Recently I had an online conversation with a friend who hinted that he wanted me to move back to Texas.

That's probably the thorniest question anyone could ever ask me. Everything else, I have something smart and nasty for.

I don't really have any conscious agendas, back home.
My immune system, on the other hand, has other ideas.

The slightest hint of juniper incapacitates me.
Not just something answerable by even injections of prednisone, I am headed straight for bronchitis and pneumonia.

From Christmas through St Paddy's, my favorite Texas holiday, I simply cannot be there, if I want to breathe.

the theme of my life, should be the gossamer threads of the garden.
I should only be so lucky, to follow just these and the life of the forests around me, each and every day.

Just give me.. 10 minutes of mercy. 10 seconds would be fine. 

The truck misses my dad. 

He has a story to tell, and he tells us. 

It would just take 10 minutes, or seconds,  of mercy. 

We did not get them. He did not get any mercy, none whatsoever, this gentle man. 

Only what I had the staff show him, in pain relief.  Our ministrations, my brother and I, just broke his heart. The hours I spent with my own body holding him down, in sad and gentle combat, as he tried to break his broken body free, and I told him there was no way out but up.. 

We had four days of some kind of mix of mercy and torment. 

I would have given all that

for 10 minutes of mercy. 10 minutes of conversation. 

At the same time, we got to let him go ourselves. 

If you have to go, and we all do, let the ones you love hold you. 

let them play you music and love you. 

there isn't a good way. 

But there also isn't a better way. 

If it's time to go. 

I cannot change time. 

I cannot change fate. 

I can step into the shoes that fit me, and keep walking.

I may quake, I may shiver, I may be terrified and my heart may be broken beyond repair. 

I will come back from it, I will persevere through the tears.

Dad won't tolerate our deep depths of depression, he'll play a joke or sport a license plate. 

Literally, he has made fun beyond the grave for us. 

who else would cause "smelly" to be on a Volkswagen in front of us, telling fart jokes in our uncle's Suburban in traffic.  Who else would cause the random to play "rock steady" A Real Love Survives as I am crashing into tears. 

And then play Driven to Tears. 

Which my random player just did. 

Sometimes you have to listen to fate, and its messages. 

it's with earthquake shivers, I look at my fate this eve.

"My mistakes, brought me to this place, where the flowers
replace the thorns. "
(Sarah Hickman)

My brother and I have been through this odyssey with our father, and we aren't done yet, and he has, in his Pyhrric nature, given us both a way to our dreams.

In all of the additions and subtractions of fate, both of us, would just rather have our Dad, back close at hand. But he is gone, struck by a broad, gross hand, which would ask more than his simple death.

The flowers do not entirely replace the thorns.
Our Dad would have us work to our utmost, to find a way to improve ourselves.

Our Dad was a blue collar man, and I, for my own work, follow his path on a slightly more sophisticated way. I keep people working, despite their pain.

Our Dad was the son of new money aristocrats, and took the path of a laborer when he married our mother, and needed to keep a kind of family income with the US Post Office.

The awards he got, in the beginning, were abundant.
They got tired of him trying to shift the dominant paradigm.

If you don't have people in position, you can't do a thing.
This year, especially.

When I got to East Texas, a long desperate drive after a tolerable flight.. 

I knew I was walking into hell, at the Tyler Emergency Center. 

This is another story, but I walked into hell, fully armed by our father, and ready for battle. 

I can't imagine what kind of knuckle-dragging hell they took our dad into, in Palestine Regional, where they refused to give up his personal effects until I had made contact with the regional director, and made sure they knew that I had done that. 

The money in my dead father's wallet, was bait enough, to make staff lie. 

It wasn't a lot of money, not over three digits. 

They were sure that a few lies and fibs, would pay off for them. 

It took conversations, and texts with their Director, for me to walk in and get my father's effects. 

As would any sentient, emotional person, I fell apart completely upon laying my hands on the belt, wallet, glasses and familiar scent and things of my paternal.. the staff had the grace to do the same. 

I had the presence of mind to call into consciousness for them, my father's presence, hold my hand up to their startled eyes, and say, yes, he is here, and you must feel him. 

Of course I do, because the engrams of our loved ones are engraved upon our hearts. 

Because we, the living, do not know. 

But we, the living, must hold those in sacred trust to the dying, to their trust. 

What would you steal from the dying man, or his children?

What kind of worthless protoplasm are you, to try to do this?

If you will, will you at least submit to target practice?

Because you are exactly the kind of worthless mutherfucker I would like to cut into slabs. 

Come over here, and stand still for a minute.. 

