My father and I connect over family, history & politics, for the most part.

He was talking to me (in one of our semi-weekly phone conversations) about all the crazy things he did with me as a kid.

He says he was drunk most of the time, but I don't recall any change in his behavior until he really "got into it" and then he was pretty sedentary and sometimes obnoxious.

Mostly, when we were doing things, I wasn't aware of him being in an altered state.

One of the things I remember, is taking the flat-bottom john-boat out on the Colorado river in flood stage. I don't know why this was a good idea.

We shot out of the boat dock into the streaming chop, torn downriver until we could struggle to the other side. Then, with clumsy geometry, and me at 9-10 years old climbing the riverside trees to pull the boat along, we pulled ourselves upstream, to shoot back across, paddling like hell to hit that boat ramp on the way back across the vicious swollen river. I think I had poison ivy welts for weeks.

Keep in mind that rainfall in Texas happens a couple times a year, in 5-10 inch increments. Formerly dry creekbeds kill people every year, much less racing rivers.

I think we went out for Pit BBQ in celebration of having not drowned.

Somehow, I was already inured to this kind of thing. Some of my earliest memories are of being strapped to my dad's back, with a fly from a flyrod whizzing around my head. I remember trying to see the colors.

He told me about another adventure in which he put me on his back, and hiked up a waterfall.

When he looked down, he told me, he almost fainted. I don't remember. I remember getting better at rock-scrambling.

At age 9, he put a pistol in my hand, and taught me to shoot. He was very proud that I 1. didn't kill anyone and 2. hit my targets (I remember refusing to shoot turtles).

I think my lack of fear had some roots in his late 60s model VW Beetle which had no floor in places, all rotted out. I remember the road passing by, under my feet. I knew I could fall out, but I knew I wouldn't.

He also told me the story of teaching me and my friend Terri how to use a recurve bow in our back yard. He said we spent all day out there. I think we wanted to be Jedis. We were 13-14, the age all girls should be learning to use weapons!

Central Texas is also Snake Central, and he told me about a little snake that came up on the bank where we were fishing, and that he picked me up and held me over his head until it slithered past. I remember being outside the boat in another incident with a snake being very interested in the bait I was reeling in, and his lifting my fairly sturdy (nearly 100#) 10-year-old self out of the water and putting me in the boat.

My dad was this great, bald & burly creature with long arms and hands like slabs of butcher-block, smelling of gasoline, mown grass and WD-40.

As I grew, I got to nearly his height, with his length of waist, arm, and hardness of bone & muscle. My hands are still small, and my features more dainty, but I am still the kid who climbed the trees to pull the boat upstream, picked up the pistol with confidence & curiosity, and hopped in and out of boats without thinking about it.

I told him today, he had raised a fearless kid, and the subtext went unsaid.

He raised a fearless woman. Without meaning to, just being a dad, and doing what he did.

Whatever else wasn't perfect, he did that for me.

Since then, I've found myself dealing with fear, and fearful situations, in a way I realize most people are unable to step into.

I think my dad is starting to figure out what he did right.

It certainly wasn't anyone's model of how to raise a "young lady" and to this day, I can't set the table or fold a napkin.

I can, however, plant & raise, or find, something for that table, cook it well & competently, and do it all as ethically & humanely as possible.

Other Dad-taught talents include talking to owls & coyotes, knowing the wingbeats of a duck or dove, and being able to catch fish anywhere there is water.

It simply doesn't occur to me to be fearful, most of the time.

Even when I maybe should be.

So we finally have a partially black president (others may have been, just not obviously- I still think Taft was black- kind of a white Fat Albert).

We got a black man who can finally complain (due to being a Harvard professor) of racial profiling, and be taken seriously. We got a white cop who teaches racial sensitivity, and fell into the biggest political trap of a generation.

We got a Hispanic woman (Puerto Ricans are incredibly culturally diverse) having to be polite to a lot of idiot racist white men who are accusing HER of being racist.

That was an act of brilliant equanimity on her part, walking over that nuclear (there's only one U, in our post Bush society, thank Webster!) bed of hot coals.

I would have wacked out and put a couple gavels and some copies of the Constitution wrapped around various implements of destruction, in some very interesting places.

Sotomayor exemplified the Klingon ethic, that revenge is a dish best served very, very cold.

Don't get me wrong, I feel for all of them. My own father didn't know he was white, until he was 10 or so.

Class war has walked out into the open, in the health care debate.

