't for aikido, he wouldn't have the quality of students that he enjoys. He's laid off a bit, and, while I don't exactly make a career of defending aikido, we still appreciate what the best of the art has to offer in terms of friends, associates, training partners and various adventures.

Now, teaching his class, I come clean. I have, approximately, 10 years aikido experience, and 5 in Chuck's sogo budo. The math is against me, to teach a "pure" version of Kokoro Ryu Sogo Budo (www.the-dojo.com). So I am honest with the students, and let them know that they are going to learn a lot of aikido in the bargain.

I can do this with a clean conscience, as I know that aikido is very good at teaching very basic concepts. I just have to know where the students have to go, and get them ready to get there.

In this time, I rediscover how wonderful it is to set foot in this Strange New World of budo.
It is such a delicious sensation, to see a person learn how to get their body and mind to working so much better together.

It is such a thrill to be with people through the experience of falling and getting up, effortlessly. Yes, you can fall and it can be fun. Yes, you can hit, be hit, be twisted, pounded, explore the limits of your personal resilience, and it can be be big, beautiful, supreme fun.

There is a moment of the outbreath, the impact, there is a moment which seemed impossible to you before, and now you are there, and it is not just OK...

It's big fun.

Ah, this is my supreme pleasure these days.

Life is hard. My body is starting to show signs of age, my teacher's body is in for repairs, mine will be.
For myself, I can stand these minor discomfits, these major challenges, replacements, refits, frights, shocks and tests of endurance, if I can get back to my work.

I help people be themselves, and find more of themselves.
Some of it I do for free, and much of it I get paid for. These adventures I take on, are always larger than I am. I am only a faithful companion, a kind of coaching Rin Tin Tin, barking when Timmy's in the well, wagging when Timmy manages to pick apples and rescue other kids.

I can't imagine a better or more meaningful existence.
And I do love bringing beginners into this new, amazing world.
It's like being a midwife for the soul.

Still, I feel the need to go stand in the entry of Gregory Gym at UT Austin, and breathe deeply the smells of my early training.. whatever they might have been.

The more we want things to change, the more they stay the same.

No matter how many times I listen to the Asylum St Spankers sing Summertime on Itunes, it won't bring back those first times on 6th St, the Hole in the Wall, and points downtown.

It won't bring back catching Guy's slide and handing it back to him. It won't beat hot sweaty wandering evenings looking for a place for them to play, or tense times at the Kizmet...

It won't replace the long dark time in my personal blues, sitting at that table in the corner, lost in the music and my own personal mysteries, joined only by a good friend or two.

It won't resuscitate Austin for me. It will only make me miss what I remember, more. I'm not past times of rich personal development, but I'm past THOSE times. There was a kind of new and desperate purity both in the music and in my own life, with a deep background note of pain and loneliness that I had accepted as my own motif.

"Until that day,
ain't nothin can harm you... "

Well, I'm lucky. I've never been harmed.

But the hurt of change, of growing older, watching things I found so precious fade away, watching everyone around me growing older, this is my new background note.

I'm out of the bubble of youth now. I'm dealing with my own aging in my own body, and supporting the aging of the battered soldier by my side. My profession being bodywork, I have received some of the best repairs on the planet, and can do pretty much any damn thing I please, far more than I could even 15 years ago (I am closer to 40 than not). My mate is spared many small hurts, and is better prepared for the big ones (his upcoming hip replacement).

I'm insanely lucky, though not in any really visible way.
These times, like the times I had in Austin, slinking alongside the blues, will someday be another set of glory days for me. I stand in this very soft place now, where I am in a kind of awe about how a strange, small fish can become interesting in a small enough bowl.

The jazz show we saw tonight just made me miss Austin all the worse. I knew the faces on stage, knew the relatives, talked the talk. But it was just too calm, too poised. The cops weren't coming, there was nothing at stake.
In a way, it was more relaxing. In a way...

It just wasn't the same.

So I'll let Guy Forsyth and Christina Marr's crystal clear, exquisite version of Gershwin's "Summertime" wind down, let it go and go to bed.

Hank Hill has it all wrong.
Who can have such a limited view of life that their lawn is such a huge part of their self-image?
I remember long summer evenings, the smell of fresh cut grass, gasoline and WD40 that was such a huge part of my "Dad" image that I still think WD40 should be a men's cologne.

I got my husband to cut the lawn, while I tended the veg and herb gardens. Now that he is suffering terribly from a terminally arthritic hip, I cut the lawn. Today he bravely pulled out the trimmer and had a go at the edging. I really wish he hadn't, not just because he didn't get around to the things I actually asked him to do instead (things that would have hurt him much less). He ended up in quite a lot of pain.. fortunately he got some excellent meds from the doc and managed to stump to the jazz fest with our friends K&C tonight. That was good and therapeutic: they danced and were cute, and this young couple and ourselves have more in common than we have found in a very long time.

I find myself quite against lawns.
It's a British thing, something for the aristocracy to play cricket or croquet on. We ain't aristocracy, we don't plan to be, and we ain't got servants to trim the verfugen grass blade by blade.

I got part of it last night, the rest today, and set the little annoying electric lawnmower as low as possible to shave the hell out of the manic growth portion of the lawn just below the veg garden. Next home, no fucking lawn. Paths, fruit trees, veg garden, berry patches, gravel and cactus (very Tex-Asian), sheep, goats, geese, whatever. No lawn.

The Black&Decker froggie we have is completely useless for anything with grade or relief. I have to wrestle the thing into straight lines and release the back wheels on what would be a normal easy "return cut" on a gas mower. In addition, you need four hands at least to operate an electric mower. Lacking this, I loop the first meter of the cord around my own neck so that I can control the cord on the "cutting side". Years of experience in fly-fishing and martial arts pay off in this endeavour.

I can flip the loops like fly line, sweep them away from the path of the blades with feet accustomed to sweeping human feet off course and into the line of my own intention, and curse in all of my adopted languages to maintain a faintly obscene monologue between myself and this blighted machine I have chosen to keep our home presentable with.

I can't imagine how someone without my years of training and trials could POSSIBLY manage an electric lawnmower. Therefore, I must say that no one without at least four years of judo training should even consider the purchase of an electric lawnmower of any kind.

Meanwhile, I contemplate the meaning of lawns, and I don't like what I find. It demonstrates a certain futility, a certain time span one has to waste. It's the same thing I find when I contemplate personal car ownership (as opposed to efficient public transportation).

We don't get enough out of it, to warrant what we put into it.

Think about it.

Just.. for a minute.. think about it.

As a person having to submit their mate to the hammers and saws of the orthopedic surgery profession, I have this repulsed sense of indignity and rage mixed with a sense of gratitude that they can actually take a rotten greater trochanter/acetabulum, cut it out, and replace it with titanium and stainless steel.

I'm also grateful for colleagues here who will do their level best to see that he is in top form for the surgery.

I'm facing some minor but necessary medical procedures myself, fortunately that can wait until he can drive again.

I'm reminded of something my Taiwanese massage school co-student told me, in between throwing me across the room (he is a Kung Fu/Chi Gong master and I was a student of aikido).
He failed. I passed. I hated that, hated the cultural bias and idiocy of state licensing, for him.

"Killer is healer:
You need a knife in the kitchen
and on the battlefield."

The kitchen being the place of healing, and this statement, brought me into a very different place in terms of my attitudes towards to my martial arts practice, allopathic medicine, and Maslow's theory:
"When all you know how to use is a hammer, the whole world looks like a nail."

I see one of our biggest needs as "alternative" practicioners as being communication with the allopathic profession, many of whom are grateful for a partner who has more time, and more empathy *Mitgefuhl* to give people, than what they can do, given time and insurance limitations.

I also hold in my memory, probably for all time, my conversation with the German doctor who will take care of me, when my turn comes.

"Blood is my job, ma'am".
He showed me the stains on his new white slacks, which German doctors are culturally obligated to wear.

Let us be grateful that health, and not blood, is our job.

It's almost dark and Munich music rumbles in the distance.

I've loved it here, and alternately yearned for the heat and mesquite of what I know as home.

I've come to love Germany, and Europe.

In the US, you can go from East to West, and there's no more difference than there is between Boston and Houston. Same language, different accent. Same stores, similar food, same road signs.

It's hard to explain the thrill of driving half an hour and being in a very different culture, with a different language, culture, road signs, food, drink, landscape, and cityscapes.

We can drive to the battered, recovering Czech Republik, to places like Cesky Krumlov (next pic) to Austria, Italy, the Bavarian Forest, we can fly to Greece in an hour or so, and we plan to drive to Amsterdam at the end of September.

It's hard to imagine how stimulating it is to remember the things to say in such a different environment and how much fun that can be.