They don't let you post. Forget it. 

useless.
You can't post anything, it disappears.

Blogger totally ate an important post of mine.
Couldn't post it.
Nothing moved.
Useless system.

Blogger does not save stuff you really care about.

Fuck Blogger.

This is not the mountaintop, and I am not the first to pioneer this direction.
In any case, I was never interested in it, or anything to do with Zen, status, flatus, or any of the accompanying baggage.

I am not here, to dance circles round the Sun.

I am just here to Train.
My soul is only rewarded by Shugyo, the simple fact of training which brings us all together in the holy communion of sweat and honest effort.

I only seek a venue for this simple expression of soulful effort.
Perhaps the stars, thorns, sparks and thunders of life can find their way into discipline, through our simple efforts.

It seems so astonishingly miraculous to me, that this so old discipline, can give so much to people so far removed from its origin.

In any case, I will glad and proudly take my place on our little Island of Misfit Toys, no one knows us, no one wants us, but if they are paying attention, they may start asking questions.

Now, we are at this point, and for myself, I find the tight, risky, bare trembling of new beginnings right under my hunter's nose.. you stand, or you don't.

When I know it's right, I stand like the steel I know how to sling.
When I know it's wrong, I stand ready to cut without prejudice.

you can't change the world,
you can only change yourself.

Everyone who has lost someone, is living on a great expanse of empty.
We are all searching for equilibrium.

The fact is, that every plus needs a vacuum, and every vacuum needs some kind of positive energy to fill it.

Trust me,  I have lost the linchpin of my life, of my brother's life, even more so than my own.
Every emptiness begs something to fill it.

Fill it with what sustains you.
I got a personal trainer who is constantly astonished at my bloodthirsty hunger for the heavier weight. "Yeah, you might want to hand me a heavier weight. Yeah, you might want to hand me a heavier weight.. " I have friends in budo who show up at the house and want to train. We practice one of the most painful forms of jujutsu I have ever had anything to do with.
Training as sempai to a gifted kohei, I give the attack best I can, I know it's going to hurt, and I'm OK with it. In these days, this constructive pain is a gift, it is not a pain of loss, it is a constructive pain, and I will take it, gladly, and I will rebound like something mad and rabid, and walk into the pain again and again, because it is a glad, voluntary, constructive pain, and it takes me away from the wildly deconstructive pain of grief, loss, rage and insanity I am dealing with in my deepest levels of emotional control and management.

The other factor is, that I was raised in insanity, and therefore raised to walk into pain.
So in my life, I resolutely walk into pain
again and again.

So I am rewarded by Shugyo, dancing with pain, and dealing with technology.

My body makes me lame, it makes me slow and not able to express the things I know, the things I have been shown, and I fight it.

In combat with my own balky body, I have found ways to make it work.

I call in colleagues, and I ignore pain.
Pain is my friend, pain is the mindkiller, pain is the motherfucker.
Fuck pain. Pain in the am, pain on walking, pain on stretching, pain on sleeping. Typical heel spur/fasciitis. Victim's fault? oh goodie, that's a lot of help.

I am pain, I work through pain, pain is my friend.
This, when my US colleagues can't resolve it.

I am looking forward to the EU visit, see what the perspective is.

some rationality in a world full of morons.
I did the deep work already, don't ask me again.

I feel like I'm sitting in a corner, with several ways to go.

The one that leads straight down into despair, is the one I am NOT taking. Dad would be decidedly disapproving, and he has given me so many signs that he is having fun observing and making fun of the living, that I am not so concerned about him, as he may be about me.

Since I got back from Austin, I have been scrupulous about my support.

And yet, I find myself in frequent tears of crisis, and not wanting to burden my mate.
My grief for my father, a tremendous icon in my life, is gone, and my feelings well uncontrollably. I don't want to tell him, all the time, that I miss my dad. It's a constant, not a comment. Chuck knows that. He knows, at least I hope he does, that it's another spear in my heart, one I will never recover from, and having lost loved ones, I just enter a little more solidarity..

In some ways, Dad is more with me, than he was before he was dead. I left Texas over 10 years ago, and have been dealing with his physical absence at least that long. This is of course different from knowing that he is alive and well, and has opinions, and being able to ask about them.
Now, he can sit with me in the kitchen as I cook, I can serve him a drink at his place (the one I am sitting in now) and no one is the wiser, we can nod and smile at one another, depending on how much I have had to drink, or how insane I am feeling, we can have an actual conversation.

My father never understood my budo practice.
And yet, he raised me to be a budoka.

There's your conceptual dichotomy of the day.
For me, it's just practice.

