"The Definition of a Gentleman" (May God grant me strength . . . )

Hence it is that it is almost a definition of a gentleman to say that he is one who never inflicts pain. This description is both refined and, as far as it goes, accurate. He is mainly occupied in merely removing the obstacles which hinder the free and unembarrassed action of those about him; and he concurs with their movements rather than takes the initiative himself. His benefits may be considered as parallel to what are called comforts or conveniences in arrangements of a personal nature; like an easy chair or a good fire, which do their part in dispelling cold and fatigue, though nature provides both means of rest and animal heat without them. The true gentleman in like manner carefully avoids whatever may cause a jar or a jolt in the minds of those with whom he is cast --- all clashing of opinion, or collision of feeling, all restraint, or suspicion, or gloom, or resentment; his great concern being to make every one at his ease and at home. He has his eyes on all his company; he is tender towards the bashful, gentle towards the distant, and merciful towards the absurd; he can recollect to whom he is speaking; he guards against unseasonable allusions, or topics which may irritate; he is seldom prominent in conversation, and never wearisome. He makes light of favors while he does them, and seems to be receiving when he is conferring. He never speaks of himself except when compelled, never defends himself by a mere retort; he has no ears for slander or gossip, is scrupulous in imputing motives to those who interfere with him, and interprets everything for the best. He is never mean or little in his disputes, never takes unfair advantage, never mistakes personalities or sharp saying for arguments, or insinuates evil which he dare not say out. From a long-sighted prudence, he observes the maxim of the ancient sage, that we should ever conduct ourselves towards our enemy as if he were one day to be our friend. He has too much good sense to be affronted at insults, he is too well employed to remember injuries, and too indolent to bear malice. He is patient, forbearing, and resigned, on philosophical principles; he submits to pain, because it is inevitable, to bereavement, because it is irreparable, and to death, because it is his destiny. If he engages in controversy of any kind, his disciplined intellect preserves him from the blundering discourtesy of better, perhaps, but less educated minds; who, like blunt weapons, tear and hack instead of cutting clean, who mistake the point in argument, waste their strength on trifles, misconceive their adversary, and leave the question more involved than they find it. He may be right or wrong in his opinion, but he is too clear-headed to be unjust; he is as simple as he is forcible, and as brief as he is decisive. Nowhere shall we find greater candor, consideration, indulgence: he throws himself into the minds of his opponents, he accounts for their mistakes. He knows the weakness of human reason as well as its strength, its province and its limits. If he be an unbeliever, he will be too profound and large-minded to ridicule religion or to act against it; he is too wise to be a dogmatist or fanatic in his infidelity. He respects piety and devotion; he even supports institutions as venerable, beautiful, or useful, to which he does not assent; he honors the ministers of religion, and it contents him to decline its mysteries without assailing or denouncing them. He is a friend of religious toleration, and that, not only because his philosophy has taught him to look on all forms of faith with an impartial eye, but also from the gentleness and effeminacy of feeling, which is the attendant on civilization. by Cardinal Newman, from The Idea of a University, a series of lectures given in Ireland, 1852.

It was while walking this morning I came round a corner To so nearly be struck by three roses upon a thorny branch borne. I ducked in annoyance, stepped, then seized by sudden greed spun And grasped at one to tear it from its place and bear it with me where I went, But too late I turned, my fingertips but slid across the surface of the nearest petals And I, not caring so much to stop or step back, walked on with only a memory of what I had wanted.