What the many need, is single payer.

What the powerful few want, and they pay to get what they want, and our representatives are too weak and whorish to look at statistics instead of the almighty $D, what the powerful few want, they get.

My friend the medical examiner had something very interesting to say about socialized health care:

"I really don't want to have to do another autopsy on a middle-aged guy who died because he couldn't afford his heart/blood pressure/diabetes/cholesterol medication, and chose to feed his family instead".

I really have to steady myself, every time I think of that.

Let me give you a picture of socialism, something I have seen personally. I lived in Germany for six years, under the shelter of my husband's work with the US Army.

Every day, you see old people.

They are on bicycles, walking, chatting, gardening.

White-haired folks are everywhere. They are vital, they are participating, they are active.

They are respected, and kids behave themselves, where old folks are.

Because they know their elders have been through some Serious Shit, and don't tolerate any kind of tomfoolery.

The pyramid of failure in our culture makes a vortex of social failure, from structure to behavior.

We don't support education, or we support it spottily. We don't VALUE education, as a society.

We value Luck.

Unfortunately, Luck is not a reliable investment.

We construct our society on a rickety structure of luck & hope.

Now, we have the opportunity to back it up with the most valuable commodity of all.

Hard Work.

The people who've been working hard all the time, are ready to back this sucker up.. if only..

The people who've been on top, and their elected/hired minions, are terrified they might have to either actually get their hands dirty, or "get a haircut". Meanwhile, they are the ones with the resources to brainwash some squeaky wheels to get the attention of people unskilled in critical thinking. A nice side effect of undermining socialized education.

At this point, we are so far in the hole in terms of social "leverage" that the bottom third of society is uneducated, malnourished, and can't even walk around the mall. They are all so overfed by the stock dividend providers, that they can't, in so many ways, put one foot in front of the other.

Not in terms of health, finances, or education. They've been taught a constantly changing stream of nonsense, controlled by whatever party has power or money in their district.

So at this point, the shovel has to go in deep, to dig a new intellectual, physical and, yes, spiritual foundation. (I am a non-theist, I do better without any imaginary friends)

People have to be able to get educated, to get a job.

They get a better job, to get more educated, to get a still better job.

Along the way, they need to be able to stay healthy, free of partisan interference in their political, personal, social and professional life. I saw far better success of this in Europe, than I see in the US. People interpret freedom here, as the freedom to annoy and endanger others.

Sorry, it's not a frontier any more. Move to Antarctica (look out for penguins).

The more paths are open for people to improve themselves, the more they will do so. The immigrant populations of Europe prove this. Many of the newest, best and brightest in medicine, technology and communications, are children of immigrants.

We are a world of migrants now. We might as well give up the idea of US & Them.

We ARE them. They are us.

Now, can we get on with the evolution?

I'm so ready, I'm so not interested in the Status Quo.

We've had enough rectocranial inversion for the next ten generations.

Late summer in Maryland has been wet, with rain, wet, and more wet.

The garden, raised bed and all, has been the recipient of all the overflow. That and the low spot between us and the neighbor! It looked like a lake, this afternoon.

Rain! we get a lot of it.

I'm in a part of the world I only ever read about.

Growing up in central Texas, this part of July was the last time you ever thought about opening the windows. In the last days here, it has barely gotten hot enough to bother with anything more than the house fan and "window management". We open the house at night to let in cool air, and close up during the day to shut out the heat.

The sun has turned the corner of the solstice about a month ago now, and while most things are still in full growth, the sun has gotten old.. I can see the traces of the season beginning to age, as I see the traces in my own face & body. Things become subtly less bright, less defined. Leaves fall yellow here and there, early casualties of the beginning of season's turn.

Plants in the garden are still trying to catch up to the cool spring, while the pokeweed & hickory, and wild grapes, seem right on summer's schedule.

Last week I played hooky one day in the Appalachians, and found black chanterelles. They popped suddenly like black shredded paper in last fall's fallen leaves.

The veloute' I made still sits waiting, for another delicate dish. The earthy sweetness, the fruity musk of the incredible chanterelle infuses it.

I think I have missed raspberries for the season, but perhaps elderberries will give me a chance at wine.

No man is an island

(nor is anyone else).

It is the basic misunderstanding of the basic American, that this is a free country, and you can do what you want.

If what I want is to have elephants in my living room on the 5th floor and experiment with explosives, am I still free, if it bugs you?