I would hate to go back to just driving 12 hours to get to Colorado.

Travel in Germany is one of those legends everyone hears about, mostly concerning screaming along the autobahn at speeds which seem even faster when measured in kilometers. I've logged my share of Autobahn hours, but it's not my favorite thing. When I remember my teenage gearhead years dreaming over auto magazines and Porsches, and drive the Autobahn today, I have to sigh with disappointment. Gone are the days of "Fahrvergnugen". Now, all you get is "Joy of Trucks". Lots and lots of trucks. Double trucks, single trucks, trucks with cabs decorated like Casanova's living room. Trucks from Holland, Slovakia, trucks from England, Russia, Greece, and trucks from places I can't possibly pronounce, much less spell.

Imagine climbing into a comfortable seat in an air-conditioned space, picking up a book or plugging in headphones for music or a story or simply watching the world go by. Imagine that a fellow comes by with a cart, offers you a perfectly chilled beer and even opens it for you. I keep a little bag of nuts in my pack just to nibble with a beer, on the train.
Yes, this American (a Texan, no less) has forsaken the car. I believe that in 100 years (if we have a kind of eco-economic revolution) we will look back at these silly little vanity boxes and say "What the hell were we thinking??" There are times I think it would be more practical to keep a horse. The personal relationship would probably be more fulfilling.
So I leave my husband the car, stroll to the train, bring a good book and music and savor the sweet, soft rolling scenery of Bavaria from the comfort of a second-class seat. First class doesn't mean you'll make it on time 90 times out of a hundred anyway. On the occasions I've paid the difference, I've been disappointed.
Meanwhile, I enjoy the simplicity of just getting on the train, and getting where I want to go.

My favorite mode of travel is most definitely the German trains. It's the usual stress getting everything together and getting there on time, but once on, it's just a matter of kicking back and enjoying the ride. A couple of nice Polizei helped me get my bike on board this dusty old regional bahn. My legs always get incredibly banged up, for some reason, hauling the bike on and off the train. I try not to load the bike itself too heavily, it's a mountain bike and not exactly light. I tried to fill the panniers with bulky but light stuff (food and tea bags) that would probably get squished to death in my rucksack. The rucksack overbalances me a bit, and I have to pay attention. I'm just hoping that it's all lighter on the way back!
I have a triple set of folding bench seats to myself, and a window that opens if I want it. My bike is propped up parallel to the seats, so that if the train lurches I can catch it, and it's out of the way of the constant thread of traffic down the aisle of the train. My shoes are off, my feet up on the second seat, and I am typing on the little laptop I take to school. It's a little noisy, but the rock, whoosh and rumble of the train are familiar noises, and the seat is fairly comfy.
It's wonderful to watch the scenery go by this time of year. Germany doesn't have much summer, so when spring hits, she goes all out. Forsythia explode in bright yellow first, with the fields glowing green and cherry trees fluffing out into pink clouds. I always love lilac season. Lilacs don't grow well in Texas, and I was delighted to find them when we lived in Indiana. They grow like crazy here, and I love to cut the full rich blossom heads and stuff vases with them. The scent will just about knock you over if you overdo it, though, and lilacs are toxic, so I try to keep it to one vase per room.
This is going to be my second to last training, and I intend to enjoy it. I know I will miss these monthly adventures down to Munich. It's a vibrant place, and the training is brisk and vibrant as well. My colleagues are fun and supportive, the teachers are brilliant and fascinating, and the environment is open and adventurous. Sure, homesickness is often a factor, but I find myself thriving on the change of pace and the independence.

Knowing that we may leave Germany some time after October, I have decided to start posting the little things I have written, here and there, about Germany.

A Munich Story:

I love to go sit in the little city markets when I find them. I buy a snack, something to drink, and sit and watch. If people want to talk, I talk.

The benches at these things are a kaleidescope of people.
Tonight I was joined by an interesting pair. One was a pilot and flight instructor, the other an actress.
Wow. Right now the Greek restaurant I am hanging out in is playing the "Bette Davis Eyes" song, and boy did this lady have that going on. At right about 60, she is vivacious, passionate, vigorous and, yes, beautiful.

The pilot was a compulsive smoker, and seemed to have never forgotten the actress.
She didn't remember him, and sort of ran off with me in a series of strolls, cell phone calls and bathroom visits across a small part of the English Garden.

She had that sort of womanly sparkle that successful female celebrities have, and a lasting vitality shining in those big blue eyes. She reminded me of my mother's Cousin Jane, with somewhat less measured features.

It's interesting to be with celebrity. Every event, even finding a "pot to piss in" becomes something of, well, an Event! There was huge Porsche event, and we weren't allowed in, but security greeted her politely and directed us to clean toilets upstairs by statuesque columns overlooking the English Garden.
She took my hand and we strode along, Queens, Princes, Kings and Goddesses of the World.

This woman in this short time, taught me so much about the theatrical space and how to occupy it. I am so accustomed to disappearing, and not "filling my space" that the lesson is a truly needed one. Every woman should have some time with a Prima Donna, if only to learn what to do, to get a table at rush hour.

I directed her to colleagues in Koln, but I'm not sure what I can ever do to repay the theatre lessons.

There's a kind of bravery Army life takes, which has nothing to do with bombs or bullets. It's the kind of bravery it takes, to leave people, things and situations behind.
Getting there isn't the trouble. The human is designed exquisitely for new situations. We do nothing better than adapt. What we do poorly, is LET GO.
Some people withdraw and make no connections. Others become reckless. Those of us in between, seek connections with like madness. Unfortunately, it usually takes too long, and when Sympatico is realized, it's almost too late.
We live with a kind of sadness in every encounter, we become more sentimental than the average human ever has the advantage to be. Life on a military post is like life in a small town to the 10th degree. Desperation isn't quiet here. I'll never forget my first morning in the Grafenwoehr Training Area, when a young man just melted down on the wooded lawn outside the housing area. Lying in the grass, screaming obscenities at everything and everyone... he got jammed into an MP jeep, then transferred, kicking and bellowing, into a German ambulance and carried off into bizzare backwards Euro siren silence. That was desperation. I don't know who the kid was, what happened or where he is now. I just remember two obese women staring at him as he screamed, occasionally poking him with their feet like a half-dead animal.
Meanwhile the rest of us get in for our reasons and, if we are lucky, get out with our goals accomplished and all of our limbs more or less intact. Those who serve on the front, pay for the rest of their lives. My husband, barely 50, will get a new hip as a souvenir of his first stay in Germany, during his second. It's a weird peice of karma, and a wierd souvenir of our time here.
Our friends here are some of the most solid we will ever make. We are lucky, we are blessed, and we are proud to have stood through the fire with anyone and everyone who shared time with us here. We don't want to say goodbye, so we'll just say... the door is open. See you later.

I called my dad for Father's Day. Not a great fan of these Hallmarketing Holidays, but any excuse to call Dad and see what he's up to.
He was changing the oil on his truck. He's got a Dodge Diesel pick-em-up to pull his trailer home. No, seriously. I'm from Texas. It's OK. Dad actually owns land in east Texas, we've traced it back to Spanish times and it's kind of a Family Thing.
Here's the thing that makes it remarkable. My dad is almost 72. He's almost 72 and still happily changing the oil on his truck! That's something to celebrate! Especially since he ended up in the hospital for a couple weeks two years ago with kidney failure. Evidently it was a little medication bobble, not unusual when you are 70, diabetic, and your endocrinologist ups and moves to Paris (TX) with too little notice for patients to reschedule. Dr Whatsit, wherever you are, it wasn't worth my dad's life, whatever it was. Shame on you.
Anyway, Dad's still hanging in there, changing his oil, checking his land, enjoying life and bitching about politics.
Well.. you had to know where I got it.
Thanks, Dad.

We're still playing Fantasy Destination.

I've got to be honest, I just want to go home. I've loved this time abroad. I could just live out of a pack, wander the world free and easy and open, and say the hell with all expectations. Maybe I will again, someday.

Wait.. I think I said the hell with all expectations long ago. No, not going to be the way you expect. Don't know how. Don't want to. Can't either fit or understand the box. Don't want to. Why should I, when I can make my own way?

My mate is a real gypsy with no roots whatsoever. That's not me. Roots have to dig deep, in Central Texas, to live. We can't just blow around like tumbleweeds (imports from China to the SW, BTW).
Roots have to dig deep in the limestone, in the blackland prairies, in the alluvial sands of the Ouachita Mountains, the great-grandmothers of the Appalachians, roots have to dig deep to survive long dry spells and crazy rain. Don't dry up, and don't get washed away. You can reach as far as you want, travel as long and as wide as you wish, just never forget where your toe-roots find home.