The Persistence of Memory

I know I have many times quoted the famous Tolstoy line about happy vs. sad families. But I'm beginning to wonder if all divorces aren't the same as well. It's just odd how much we all seem to live out the same things. Namely, the expressed desire of our former best friend to have no contact with us - to shut the door forever. On an odd, (and still emotionally raw note,) I'm writing this in bed in the morning. I just woke up from a dream in which I and a number of old friends were sharing a weekend together - and Cynthia, my ex-wife, was there - and I was able to talk with her a bit. It was exquisite. And by exquisite, I mean I can only compare it to having unanaesthetized dental work done. Every moment is full of a grinding minor discomfort, and the wonder that it doesn't hurt more than it does, but it's the constant expectation of the imminent arrival of the inevitable unannounced searing jolt that's killing you. But it was good - to see her, and talk. The old sarcasm, (which I treasured) was there. But the real reason I mentioned it is that when I woke up I came out of one of those sleeps that was deep enough that your mind's mainframe has to do a bit of an update to allow you to function. It's kind of like Location: searching//: Istanbul Marital status//: single Health status: searching//: fucked up knee; recovering toe; recurring pain in elbow Work status//: currently awaiting beginning of school year Fucked up situations or imminent catastrophes on near horizon: searching//: None //: Accessing updated to-do list: . . . (Ok, I don't know how YOUR process of coming out of a deep sleep works, but that's a surprisingly accurate representation of what happens in my brain when I wake up from a heavy sleep. The location finder only kicked in this time because I have been travelling, and recently enjoying the experience of waking up in a pink room filled with playskool kitchen sets, and thinking "Ok, just stick with me here -I'm sure there's a perfectly good reason for this, which will be coming to me any moment now . . ." ) And, if you care, the space between the "situations on near horizon" and "updated to-do list" is where I have to hit the escape button, if I hope to go back to sleep. Once the to-do list starts scrolling, all sorts of data-trees start flashing on the screen, and it's day-on. Not that I'm actually going to DO anything about those things today. Heaven forbid I actually DO something. I'll just start thinking about them a lot. Anyways, in my dream, I had just woken up from a night of (apparently heavy,) drinking, and found someone had made a minor architectural wonder out of Pringles on the kitchen table, someone was starting to make pancakes, a wife of a friend informed me that people were still laughing over the fact that last night while intoxicated I had purchased an unaccountably large amount of women's cosmetics from the convenience store, the purpose of which was still to them unclear, and then I went into Cynthia's room and she was straightening up some things, and I sat down on the floor and started with some hesitation, and a great deal of apprehension, to talk to her. And when I woke up, as I realized that I wasn't going to get to talk to her, to get to ask her a few things, and learn how she is doing and who she is becoming, I felt quite sad. But then I got a flash of memory of all the times that my mind had to do an update on what the fuck had transpired last night, and all the times that the conclusion was that I really would rather stay asleep, because I was dreading how this day was going to pan out. And then I would have to get out of bed, and buckle up, and prepare for another day of war. And THAT was over. I don't have to dread first contact in the morning. I don't have to explain constantly, and have every motive and choice of word questioned. I don't have to think 5 steps ahead in a conversation. And dammit, ain't that nice? WHY do we have the need, (cuz it's located a lot deeper than simple desire) for holding a shared narrative with someone we care about? I think maybe the answer lies in the wording of that last question. Because if you don't care about someone, you can just say "well, fuck you, you are clearly a moron." But if the person in question is one with whom you have spent a long time, and had accumulated years of conversation, you tend to think that you should be able to explain your side of shit. That if anyone can hear you, and understand what you mean, it would be them. But they don't. Not only that, but you find that this person, who has every reason to know you better than anyone else on the planet, actually seems to understand LESS of you than a common stranger you just met would understand. And the only possible reasons for this are that A. we are fundamentally wrong in what we think about this situation, and they recognize it, and we do not. We are, in fact, deceiving