If what I want is to drive as fast as I want, while talking on my cell phone, with a Rottweiler on my lap and assuming you know where I am going so I don't need to use my turn signals.. am I still free, if that bugs you, or kills your kid while I am not paying attention?

If what I want, is to drive something with a loud reverb exhaust, in a residential neighborhood or down a commercial street where people are trying to communicate in public (heaven forfend they do anything but think of me and my tiny wedding tackle) , why shouldn't you put up with it?

If what I want, is to have an untrained, insecure animal outside, who makes noise constantly, why shouldn't you put up with that?

The basic misconception is this: That we are islands.

The basic truth is this: Islands are contained by a shared ocean. The flotsam you let go, shows up on my shores. The flotsam I let go, shows up on yours.

My success in society shows up, when you don't notice me.

Your success in society is denied, if I notice you. Your loud transportation demonstrates your lack of taste, as a person's willingness to share their music or mode of transportation, is always inverse to their taste in it.

Your loud animals demonstrate your lack of self-control.

The need to hold a cell phone to your ear during every moment of your existence demonstrates your lack of self-esteem.

Your need to be in front of everyone demonstrates a drastic failure of the most basic kindergarten rule- don't be a dick.

I really despair of any Americans ever achieving something resembling civilization.

If you have never lived anywhere else, you are not qualified to comment.

The idea that we live in a pioneer society has been reduced to the most basic ideas of farting in public (which is what the loud reverb, animals & music really are) and being hogs in every social sense.

Whatever happened to being good neighbors, to thinking about the welfare of others? Whatever happened to looking out for each other? Sure, it happens in micro, but what about micro.. Real pioneer society is all about looking out for each other, because you never know when your house is going to need some help.

The Right has taken advantage of their architecting lack of education about socialism, to make it a dirty word. In fact, it's working so well for most of our modern counterparts, that they are kicking our behinds on everything from manufacturing to health care.

It's a bright, strong cup of coffee. Take a long drink.

During my times of trial, I lived on a steady diet of Sara McLachlan (I met her in person, she's wonderful) Me'shell Ndegeocello, Sophie Hawkins (more a Chuck & I thing), Richard Thompson, Patti Griffin, and Dixie Chicks.

You need some John Mayer: Vultures, Belief, Gravity, I'm Gonna Find Another You, Bold as Love)

You need a LOT of Richard Thompson: She Twists the Knife Again, Uninhabited Man, 1954 Vincent (just because it's wonderful)

You need Sarah McLachlan: Train Wreck, Stupid, World on Fire

You need Patti Griffin: When it Don't Come Easy

Nickel Creek: Reasons Why (the whole album is amazing)

And you need to listen to the Dixie Chicks sing Not Ready to Make Nice a couple dozen times.

Listen to Shawn Colvin's Get Out of This House -- as often as needed. Trouble, and I Want it Back are good too. Finish up with Sunny Came Home. She has a song called If I were Brave you might like.. what the heck, get A Few Small Repairs (the album).

Sting's Brand New Day is a great way to open your own new adventures.

KT Tunstall's Heal Over is a great way to have a friend sitting by you, when you need it.

I've felt orphaned more than once, and I've always found my way back home. You have, too.

My home now, is anywhere trees grow and grasses wave. Anywhere I can get something to grow.

I had to change my anchors drastically. I am now anchored to Life.

It's a very different experience, in every level.

I am acutely aware of the transient nature of every pleasure and pain.

I would not have any of that, if I had not gone through what you are going through, right now.

You never forget it.

It informs every single future moment of your life, if you are paying attention.

I think you can.

Chuck has never had the anchors you and I have, to have them ripped up and have to re-establish in a more flexible capacity. He never had the chance.. so the curses & cures run both ways.

Imagine if you never belonged to anyone, anywhere.

Me, I have a belonging and an identity, but it just orients me to my new experiences.

Most people can't even get that far.

It's truly terrible, and it runs to the core.

But if you can let go, if you can "weigh anchor" and "set sail" while still having the Ship of Self under you, the adventures are limitless.

It's a process, like so many. This is just your introduction.

This is Coyote life.

It starts when you are born, however that happens for you.
I call my mom every year and thank her for going to the trouble. I was a bit of trouble, something about insisting on being face up..

They call babies born face up "star gazers" and I hear that they tend to be relentlessly optimistic. Pushy, even.

