We are designed to be migrational. 

We Pans narrans, can't take the heat of summer, nor can we bear deep winters, if not well dug in and provisioned. 

Our special skill is adaptation, we move, we migrate. 

The Karankawa of South Texas were reknowned as direly vicious killers who bathed in alligator fat and ate anything they weren't closely related to. 

This is how you have to live, to survive in Texas. 

If the heat doesn't drive you barking mad, the heat will.. wait, the insects will.. wait, the parasites will.. wait, the .. well, if you aren't mad, you aren't paying attention, in Texas. 

Not paying attention, is its own form of madness. 

I do pay attention, to the deep pulses and textures of where I am, and what I am doing. 

I live in a kinesthetic world of sheeps' wool, leaf textures, and the skin, muscle, bone & fascial textures, the kinesthetic world of my clients. 

This is how I root. 

This is why I love to work with farmers, those who live in intimacy with the land. They will know, in their skin, to their bones, what to do and how to do it. 

I will pick it up, not just from asking them about what they love, but how their bodies react to it. 

I learn the lay, the ley, if you will, of the land, from the bodies I touch. 

If they have been here for generations, that's information. 

If they came here from Southern California, and settled deeply, that's also information. 

It's normal, to tell you, that I have an idea of how the season will go, because I chatted with a client about it. 

It's not so normal, to tell you that I gained a sense of the season, from the neurological ripples though their bodies as they talked about it. 

But I do. 

And it seems normal, like reading the phone book. 

My sense of rootedness, my need to grow things and see them fruit is one sense of a way to survive. 

My sense of adventure, my ability to fit into and fall in love with other cultures, my curiosity & intelligence, is another. 

This is a good place to be, but I am curious, as to where it will lead. 

Here in the verdant spring of Maryland, we have cool nights. 

I have a cheap acrylic guayabera, split down one side from use.. I wear it out on the back deck in the blessedly chilly May spring nights here. 

Frederick lies in the lap of the Catoctins by the Appalachian trail, so remnants of mountain weather wash down to us. I was up on the mountains at Gambrill State Park a week or so ago, checking out nonexistent morels. The mist was so bad that I kept wanting to clean my glasses: I don't wear any. The wind was so bad, I could lean on it when hiking uphill. 

I remember May as the worst time of year, in Texas, when there was no longer any hope of cool breezes, and the humidity really started to kick in. Hope just dies in that kind of heat. Hope, energy and optimism simply wither in the hothouse heat. 

We've had to run the cool side of the heat pump, once. 

It's the only side that seems to work.. 

It was Patsy Klein, who figured it out. 

We are Crazy. 

Like Teddy Thompson, looking at his superstar dad who has made his living staying up late and singing.. 

We all think, we should be so lucky. 

Richard T, knows he is not so lucky.  He knows he worked like hell on the guitar, fell to some place he would really scratch his own head about, and now the rest of us think we can take a nap if he's on the air or the sound system. 

Quite the opposite.. this one is still Paying Attention, and we should too.

Sophie Hawkins did some crazy things with situational sound. 

The people who had to step into "Damn, I wish I was your Lover"had some serious game to play. 

Imagine having your skull spun around its axis, for six years Try to figure out where you are, when no one will give you a point to fix on. Try to build a career on that. 

Despite six years of trying to orient to Germany, you end up on the NE coast of the US. 

Welcome to my world. 

Despite probably the most apt and willing welcoming committee this side of a full-on Welcome Wagon, I'm still marooned and paddling for my life. 

Now, 

I am not afraid, and I can swim. I can even wait. 

I am looking for a direction to swim into. I need a line of attack. 

I am, after all, a military orphan, whether I like it or not. 

Don't hate me, don't excommunicate me, because I have been in this service. 

I will never devalue the service of anyone, in any service, because we are all here, together, and we cannot know the ways in which we can help one another. I have personally defied, and complied with, every meaningful order, to help other human beings. I will continue to do so. 

We must simply try. 

I don't think that's crazy. 

Not helping others, is crazy. I choose to help. 

www.frederickrolfing.com

This post is just for me. 

I am here for one thing, one thing only. 