ourselves. Or, B. the more a person comes to know us at a deeper level, the less reason they find to grant us the empathy necessary to understand us, ie, we are at heart so flawed as to be undeserving of the love that was once given. Or, C. over the course of the years spent in our presence, the other person has become so emotionally crippled that they can no longer function in our presence as a civil, sane, and rationally oriented person would. We are, quite literally, psychologically toxic. I myself tend to go with option C, adding an extra shot of espresso with a little lemon twist in it. You'll like it, I promise. It's what I'm having this morning - hang on, I'll show you what it looks like. Ready? I am toxic to her, because I am a highly addictive, reality-altering substance. One dose of me, and you see the world with a new and vibrant clarity. Two doses of me, and you begin to question your previously held assumptions, because it-all-starts-making-more-sense-now. Three doses of me, and you would sell your own grandmother to stay right here with this feeling, except that grandmothers fetch so little on the market that it's not really worth it. So, as a recently divorced woman of my acquaintance wrote - "I'm not interested in constructing and living out of a narrative that just erases those (good things . . . and times that were happy and loving.)" I am able, and strong enough, to live with the pain of still remembering what was good, and I am not going to let someone else push me into scrubbing away and erasing and fixing and patching and remolding reality so it can create a cleaner plot-line from a later perspective. I have sat in on enough suture-sessions to know that a clean sever is extremely rare, because that would require a very sharp and smooth object moving in a consistent direction at a high velocity, and life is mostly populated with oddly dull, slow, unfinished and jagged objects that cannot move in a straight line to save their goddamn lives. That's not me making excuses, that is just a fact of physics. Pick up anything you want and throw it across the room, and you'll see that it never flies in a straight line - it spins and wobbles around an uncertain center and impacts at an angle less than true. The exception is a throwing knife well-thrown by practiced hands. So why are we and our partners so injured? Because neither of us really wanted to hurt the other - and so let us be grateful for small favors. Let me also be, however slightly, proud of the fact that I can find myself able to countenance my own actions and inconsistencies and inflictions, and that I do not need to write someone out, and pretend that what was good was bad, and what was happiness was delusion, and what was, in brief, now no longer was at all. It is sad, both for us and for them, that they will no longer have the memories we cherished, (and at least I still do,) of the very sweet times we spent in the hearts of the other, for it was a precious privilege, and a painful loss, and to deny any of it would be but a miserable robbing of one's own most precious storehouse. On a tangentially related topic, can I just pause for a moment, and speak in favor of the greatly underchampioned value of shutting your goddam feelings off, and putting on a nice tone of voice, and maintaining the social niceties when conversing? I mean, by all means feel free to say such pointed things as "The amazing degree to which you attribute me agency to affect you speaks volumes to the degree to which you seem to be avoiding any great degree of introspection, self-reflection or personal growth in favor of mentally masturbatory blame-casting," if you want, but there is no reason to go all red-faced and spittle-inflected when you say it. It just makes you look ugly. I mean, the purpose of life, insofar as I can tell, is the creation of a little bit more beauty in any given environment in which you find yourself. There are already so many unattractive things in the world - why be one? Aaaaah, the wisdom I could share with the world - if they would but let me, the ignorant bovine-minded piss-trousered fuckwits. Let others come to their sure conclusions. Let them have their officially sanctioned versions. The more bloodless and anemic of a creature you are, the more you will seek shelter from feeling your uncertainty. Let them enjoy the flimsy hovel they have constructed of tissue-paper and twigs of half-notions just salvaged from the masticating jaws of deeper reflection - grovel in the little pity-pit they've excavated in the center, to shelter in what warmth remains them, because until they are willing to endure the cold and lashing rains of self-doubt for a period, they'll never construct a wall of stone, nor a warming hearth that can contain an honest fire. The only thing that bothers me about that last paragraph is the degree to which I am sooooo sure whereof I speak . . . Surely I have it all wrong.