It's hard for him to understand who I am to my family. I've somehow managed to be the lost hero child.
Those who know the 12-step lingo, will understand me.. that this is Abraham's lamb and the black sheep all wrapped into one. They put me there, I just try to recognise it. If they need me, and increasingly, they do, I can't just wander off. Certainly, I need room, I always do, but I don't want to not be there for my parents when they need me. It's just not something I can do and remain happy. We'll see how I do it, and remain happy!!

In any case, this sheep is no lamb, and no ovid herd animal for that matter. My father, shockingly spiritually aware redneck that he is (our Shibumi Bubba) gave me a copy of Women who Run with the Wolves.

Woodswoman, hunter, martial artist that I am, I found some message in it, but the "with" part did not apply. I learned from this book that I simply AM a wolf. Not a fighter, rather a conciler, not a killer, rather a shepherd. It's easy to see the fangs and the shaggy coat, not easy to see the complex social system, care, and strategy of wolf life.

Wolves don't play Fantasy Destination unless they are out exploring. I am in this phase. I have brought down more valuable things than I could possibly imagine. The structural integration certification is like a woolly mammoth out of season. It's something I never could have done in the States. I devoted my entire income to it, I warped the bureaucracy and swayed the community to do it. I ran constantly round the herd, finding the right buffalo to nip, to get what I needed. My focus becomes ever sharper, and I see more of what I need to do. Now I'm seeing the end of the Army tunnel and it's hard not to just explode with frustration at the system I have been whaling on and subverting all this time.

That's it. I'm a tired, ragged wolf. My pads are sore but nimble, my teeth still sharp, my tail still high. I've done things here that others thought impossible. I'd like to go somewhere welcoming, somewhere I can make a living on my own.

So would my mate.

So take me home already.

What's my story? It was asked on a Rolfing practicioner discussion list I am lucky to frequent.
It's something a fellow practicioner asks clients when they come in for sessions.
Well. What's MY story.. It's not something anyone can encompass in one go, but I'll give it an abridged effort right here.

Most people get Rolfed and then change their existence. As usual, I went backwards. I changed my existence, left a rotten marriage, changed my Self through martial arts and time and meditation in the natural world. I changed my diet, changed my approach, changed the country I lived in. All in a kind of involuntary response to my heart's desires. I never planned it, never asked for it (consciously) and certainly never really understood, beyond messages from my heart which I had, at the time, no way to answer.

There is one incident I can point to which I believe led to my "unmooring" and the beginning of my Adventures. I saw a gifted massage therapist on a far too infrequent basis in the Bastrop City Hall. There is a point in my body which I have always equated with an old spear wound, as if I had been run through centuries ago and my soul had never forgotten.

As a child, I woke stiff and arched in my bed, nightmares of demons butting or stabbing me in the back echoing. I never spoke a word of it to my parents, who were not well-to-do and made me aware of the cost of every ailment I had. I never felt comfortable being ill, I never felt comfortable being hurt or needing help. The Reichian definition of compensated oral begins to define what defined me. Rigid, never needing help, never needing anyone, never admitting pain or need, even to myself. Even telling my dear and loving husband that I've had some tiny problem or need a foot or hand rub, was at first a real effort. His loving nurturance has shrunk that wall to a shallow curb.

This massage therapist, with her 350 hours of training and her Texas license, worked manually on this spot like a champ. At some point, breathing into the pressure, I said "it feels like there is a spear in my back" and she paused.

Then, with a bloodcurdling shriek, she pulled the virtual spear out.

What kind of intuition and bravery does this take? This borders on the shamanic. This woman is probably still a massage therapist in the city hall in Bastrop County.

I have never felt the spear again, though the wind used to drift through the hole in me it left. The beautiful ministrations of some of the best bodyworkers on the planet have minimized it to a kind of functional echo in my body.

So, I say to my elite colleagues, especially in the US, where the prejudice seems most keen... you just don't know when the mantle of the angels will fall on you. It doesn't fall because you are ever so special and have special training, or don't. It falls where it falls. Deaf, dumb, blind, stupid, toothless, mindless -- we may all have the honor of helping another. We should never think that it's because we are special in some way, that it comes to us. It is simply our responsibility, when it does.

Mind you, I am free of (save a devotion to Marishiten) deities, but I still believe this: We are angels for one another. In this real and practical world, we must be.

So yeah, I'm backwards. I came to enlightenment, and then Rolfing. Not the other way around. It doesn't mean I'm not grateful or amazed by the furthering of personal growth, or the opportunity to do the work myself, but let's face it.

There are other means to enlightenment, and we can't specify what they are, for everyone. Nor should anyone, ever, for any reason, decide that they have in hand a tool to enlighten everyone.

This way lies, truly, the hellfire and damnation of the Taliban, the Catholic ("Spanish") Inquisition, Hamas, and yes, especially the American Fundamentalist Movement.

I'm still working on Life, the Universe and Everything.

Actually that's a big sick joke, if you know me. I don't know shit.

Now, then, if you want to go another layer, I DO know shit and I don't want anything to do with it when I see it.

Military life right now is cheap margarine over too much white bread toast. The times coming, before we depose the dreadful fascist regime that is Bush, will result in more than the deaths of many persons far more worthy than the ones who started the war.

It will result in the gutting of every motivated individual in the civilian military system.
I know more than a handful of retired Soldiers (don't just Capitalize, INK IS CHEAP!!!!! it, give them a fucking RAISE, perhaps equal to what our representatives make? especially in retirement! what a concept!) in civil service who are being used as three persons to their every one, overtasked and overextended. They suck it up, because they are old soldiers and they can't stand the troopies downrange suffering any more indignities (armor your Humvees? why? oh, wait, the media got hold of it. OK.)

Seriously, the civilian side of military affairs is so infested that a complete purge is necessary.
Especially of all senior personnel who make the decisions. There are always loopholes. Look at the loopholes, see who's exploiting it, and look at how their decisions have impacted the community.

Anyone married to a DODDS teacher can stay as long as they want, whether it benefits the community or not. They may pull the race card, the gender card, or the skeleton (s in the closet) key, but, the successful administrator will strive for truly New Blood...

Not just the same old Idiot Game. Hey, if you want a Circle Jerk for an administration, please, by all means, continue as indicated.

However, IN CASE YOU MORONS HAVEN'T NOTICED:
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It isn't working.

So stop holding your goddamn chair down and work for a living. Not just maintain, not just build your (transient and non-beneficial to the community at large) empire, try doing your job, try fulfilling the mission, not just writing nonsensical babble for people who answer the phone for your division. What a waste.

Unless you answer the phone the exact same way.

Then, it's just an insane game about choices people aren't really free to make.

If I have to write another one of these, I'm going to print FTA cards and start handing them out.

You fought for this right, it's called Free Speech, and if you can't exercise it on an Army post, then what's the point?

I am in the process of comforting an elderly cat. Like humans, in youth and old age, we need the most care. The poor girl is getting progressively leakier, as we all do. I never fuss at her, I know thunder scares the pee out her, and she's always alarmed and ashamed about it. I talk to her and pet her when she paws my arm as I'm typing.
She's hit the age of consent for humans. If she makes it to next year, she'll be able to vote. If we have to move, we're both afraid of how it will impact her health.

For my part, it could be an improvement. I'm dealing with a medical command who does not believe in what I do, but will send kids for "fasciotomies" resulting in weeks of recovery and pain. FYI, I can deal with plantar fasciitis, IT band syndrome and other problems of tight fascia with no surgery, no recovery, and a decent success rate (undocumented unfortunately). I'm a Certified Rolfer with actual massage certification (Rolfing isn't exactly massage, but it has yet to differentiate itself so far as chiropractic has -- and Rolfing can be more effective, and results in more client independence in the long run) I kind of object to Rolfers with no bodywork credentials as they tend to be not only dismissive and condescending to other bodywork professions, they also don't understand the body and psyche nearly as well as they would if they had spent a few years in "symptomatic" treatment rather than worshipping at the altar of IPR and her 10, which was in fact only a kata to teach students. If you object to this statement, first learn about Shu Ha Ri. Then listen to IPR herself, who only ever meant to create more mavericks.

Meanwhile, I am dealing with a husband whose hip has ceased to function without pain. I have to turn him over to surgeons, and I hate to give anything of mine up to anyone. Turning him over to my teachers is another thing entirely, because I belong to them, myself, already.

My first priority is to get him through this health crisis and very much "back on his feet". Then, we find out what our future holds. Right now, it swings on his job, because that pays the rent. Sadly, mine won't. Not here, not reliably, not so far. Not to the level of his job, certainly.