At some time after 4pm today, Chuck & I transferred off the Red Line to the Yellow line, coming back from a really fun tour of another part of the Washington Zoo in DC. It takes several trips to get through everything, and public transportation is the best option as parking costs something like $14 an hour. We love the Metro, and we hate driving in DC. The sheer bulk of population creates behavioural pressures of time and space, incompatible with the lack of training the population has received, and the ability of the law enforcement to function. Of course, if people wanted to intrinsically do the right thing and help everyone get along to to go along, that would make a different world, wouldn't it.

So we got off the Red Line at about 4:15, hooked up with the Yellow and got back into Alexandria, where I had to pick up my favorite shoes from my buddy Cosper's office. I had stayed with him during the training.. he's a great friend, and everyone running a seminar needs some support. His son is crazy about Chuck (they can talk military tech & history to a level the rest of us simply cannot comprehend) Cosper & Chuck & I pun and talk shop, and we all have so much fun hanging out.

Chuck & I don't think anything of riding the Metro, we are both used to the German public transport, which is as close to perfect as such things get. I was late to class because of it exactly once in 5 years of use. I had to hop around a little sometimes, but it always worked out.

Two Red Line trains collided at about 5pm today, June 22, and at least six people have died so far.

Tomorrow is my 41st birthday.
It happened once before, that for my birthday, I got another birthday.

It was my 30th, and we had spent the day training with our backyard kenjutsu study group, beating the hell out of each other and then going to the Vietnamese restaurant, icing our bruises with jasmine green tea-flavoured chips & talking about everything.. I'll never stop trying to rebuild those times, somehow. I have it in many ways, times & places, it's just the reliability and frequency I'm working on.

Can't do the beating the hell out part so much any more.. not for my part anyway.
Not that I don't have any hell left, just short on intact ligaments.

It was my 30th birthday, and I was blissed out from great training and driving us back home down 969 like I had every Sunday for the last 4 years.

A car swerved into the wrong/oncoming lane, and I heard my sensei Jim P's voice in my head, GET OFF THE LINE and I did, into the other lane, as the car spewed turf onto the side of my car, and dove into the ditch on the other side. My ex had been napping.. didn't notice anything, and didn't know why I pulled over to check on the other guy, who had run off the road and ended up in the ditch.

Thankfully, the other guy was coming out of the car, scared mostly of having to tell his mom he had driven her car into a ditch. A stray EMT had stopped to check on him, and everything was OK, when it could have been very, very not.. if not for my teacher's voice in my head, and the steadying influence of my training.

Today was luck, just luck. We got off the train less than an hour before it rammed the other one.

When something that big happens, you're just fucked.

Thank you, to fate and circumstance, for waking me up to the fact that every single second is a gift. That my situation is the greatest stroke of luck since the first amphibian got hungry enough to venture out of the water.

Happy my birthday, friends.
If you don't celebrate your birthday, if you don't pull out all the stops and live life to the fullest, you must not love being alive.

I get it.
It's fragile.
It's beautiful, transient, and exciting.
It's not easy, because we are built for challenge.

I'm happy to be here.

I stole it from Bill Bryson.. 

The ex-pat's dilemma is that of having spent so much effort, to fit into a strange place (usually after having spent more effort than that, trying to fit into a space defined by others anyway) and then having to come back to the place you didn't fit into, in the first place. 

I fit into "old Texas" culture, where mavericks (not power-mad Barbies who mistook their uterus for a clown car) were normal, and normal was not. 

This, once I did the work of translation, fit rather seamlessly into the values of Bavaria.

Seeing pictures of a house some dear friends are moving into there, and hearing of other friends moving out of their very nice place in Freiburg, just made my heart ache for the great comfortable blocky architecture of German houses. 

Living in Frederick provides glimpses of Old Europe in the great stone churches, cobbles & bricks, elegant & antiquated, a little patina of time on a great American city. There is a Pythian Castle, and gargoyles here and there. 

It brings me comfort, but it also makes me homesick for a truly great cappuccino or some of the terribly simple, high quality things we got used to. 

I found a little cafe where they put cool, crunchy steamed asparagus in salads & sandwiches, and the older proprietors treat everyone like kids who wandered into the house with their friends.  (FSK Kaffe on Record)  I can sit in there, chit-chat & read the Post as long as I like. 

I have a garden in the ground, an analogy to a life trying to take root in a place. 