To my delight, I am not alone.

Horror.. absolute horror..

that is what we entered into, and what we have still not resolved.

What do you do with a man who is too broken to continue.
You let him go.

I'm still living with the horror of the whole procedure, from the lying across his broken breast, listening to ruined lungs, to telling him that there's no way out but UP, to having the staff pull the tubes out, and watching him go.

If anyone has to go like that, someone should hold them.
My brother and I held our dad.

We held him.

He says to me now, Stop crying, I'm okay now.

He doesn't want me to forget that.

And I don't want him to forget, that I'm OK too..
I just miss my Dad..
and I'm still Listening.

The little pink bandaid on my right index knuckle has a cute design, something for girl-children who know they are girls.

On my rough, working hand, this material has cracked and frayed, just in one short afternoon, after multiple replacements.

I turn my hand over, and I see a powerful yet gracile structure, single-jointed fingers of great sensitivity, frayed cuticles and flattened knuckles from my work. When I am training enough, keels of callus also rise. But not now.

I am a workman, I don the overalls of the Japanese monk or crafter for a reason.

These blunt fingers, this blunt mind, I like to solve problems.

The tracery of scars from bones, to skin and gristle, only helps me understand my subjects better.

My father beat his body to make our living. I have made my life's work, a way for people like him, to not be so trapped in that battle.

I have already done the work I needed to do, to reconcile.
I just did not consciously acknowledge that I was doing it.

I knew I needed to be ready. I just didn't know it would be so soon.
The means still sticks in my heart like a crossbow bolt..

I'm caught in the swirl of events, waiting to land with my own two feet, sharpening my talons for what I need to get them into.

I also have to sort through a multitude of hometown issues.. besides the broken heart and the lost icon and my family..

I have a spine of spring steel, teeth like chipped diamonds, and my heart is Pele's best friend.. I have all the resources to survive this.

It's just the steps I need to take, to really make it count.
That's hard.

For my brother..
We are in mourning, no way to deny it.

We were both close to, and crazy about our dad.
And he was crazy about us. As a proud father should be.
We are rarely gifted, with a personal relationship with our dear ol' Dad.
We are rare and dearly lucky.

He was taken from us in a particularly brutal and traumatic way, and you took the brunt of it.
The moment you told me "it's bad" and "you need to be here" I knew exactly what I was walking into. I will never forget that Jersey nurse saying "It's pretty rough in there" and me swallowing my horror, and saying "yes, I know" and walking in to be who and what I needed to be, for you, and for Dad.
Nothing else mattered to me, but that I be the powerhouse my heart can give me, from the love of my family.

One of the songs I love, by Guy Forsyth, is "If I was Sick, and I couldn't get Well"
one of the lines was "would you wait with me"
"wings made of needles, crash into the ground"
"would you take a stand.. "
"I would hold you forever, or at least until"
"I would wait with you"

We did take the stand we needed to take.
Dad gave us the legal tools we needed, to do what we needed, for him.

One of the most healing conversations I had with one of my dear clients, an Air Force medic who has been there in far, far worse situations than either you or I can imagine (she cannot attend barbeques), she was so adamant that we had done the right thing, she couldn't repeat it often enough.

"Honey, your mind may play second guess games with you, but never doubt your heart, you did the right thing, you did the best thing, and your daddy is so grateful and proud of you"

Of course I fell apart then, and I fall apart now, but in the company of those who face death and dying in the worst possible times, there is no shame.

I'm lucky, I have spent time in the company of chaos.
I know what it is to lose a good life, in a good cause. Or just to lose a life to stupidity.

Losing a life so close to my own, with the cloud we are still under.. it it always uncertainty that hurts the worst.

I am still waiting, with you.
We have, and we are, the future.

When we have healed, let us fly like he meant us to.