Of Children Grown and Going On, of One More Day Now Come and Gone . . .

I recall Poland as an odd place - where winter's hand was heavy on the land, and summer's was somehow equally so. Spring and fall were themselves just as intense - spring a time of suffocating pollen, and the sensation that the lifeblood of the earth was strongly stirring itself beneath your feet, compensating for its long sleep. Fall was perhaps the fairest of all, yet coming off of a summer so heavily drenched in sunshine and treesap and contemplating the approach of another deep dark frozen season, when the sun would seem to rise at 9 and go down by 4, fall always assumed a kind of poignant and dreadful urgency, perhaps similar to what a man soon to enter prison might feel in his last few days of freedom. These, then, are the prominent feelings that accompany the memories that play through my mind when I remember back to Poland. The more I travel around the world, the more I perceive, or think I perceive, that a people are of one cloth with the place from whence they come. I know it sounds silly - fantastic even - I can hardly credit it myself. Yet, I have come to think it is true. Whether their character springs from their native soil, or whether the two things just become so associated in my mind that I cannot separate the one from the other I do not know, but foreigners and transplants somewhat aside, when you look upon the resident of a land, who for long generations has not been uprooted, you can find in his manners and habits, trapped in the crevices of his hands and face and soul the soil of his home, much as you would upon a stone dislodged from the side of a mountain. Nowhere was this more true than in Poland. The people have a heaviness in them that parallels that of their climate. They are serious at heart, and even their levity rides like foam on a deep, dark river - you may hear light laughter, and see them downing beer in the sunshine, but none of that negates the powerful force lying under which carries it along. They are a somewhat sad people, it seems to me, though they carry their sadness well. Somber tones inflect their voices when they speak unthinkingly, for they are imbued with a dread of the future, and an underlying conviction that it holds nothing very good, at least in store for them. This tends to manifest itself at worst in a surly and mopish character, or at best in a wry and self-deprecating anticipation of being thoroughly fucked unknown forces of the future. Life is, in their approximation, something that easily spins out of control, much to the cost of the onlooker who has not correctly anticipated its antics. I myself believe this peculiarly Eastern European worldview evolved from generations of drunken villagers laughing raucously in close proximity to dancing bears. I was not surprised then, to receive a recent email from one of my past Polish students, asking advice about her university choices, and how it would affect the rest of her life. I remember this student particularly, because she had an air of self-possession in a degree not usually encountered in people of any age, let alone those in their teens. Whether or not she felt any of the confidence and assurance that she projected I do not know - I would suspect not, as it is my experience that what is projected to the world and what is actually felt usually only coincide in the more pathetic portions of the emotional spectrum. She became a natural leader in the class, but only in her chosen circle, for like many natural leaders her power was much predicated on the fact that it was never seen to be wielded or by any effort extended - her influence over others was what it was, and she neither wished for it nor rejected it and thus all recognized it to be her rightful due. At the end of our year together, (and a year is a great deal of time in which to become fond of a group of young people,) somewhere near our last class together, I spoke to Joanna, and told her that her life could turn out to be very, very interesting, or really quite boring, and I was curious to know which it would be, so would she please write to me about once every 5 years or so, and let me know what had become of her. She agreed, and every year or so, probably as often as it occurred to her, she dropped me a line and told me of how she was doing - what was meaningful in her life, what she was worried about, etc. I was glad to hear from her, but little that she said engaged my interest overmuch. Then, about a week ago, she sent me another message. It began with "I don't know why I am bothering you, but I just feel as though I don't have anyone else to talk to who will listen to me." What she went on to say was nowhere near as dramatic as such a beginning might lead one to suspect, but all the more dramatic for how heartfelt it was, and how non-dramatic of a person I know her to be. She is, like so many people of her age, having to begin making her own decisions, and they are not small ones. She has decided that Poland is not the country in which she will make her eventual life, and so is looking at the possibility of moving abroad now, in order to do her schooling in England or another place. As large as this decision is, (and I think we can all recall how fraught was the decision of where to go to school,) it is only the first of a number of difficult decisions she has in front of her as she transitions from the haven of being directed by her parents into a world in which she makes her own decisions. Her parents are offering to sell their plot of land so that she can go abroad, but the money will only pay for a year, or two at most. She knows she will have to work tables, and wash dishes, and struggle to make ends meet, and I assured her that in the end, what people determined to do, they usually got done. So if she was determined to make her life in London, she needn't worry - but she would need a lot of determination to carry her through the rough (and impoverished) sections of the way. In the end I advised her to stay in Poland for the first two years of her education, and then transfer abroad for the final two. Although she liked that advice very much, I don't know whether she will follow it or not - I get the feeling that the main value the conversation had for her was in being able to talk with someone outside of her own town and circle of common friends, and hear an outside voice - and I am immensely proud that at the moment she thought to speak with me.

What is the sound of one tumblr reposting?

Like many people, I once harbored the belief that there was within me something - some strain of endurance or achievement or good taste or culture or education or perspective or possibly just potential, that set me apart from what I would wish to view as the common herd. Then I found tumblr.

A few months after I first encountered the website, I created my own tumblr blog. For many years I have maintained files on my computer of interesting design ideas to replicate in the house I hope to build one day - or ways the cheap, old BMW motorbike I am looking at buying could be reworked to look uber-cool, concepts for photos I would hope to take one day once Claudia Schiffer comes to her senses and stops blocking my email messages - you know - that sort of thing. I have folders of photo ideas, recipes, ideas for novels and poems, interesting house designs, jewelry I could make, etc. So when I found on tumblr a constant feed of photos of gorgeous and interesting things, I quickly wanted to find a place to collect some of these so that I could replicate them later. Since it is much easier to move photos about within tumblr itself than it is to export them out, with the additional bonus that tumblr will host the collection for you, so you don't have to take up heaven-knows how much space on your own machine, starting a tumblr acct seems like path of least resistance.

Over the month or two that I have had the tumblr acct, my tastes and interests have meandered slightly, from the sartorial to the numismatic to the antique to the culinary to the plain aesthetic, and I have accumulated a large, large, large amount of photos which reflect my interests and personal taste to a high degree. So much do these photos appeal to my particular sense that sometimes when I open my tumblr blog, I find myself awed by the beauty of all the things I see before me, and the strength of the resonance surprises me.