I am here to figure it out best I can, find what I am good at, and seek my path. 

For me, it's about deliciousness. 

Pleasure in being is maximally subversive. If people believe in, and are at home in, their bodies, they don't need imaginary beings and delusional principles to live by. 

I've been a train wreck since birth. Bodywork has brought me back to a kind of pre-birth optimism, honed by the fighting spirit of a body roughly handled, from its first second of existence. No one can hurt me, as much as I was hurt in my first hours of existence. I was born addicted to nicotine and possibly alcohol. 

And I was easy & lucky.

Learning to live as more than a train wreck, learning to not rely on pain and anger, has been the trick for me. Learning and appreciating that I AM the lucky one, that I get to pay attention and make changes, this keeps me active and participating. At the same time, I realize that I am over-activated, and need to take time to gather information and not just react. I might do too good a job of that. 

It's about the principles:

Mutual benefit

Maximum efficiency

Mutual courtesy

For me, it's about these things. 

In that order. 

For me. 

"There's flies in the kitchen

I can hear all their buzzin', 

How the hell can a person

go to to work in the mornin'

Come home in the evenin'

And have nothin' to say?

To believe in this livin', is just a hard way to go

To believe in this livin', is just a hard row to hoe."

Fights within a family, are always the worst. 

I've been there, I've lived through death threats, and countered them, in person. In family.

It's a deep and terrible Trouble. 

I'm looking at another rift I fear, will drive a dear and beautiful family, apart. 

I'm sure there's nothing I can do about it. 

I'm positive the rationals and the intuitives will never find a common ground. 

I say that in despair, as one who is both. 

This is my rational mind speaking, as a rational who has spoken to intuitives, and found a kind of "ad hominem*" defense. I personally would never dispose of the intuitive approach, it's too valuable. I would seek only, to explore how it works. 

I do it, I AM it. 

I have dedicated myself to the rational deconstruction of my incredibly powerful intuition, in order to prove the validity of it. 

Everything that works, can be proven. Every worthwhile concept, stands any test, and is refined by testing. We only have to be smart enough to do it. 

Meanwhile, we must stop taking exchange of information, as personal attack. 

This is a rational approach. If X quotes research as saying the sky is blue, Y has to come up with adequately researched info that says the sky is, in fact, purple with green marshmallows, which 200 others have said they have also seen the purple with green marshmallows, before anyone with any rational perspective, takes it seriously. 

This is the rational world. It's a matter of rational consensus, not just that me and my friends have decided that the sky is purple today, and you have a dark shadow on your left hip. Hello, I have hip dysplasia, proven by scientific X-Rays. That feeds into the Ad Hominem argument, but I put up with a lot of moralistic bullshit about my self-image and my left hip being my female persona which was, let's face it, bullshit, because I have developmental hip dysplasia and I'm more comfortable in my gender identity than most US senators and most Rolfers. 

The scientific answer was a relief for me. My mother had a lot of scar tissue in her uterus from peritonitis, I was crowded as an embryo, and I have a hip problem. It's pretty common, if you research it. It's not my fault. It's not her fault. 

Belief systems which make it my fault, are not helpful to me. I have to do a lot of extra work around it already, because it didn't develop properly. My mom has tried to apologize about it, and I had to tell her it wasn't her fault either. I was glad to do that. We need to understand the physical world well enough to navigate it rationally, and not load our over-rational selves with any more guilt in any situation. Our goal in life, should be to dismantle guilt, because it is not functional. An extra load from the belief system, on top of any existing systems of physical maintenance, have not been helpful. 

The fact is, that we live in a rational world, and rationality is the rule the modern world plays by. 

Keep in mind as well, that we are here to subvert these rules. 

There is a principle in martial arts, of Jyu, or yielding. 

This means you blend with the existing flow, in order to bring it to your own center. 

If we do not do this, we cannot compete for resources. 

If we cannot compete for resources, and people keep getting mutilated by surgical and chemical science, just because they will play the game, and we won't, what will we have accomplished?