Posting from Austin, Texas, where I've been since late September.
Our dear ol' Dad was in a drastically terrible auto-tractor/trailer accident on September 27, and my brother and I acted on his living will and directives, and pulled the ventilator on October 1, 2011, and held our dear father as he died.
I'm sure my dad wanted it to be another way, he wanted to be eaten by coyotes, or hogs, or somehow or another to go out on a quieter note.
My biggest regret is that my father's last days were painful, emotionally difficult, and that he was, while intubated, unable to communicate precisely. My brother and I spent every possible waking hour talking to him, guessing for him, reading to him (mostly the 23rd Psalm,  I wish I could say he responded well to Thoreau and Bassho, but he didn't) and just being with him.
One of the things my father gave me, through standing up to him, was a kind of fearlessness.
I always knew I would lose him, and I always feared, that I would fall completely apart when I did. I was afraid I would howl like a coyote at the funeral, but our dear cousin Butch and his coy-dog and German Shepherd and I had several good howls, just for fun, and it totally cleared my heart. I was afraid that I would howl for days. I may yet..
I had to be very clear and present for my brother, for the family, and I had to Get Things Done, and there is nothing for the hunter but to have a quarry.
I knew, when I got on that airplane, with the health power of attorney tucked under my arm, that I was going to have to guide my brother and I through the process of letting our father go. I had very clear direction from my father, not just that, but very clear intention, and my only regret is that we waited as long as we did, and subjected to our Dad to that much more pain and privation. The dying suffer for the wants of the living. Our father spend four days in pain and unknowable privation, a proud, independent, fastidious man, unable to do a thing for himself, in incredible pain, unable to communicate, with his children obviously in distress and caring for him, drying his tears, reading to him, holding him (and holding him down, in my case). After I filed the health power of attorney, the staff was very responsive to what I felt and saw as my father's needs. His broken clavicle/scapula was incredibly painful, and after 16 hours of ineffective Lidocaine patches, I got him some Fentanyl, and he was much more comfortable, though headed down the Exit Express..
If the living really want to respect the dying, we need to learn to let them go faster, sooner, and we need to stop being so selfish.
That was what I understood from the trauma staff.. those people live to fix lives, not to prolong pain and suffering. They made it very plain to us, and I said to my brother, "we have been selfish enough" and I took his hands in mine, and we looked into each others' eyes, and I asked him the question I knew I had to ask.. "are you ready".
My brother, sick of suffering, and brave, said "Yes".
I could have never done it, without him.
Ol' Pat played some jokes on us, even on the way out. He is still making himself known, he is giving us gifts and communications.
Dad is our favorite Poltergiest, and we welcome his jokes, tricks, lessons and free and playful spirit.
I am still free, clear and present, but that great vast emptiness that is grief, is such a huge part of my life right now.
My dad would be very proud of our 10-year wedding anniversary, I'm sure he had something planned for it, we had a nice Greek dinner together with Patrick, Megan, and Mombi, and I think he would have been thrilled about that. All he ever wanted, all that made him happy, was to have as much of his family around him at one time, as was possible.
In this event, I'm sure he knows that we have been together more, and bonded more, than his wildest dreams. This extends to our dear Unka Bubba's son P (Taz) and we are talking about what older parents need to do, to leave their children free and clear to care for them, and let souls go as needed. Please go to NOLO.com, and get it done.
The blood on the tracks so far, says that that's the easier path.

In 1989, I finally made my way into formalized Japanese martial arts training. I was 19.

It was an optimistic year, I had finally gone back to college, and bundled Aikido into my community college semester, against my parent's wishes, telling them it would help me study.

It wasn't easy, I cried a lot inside, I got sick and I had to sit on the side, and I was ill-suited and had a bad attitude and I wore the wrong clothes and had a brown belt someone had given me, which I had bleached white.. I don't remember much else about this semester.

I was stiff, arrogant, stupid and stubborn.

Maybe I still am.
Now, I just know that this doesn't help me learn.

Now that I am not quite over that proverbial hill, but still playing with the young and vital, those young people who show up in your life, who persist and keep the faith with you, and they still consent to play with the broken so that we can all learn something, I am gaining the perspective I saw in the people  trained with, back when I was the springy young buck in the equation.

Thanks to some of the best bodywork on the planet, this pile of scratch and dent is still training. The twice separated shoulder is glued back together, thanks to Dr Robert Wagner, friend of my dear friend Cosper Scafidi. He said I would be back to 100% this month, and I had a moment of deep sadness, for a man who could not understand 100 of 500%.
At this point, I give him 85, which is Not Shabby At All!

Dr Robert, and his associate whose name I forget, injected a variety of biological superglues into my ruined left shoulder over a series of three sessions last year.
This year I have vastly greater stability, but in shihonage, and the big kotegaeshi throws, I hold onto that arm like it cost me 1500 bucks, which it did.

The other complicating factor is the cervical disc disease and the bulging disc in my neck, which means that impact of any kind is simply OUT.

I choose to minimize it. I don't reject it, I just find ways to train honestly, and minimize.
I'm going to tell you, not to bang me around.

Most people won't listen, so I mostly don't bother.

Everyone has the responsibility to train with their partners in a compassionate, constructive, and responsible manner. I'm nowhere in the leagues of the people who have written articles on this problem, but I have been in the trenches since 1989, and all I can do is call for awareness.