From this I have learned two things. First, I have learned to better identify what it is about a scene that piques my interest. I am learning the particulars of the ranges of colors and compositions and elements that to me most appeal. Secondly, I have learned that my taste in aesthetics no more sets me apart from the common herd than a baboon's love for a banana. I am a most typical man - I am a product of my generation, and the media that feeds us all. My taste in things is not mine - it is my world's, and I simply swim in it.

A Motley Assortment

The boys on the bus are well aware
Of the gorgeous girl, and her most minimal
guarded gestures are watched with heavy eyes.

Her eyes, however, wandered never.

A Question, on an Educational Survey I Filled Out Today.

5. If you were to choose a metaphor for where/how you see yourself with respect to your personal and professional development, how would you describe it; what metaphor would you choose and why?


I am on a bridge, which is over a deep chasm. The bridge sways gently in the breeze, causing the cables to creak in a pleasant, though possibly ominous way. I look down, and see far below me the river of knowledge that flows like a thin silver rivulet along the bottom of the chasm. Oh, how I wish I could reach down, and dip my hands into the shining flow! But alas, I am on the bridge, and I cannot reach the knowledge without either exiting the bridge and climbing down the treacherous walls of the chasm, or leaping from the bridge, which would surely kill me.

A large Administrative bear emerges at the head of the bridge, but when I turn to run, the tiger of unemployment stalks me from behind! I cry out to the gods of wisdom and rationality, who answer my prayers with the approach of a group of raucously loud and uneducated mob armed with sticks and plenty of snacks, (but no pens or notebooks or textbooks,) at whose approach the bear roars in fear and leaves. The raucous group then beats me to death with their sticks, on the bridge, overlooking the shining flow of knowledge, far, far below.

“To live content with small means; to seek elegance rather than luxury, and refinement rather than fashion, to be worthy, not respectable, and wealthy, not rich; to study hard, think quietly, talk gently, act frankly, to listen to stars and birds, to babes and sages, with open heart, to bear all cheerfully, to all bravely await occasions, hurry never. In a word, to let the spiritual unbidden and unconscious grow up through the common. This is to be my symphony.”
― William Henry Channing

Well - this is much more a statement of aspiration than anything else. Perhaps one day my current materialism and laziness will, with tending, mature into such a refined wisdom.

A Taxonomy of Training

The taxonomy of training has for some time now been on my mind. By this is meant the range of difficulties or problems likely to inhibit one’s fight game which can be foreseen and forestalled with a degree of preparation. A perfect example of such a foreseeable problem would be gassing out during a fight – exhausting yourself, and being unable to continue past the first minute, and thereby getting your ass kicked. A problem that would not fall within such a taxonomy may at first be difficult to name because in order to name it you foresaw it, and thus could, I suppose, prepare for it.

There is a point, however, at which an occurrence becomes so unlikely that to train for it seems rather a waste of time. One borderline example I recall was in Kenpo. We were taught to slide our feet across the ground when moving, rather than pick them up. The rationale given was that by sliding your feet you reduced the chance of stepping on something (an overturned bottle, perhaps,) which might disturb your balance. So their particular taxonomy of foreseeable problems was, in my opinion, a bit detailed, but I suppose if you are striving for degree of precision in technique that approaches science, (as they were,) why the hell not?

Yet who has time to focus on the tiniest details of advancing and retreating? My students need things which are so much more fundamental and all-encompassing than that. I suppose the person who has the time to focus on the smaller detail is the Martial Artist – the individual who has chosen to devote himself to his fight science until he reaches a degree of development sufficient that he can begin to intelligently customize the technique to his own body and skills, and further, give back to his art by contributing solid fight techniques, teaching techniques, and theory for both.

And suffice it to say, my current discipline does not attract martial artists, it attracts people who want the down-and-dirty of busting out physical confrontation with minimal damage, and then want to return to their normal lives in which krav maga occupies a couple of hours of their week, no more. Which, all things considered, is probably a healthier perspective on life, anyway, since real artists are often real pains in the ass.

So what are the taxonomy of problems which can be foreseen and forestalled by a bit of directed preparation?