Look at everyone who got cut, before they came to you, in your practice, and everyone who goes surgical or medical before they come to you, or look at the fact that they give up to the fact that life sucks, instead of getting great bodywork. Chemistry and cutting wasn't appealing, and they don't know about alternatives. This is the fault of the RISI, and a lack of public outreach and education. 

It's' the ones who won't give up, who come to us. 

We should learn from them. 

If we cannot, we will not survive. It's that simple. 

There are those of us, who don't care to go down that easy. 

A simple disagreement is no reason for extinction, unless you make it so. 

*Look it up. Educate yourself. Your intuition will only get you so far, and the rest of the way is just wherever you are looking.

I'm beginning to stumble on the need to meditate. 

It's a little weird.. but without a lot of training, I find myself missing the Zone. 

In a hot bath, last night, seeking that Space, I found myself deep in my debt list. 

There are so many, who have stepped in and brought me forward. 

You know, I get it about me. 

I'm a butterfly train wreck, I'm a collection of talents and interests, brought together in a deeply physically, and even mentally limited, package of boundless curiosity and ambition. 

The great divide, within me, is that ingrained Texas awshucks/self-deprecation and the steep ambition of the powerfully dominant personality which allowed me to take my own path in martial arts and other endeavours. I really am the egomaniac with the inferiority complex. 

My task is, to balance this with a realistic understanding of my environment. 

The last decade of my life has been a nonstop cascade of leaps & bounds in terms of personal, social, intellectual, physical and emotional development. 

Over ten years ago, in June 1998, I passed my black belt test for shodan, first degree black belt, in aikido. 

It had been about ten years, since I started the effort. I was deeply ambivalent about the group I was training with, would rather have been doing another style, and lost a judge's vote to the opinion that I was doing that, rather than my original style. My partner was from that style, not my own, as my own choice had not been able to attend the testing event. 

The fact that I adapted, should have meant something.  

The dissenting teacher ended up leaving the style anyway.. 

I was very close to one of them, and terribly fond of the other (dissenting one notwithstanding). 

The dissenter really helped me form my opinions, and for that, I'm grateful. I bear no ill will. I don't care. I'm on to the things that really matter to me now. 

That's the vital thing. I'm on to things of vital importance, for me, for my interests, for my passions. I want to know how bodies work, in all things, in all situations. I want to keep and learn some old traditions, because they improve me as a human being, because they challenge me, and make me happy. I am never happier, than when I am wielding weapons of great grace, precision, & lethality. 

A teacher new to me, quite a good one in SMR jodo, actually apologized for telling me to "back the motherfucker up".  Well, we are still getting acquainted. He doesn't know that I have chased Charolais bulls with nothing but a bullwhip and a good dog, shot , killed & eaten rattlesnakes (got a nice belt to show for it)  killed rats with a hard boot, and rabbits & chickens to eat. 

Most people never have these experiences, and waltz into budo with no frame of reference. 

I grew up in a culture of responsible gun ownership, felt comfortable in the military framework, and find classical Japanese martial arts a rational way to relate my relatively Paleolithic personal life to the rest of the world, in a strategic manner. 

There is a kind of laugh, when you get exactly what you want. Involuntary, delighted, like when sleight of hand really surprises you. 

That's what I go looking for, in budo. 

 

I need to test myself, I need good, no, great friends to test myself with, in a safe, sane & supportive environment where we won't hurt ourselves or each other. I need it, I need to be here. Early & often. I need to test and be tested. 

My teachers got me here. 

If it works, why not rely on it, to work for me. 

Because the people who care about me, made it work for me. 

The are all still here, holding me up, getting me there. 

I never stopped feeling any of your hands, holding me up here. I am still listening, I am still studying, and I am still unapologetically doing the work I am here to do. 

My "house sensei" CG, Joe, Jim, Stephen, Brendan (you especially!) Andy W, Frank Gordon,  Mr Matl, Kregg, David H, Kawakami S, Kurt VQ, William B, Dan A, Dennis H, Jonathan W, folks at Austin WT, Greg and Guy, and some rei to those now gone: Bill Sosa & George Simcox.

My bodywork teachers include Tom Lang, Carol Shifflett, David Lauterstein, John Conway, Christoph Sommer, Pierpaola Volpones, Dorit Schatz, Peter Schwind, Alain Croibier, Tessy Brungart, Jane Harrington, Cosper Scafidi &... 