Other places, maybe.
So we play the Fantasy Destination Game, and I sure as hell won't let the door hit me in the @ss on the way out.

Word is that NO ONE is getting extended in hubby's little slice of Army.
His office mates are crying because he's truly the continuity for their area. But let's face it, it's time to move on. It's high time he got a promotion. He's been playing Good Soldier and laboring in obscurity while other whiners and diners are playing the Game and getting bonuses, getting promoted, and so forth. What a waste of tax dollars and air.
We've been more busy Having a Life than Playing the Game, because it's so much more important to us to have a deep, rich personal life than anything else. However, the time comes and, sometimes, we have to play. Neither of us are good at "playing" we're both deeply "for keeps" and when the time comes, we're both razor focussed and uncompromising.

So now we are playing the Fantasy Destination game.
He applies for jobs and lets me know what got picked up and where. So far, destinations include Japan, Colorado, Washington State, Ohio and even my home state of Texas.

Wow, could I live in Texas again? I'm pretty sure that first summer would be misery, but there's always trainings I can go to, once I got my bidness under way again. I, too, am laboring in obscurity here. I can't make nearly what my colleagues make either in the big cities in Germany or anywhere that's anywhere in the US.

Japan is an exciting option. Chuck has a long, deep history with martial arts and Japanese culture, without wanting or needing to be a Japanese Gaijin (which doesn't happen). I would love a new lifestyle, and I have a curious hunger to learn Ikebana, Japanese flower arranging. I'd love to go live in the mountains, study as a student with Chuck, explore this culture I've skirted the edges of and quietly admired for so long. If you don't know me, I've studied aikido since 1989, and other budo since 2000. I enjoy Chinese arts as well, but have somehow always found my home in the Japanese arts. I can't define why, and, like a person who would rather have Rocky Road than Neopolitan, I shouldn't have to. It's just a matter of taste and, certainly, of circumstance.

In any case it would be a kind of joy to sell the car, get rid of a large amount of junk, and prepare for a much smaller, cleaner, deeply devoted to learning lifestyle.
The fact is that I could do it now, but like most lazy moderns, I'm too addicted to my addictions and too distracted to dig out and simplify. Living with another person and their addictions and problems does not make this any easier, as we are inevitably intertwined in our baggage. His socks in my hand luggage, and my jeans in his. Such is life.

I'm back from the American Women's Activities Germany meeting.
http://www.awag.us/
Nice, nice people, but I'm just socially impaired when it comes to chants and sing-alongs and so forth. Ich bin keine Gruppenmensch, that is, I'm just not that social.

Let me sit in my corner, observe and let me go away when I want. Let me go see my beloved mountains.

I did the overnight, savoured the luxury surrounds and free food and wine, and gave my all in our section. I'm supported by a brilliant rheumatologist, and we talk about PAIN.. we make pain fun, what can I say. This lady is one of those quiet gravitational forces who bring some level of sanity to the military. She's never loud, never pushy, she just gets things done and makes you like her. She's wise, even, deep, very drily funny, and appreciates humor even if it isn't her own forte'.

I love the idea of bringing structural integration to the military, but let's face it. I've been "swimming uphill" for five years now. I haven't made a single Euro in the past week, and only perhaps a hundred dollars. In a profession where experienced practicioners command $140- 200 per session in the US, I'm feeling pretty annoyed.

I'm patient, I'm strategic, I get, and have gotten, good advertising and info. The trouble is, the natives are more interested about meeting me because I was in the local newsletter than over what I DO.

So let's face it. I'm swimming uphill with both the military and the Oberpfalzers.
If hubby doesn't get extended here, careerwise it's an advantage for me to beat feet out of this sluggish business environs. A German friend just closed his spa business up because he couldn't make ends meet. People here just aren't spending money on themselves.

I'm not sure what to say, or what to do. I'm working with a local orthopod, I'm getting articles out there, I'm out in the community, I'm doing my volunteer stuff, I'm prepping the avalanche like crazy.

I've been working that Wurzburg Tricare Provider thing like crazy, and the only person I'm getting to know is the operator, because no one answers the phone.

I'm just afraid it will happen, and we will have to leave.

Perhaps the fear shows up in the hesitation.
I want a practice, I want so badly to do this work, I know how I can help people and I know I'm not "just good" at what I do.

In June I will move to doing only Rolfing, which means that people only get hour sessions with me for $100. This will be a huge thing, but honestly I've been worth it the whole time. People have just been getting it for 1/3 the price because I want them to know it works, and I know insurance will pay. If I can overcome sheer bureaucratic incompetence to get myself on the list for them to make some use of me.

I know that life works in dramatic pauses, and I can only hope this is one.
Meanwhile, things that don't work, continue to make money, and I continue to labor in obscurity.

I'm beginning to wonder if I should bike around in rags, accost people with obvious difficulties and play Jesus.

The subtle approach hasn't been working, so, what the fark.

Why are there more prescriptions for surgeries and NSAIDS than there are bodyworkers getting down to business?

Why am I asking this silly question? Maybe I'm tired of treating soldiers dealing with the aftereffects of surgical "fasciotomies". What's the recovery period for a "fasciotomy"? Six weeks minimum, I suppose. I've seen it for plantar fasciitis, and I've seen it for "IT Band Syndrome". Either one of these "syndromes" indicates overtightening of the fascia in a certain pattern.

If I thought that surgery was the best answer, I would be terribly enthusiastic. My husband currently needs a hip replacement due to damage in Army service. It's not something I can do anything about, and his pain recurs after either I, or my teachers, or even brilliant German physiotherapeutic technology have anything to do with it.

None of us are happy that our treatments have failed, but we all know that the best technology in the world is right here by Regensburg... If I have to turn my mate over to someone, this is the place for us to do it. I won't leave his side until he starts flirting with the Krankenschwestern, but until then, I'm a fixture.

Meanwhile, resolutions I have literally at my fingertips, take no recovery time and have real time results. I can reduce plantar fasciitis by separating and lengthening soleus and flexor hallucis longis fascia, and I can reduce "compartment syndrome" by separating and training the anterior compartment and the posterior one. No surgery, no recovery, I'm comparatively cheap as beer, and just as friendly.

I understand why I'm not referred to or on the Tricare preferred provider list. What I do does not make anyone money. Nothing any bodyworker does makes any larger company money, unless you belong to a large school or licensing committee. I have the National Massage Therapy and Bodywork Certification, which means I crossed the right Ts and toddled the correct I's. The only stockholder, in the end, is me. And I have faith in my work, I know it works, and so do my clients.

I'm still not making any stockholders money, despite having been here for about 5 years and having helped hundreds of people. God forbid I help anyone, without making anyone money besides for me.
Heaven forbid I make money by helping people. At the rate I'm currently helping people and making money, Mother Teresa would be asking for a refund.

Now, I've been working on the Tricare Provider thing for a while. I turned in a pile of my certification paperwork to Wurzburg. Well, the personnel there appear to be perennially ill and have no idea whatsoever about cross-training. If one person is gone due to illness, the rest of the office sits around wondering what this person does.

Yeah, my clients with real and painful problems can't get any problems solved, because the TriCare provider office in Wurzburg can't get cross-training. Furthermore, the local officials don't want to soil their hands with any of this kind of paperwork, and can't talk to the officials in Wurzburg.

Meanwhile, I'm going to do demos for local (German) orthopedic offices and volunteer organizations, (AWAG) I'm going to spank some bureaucrats or at least annoy them terminally, all so that YOU can get the best solution for simple physical problems.

Surgery sucks. Manual therapy is easy, and much cheaper.
Tell your insurance company, tell your doctor, tell your orthopedist, tell your surgeon.
If they have any questions, email me and I'll try to find them a good connection where you are, to a good manual therapist.

Knives aren't neccessary.
Hands are.

Military life. Living in the belly of the beast.
I love being here but it's like living with someone who can't figure out which side of the door to go out of, but they own the house and don't charge you rent.

Furthermore, until recently, the refrigerator was locked shut on Monday and Wednesday. Oh, and sometimes some of the doors don't work. Just approximately whenever we feel like it. We call it FP (there's another meaning but for now it stands for Fucking Preposterous) so that you feel more patriotic when you are inconvenienced.

By the way, this exercise is to help officials who normally succeed only in holding their chairs down for years at a time, held in position by politics and spouse's job, make themselves appear useful.
Meanwhile, we're expecting approximately 10,000 more inDUHviduals within six months.

By the way (again) there will be personnel reductions to help deal with the extra bodies. That's right! Less people to deal with more people! How's that for strategy! Wow. Brilliant.

