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.  

When we first start studying in budo, things seem like magic. 

Later, the magic seems like science. Tested, memorized, titrated and experimented with. 

Naive in a deeper world, at first we can be taken advantage of, by those who would withhold the fine mechanics of simple ergophysics.

They will tell you that success in budo, has something to do with energy, instead of a fine mix of human psychology, ergonomics and physics. 

Arthur C Clarke stated in a set of two corollaries, that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. I will state the second corollary shortly.

One of my teachers, a hard-bitten fellow generally passed over for promotion, unless it served someone else, taught me a couple of important things. 

The first was, that he couldn't teach me everything about the arts. Neither could anyone else.  He told me that I had to learn to steal. 

I took to this like a fox takes to stealing chickens. 

I learned to feed myself. 

I don't expect to be spoon fed, I will fight and hunt for what I need, not just to get by, but to feed my family. I will wait and watch, for opportunity. 

I am an information scavenger, always hungry for more. 

The second was, to always tag the biggest dog in the pack, to learn from. He told me, walk up to the best person in the room and bow in. 

I've done that. To dizzying effect, at times. 

I learned to be fearless. I learned to walk into my fear, and look behind me (nothing will be there).  I try not to look behind myself too much. It gets boring. It's still my behind. 

Once the boundaries of learning and fear were lifted, I began to learn to learn. 

Once I learned to learn a little, I had to learn to teach. Technique? who the hell has time for technique? I'm trying to teach people to stand up and sit down!

Once we get that down, maybe we can get to some budo. 

Now, we come to the second corollary. 

Any sufficiently advanced magic, will be indistinguishable from science. 

I am writing in direct response to Brian Burrough's recent article in the Washington Post. 

Honestly, I enjoyed the article, and nodded as I read it, but something inside me, began to fester and rankle. 

I started to get really, really mad. 

I couldn't stand it any more, after a decade of apologizing all over the Western Hemisphere as my husband and I served the US Army in Germany. 

I got into some specialized training in Munich, DE where I was the only American, and it became an ordeal I learned to preface with "Yes, I am an American, from Texas. And Mr. Bush is not. Buy me a drink, if you want the explanation". 

I lived with that for six excruciating years. 

I've had enough. 

This is a tick that's been in me since Bush took office as the Governor of Texas, and it's time I tore it out, torched it, and smashed its worthless carapace into the firepit. 

I'm at least a 4th-generation Texan. My great-grandfather on my mother's side, was a pharmacist and hobby carpenter (a fine German occupation) in Amarillo. That side of the family still curses in German to this day, though we don't know how they got here. Escapees from the World Wars didn't always have a choice about where they ended up. Let's face it, that's America. We are the best, and the worst, of the rest of the world. If you aren't Native American, you have nothing to say about that. If you are, I'm listening. 

My father's family came down from Indiana, three generations back, Clara Shaw married one John Dolan and was written out of the Shelby County, IN annals for marrying a dreadful Irishman. I know, I was there looking for any trace. I found quite a lot about Charles Major and his wife Alice Shaw Major, my great (3) aunt who sent postcards to twin boys in Jacksonville, Texas.. one of whom was my own father. He tells me, I must have inherited her wanderlust, despite our lack of blood relation. He does. You can ask him. 

One of the Dolans lost an infant to an Indian raid. You can find Pat Dolan at the Ranger Museum in Fort Worth. 

Now that I have established my credentials as a Texan, maybe ya'll'll listen to me for a minute. 

I was born, as in I physically came out of my momma, in Austin, TX, in the old St David's before 1970.  The rule is, in Texas, if you don't come out of your momma in Texas, you are an immigrant.

Immigrants who get this, conform and admit to it, can become honorary Texans. 

Those who do not, are liars. 

In old Texas code, the only thing lower than a liar is a rattlesnake. Poisonous, dangerous, and shot on sight. 

Too bad we forgot that, when GW showed up. Born in Connecticut. Moved to Midland age 3.