At the end of the weekend, I will be an Advanced Rolfer. Whatever that means. 

What it means to me, is that I have a lot to pay forward. 

Today would have been our 16th anniversary.

It was Valentine's day, 2000, when I walked in with bags of groceries, knowing I would be turned out the door hungry, determined to give us both, the gift of freedom. 

I looked him in the eye, a perfectly good man, and I told him that I wasn't happy, and that I had not been happy for a long time. I looked him in the eye and I did it. 

For the marriage, it's just kind of a bittersweet emotional cyst. It forms my frame of reference. 

My separation came with multiple trips without him, he was just too frozen in his ways to adapt to travel, and I had developed a taste for it.  I had dragged him along, but had come to the end of my patience with that. 

I was also realizing that the rest of the world, was healthier for me than Texas. Maryland seems to have junipers, but it also has a lovely spring. Cherries and pears bloom like pastel popcorn along the quaint walks & parks of Frederick.  There are dark redbuds and red oaks in contrast.

There's a way to have Adventures from a stable base, which doesn't compromise your lifestyle. 

That's what I'm working on. 

The thing that really made it easy, was that we didn't have kids. I really wanted to take the cat with me, but the cat didn't do well in my apartment, the guy I thought I might get together with had a cat, and my ex really needed the company. So I took the cat back. As far as I know, old HP is still doing well. At least I hope so. 

I liked my ex a LOT better, once we didn't have to share space  & politics. 

I think that's the best I can give the conflict-ridden, just to get some space in the relationship. 

I celebrate my Unniversary because it gives me a motive to examine where I am, what I am doing, and whether it's healthy. 

I put the uncomfortable memories (stirred by a friend's impending divorce), into a better life for myself and my ex. 

Mine is better, and I don't bother him enough, to know if his is, or not. 

It's up to him. 

As it should be.

20 years after I first stepped onto the martial arts mat, that I'm going back to the same old damn question of gender. It just came up in conversation, and I'm training with a wonderful group of guys, none of whom seem to care what my gender is, as long as I show up. 

One of the instructors has the charming habit of referring to the group as "gentlemen" so I suppose I'm an honorary one now. I honestly don't care, I think it's funny. 

It's too late, far too late, for second thoughts about women in combat. We have always been there. It's just now, we are getting paid for it. Sometimes. 

The enlightened hard-asses who comprised my core curriculum in aikido, jujutsu and judo, took my measure, and took me on. 

Gently, lovingly, without ever hurting me. I'm plenty good at hurting myself.. 

They taught me what it was to get up again, when I thought I could not. 

I'm 5'8", and over 180# in bad (fat) times, and my life history is full of manual labor and physical activity. I've got the disposition of a copperhead- I'm incredibly mellow until stepped upon.

I have tremendous control over my weapon, and choose to over-control rather than injure. No civilized training partner would do otherwise. I am not so kind, with my wit. No reason to be. The uncivilized tend to be witless as well. 

The gender discrimination game is outdated, yet lumbers along like some bit of space junk, waiting to fall on some undefended province in an unnamed, unrated country. 

I've made my peace with men (I like them, as long as they are paying attention, same as the rest of humanity) and at this point, I just want to see people focus more on the things that work, than imaginary problems propped up by politicos, propagandists, and the uneducated & incurious. 

I sometimes feel like I should carry this article, written at the prodding of Deborah Klens-Bigman for the Guelph Sword School, in my dojo bag.  She edited & carried me through it, and tried to get me to change the title.. for me, the title is part of the power (and the sly joke, if you know me) of the paper. 

"Putting up with Men"

An antidote, I hope, to the same damn thing.

I think luck has an engineer, and he's a bribeable sonofabitch. 

Fortunately, I never had the latitude to care. 

Survival leaves so few ways to complain. 

It's not convenient. Life isn't fucking convenient. I'm attending an advanced bodywork class this weekend, some good CEUs and good teachers. 