It's a lot like the Surge. It was going on before it got pitched to the public. People were getting deployed while everyone was arguing about it. Right. When do we install a Surge Protector, and we can talk about it before our friendsandrelations have to go dive back into the sandbox just because they wanted a way to pay for college or get ahead?
Have you taken a look at what's happened to college tuition, grants, and scholarships?
Tell me there's no draft.
Then stand still for a minute... I need a makiwara.

What a pain in the ass. I have no interest in doing business with Google, unless I am getting stock dividends, and I have to have a google account to do this.

I'm going to keep it up because I like the name of the blog, but I will do my best to see that no one (except possibly me) profits from my work out here. I also have a Myspace page:

http://www.myspace.com/edgegrrl

A lot more pix and shorter posts there.

Enjoy.

First of all, let me say a small, sweet, sad goodbye to another heroine of mine taken by breast cancer. Molly Ivins is what I've always aspired to as a writer -- piquant, wise, sharp and worldly.

Molly, sweetheart, I always wanted to meet you.
Now, if I'm lucky, I'll just have to wait until I wander into the right bar in the afterlife.
You a Scrabble fan?

I'll miss you terribly, and try to stand up to your razor standard...

http://www.texasobserver.org/

Life in Germany is marked by strange bits of chaos and order. Recycling is the law, so of course everyone does it! Little monthly calendars are distributed in German, and of course between the differences between German and American calendars (German weeks start on Monday, American weeks on Sunday) and the language, most people can't parse it. Besides, how the heck does "ungerade" mean "every other"??? Oh weyh!

Anyway, for recent expats, in this, as in other things, the best thing to do is simply observe your neighborhood. Whatever they have out on the curb in the evening, be it paper, cardboard, or yellow bags of wrapping bits and plastic meat trays (rinsed), leave some of that out too. It will make your house fit in better, and it will make the recycling fairies happy. If the recycling fairies are not happy, you will get a BIG bill, as much as (or as little as) 200 Euro. Best keep the recycling fairies happy. They can be grumpy and expensive.

I've just read a bit of a blog of a German friend of ours who writes in very nearly perfect UK-ish English. I find it quite funny that I'm blogging at the same time, but in my "muttersprache" as my written German is an absolute catastrophe.
Should we stay here much longer, perhaps I can write very basic things, but German is not a friendly language except to real artists and technicians of its vagaries. I am struggling through 4th grade grammar workbooks in Deutsch. I would be fortunate merely to be competent. I can use very basic forms, but the language is a reflection of a very old, intricate and intellectual culture, not entirely amenable to foreign use.

English, on the other hand, if current news and literature is any reflection, is headed to a level that signing gorillas would be eloquent in. I should be glad, but writers who can actually write tend to be more of a threat to this sloppy establishment than a boon, and are treated accordingly. Making my living by writing would have made me suicidal (or homicidal, which is actually more interesting). Same way with other artistic endeavours. I'll make my living another way, and do things as I please, when I please, how I please. Otherwise, what's the point of any art? I can write a bloody sonnet as an exercise, but it's more squeezing myself into something that doesn't fit, than me expressing myself. So what's the bloody point of that?

So far, I've been more writing for my American friends and family around here and back home. I haven't, honestly, though much about my German friends here and what they might find interesting about my experiences as a Texican-American in Deutschland.

It's something to contemplate.

Christmas In Bavaria: Wrap it up, I'll take it.
I've spent too many sweaty dismal holidays in Texas, dreading the day the cedar "pops" and dealing with the trendy Austin crowds in Central Market. We dealt with some fairly serious crowds in Regensburg at the Christmas Market, but Germans are normally pathologically polite (except when they are extraordinarily rude) and, for many generations, used to crowding. US'ns, as an estranged in-law used to call them, are used to open spaces and getting their way, and get psychotic about it.
In any case, no one is as rude as a German who has put their mind to it. Old women or men are the worst.
Anyway, most of the time, I find myself having to keep up with the niceness.
I got gummi bears at the bank, chocolate and then butter cookies at the grocery, and beer, beer mugs and calendars from the German neighbors. I'll gift them all with my homemade jam and American candy canes (woo!) tomorrow.
It's cosy here, it's absurdly safe, it's beautiful and clean. They pay unbelieveable taxes, but at least they have public health care, clean streets, recycling and guaranteed pensions. There are few bums or beggars, and old folks get taken out for walks every Sunday.
Balconies are lit with little wooden carvings, strings of dangling lights, even reindeer and Santas (a new thing here) but there are no inflatable Santas or snowmen about.
The big thing is Santa on a rope or ladder hanging down the front of a building and putting lights in an outdoor tree.
They are getting more Americanized, we see Santas instead of Father Christmas with his little black elf. Adults we know tell stories of being kidnapped by whomever in the family was playing the black elf, if they'd been bad -- stuffed in a sack and carried away!
The Bushites have decided that ex-pats who decide to stay are more of a problem than corporate tax dodgers (why ask their friends to pay?) and last year passed a law requiring all changing citizenship (due possibly to lack of faith in said administration) shall continue to pay "double jeopardy" tax rates for foreign earned income over 82.5K for ten years after they turn in their American passport. Wait, did no one tell you about this? didn't you get to vote on it? Gosh darn golly, I guess you didn't . Me neither. See www.aca.ch , it will be easy to find.
It's an incentive for me not to try too hard on the foreign side, and to divert my tax dollars to purposes worthier than (a) getting myself screwed further, or again or (b) giving any support whatsoever to an administration greedy for current profit over future development, sane growth and gain.
Do your research, follow the money, be happy, do what you love, and have a beautiful holiday.

What is the ultimate luxury, but feeling good and feeling free? People trade their time for money, and their money again for time.
Me, I'll take this deep exploration of how good I can feel. I feel like a puddle of silk, a sensual ribbon of flesh at the end of a Chinese dancer's staff, on a good day.
I don't care for this keeping up of appearances, this false nails and skin-destroying tan lifestyle. I have a rather boring hair colour, so until it turns a pretty silver I will play with the tint of it. Teeth are important, but I don't agree with this shaving and capping and bridging. Anything which destroys the natural integrity of a thing, such as tanning booths, I cannot agree with. Growing up in Texas, sun was the enemy. My Celtic skin is practiced with regular sun exposure, but then, my dad tells me I've got a touch of alligator blood here and there. Here in Bavaria, I am letting my skin "rest" and have only once or twice incurred an actual sunburn.
I saw a picture of myself from Texas times, and noted that I was gently browned, a cautious outdoorswoman's tan. My face has remained untanned since I was 15, which may be why I don't look as close to 40 as I truly am.
I'll trade present fashion for longtime survival any day. Besides, powder bronzers give the same short-term effects without the long-term ones.
Increasingly, I find true Beauty in grace and freedom, rather than what others try to tell me what beauty is. Yes, eyeliner is good. Eyeliner can elucidate beauty, but only if you have a Very Steady Hand. Otherwise, you look like an owl on acid.
So, for beauty, I insist on grace, freedom of movement, health, fabulous toenail polish, and well-applied liquid eyeliner. Not much else seems to matter.

Here's a post probably a bit more relevant to what I am going through right now.
I encountered one of those "speed bumps" on a very deep personal level, had a huge enough glitch to make me Pay Attention, and got down to work on my own personal issues of rage and rebellion.
I did the work of paring away distractions, I did the work of finding a way to Listen, and am doing the work of making myself, somehow, a simpler, easier person to be. I have too much to do, to continue to be so high-maintenance for my own self. My work has become larger than I am, and I am my work. This is something my Rolfing teacher Harvey Burns said: "I am the work". I kind of get that. I have to be the work, to do the work. I have to stay active in my own process. I have to manage it, and keep it going. I have to model what I hope to give others a step into.