I can learn, I do learn, and I will never be "shiny" but in the end, I will be the one who has to work the hardest to remember, and pass it on. We are the ones who make the notes, write the books, and have to work hard to remember every move.

You know better, than to ignore the slow ones. At least I hope.
Otherwise, we need to renegotiate.

 a learner in a learning world;
no better place,
no leaner space.
Desire is universal,
detail is not.
Spaces are more common
than
full.

We live in
between
not in
what fills it. 

a cool morning in August.. something I dreamed of back home!
crickets chirp sleepily, a jay creaks, and the cool air is so sweet. 

There is the question of belief.

I don't believe in anything.
I may have the experience of anything.

My life is so open to What Is.

I choose not to limit myself, by Belief.

I don't accept the existing limitations.
I never have, and I never will.

What everyone believes, they're not giving up.

I am not even sure of what I am working on, but I am sure it is within rational grasp..
If it was not, it would not be worth grasping.

If you spend so much of your energy, imagining things, you abdicate reality.

Spend your energy becoming sensitive to what is.

In the words of Emily Dickinson, "to simply live, is so astonishing, that it leaves little room for anything else"

I deeply, and truly live by my namesake's statement, in the times and spaces I have to do so.

I have lived with death in the room.
I have lived with deep uncertainty.

I have lived, in places where I could stay another day, hour, or month, and no more.
I have lived in some of the safest places in the world.

The place I live now, is not one of them, and will never be, due to local wilfullness and stupidity.

We have, can, and will make that place work for us.

A kerfuffle has emerged, on my father's side of the family, yes, America's worst nightmare, rednecks with a little bit of money..  anyway someone wants to move things around and get buried in the family plot, and my dear old dad, just wants them to ask him for permission. 

You know, for those of us NOT concerned with our earthly remains, I can't think of anything worse, anything stupider and more useless, to get filled with wax and formaldehyde, and made up in some kind of hideous "lifelike" Lovecraftian simulacron, nothing would horrify my existential self more. 

Take this hard-working, startlingly functional carcass, and first of all, take what other people need. Take my beautiful menisci, which in my late 30s, were described as the menisci of a teenager, despite a lifetime of crazy budo. 

Take the corneas and retina of my incredibly well-functioning eyes. Take my taxed liver, give my kidneys to my friend Brad Wye, if it's a match. If it's not, find some kid who needs a second chance. 

One of my dad's disappointments, was that, when he reached a certain age (76 this September) he couldn't be an organ donor any more. 

I don't have a lot of patience with people who get hung up on useless remains. 

Make them useful. Fish, or cut bait. 

"Believing in this living, is a hard row to hoe.." (Angel from Montgomery)

I run into these obstinate vendettas, and just shake my head, while understanding my own obstinance within it.

I do believe in living. I believe in contributing to living. 

"I'm not ready to make nice, I'm not ready to back down".. (Dixie Chicks)

My mother and I have driven around with this amazing CD in the car, both of us in tears, both of us understanding each other, and both of us wanting to somehow reach beyond the vendettas. 

"They say, time heals everything, but I'm still waiting".  (Dixie Chicks)

At some point, someone, usually the same 20 percent, who has been giving more all along, has to create a controlling interest. 

That said, those in the position to give, are usually the ones who have kept better track of their resources all along. This creates resentment in those, who have not. 

I have been there, and I have felt that. 

I have also learned, that it was my own fault. 

Of course it's hard, when things don't come easy, but little worth having, does. 

If you are afraid of work, you are afraid of life. 

My teachers taught me that knowledge is transmitted via sweat, and I took it to heart. I have no fear of work, perseverance (shugyo) and even blind exhaustion. 

I am older, my endurance is shorter, but I will never stop trying to extend it through simple cardiovascular and weight training. I don't want simple physical limitations to stop my inquiry. 

My profession is geared to erasing physical limitations, and I rely on it myself. Granted, since I left Germany, the work I get is not as amazing, but it does still help.. oh, who am I kidding. One hour on my teacher PS's table made me Superwoman, until I fell down a hill six weeks later, and disorganized my pelvis again. 

Since then, I just feel like I need to get back to Europe, to get my groove back. Last time I returned to the EU, I just felt like I woke from a bad dream in which I was stuck in the USA..  

Bury me not on the high prairie, but take my parts and pieces, give them away. Burn the rest, and bury it under a wild rose-bush. 

In my waking hours, my willing time, let me go back to an orderly society, where health care, pension, and security has something like a guarantee, where manual therapy is not a gutter idea, rarely recompensed, looked down on, and shunned.. 

I'd like to live in a more rational world. 

Just sayin'.