Someone offered a sweat lodge, and that sounded great to me, but women on their period are invited to "pray outside the lodge for the benefit of the ceremony" sorry , the benefit of the ceremony is in the mechanical function of the heat and steam. It's best for cleansing, which is, biologically, what menses are about. 

It's not about some sexist idea that women who are on their period are either not pregnant or not senior enough not to bother with it, can get a sweat on. High temps are far more dangerous in the first trimester. HellO!

Seriously, the magical thinking in this community just irritates the fuck out of me. 

When we build the steam room in our basement, anyone who can fit in, can participate. They just have to be naked. Towels welcome. Clothing forbidden. Ashamed of your body? not our problem. See a psychologist.  Steam is enough to purify anyone. Honesty will do the rest. 

If you are thinking magically, sit outside in the snow and rain, and pray yourself some fucking steam. And fuck off, while you're at it, especially if you're a sexist fucker. 

The world was never my oyster. 

There it was, a round grain the size of a LeSeur pea on my tongue. 

Spat it out, rubbed the membrane off, well by damn, that's a pearl. 

Thirty years of eating oysters with enthusiasm, raw, fried, and recently, steamed, and never a pearl, unless I didn't notice it going down. I can tie multiple cherry stems, and do some things genetically limited to a very small percentage of the population, so I don't have a stupid tongue. 

It lashes out, when something happens, and I can't hold it any more. 

Sure, this hurts someone.. but I have to accept, that they weren't paying attention. 

It hurts like hell, to hold this line, to have people scream and hate and whine, but truth is truth. 

We have to hold it, when we find it. 

We have to have a learning curve leading to Truth, and rational thinking must be the goalpost. 

What other people think we should do, is rarely Truth. 

It's just convenient.

I heard an old song, and old situational feelings just flooded me. I can smell the hot sun, I can smell my old Geo Tracker and see the places I went, I can FEEL them. I can feel the desolation of the time.

That was it.. I was emotionally desolate. 

I knew it. I knew I was terribly adrift, and I was swimming like mad. I just didn't know where to go. 

Strange, that I affected the same makeup style then, as I do now (though less of it then) and these hands are the same that gripped the steering wheel, as I drove from class to class.. I was troubled, I was verifiably mad. I didn't understand how dangerous I was, or how much danger, I was in.

Now, I am sure that I was like so many other martial artists, not sure what they were pursuing, but pursuing by damn. 

Me, I was looking for someone, or something, that "got me". 

Meanwhile, I was too focussed, and closed, to let anything in. 

It's been a process, and these hands typing this post, are becoming more spotted & wrinkled in the quest, and the limbs aching & mangled, but I feel far more "gotten" these days, in my training with koryu, than I ever felt in aikido or judo. 

My first taste of SMR & genuine iai, I was completely destroyed, and I remember driving around the neighborhood of the dojo where I had helped orchestrate the seminar. 

I was actually in tears. 

I wanted to do THIS THING.

I came to a place where I just looked, and knew what it was, I am here to do. 

I need to handle weapons, I need to be good at it, and I need to have minimal risk in its application.  

I've never mentioned it, or discussed it.. my evening after class of driving around sobbing my heart out. I didn't think it was anyone's business, what I really wanted to do. If I wanted to do it enough, I would simply go do it. It was over a decade ago, now. 

There are those who claim (my former teachers among them) that the risk of injury, is the teaching tool. I've been lucky, but I've got one more ligament left in my left shoulder, and had problems in my left wrist only the most advanced of my Rolfing colleagues could solve (and did, in 15 minutes in one class) at this point, no one gets to twist me, or throw me, unless I know them very well, and know they can save me. Short list. 

I won't train with anyone who thinks that injuring me, is a useful training tool. I don't have any more room for injury, and people who train like that are psychopaths. Not interested. 

I am pretty sure, that I don't understand much about this process, except that it can, and should be, constructive. 

I am not willing to stop. 

The trick is, finding my way. 

Now, to the dreams of the late 90s, sure to find me in restless sleep tonight. 

Long and weary, clay stone dreary, 

here we are. 

He would fly, and so would I, 

into a world free of things we think we need. 

I tend to think of roofs and baths, 

not a few books, blankets, movies and that's just half. 