Chuck says he is putting talcum powder on his "itchy feet" and I am doing my best to hold out against homesickness. I did it before, when we moved overseas. I was pretty bad for about a year.. but if I stay on the ground, I can grow some roots, wherever I am. 

Once I get into the swing of the seasons, once I get my garden(s) going, I can be happy just about anywhere we can both be healthy, see a lot of our friends, learn stuff and have some fun. 

http://www-fars.nhtsa.dot.gov/People/PeopleAllVictims.aspx

With no apology to Jeff Foxworthy (I hope he loves it)

There are three categories of drivers: 

Piggie Drivers, Jerk Drivers, & Psycho Drivers (better off in jail or dead). 

Ugly Little Piggies:

You might be Piggie Driver, if you use a cell phone while your vehicle (car, bicycle, skateboard, moped) is in motion. You are also a Psycho.

You might be a Piggie Driver, if you have to get to the stoplight first. You're keeping the brake shops happy, and buying enough gas to drain Alaska, though, so at least you're good for the economy. 

You might be a Piggie Driver, if your willingness to share your music is inverse to your taste in it.  In other words, if anyone besides you can hear the music on your car stereo. You are also a Jerk. 

You might be a Piggie Driver, if you think everyone enjoys the sound of your exhaust as much as you do. (No one does, that's why you're a Piggie- especially if you drive a truck or motorcycle of any kind.)

You are definitely a Piggie Driver if you turn into the turn lane next to the lane you want, then push your way into the lane you want  by cutting into the line. Depending on how obnoxious you are about it, this also makes you a Jerk, and a Psycho. 

Jerk Drivers:

You might be a Jerk Driver if you think you drive just fine while talking on a  handheld cell phone. You are also a Psycho. 

You might be a Jerk Driver if you aren't sure what the black numbers on the white signs mean, or can't read them. 

You might be a Jerk Driver if your dog is a better driver than you. It must be, it's in your lap. Just let the dog drive, it would be safer. 

You might be a Jerk Driver if you have to be in the fastest moving lane. Of course your time is more important than anyone else's. Your life must be, too. Maybe you didn't read the statistics about the driver being most likely to die, in any accident. 

You might also be a Jerk Driver, if you think this article isn't about you. It's about all the people driving too slowly who don't get out of your way. Of course, you are also the only person on the planet. Must be lonely up there. 

You are a Jerk Driver, if your car stinks. Of anything. Including air freshener. 

Psycho Drivers (move into a nice padded room now, and save lives!)

You are a Psycho Driver, if you talk or text on a handheld mobile device while your vehicle is, or will be, in motion. *

 "Cell phone distraction causes 2,600 deaths and 330,000 injuries in the United States every year, according to the journal's publisher, the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society."

http://www.livescience.com/technology/050201_cell_danger.html

You might be a Psycho Driver, if every stoplight is just a race to get to the next one. (You might be part of the economic stimulus, and you might get your stems pulled by an annoyed co-existant on the roads)

You might be a Psycho Driver, if you think you are perfectly safe, on an interstate, in broad daylight. 

http://www-fars.nhtsa.dot.gov/People/PeopleAllVictims.aspx

You might be a Psycho Driver, if you don't wear a seat belt and secure your kids safely. On the other hand, you might be saving us all from kids who didn't inherit enough brain cells to figure it out.  We could be grateful for that, and sorry about your kids. 

You are a Psycho Driver who belongs in jail, permanently, life sentence, if you do not obey state law at pedestrian crossings and stop.

You are a Psycho Driver, if you don't keep an eye out for bicycles & motorcycles, and treat them like you would a car (given they act in accordance with traffic laws- and if they don't, maybe you should get to know each other).  

You might be a Psycho Driver, if you think this isn't about you. ("Don't you, don't you".. cue Carly Simon..) 

It's a free country, but only so free as we extend courtesy to others to be free, as well (and not die because you were ordering pizza).

"You’ll notice that I try not to use the word “accident” on this blog or podcast. That is because there’s no such thing as an “accident”. The word implies that no one is at fault, that it was truly a random act. Well, if you get swallowed up by a fissure in an earthquake or hit by a meteor, I’ll allow that as legitimate use of the word, but if you are in two-vehicle collision, somebody made the final mistake. "

For more info:

http://www.talkingtraffic.org/index.php/2009/04/13/episode-29-fatality-statistics-bikes-pedestrians-speed-humps/

*handsfree isn't that much better-- I have some 20 years of multiple martial arts 'under my belt' and find talking to someone, even handsfree, too distracting to drive with what I think of as a reasonable margin of safety. 