I'm not sure who got hornswoggled & hoodwinked, or who stood to make money out of the deal of making this delinquent, brainless, black-thumb nothing into something profitable. I am sure that dragging over broken glass,  behind horses recently fed laxatives, is probably too good for them. 

No one overcame more obstacles than the early Texans. Have you ever read about the Karankawa? These were the aborigines of the Texas coast. They lived in a coat of alligator fat, to turn the ravenous mosquitoes and sand flies (they bite through DEET like it was salsa fresca) they ate anything and anyone presenting themselves in an edible way. They carried clubs armed with barbed alligator teeth. I don't think anyone now living, understands how hard it was, to be a Texan, back before air conditioning.  If they do, I want desperately to hear their stories. 

My mom is visiting next week, and I hope to get some "footage". 

The Apache & Comanche roamed central Texas when the tallgrass prairie still stood.  Immigrants did bloody battle with these fierce, beautiful peoples, and proceeded to run beef cattle where the bison (buffalo) once roamed, eventually decimating all three populations. 

Then, the newcomers wondered, where all the nice grass and topsoil went to, as we paid our first debt as a nation in the form of the Depression. 

The Depression never left the poorer areas of Texas. My parents were fixers, hoarders and repairers and inventors of almost everything. I grew up between the late 60-s early 80-s, and I was always far more "handy" than most of my peers, depending on economic echelon.  I taught my ex-husband how to replace a master cylinder on a 66 Chevy pickup, and drive a stick shift. 

Now, here I am, daughter of the Depression, looking the consequences of GW Bush in the face. 

The principles of Texas were never the principles he espoused. He wasn't raised here, he didn't get it. The "cowboy mentality" he fronted was just idiocy. Real cowboys understand their neighborhood, have a deep foundation of integrity, take care of strays and mavericks, and will stay up all night with a sick calf. GW didn't have the balls, or the guts, to do any of that. Nor did he even have the heart or brains to figure out why, all that he was doing was wrong. 

No cowboy, just does what he's told. 

We think for ourselves, we are REAL mavericks. We find freedom, where others only find fences. This tendency can go both ways, but the tendency to break rules unseen, remains the same. Breaking rules people tell you to break, DOES NOT COUNT. You have to come up with it yourself. As I am doing here.

 Nobody told me to do this. Lots of people would tell me Not To. I would moon them. At least. 

At some point, you have to draw the line and find your own place of rebellion and resistance. I never did. I'm still rebelling, and resisting. It's not comfortable. It's not supposed to be. I like it here. I'm a Real Texan. I like resistance. I grew up with it. It's a natural state for me. 

GW hijacked it all, he made the "cowboy mentality" seem autocratic and narrow-minded. 

In fact, cowboys are highly socialist. They help each other out, and they are, frankly, all about the cows, their horses and each other. GW would have gotten shot, early on. 

Otherwise, no one survives. 

Nobody in this environment has anywhere they actually live.. so real estate isn't an issue. 

You wear what works, so fashion isn't really an issue, unless you are a highdolla bronc buster, and then you are suspect anyway. If you can't ride it, and you can't break it, you BBQ it. 

The bigger your belt buckle, the smaller the equipment under it. 

The bigger the cowboy hat, the fewer cattle look to it. 

These are the living facts of the Old Texan. We do a few things well: We ride, we shoot straight, and we tell the truth (original quote: Jeff Cooper). 

The rest of it don't matter. 

Mr Burroughs, I suggest you look a little further back than our beloved LBJ, next time you delve into the history of Texas. Sure, it's corrupt, but read your Bedicek, your O Henry and listen to Jim Hightower once in a while. That's the Real Texas. 

Let's forget that Bush pretended, BADLY, with his damned Nouveaux Ranch and his inept brush cutting, to prove that he ever had more to do with Texas than a bad bet, with bad reprisals, by his parents. Let's excise this rotten damn apple, this Connecticut Yankee infesting the Texas Court. 