The things we need, they don't go with.

The things we need, are in the place we are standing, 

wherever that might be. 

Running from problems, pretending they don't exist, 

temporary forgetting is

No solution. 

Problems are problems, until they are not. 

There's that sustained effort, not running away or pretending thing. 

Ignoring is pretending, forgetting is pretending, inaction is pretending.

Pretending does not work on problems. 

I would rather know that I was fucked, 

than pretend I was not. 

I would rather expend energy to do something about it, and make sure. 

That's the difference between he and I. 

So I'll stay where I am, fucked or not. 

I can deal with it, where I stand. 

I don't run, I fight, I strategize, I survive. 

I'd rather fix it for myself, than rely on someone else. 

I am a creature of root and stone, I need the earth. I can only fly for so long.. 

Sure I can wander, sure I can migrate, but life is chaos enough

without inviting more. 

I'd like to take the time

to see some gardens grow

in the ground, and in my life. 

They don't grow quickly, and impatience is poison

in the garden. 

Too much fiddling kills a fire, fast. 

I'm tired of not being heard

I'm tired of not being remembered

I'm tired of not having time to grow. 

I know, I should TAKE time to grow. 

It's the same old problem and

I wonder if it's generational or if

men just cannot hear women

and don't listen to them

and never will?

Roots and stones.. 

One wraps around the other

together, we are the earth

pulling in different directions. 

Here it is Spring and all.. found a nest of cottontails under the front porch. 

They've been all the rage on my Facebook page.

It's a real internal dichotomy, petting and nurturing these little fuzzballs who will grow up to do their best to eat my garden, while I put the garden together. I might put chicken wire over the porch to prevent it happening again.

I'm putting a kitchen garden in with the energy of someone who has not been in place long enough, to see things really grow and take root.
Or, rather, the energy of someone who has gotten things a good start along (6yrs) and had to pull up stakes and shift camp.
I'd love to know that the gooseberry was blooming, or the blackberries and raspberries along the back fence there, in the Oberpfalz.
It would bloody break my heart to walk that street again.
But I know I will do it.
I'll walk right in, say hello to the elder as I did that very first day I walked into that yard.

I'm no stranger to walking right into heartbreak.
I think you understand. The last two years have been a real bitch for me, and I'm far more protective of my personal life, than I was, which is quite an elevation. At the same time, I have to have a public life, to make a living. As you've found out with your radio shows, on which you are quite charming, BTW.

So we've got the usual suspects, plus a few, out by the front walk. I also ordered 4 hop rhizomes to plant by the front porch, which gets our best sun.
I've put in some Italian parsley seeds, day lilies, dahlias, and roses as well.
The hops are Saaz, Tettnanger, Hallertauer, and something else, I forget.. Spalt, I think. All carefully labelled, with tulips & daylilies in between.

As it goes down the sidewalk, it gets more casual.
Meanwhile, I have lost an entire Thyme plant.. which means a loss of thyme.. utterly silly.

Thyme in mind, I give up and go to dinner.
Seafood medley with tomatoes & saffron over wild rice

I suffer from a lot of generational diffidence, which, if you understand Texas culture, makes some sense. 

We are brought up not to make a fuss, ever, even over severed limbs and cranial trauma. Never mind that you just lost your house in a poker game, buy the round.. that's Texas. It's that, or slink out like a yeller-bellied skunk. Go out, guns a-blazin', is the cultural motto. Never mind if they deliver the bill to your widow. 

There is also, as lies under the bulk of American society, a tremendous amount of classism. 

Caught in that generation, whose parents couldn't do as well as their parents, and who could never, statistically, even do as well as that!  I inherited a family in the middle. We had a house and two cars, but neither parent was statistically functional enough to fill out my Pell Grant papers or the ones to Rice University (I didn't want to live in Houston anyway).

In the time I was given, where nothing was expected of me, I became an autodidact. 

I taught myself graphic and web design. I took advantage of jobs needing cheap, self-educating labor with the State of TX, and worked it into some skills still working for me, today. 

I still send people home, to look up "Autodidact". 

It means that I taught myself. 