Physical preparation

Cardio – put simply, most people gas out in under one minute. By gas out, I mean hit a point of exhaustion where they would rather just lose the fight now, so they could get back to breathing, or their muscles and minds simply stop working sufficiently well to continue in any sort of effective fashion. Since most boxers have (in comparison with us mere mortals,) amazing cardio, the three-minute/one round standard seems to be a nice stage to aim for.

Flexibility – the first thing that comes to mind when one mentions flexibility is Jean Claude Van Damme hanging around 3 meters off the floor, meditating while doing the splits, or amazing flying head kicks, or scorpion kicks, where the heroine (let’s imagine a chick, shall we? It’s just better that way,) her hands being occupied in front of her, swings her leg so far behind her that her foot emerges over her own head to smack the opposing person in the face.
Now forget about that. Most people need to have enough flexibility to land a kick on their opponents ribs, and that only because if you can do that, you can easily kick them in the crotch, or stomach, which is the highest you should ever kick. Unless you wish to show off for your friends, that is.

Balance – One of the things we are most likely to lose as we get older, and spend a greater amount of our time in soft supportive chairs, is our balance, our inborn, native sense of how far we can bend or stretch, with or without compensation, before we will topple over. Our ability to center our weight over one foot, or compensate for a degree of momentum or displaced weight – these are things which only long hours of kicking and jumping can teach us.

Body-hardening – this involves two aspects. First, and most critical, is the degree of pain your body registers when it comes into violent contact with something. The second is the actual damage your body receives when the impact occurs. The first of these is most critical because a moment of crisis is no time to have your mind occupied with secondary thoughts of “Ooooow – that hurt – don’t want to block with that arm again!” Since this aspect is largely mental, it’s best dealt with via practice at receiving the pain and learning that A. It signifies no lasting damage, and B. You are able to do that take that same abuse on that same spot another 5 times before it becomes “unbearable.”

The pain is likely to come in largest part, from your own body’s exertions – primarily from cardio, and secondarily from impacting the other person with strikes or blocks. With practice, two things occur – first, you learn to ignore the physical pain that occurs, and secondly, the actual amount of pain you feel decreases as your body, over time, develops tougher capillaries, denser bones, and . . . kills off nerves.

The pain that is inflicted upon you via successful strikes is another thing entirely, and largely falls under the mental, not physical, aspect.

Strength – strength is possibly the least important aspect, and most difficult to build.

Speed – speed develops as a result of learning correct technique, and practicing sufficient hours that A. Sufficient fast-twitch muscle fibers are developed, B. Your body learns how to correctly recruit the muscles it has, and thus C. the correct technique flows from your body with minimal thought interference.

Physical Accuracy, ie, coordination – a large part of success lies simply in learning accuracy – in learning, for lack of a better term, where the end of your arm is. I think we have all had the experience of looking at something sitting a little ways away, and wondering if we could move fast enough to grab it – and if so, how far would the whole body have to move, and how far could I lean over, and how far could I extend my arm, and furthermore, what hand position would be best to adopt to successfully snatch the item as fast as possible. Training teaches us, via a thousand small lessons a day, these things. How we move our body best to arrive at a particular configuration, and how to put your foot swiftly and reliably to the knee or solar plexus of another, we practice and practice and learn, until we develop the ability to move our body and extend our limbs with practiced confidence.


Mental preparation
Pain threshold – as mentioned above, there is nothing more crippling than having secondary thoughts running through one’s head which sap one’s morale by asking how close we are to breaking. Pain threshold is an important part of the cardio aspect – to learn how badly your lungs and legs can burn, and that the pain becomes X intense, but no more, teaches one to A. Continue despite the pain, and B. to not fear the pain, because one knows how to C. Distinguish between normal operating levels, and “Houston, we have a problem.”

As mentioned before, the pain from receiving a successful strike from an opponent is difficult to prepare for, but fortunately, much more of a mental hurdle than a physical one. Most strikes do not do extensive physical damage, or at least not of the sort that you need to be concerned with during the moment of truth. Furthermore, shock and adrenaline dampen the amount of pain you register at the time, which is a very good thing, since in a true physical altercation, you have bigger things to worry about than whether or not you have a broken nose.

Mentality or Attitude – Which leads us naturally to our next point – perhaps your nose IS broken. It’s bleeding on your shirt – dammit, that was a favorite shirt of yours – it will never be the same – maybe the blood isn’t on your trousers yet – perhaps your trousers can be saved – and while you are thinking about keeping your trousers clean, the other dude knocks your ass to the ground, steps on your ankle intentionally or not, thus breaking it, and incidentally also ruining your trousers.
There is no time for secondary considerations. When a physical altercation occurs, we must immediately prioritize in a manner quite different from a normal situation.