Let's get back to being honest, basic, no-bullshit Texans. Let's go back to LBJ. His legislation was revolutionary and remarkable, but it wasn't what he, personally, wanted to do. 

It was what was good for his country. 

We may all want that pony for Christmas, but what the family may need, may be 40 acres and a mule, is what we actually work for. Then, when the fields are healthy again, we can get back to the pony. I grew up here. What we need, is, work, that brings us all forward. 

Until then, we need a lot of people with shovels, shears, rakes, wrenches, computer terminals and a whole helluva lotta gumption, and no limitations. Not in terms of stem cells, not on networking, not on any energy source efficient enough to get us out of petroleum slavery. 

Real Texans have the intellectual independence, to separate religious dogma from legislation. Furthermore, they would understand that population and health issues should come before any writs possibly no longer applicable after several thousand years. 

Our Founding Fathers separated Church and State, for a reason. 

That which is mandated by the Church, may or may not serve the State. Only the State, and its constituents, can make that decision, by voluntary declaration. 

That would be democracy, more or less. 

Listen to my old buddy Guy Forsyth, and Rise Up. 

Juanita, back to you, honey. 

The cat hasn't mentioned being homesick. 

I'm sure she misses the heated bathroom floor, but she has no shortage of warm spots and willing laps. 

For us, it's more complex. We live in a small but quirky bedroom community for DC/Balto, and the town itself houses a bioscience center, which encourages a kind of cosmopolitan intellectual spin. At the same time, it's close enough to Appalachia to have an element of funk.

Houses date back to the 1800s, and sidewalks tend to be made of exceedingly wavy red brick. 

For me, once I left Texas, all bets were off. I was uprooted, and went through the pain of learning to shift my attachments and expectations. It was a sharp & painful learning curve, but now that I've got it, I'm fairly adaptable. 

I'm enjoying spending time with colleagues and making friends. I've never really been in this supportive an environment.

I'm wanting to put down roots, and see what sprouts. I'm not caring so much about where, just that I get to try it.

This post comes after the verse, so it's denoument any way I slice it. 

My fragmented psyche craves the order of budo training. I suppose people like me went into nunneries or such, to give space to their constant combination of intellectual/spiritual itch. 

Something about the complex simplicity of Japanese martial arts, gives me a place where my attention is completely full of what I am doing NOW. 

It probably coincides with my vocation of bodywork, where there isn't much room for daydreaming.  

It's not about me, or what I want. 

In fact, it needs an end of that cycle. 

If you truly train, you stop wanting individually.. you have to, it won't work otherwise. 

At some point, it happens that you realize that who you are, what you want and how you like to do things, are just in the way if you want to do this thing. 

Certainly who I am, where I've been, and the debts I incurred along the way in culture & physical injury, are the things I have to build on. 

In training, I am about the training. I am egotistical, I like to make jokes. Fortunately I am good enough at it to make all my teachers at least smile.

Once I have "bowed in" I am about the training. Only on rare occasions in the recent past, have I not been as present as I would like, in work or training. Fun is not excluded, we need to have fun to learn. 

I am mildly curious, when my bodywork teachers get the level of attention from me I give my budo teachers, and seem at least puzzled, or at most overwhelmed.  

If we don't have an ego, we have no reason to learn. 

If we can't get our ego out of the way, we will never learn anything new. 

We must navigate the ego.

I know I am in a good learning place, when who/what/why and my feelings about something are totally subsumed in the training process itself. 

There is no I, only the vacuum I have created, for what I want to know, to be, to do. 

Dressed-  soft blue cloth

clothes me

anonymously. 

Quirks poking out of my dogi, rumpled & torn.

Bow in

Sensei ni rei

Shinsen ni rei..

Questions fade as 

the certainty of wood and steel prevails.

Who am I and

who are you-

Not so important.

What can we learn together-

now;

We are training.