In this world, where learning is owned by companies and complicities, the autodidacts are the ones examining, measuring, learning and speaking out. 

Nature, as India Arie says, runs the show. 

Digging in the weed barrier for the front garden, I noted odd movement. 

Brushing some fuzz & hay aside, I found two warm, live baby cottontails and one cold dead one about 10 inches from the nest. 

I cuddled the two back into their nest, knowing they were as likely to be abandoned by their mother as they were to have anything else happen to them. I brought the neighbors over so that the kid, a 8-9 year old wiser than his short years, could hold the larger, more robust of the bunnies. I know the bunny will most likely die, so the best I can do, is share the experience of holding this brilliant little life. We can't save them, and it's not our place to. I taught them a little about the handling of baby bunnies, and tucked them back in again. 

Later, I went out to finish my work, and the littlest one had gotten hungry and impatient for its dam to return (I had obviously disturbed the feeding schedule) had started hopping and bumping around energetically. 

Mindful of the dead one I had tucked into some bushes for the elements to take care of, I put my warm hand into the nest to calm them. The older kit ignored it, but the younger one sniffed and sniffed, nosing along my hand for sustenance. I tucked the litter and fuzz around them again, and held my hand over both of them, until they stopped moving so much. 

Then I wrapped up my work, and went inside, so Mama Bunny could come along, if she chose to do so, and feed her mislaid children. 

Sometimes they don't, and tomorrow morning, I may well find two cold corpses, to match the one I found today. 

I'll put them in the bushes, for the elements to take care of. 

I am not God in my garden. 

I am just the caretaker. 

If I am obedient to the laws of Nature, I will shape my environment to feed myself, and do as little harm as possible. Thus, I will let a young mother rabbit lose some kits, if she puts them in a bad place. 

Rabbits aren't endangered, they are doing just fine, and I'm not about to propagate something that would eat my food with great energy & ingenuity, given some particle of a chance. 

It's a kind of compassionate detante.. we'll see how far that goes, after they eat the hops and bok choy.

I'll try not to give them a chance at it. 

A dear friend is approaching the end of his marriage. 

Like so many things we get in a pattern with,  he has been locked in combat for years. 

Me, I hid the combat, and wondered why my resentment came out in psychopathic symptoms. 

I realized, that my inner life, and my outer life, were so far apart, as to tear my own psyche apart. 

Rather than go the "crazy route" I was already pointed down (following my ex's family pattern set) I broke free and recalculated. My life GPS was my own, at that point. 

There are some things that are going to happen, when a marriage finally breaks. 

First of all, it is going to HURT. 

Second of all, there will be collateral damage. 

Third, you have to line up your resources, and hang onto them. 

There is the dive into the tunnel, there is the long swim in the dark, and then there are those breaths of air on the other side. They come, long before you can see the light. 

Be soft and open.. it is better to know you are going to be hurt, than to miss something you might want to have seen.  At this point in our lives, we know how to take hits. Sometimes you have to careen, and bounce.. it's a starter point for bouncing back. Take the hit, it may help you stand back up. 

Let go. 

Nothing matters but mutual welfare and freedom. Focus on that, work on that. 

The nasty old things of the past, are what you are both working to be free of. 

You can't focus on that enough. 

Don't chew your own limbs off, to escape. 

You might need them, later. Don't give up resources, you can't do without. Find a way to make it work, without selling your @ss downstream. 

Be glad about it. 

It's been coming, and this is the end of a lot of suffering. For the whole family. 

Put the marriage down as compassionately, as you would a beloved pet. Even if you don't love the circumstances or members of the arrangement, the thing itself still needs to be mourned. The remains need to be able get dug into the earth, so that everyone can be nourished, rather than tormented, by whatever resolutions evolve from the dissolution. 

I'm still apologizing to people I hurt, between episodes of me getting hurt. I'm not a hater, I reserve my wrath for those who work hard to earn it, but in my general "life angst" it seems my pain spilled over, even when I thought it was well hidden. 

Reach out to friends. 

I can't count the doorsteps I showed up on. Some of them just long enough to say "take care of him" and then walk away. Almost a decade later, I'm back in touch with some of them. 