If you think you can do better, try swinging a three foot razor blade for fun. 

Meanwhile, I suggest that anyone with an attention span invest in a simple stem puller, and not hesitate to use it, on the deserving. 

Americans don't drive, so much as they careen. I have driven in Germany, France, Holland (Amsterdam) Ireland, Greece, Czech & Austria; I most dread driving in America. 

Every third person here,  has a cell phone glued to their ear, uninformed and unaware of the fact that they may not be the only person on the road.  Handsfree is mandatory in Europe. 

 "Cell phone distraction causes 2,600 deaths and 330,000 injuries in the United States every year, according to the journal's publisher, the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society."

http://www.livescience.com/technology/050201_cell_danger.html

Most of these people are driving very nice cars, and they have nice hair and fingernails and very pretty sunglasses, so I'm not sure why a beautiful cell phone earpiece is not part of their ensemble.

 I spent a lot of money on mine, a delicate contraption which makes it look like a Ceylon has taken up residence in my ear, but I still can't keep track of all these careening lunatics if I have it in my ear and am talking to someone, so I try not to try.  In addition, a light sneeze will send the black plastic into unreachable black plastic reaches of our Honda, so I just don't dare most of the time. Meanwhile the thing is so contrary, it's out of juice most of the time. I have voicemail. I'll call ya back. 

Here in Frederick, cell phone use is usually combined with having the family dog in your lap, a lit cigarette, kids bouncing around,  and gleeful nonchalance about the color of traffic lights and lane markings. Never having had to use a turn signal on uninhabited farm roads growing up, they don't bother on inhabited roads, either. Everyone has to take notes on where these people go, and memorize it, so the driver is never bothered by having to tell others what they will do. 

I assume it's a kind of Darwinistic system by which the offspring of the careless are scared into being more careful, however, the usual result is slightly more extroverted. 

The other kind of driver we get here is something I call a Beltway Bandit-- a term originally used for something else, but perfectly suitable. 

Taxation without representation appears to result in suicidal tendencies, a political result I actively support correction of.  Usually careening at improbable velocity, into spaces too small for both the bulk & lack of maneuverability of the (usually oversized or overpriced) vehicle, the pilot is generally either reading the Post or watching a DVD, if not also appearing to have an Italian-style conversation with someone on some type of mobile device, these people don't appear to have time to so much as breathe without doing 125 things at once. Unfortunately, in their ambition, they steal the breath of those dodging their idiot path of blithe highway destruction. 

I'm not sure what is so important about these cell phone conversations.. I would hate to think that someone's pizza order, or grocery list conversation with the spouse, was the one that killed my kid, my mom, my own spouse, because someone wasn't paying attention. 

"The NHTSA estimates that your chance of getting in an accident increases by 300% if you're talking on your cellular phone while driving. In addition their data shows that 25% of all traffic accidents are a result of distracted drivers."

http://www.drivinglaws.org/stats.php

There also seems to be a rule about Escalades, Suburbans, and tricked-out, overly clean pickemup trucks. They speed, zip around like elephants pretending to be mosquitoes, and work hard to burn as much gasoline as possible. Acuras and BMWs are almost as bad-- does anyone remember the difference between an Acura/Lexus/BMW owner and a porcupine?

 No wonder they are so unhappy. They can't figure out why they have financial problems. Perhaps, if someone is driving one of these unwieldy heaps, they have already failed certain intelligence tests, and are not likely to pass others. 

People with evangelical church stickers on the back of their Suburbans, Siennas,  Ridgelines and other giant gas suckers are aggressive careeners. Unfortunately for those of us without guardian angels, "Not Perfect, Just Forgiven" doesn't apply to involuntary manslaughter in a court of law.    

There are some compensation issues people attempt to address with large or ostentatious vehicular displays, which tend to show up in infantile behavior and attempts at dominance displays while hiding behind several tons of metal and chrome. 

An incompetent, insecure idiot in two tons of metal and chrome, is still guilty of manslaughter, no matter what kind of lawyer they can afford. 

A recent conversation on public radio brought up intoxicated driving, cell phone driving, speeding and other public transportation issues. The solution offered, was to make driving illegal. 

For most of you, it should be, because I hate going to funerals. 

My forensic pathologist friend tells me that they test bodies found near wrecked cars for marijuana as well as alcohol, because the former does a number on proprioception as well. 