In so many ways, budo is where it all started for me. Here's an early window:

I'm sure the question in everyone's mind is:
What is different for you now that you are not training in aikido? I trained in aikido from 1989, starting with Joe Birdsong of MAF under Akira Tohei. Joe's first teacher was Tri Thong Dang, whom I believe trained under Ueshiba and under Koichi Tohei. I might well be wrong about that... In any case, Joe is a good teacher and a great dancer.
I had to take three years off due to financial and personal reasons, but I was miserable when I stopped, as if someone had taken away my source of sanity.
I began again under someone who had beaten me badly in a kenjutsu fencing match with old-fashioned bamboo fukuro shinai, a man I knew would teach me what he knew of the sword, and originally it was the sword I loved. Jim P introduced me to several other teachers, from Stephen McA to Brendan H. In about 6 years I ended up a shodan assistant instructor under Brendan (nidan in aikido and godan in judo) in Round Rock at Mr. Matl's dojo. Lots of other folks worked out there, but Mr. Matl was Brendan's sensei and therefore mine. He gave me much in our time there, and I will not forget. I learned to love and respect judo there.
Brendan, poor determined Brendan, tried so hard to forge me with his own hands. He gave me moments of truth that devastated and remade me. I would drive home crying my eyes out and not knowing why. Frustration, perhaps, or joy. No telling, at 11 pm.
After I joined the Aikido list in 1998, I began to cross train even more. I met students of Nishio Sensei through my "brother" Kregg and met people like George Simcox, Rocky Izumi, Chuck Clark, Philip Akin, Chuck Gordon, Alan Drysdale, Hiroshi Ikeda, and so many others. I have taken ukemi from all of these folks.
Tragically, very little from Shoji Nishio but quite frankly at the time I wasn't up to it. I have also trained with Seagal's student Larry Reynosa. I did not like his style, granted, I allow generously for differences.. looking back it was very Shin Shin Toitsu with a generous touch of Dillman and Kali.
Standing where I am now, I might have liked it better, but I was very committed to what I understood as softness at the time.
I have trained with Don Angier at one seminar, and with his students, who are wonderful folks, especially Kurt Von Quintus and the Dallas Yanagi Ryu fellows.
Granted, this is all a fairly shallow experience. But what does one spend a lifetime learning? I have trained in Wing Tsun, gaining my first level with Sifu Jeff Webb in Austin, and in "garage" kenjutsu and kickboxing with my buddy Dan A. Dan, you still out there doing a job you love?
I have done judo with the current national champion of his age group (being trashed joyfully and gently by Matl Sensei is one of my most treasured memories -- "so you want learn newaza?" mash, smoosh, wad...).
I trained a little with the gentleman who owns Tai Chi People in Austin, a remarkable person, also a healer. He is the one who told me "killer is healer. You need a knife in the battlefield AND in the kitchen".
All of this should serve only to tell you where I've been. And it doesn't matter. I have faced the spectre of the lack of women teachers and gotten over it. Men are teaching. They can be good people. The responsibility is on me to be brave and make it mine.
So what the hell am I doing NOW? it is a composite of jujutsu (aikido is jujutsu. It is. completely.. or you are getting an incomplete version) kempo, weapons and strategy.
Chuck calls it Kokoro Ryu. When his teacher Richard Gordon was trying to describe to Fumio Demura what he did, and where it came from, he pointed to his heart and said "I just do what's in here" and Demura said "Aaah, Kokoro Ryu". I understand that some enterprising person has taken that name as a trademark, however, I don't think they had Demura's blessing.. (smiling) It's hard to know exactly where the art comes from, but it is simple, elegant, deep and undeniably effective. During his military service, Richard Gordon trained under a variety of individuals including Koichi Tohei and Gozo Shioda as well as some undeniably old school jujutsuka and swordsmen. We may never find out the whole list,
I don't know how much he remembers. Chuck is constantly researching and backtracking to find his roots. I am a tadpole wanting to be a bird, yet again. I am humiliated, frustrated, terrified and fascinated. It is like my early days in aikido all over again, from the butterflies at the beginning of class to the pounding frustration of trying to throw powerful giants like Martin, flexible wires like Monica, sandbags like Tim and Bob, and the implacable ferocity of my teacher Chuck Gordon. I learned to enjoy my fists in Wing Tsun, and I do not give them up here. We HIT each other, with fists and weapons. We become astonished at what we can take, and are eminently careful with one another in it. Bruises are inevitable, but they are in aikido training too. You just aren't warned of it. Broken limbs have not happened, and I know they do in aikido and in life in general.We are careful, gentle, intimate. The class is too small for anyone to have a Persona as happens in large groups. We know each other too well. Occasionally I'll GET a throw and Martin will step up to take incredible ukemi repeatedly. Occasionally one of the others will Get It. Tim is one of the best at that, he's been with Chuck the longest and really and truly threw me once. Once I figured out I was still alive it was really cool. But I said a Very Bad Word on the way over. Quite involuntarily.
It is more intense than any aikido I've ever done. It is more complete in terms of using fists and feet and assorted weapons. It is terrifying and my teacher pushes me harder in the most terrible places. The fact that he is also my mate may enter into that somewhat, on the mat we are teacher and student and I love him and hate him with the rest of the class.I often wonder, gee, is that where that came from? in terms of what we get now in judo and aikido. Nikajo was never this painful. Kote Mawashi, a pain by any other name...
Aikido by and large has been gentled to help the masses, and believe me I don't have a problem with that. Whatever will help people reach beyond themselves is fine with me. It is so desperately needed. If aikido fills a person's needs, that's wonderful! not everyone needs to go to quite the masochistic means I have. Not everyone is into this deep personal adventure.
Unlike others who have left aikido in anger, I have left it in a more positive light. I am simply an adventurer. I may still teach something I call aikido, but only in that I believe that peace is best held from the high ground.
Ueshiba did beautiful things.. those who believe that any one of his students holds the whole picture has an unclear notion of the human mind. I have striven to follow a path more similar to Old Mori, in that I have explored and tried many things. I may never serve my country militarily, nor will I found a new religion, but I will follow my Path. Right now I am involved in a deep and brilliant history lesson, one I will pass on to whomever I teach, one I am striving to embrace with all of my being.
(Dec 2006)
Now, as the assistant instructor in a tiny club on a military installation, my training has an immediacy and a depth most people only daydream of. Our senior student is no longer in security, but he still has that focus and earnestness. We try very hard to pay attention and challenge each other. He is so giving, and forgiving, I couldn't ask for a better whetstone. I hope I can do the same for him.
Chuck remains one of the more difficult sensei I have ever faced. Not because of our personal relationship so much, I keep that pretty strictly limited to keeping him functional. His teaching style is very much demonstration, not explanation, which is strange for a man of so many skilled words. In a way, this works, because words cannot convey this stuff. In a way, it's harder, because we are both so wordy, and it's like cutting off an entire sense, and growing a new one, to learn this language called budo.
My personal evolution here, lately, has been deep and wide, in feeling if not in result.
Once again, the words fail... but as the bodywork has freed me, I am so free, just to train.
It doesn't hurt to fall, I can stand up and sit down (seiza is not hurting) I can move pretty freely, the pops and clicks are mostly just sound effects, the left wrist still needs bracing but I can offer it from time to time.
These things are all huge, in this training microcosm.

Another oldie but goodie:

Since I was a kid, my primary entertainment has been whatever's going on outdoors. My dad was quite the outdoorsman and my mom was too, when she was fit enough. She is still very attuned to the weather and the natural world in her own way, my dad even more so.
When I was a few months old I was out on their backs in a little baby backpack with a fly whistling past my ears from a flyrod. Our outings were to the clear rocky streams of Central Texas with a cooler full of food and beer.
We spent weeks on the Texas Coast in the summer. You want a purifying experience... sheesh. The glory of a beach sunrise is balanced by an ocean of intimate sand and salt, biting flies and man-o-war and relentless, murderous midday heat. I am hopelessly spoiled to fresh-caught shrimp, fish and crab. I spent hours in the waves, body-surfing with the mullets and investigating the rich microcosm of the shallows. In the mornings I would walk until I was tired on beach, entranced by shells and the raucous lyricism of the gulls and skimmers.

In June in Texas, the thermometer spikes to 100 degrees and it does not come back down on a regular basis until nearly October. By September, 90 F is a cool breeze.

Here in Indiana that seems so very far away, the days are in the 80s but the air is literally soggy. Astonishingly enough, I experienced some deep pangs of homesickness for the intense blaze of the Texas sun accompanied by the cool waters of the pristine San Marcos River. If I went and sat in the oven for about an hour and then took a cold shower I might be able to accomplish the feeling if not the scenery..

One of my deepest interests is foraging for wild foods. We used to pick grapes on the riverside from my dad's johnboat (a flat-bottomed aluminum craft) and make grape jelly, a tradition I have taken with me. I try not to turn the kitchen nearly so purple now as my mom and I did as we extracted the powerfully acid muscadine, or "mustang" grape juice.

Here in Indiana, the earth is incredibly rich and, wonder of wonders to this lifetime semidesert rat, it rains on a regular basis. Big black clouds gush cold rain onto rich earth, and the result is a disregarded bounty in the parks and waste places.

Early in spring I became obsessed with finding morels. I found them. It is more like a hunt than any gathering I have engaged in previously. They have a rich earthy mushroomy taste, but truly finding them is actually more exciting than eating them. Not that I won't squabble for my share, mind you!

I made a mushroom and rice dish that I fed to our dear guest instructors Goyo Ohmi and Eric Tribe at Wood and Steel III when they arrived from Canada. Cooked morels look a bit like tired octopus (tako if you eat sashimi) but taste much better. I found nearly 50 morels all told, not bad for a beginner. I wait happily for next morel season and spy out new hunting spots with the gusto of a lioness eyeing a watering hole.