I was never more naked and aware, than I was in that time. 

It was terrible, and magnificent, and I hope to never have to do it again. 

There is still no answer, as to what is Home.

Home is so much, where you make it. 

Our society is so desperately migratory, whether it be for economic or social survival. 

Home is where you can grow something. 

In the earth, in your life, in any medium possible. 

If you can grow yourself, if you can grow something, you can live there. 

The variable in the equation is, the time allowed, the time you want, and the time you end up having. 

Knowing that, we never have as much time as we want, to do what we want to do, should shape the variables for those of us with control over some of the other variables.

What if you could bring everything that was HOME, to you, to where you are now?

The good, the bad and the things that just make your life, your life?

I got that gift today, courtesy SW Airlines. 

My mom is here to visit, and it's a truly weird & wonderful experience. My mother is a an information supermonster, a real geek supreme, oddly restrained by circumstance & culture. One of few Texans able to converse in dialectic native Espanol, a professional translator and total wallflower punstress supreme, that's my Mom. 

I'm not sure she could still step up and make chicken soup like she used to, or those fabulous chocolate chip cookies we both used to eat more of the dough of, than make cookies from.. 

Meanwhile, my mom is here, and it's some kind of huge milestone in the escaping from Texas meme our family has been laboring in all these years, before I cut my own way out. 

You know, when you are  sick or sad, all you want is your Mom. 

Somehow, by making my own, at home here, her essence is here forever.

One of my life's goals, has been making the important people in my life, feel as loved when they are sick or ill, as my mom did for me. Perhaps that shaped what I ended up doing for a living. 

The big difference being, that while you never cease to function as a fixed point from dependence on your own mother, we, as bodyworkers, try to give our clients their own points to work off of. The grammar is not great here, but the idea comes across, that we all need our own concrete points of reference, for our lives. 

Do we live in a hot place, or a cold place?

My mom wants her windows open, though it will be about 11F outside tonight. I don't care about the heating  bill, I care about her diabetic circulation. I know how to get it going again, at least  thermogenically, in the am, and I have a medical contact if I can't. 

So many years under the air conditioner, does things to one's perspective, that a week's worth, under an open window, can not deny

The down comforter should keep her comfortable.. I know the joy of cool breezes and down comforters, as another Texas native, and would never deny her. 

When, at the end of life, someone wants something crazy, what else matters?

In fact, she may last another 1-15 years. 

We should be so lucky. 

I'll try to lend motivation. 

Meanwhile, I am certainly gaining my own health-oriented motivation. More, as if I needed it. 

I'm not really training right now.. at least it doesn't feel like I am. 

Recovering from injuries never feels like training, even though it's sometimes the hardest training of all.. especially if you have to change your entire approach, to keep training. 

We meet once a week with an SMR group, and will probably do more once the weather gets better, or we make our connection with the Rockville group. 

The weapons training is nothing like my years of aikido or judo training, where my body was beaten to bits, and my mind sort of spun around a bit. Here, my body makes some very prescribed movements, and my brain is placed in hot oil to sizzle. 

I am striving, to make my years of budo training inform and support, not confuse, this attempt at something resembling a mainstream koryu education. 

I feel like a Hell's Angel in MBA school. The instructors tell me they are being very direct, and I find they are being very circular in their technique. Perspective.. 

Why am I doing it?

I am doing it because I am too broken, to do it the hard way, any more. 

My sempai gives me the same old fucking tired line about women and upper body strength, and I just started laughing.. with tears around the edges. 

We're about the same age, and he's a great guy.. his younger brother is a little taller and has done a lot of different martial arts, and I pointed to him:

"I used to pick guys like him up, and slam them into walls.. I could bench 130.. " that got my new friend's attention.

No, now I have to do it the smart way. The quiet way. 

We aren't training at home, because Cg is figuring this way out for himself as well. He's got plenty of that, but I can't imagine what else he is dealing with, in there. 

I just think, we should work on it together, more often. 

We've both lost a lot. 

It's no reason to give up. 

Just because you have to try harder, is absolutely no reason to try less. 

It's new for him. 

It's the same old story, for me.