As to the US Marine who gave us a friendly wave about the huge space we left in front of us for him to travel North on 495 past Quantico, this is for you. I wish everyone on the road cared as much for each other, as you and I do. 

In any problemsolving effort, there comes the frame of reference problem. 

I always find myself pushing the envelope, in other people's frames of reference. 

I'm not sure why this is, we all grew up on the same planet, more or less. 

Maybe getting my idea of stable home & family disrupted at various times in my teens, as my parents waged active warfare on one another in various ways, probably eliminated any remaining expectations I might have had, about reality. 

Many other people, have had the same experience, and worse. 

So, why am I so outside the box?

I score in the minority on so many scales.. INFJ, Morton foot.. I'm pro gun and pro choice, basically a political orphan. 

The last decade of my life, spent as a bodyworker for the most part, spent in transition, spent dancing into chaos.. 

It's a result of who I am, rather than a goal. 

Turns out, I love grabbing the dragon's jaws, and bending reality to my will. 

It's a path fraught with disappointment, however, that's what I expect. I don't move quickly, preferring to gather information for literally years, before launching decisive action in a maximally targeted fashion. 

I do not accept the status quo. Not without a series of good hard kicks and dedicated sabotage. 

I bent a major university to my will, and got previously unrecognized awards for customer service, because I actually knew that the customer.. was the student.. and that, given impetus, they voted. I can control the system just as well as you can, with far less formal education.  I even bent the US Army to my will, and made them like it. It took the persistence of a hungry parasite.. hovering, lurking and chewing until I could make my move. From then, it was a system of human connections into the great dumb framework of the beast, and how sharply I could wire into it in terms of reward and punishment. Note: Punishment is harder to achieve, but worth it. 

Your frame of reference is just that, a frame. 

You may think education is important. 

I don't have one. Note that I tried, repeatedly. People of my economic background, don't have a great chance at education. I w

I am an autodidact. The most brilliant people I know, are unpolluted by the American public education system. Pray it never invades Western Europe, India, or China, or we will have a world of stupid on our hands. 

You may think children are important .

I don't have any, don't want any, don't like them, and think that one of the major problems of the planet is simple random overpopulation. If you don't have as many people to feed, and you can control your reproduction, until you can control your food supply to support it, you don't have a problem. Educate them, to do better than you have done. Don't buy an SUV to carry them around. You can get six in a Corolla. More than that, is some kind of religious agenda if you are not adopting (see Quiver Full fundy wackos).

You may think politics are important. 

It's about who can make the most money, off the population. That determines who is in control. Sometimes it changes, for the better.. sometimes not. It depends on the level of education, and inquiry, on the part of the population, as to how far they can be misled. 

If you just feel.. a little more lost.. welcome to the human condition. 

My very favorite quote from TS Eliot's Little Gidding:

http://www.tristan.icom43.net/quartets/

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Through the unknown, unremembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning;
At the source of the longest river
The voice of the hidden waterfall
And the children in the apple-tree
Not known, because not looked for
But heard, half-heard, in the stillness
Between two waves of the sea.
Quick now, here, now, always—
A condition of complete simplicity
(Costing not less than everything)
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
When the tongues of flame are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one.

My colleagues seem unsure, about my willingness to stay in the USA. 

Sure, it's shaky. 

It's beyond shaky. If someone offered me a full time job as a Rolfer in Munich, I'd be there before the moon changed phase. Regensburg is a good second choice. We love Regensburg. 

I want a city, I want a country, where I don't have to own a car, and if I do have the resources to do so, I can drive the very best, as fast as I want... Porsche baby here I come. 

It's not a question my American colleagues can hope to understand, unless they trained in the great clear sunny halls of Nymphenburgerstrasse, got the support of that group, got the respect of that culture, where osteopathy is understood and appreciated, where people can touch people and the body is not a place of shame. 

The client standing in the class, with her bare and perfect breasts just a fact of nature, unhemmed and unhampered, is just another human being. 

I can't explain to you, the things we have to get past, to get to this level of practice. 

I bring it into my office, but unless you get on my table, you cannot understand what it is I have been given. 

We just have to get over it all, and get to the work. 

If we are not, on every level, about the work, we are failing Dr Rolf. 

Anything which stops us, fails her. 

Keep this in mind as you look at everything we do, and are not doing. 

End transmission.. sometimes I think her tyrannical & grumpy spirit shakes me like a wet cat. 

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.