Later in the spring, I found raspberries! O rare treat indeed! I gathered and gathered and made some delicious seedy raspberry jam. Chuck doesn't like berries so I suppose that will be around for a while. Next year perhaps I will make a cordial. June came and the acres of blackberries at a local city park ripened. Monica and Chuck and I filled my largest basket with the brambly treats, and I made cobbler, jam, and froze about three gallons for Martin to make into wine. Then, in August, the wild cherries started to ripen. These are things better gathered with a stick and a sheet, but I picked them by hand. Have to be careful with wild cherries, they contain toxic prussic acid and unless you're going to cook them thoroughly they have to be meticulously de-stemmed and pitted. But they make _delicious_ jam. Yum!
Shortly after the cherry adventure, Chuck and I ventured to Eagle Creek and picked about a gallon of river grapes. I made a tart and lively jam with them. I have another batch of them in the sink which I hope to hand over to Martin for making into wine. He keeps talking about making something called a "lambic" which I am curious about.

I gathered some apples this morning as well, it's a wonder to me why people will spend money on the toxic, mealy waxy things at the store and never glance at these trees groaning under a burden of creamy crunchy sweet tartness. There's not much like this in Texas, that's for damnsure!I wait like a kid waiting for Christmas for my very first Fall.

In Texas you know it's fall when the leaves leave tiny smoke trails from the trees as they burn from the branches under the ferocious sun. Here, the bright green of summer has faded dull and hints at gold and scarlet round the edges. For her birthday I sent my mom a card with some early brilliant leaves in it.

You knew I might get political.. the deepest passions of the soul are what we bring to our politics, after all. If you knew that the government was participating in subsidizing the sale of toxic or non-beneficial substances, that it was denuding forests in Brazil so that we could pay less for something that is killing us, would you chalk it up to Darwinism and hope it didn't raise your health insurance costs? If you were hungry, if you couldn't afford to go to the grocery or pay rent for a kitchen, what would you do?Do you have the knowledge to support yourself? Can you walk outside your door and identify even three things that grow wild that would nourish you? Do you trust the government, which is subsidizing beef (ground water? trees? topsoil? who needs it?) and tobacco (nicotine is a standard ingredient in rat poison and is the most addictive substance we have around) to make it easy for you to get food that is delicious, clean and good for you? I'll brush good clean earth off any edible and bring it home a prize, but you can't get me to eat things from a street or sidewalk or any drive-through. Perhaps it is my personal rebellion, I love to look outside and see a world my species adapted to hunting and gathering in, so generous with its bounty when you know where to look. To walk in the woods and know that the cherry tree will give me treats, the hickory will give me protein both from its fruit and the squirrels who get so fat on them, to know that a little yarrow will smell wonderful and ease mosquito bites, to know that I might find a sassafras leaf to rub between my fingers and sniff and savor, this is home to me.
I see children raised by the media who think, like their damnfool parents, that the outdoors is a giant toilet, and I want to show them exactly what they are shitting on. People ask me what I am picking, is that edible? Their grandmothers likely made jam or jelly from these same plants, but we have forgotten.
They have no conception of the part they play in their world. They have fallen for what Daniel Quinn, in _The Story of B_ calls "the big lie" that humans are separate from nature. We are not. We may scent ourselves artificially and never eat anything that hasn't seen a butcher, factory, or megafarm, but we are still hyperactive, noisy predatory apes.
For some reason humans have become accustomed to a diet of clowns and music videos, we eat what is "cool" to eat and pay no attention to the needs of our bodies or spirits, when what the cells of the body actually encounter is actually a mixture of monocropped, overfed, chemical-laden chaff and lard. I love a good steak but I'd like wild venison better. I drink wine and beer and good scotch, I use olive oil and garlic in abundance and my mate is a fabulous Southern cook.
But what I love best is something I or my mate caught, made, and served to my family with my own hands. I love sharing what I know, knowing that understanding how delicious wild grapes and apples are might save tiny spaces of what I love from greed and stupidity, at least for my short lifetime.

As I update my old web site, I'm going to transfer the stuff I like over to this blog.
This next post is from March 2002.

If I recall correctly, author and scientist Richard Dawkins flatly dismisses the myth of race.
As I like this theory, this essay becomes a moot point. However, for those who still thrive on myths and cling to illusion, here's my opinion on racism in budo:

Updated March 18, 2002:
There is something I am very tired of. A certain childish attitude, in the world of budo. It is born of insecurity and lack of confidence, born of closemindedness and fear.

It is composed of the very things we seek to extinguish in ourselves by pursuing our path.
I did not see it so clearly until I went to Kim Taylor's "Sword School" in Guelph. Having been to the Guelph Sword School, where they are trying frantically to preserve ancient arts from being lost, I must say I observed a difference.
At Guelph, the differences are between ryu, not ha. That is, a whole different system. Socially, less competition. As in, between baseball and football instead of between football teams.

There is much interest and open sharing. There is mutual respect and admiration. They know what it is to do a crazy thing to a level of expertise and respect it. They don't do what you do, but they will enjoy your performance and enjoyment of it.

In the gendai budo world there is a form of racism (undoubtedly in the koryu as well, within sects). Yes, racism. "'Oh, don't talk to them.. they're a different color/school/sect. They will 'pollute your aikido/karate/judo/basketweaving' "No.Really. Even in the most polite and softened terms, anyone who forbids you to train with anyone else has something they don't want you to see about them. Anyone who thinks everyone else is a waste of time is an egotist, a megalomaniac with an inferiority complex. Naturally, a person should try to gain a base in an art which suits them, but training under lock and key is like never leaving your house.. no matter how cool you make it, you're not going anywhere. It's a kind of spiritual and intellectual agoraphobia. It's locking your door when someone of a different color walks by.

It's a terribly poisonous practice and it is robbing the aikido world (I know little of the other arts besides Wing Tsun and will tell you for free that's vicious and crazy) of a "whole vision" of what Morihei Ueshiba taught. Not to say the Japanese are sinless, in fact Hombu Dojo is known for its nationalist tendencies (see footnote by Henry Ellis) and policies which include holding back Western student so as to promote Japanese students faster.
Ueshiba taught Inoue and he taught Saotome. He taught Akira AND Koichi Tohei. If you throw away what he taught one person, what they brought away from the experience and yes, added to it, then you disregard a piece of the whole.

Can we afford to do that?
Can we, as second-third-fourth-XXX generation aikidoka and budoka, AFFORD to do that? I say no.
At the same time, we don't have to perpetuate the prejudices.

I came back from Guelph to an e-mail message which, while very sweet to me, attempted to undermine my instructor, from one of my old instructors, written under an all too traceable pseudonym.I figure he had a hard time dealing with the fact that I got to go to Guelph and get my hands on "the real thing" while he flails for truth by his own parameters back home. Geez man, let go and be glad for me! The fact remains that we cannot help those who will not either recieve help, or help themselves. I have gone out to find out more, I will meet strange people and go sword to sword with them, I will humble myself to learn from them and take what I can to those who might someday learn from me. I have nothing to lose and everything to gain. Is it all about whether or not you can hit somebody with a length of bamboo? I don't think so.

I think it's about history, about respect (hokorei...) about generations of survival in a lethal political and military climate.It's about taking what your teachers give you in blood and sweat and carrying it on. It's about supporting other people who are trying to do the same. Big arfing deal if they have other teachers. They are your brothers and sisters in preserving an ancient tradition and improving upon it.In a political climate terrified of people with power (unless they have money too) unless it's a question of character and legality, we must support one another. And we must be compassionate and try to understand that everyone does the best they can with what they have. If the person is poisonous, then be specific. If you simply don't like someone's art, don't assume they're a bad person. Just because other folks don't fit in your little cookie mold doesn't mean they're evil.

Can we turn up our noses because of the unknown and the assumed?
What do we gain, with closed minds?

Now, here is my dare, for you. Try something new. Add to your collection of perspectives. Are you content with your tiny piece of it? I dare you to kick at the darkness til it bleeds daylight. Don't just cower behind your door, or under your label, or behind your shield. So, you're already right about everything? What does that mean, if you only do one thing and won't think about anything else?

If you want the karateka's version of this, go to www.24fightingchickens.com. If you want to talk about genetic racism, sorry, can't help ya. Don't suffer from it (I don't even believe there is any basis for it!).

A footnote from Henry Ellis Sensei, posted on the aikido list:
"Hi Chuck,
I totally agree with you and others on the subject of grades in Aikido. In the 1950's several of us that were students of the legendry Kenshiro Abbe sensei were graded to dan grade, we all trained at least four to five nights a week, with three hours every Sunday, these were some of the best aikidoist's I have ever seen, all dan grades were graded by Abbe sensei, our certificates were signed by O'Sensei. In the very early 1960's Aikido was now expanding very quickly throughout the UK, Abbe sensei asked O'Sensei to send another teacher to the UK. The first teacher O'Sensei sent was Mikoto Mashailo Nakazono, we were all shocked to learn that we were to be regraded by Nakazono Sensei, the gradings were harder the second time around, I must add that the first grading was tough enough, we all kept our grades except one who was demoted from 2nd dan to first, this was the occasion that Nakazono stated " Necessary sell your gi while prices are high " this guy was a great student and a good 2nd dan, he was totally gutted after that, and it was not long after that he gave it all up. Now back to Chucks point, we later found out that Abbe sensei had received a letter from the Hombu dojo to advise that all Western students should be held back from promotions in grade, this was obviously to enhance the grades of any visiting Japanese."
-Henry Ellis

Travels in Germany: Badenland-- Frieburg is as like Home as I can imagine.
Austin is in a unique corner of the world, especially of Texas, an exceptional cultural and environmental crossroads, with the best of everything at everyone's fingertips. University town, people come for their education, fall in love and want to stay.

Unfortunately, as in my hometown, this leads to the foundational entities in the town taking their residents for granted and diminishing their returns for their work to the point that they cannot afford any more than poor emigrants quarters in the town they love. Certainly the market bears what it will, and those choosing to deal with it pay, but certainly there is a point of diminishing returns.

So in this beautiful rolling country, the toenails of the Vogesians (Vosges), urban sprawl interdigitates with plowed fields and terraced vinyards. Our friends live a few minutes walk from something called the Tuniberg, a cute little hill covered, at the moment, in slightly tired grapevines with individual fat, slightly dried clusters of dark Spatlese grapes. My friend Eva and I took turns nibbling these sticky, juicy, sweet and sour treats right off the vines. Our other friends don't quite regard the outdoors as the big snack bar that we do. I tend to wander around nibbling everything that looks vaguely edible, provided it isn't actively trying to get away from me at the time. Rose hips, leftover berries, half-frozen schlehen/sloes, mints, oregano, edible flowers and trees are all part of the buffet. In harvest season, apples always line my pockets, earlier, I always have a bag or basket for berries and mushrooms. The world is so rich, why let any of Mamma Natura's cooking go to waste? I feel that she gets her feelings hurt, when we do. Having grown up in such a ferocious environment, Texas, I find this soft bountiful bosom of Middle Europe positively intoxicating.

What also reminded me of home was that it was scarcely cold at all. I hadn't brought anything cool enough, and was sweating in my light silk turtleneck and jeans! Andy, of course, Northerner that he is, wore his usual black T-shirt and jeans. I think he would wear this in Alaska on a midwinter's day, and sweat through the icicles on his beard. Meanwhile, back in the Oberpfalz, we are still hovering within 5 degrees Centigrade of freezing most of the time.

Baden is warm, inviting, bounteous, and crowded. The nature of the land and the people has a deep French influence, and there, where German and French interdigitate is also hard to discern. Okay, the bathrooms are cleaner on the German side, and the food is better on the French side. Go to the French side for red wine and cheese, and the German side for meats and white wine. The Badischer white wine is just wicked good, and they tend not to export the goodies. The French are the same way. All I can say for wine is, buy it where it comes from. No one exports their *really* good stuff, and it's always worth the travel, to go to the source.

I love Badenland, but so does everyone else.

What's different about being here?
Besides the doorknobs (usually a horizontal lever instead), everything closed on Sunday and the bewildering array of toilet methodologies?
There's no way to address the culture without addressing its trappings.
First of all, Germans are always prepared. They all learn first aid in high school, and are required to keep first aid kits in their cars and render aid on the highways.
In keeping with local culture, I saved a little bit of sidewalk salt from last year, or maybe I just had it left over... An early snow made me glad I had! We came back from a mostly sunny Halloween trip to Cesky Krumlov through fairly thick, wet snow. No need to shovel, but the salt was a Good Thing.
Most of our neighbors have built up stacks of wood a beaver would envy. As in the US, Christmas schlock is already up. Formally, the winter festival here does not begin until the beginning of Advent. I can't explain Advent to you because I was never Catholic, and it's a Catholic thing.
I've settled into German culture comfortably enough to know to greet my elders first and respectfully, carry my own basket and/or bags to the grocery, and how to complain when the price rings up incorrectly. Sometimes I even keep my front walk swept, but honestly we are not interested in trying to compete with German standards of house and/or yard keeping. It is the law that anyone living on a property must clear a path to their door so that anyone who may need to come to the house may do so without injury. This can be a chore in snow season, but we've learned to keep after it.
In Germany, you can't put mail in your box for the postman to pick up. You can GET mail in your box, and tons of adverts from kids who make a little money from stuffing boxes with them. But you have to go to the box to get your mail sent anywhere. Don't try to go to the post office. It won't be open. Not on Wednesday afternoons, not over lunch (11-2) and CERTAINLY not after 4pm. It makes me wonder who actually works on the mail? Even the Germans can't be that "fleissig" (industrious).
Incidentally, "fleissig" is a great compliment, but to call someone "faul", or lazy, is a deadly insult. I recently taught the Germans who work at the gym the word "malingerer" and they love it.
On our way into the Czech Republic for cheap shopping thrills, a Nuremburger tried to slam into the border crossing line ahead of us. I told my hubbie to roll down the window and tell them it cost 25 Euro for that place in line. It resulted in the usual conversation about how they made a mistake and didn't see that the line was single file, bla, bla, bla. I used the word "unfreundlich" loud enough to let them know I thought they were rude. They quit trying for a new paint job, and horned in on someone else.
This may well be my shodan in German culture. It made the whole thing funnier, cut the tension, and made our young American newbie (okay, 2 years here) friends collapse laughing in the back seat.
"More civilized than Thou" leads the charge here, in a big way.

A few weeks ago, I said some thing I came to regret, online. Not because they weren't true. Perhaps because they were. The person I aimed them at is someone I think should be an icon, but has instead become a kind of liability. The details don't matter. I was miserable about my own gracelessness and lack of tact, though people have told me I was perfectly tactful. I think it is my Jekyll/Hyde problem, that I have cultivated a fluffy bunny skin to keep my dragon's teeth in.

My sensei observes that, in and out of kata, my entire body language changes. I take little lady steps in, great ferocious strides within the irimi, the practical part of the kata, and little lady steps out. It's an interesting interface between socialization, training, and nature.

I found a deep well of ferocity and rage, when I thought my teacher or my old dojomates might be hurt. I didn't care what others thought, I was going to defend my family. The fangs and claws and "dragon breath" came out, and I lost control and let it go. I lost control because of some bodywork which tore down some of the careful architecture of my limitations, I lost control because of some Spanish red wine and I lost control because I am so devoted to my old dojo family. I let that message fly, and fried in my own sweat and regret all night. I was ashamed at my lack of control. This was the central issue. I was terrified at this lashing out at the same person, again, over issues I can never change, issues my "family" can and will deal with. Issues this teacher knows about, and wrestles with on a very personal level. I know it's his fight, and I know he's trying to do the right thing. It just didn't work for me, and I couldn't communicate why, so I did what an INFJ does. I left. It's an awkward theme for me. I can't explain it because it would hurt too many feelings, and I leave. It explained my ex-marriage as well.

My old teacher said "I believe our training is not only to end conflict, but not to begin it. I hope your ire will cool but never your fierce heart."

I came out, apologized, and rededicated myself to my training.
I have done so on an unprecedented level. Every time I face the dragon, I change.

This place is very deep and very soft. This place, I just try to do what's good for me, and listen to other people about what I should do. My sense of self is well-developed enough for me to have an automatic filter. But in terms of the true basics: how to exercise, what to eat, what to drink, how to train-- I've had enough of my own advice. Certainly there are things that work for me, such as staying away from sugar and wheat and getting lots of "walkies". I've enlisted a personal trainer, and sworn off my own old black belt, on the mat. I try to see everything as for the first time. Lordy, I'm trying not to say "I" so often. I want to hear what other people are saying. I can listen to myself anytime. I have picked up the brush and the pencil again, and that's a miracle in and of itself. That, and the complete redesign of my web site, will keep me amused all winter. There is nothing like trying for complete compliance with what you see, to make you calm and whole.
I am trying to walk into the world assuming nothing.
Don't assume, however, that this has anything to do with conformity. Just listening, and doing my best to learn.