By nature of the occurrence of a physical altercation, it is clear that the normal rules that govern social interaction have been suspended – but to what degree? Is this a brawl of fisticuffs? Or will broken bottles and blades be used? I do not mean to encourage the sort of paranoia which often characterizes conversations of this sort, but stomping on the head of an unconscious person, while unusual, is not unheard of. I have even worked with a man who claimed that having been beaten down, his opponent then proceeded to run him over with a car, thus “jacking my back – for life.”

Given all this, when entering into an altercation, one must have the correct mentality, in which nothing but quick victory is important. Damage is accepted as inevitable. One’s clothes and watch and glasses are immediately forsaken as irretrievably damaged – a cost of doing business. Any blood that results is accepted not so much as an indication of physical damage, but as a warning that a particular technique was incorrect or insufficient.

This mindset of acceptance of the inevitability of physical and financial damage should extend so far as to govern our attitude and behavior going into the altercation. Since we will view this, in every way, as an experience in which hundreds of dollars of clothing, glasses, watches, etc. Will be damaged, and hundreds of dollars in medical bills will be incurred, we will naturally avoid, as much as possible, entry into physical confrontation, so that once being forced to enter in, we have no second thoughts or regrets, as we are certain we had no alternative.

Anxiety – fear is one of the biggest enemies, as it constricts one’s breathing, causes one to think less creatively, and encourages us to focus on the possibility of failure. Anxiety is always related to the unknown. How will it feel if I get hit? Am I capable of winning this? What will happen if I lose? Not only do these thoughts clutter our minds and inhibit our performance, but the accompanying stress and adrenaline often cause us to forget, or poorly execute, the techniques which we have learned. Fortunately, the best remedy for anxiety is constant practice, and lots of sparring. This gives us the opportunity to practice remembering to breathe throughout the encounter, teaches us to think under pressure, and innoculates us against fear as we learn what it feels like to be pummelled, and receive in turn the practice of pummelling someone else, and thus gain the confidence that comes from learning how to do it to good effect.

Technique – It is odd that something so important should be left until last – but absent the others above, proper technique will never emerge, or will break down in 20 seconds.

Accuracy of technique – the correct angle of delivery alone can render a technique devastating or utterly ineffective. How much more important is accuracy of technique, then, when we add to correct angle the further aspects such as speed of delivery, knowing the correct target, ways to generate instant momentum and force, proper weight distribution, and correct placement of feet and hands relative to the target? The lack of any one of these can drastically reduce to effectiveness of a technique.

Defensive Technique – these have to be practiced till protecting oneself is second nature. There will be plenty of strikes you never-saw-coming. If you are in a correct defensive posture to begin with, you will lessen the chances of the one you never-saw-coming being the one the finished it.
A few principles apply to intelligent defensive techniques. First, they should always maintain a good visual field. Of course we want to stay well-covered, but we always need to be able to see what is happening around us. Secondly, a good defensive technique will also inflict pain on the opponent, to discourage them, and allow for easy transition to offensive techniques.

Offensive Technique – three basic principles: maximum effectiveness or pain, (not necessarily damage,) minimum energy expenditure, and minimal exposure to risk of counter-attack.

Well – I hope no one ever reads this – if you do, feel free to point out anything I am lacking.

Every snowflake is unique,
The singular result
Of all the environmental agents
Acting around and upon the instant of
Its birth beneath a cloud.

(I take the speaker at their word,
neither knowing the how nor having the will
to dispute such an unqualified assertion.

I set the question aside and accept -
It's all that I am able to do.)

Pushed to the left or the right
On shifting winds that carry
Some aloft rising past others
Fast finding the packed
Ranks of the fallen,

Each one no doubt asserts
The importance of identity
In carving one's own way
In our wintery descent
Through life.

(And yet I will ask
of what possible practical use
is being unique when in the end
they all act the same?)

For those seeking creatitivity

The following article reaffirmed much of what I suspected, and echoed some of what I had heard just this week. I highly recommend it.

WSJ article on creativity.

Enjoy!

I fear my future, for all the best reasons.

A few observations upon concluding a long and not particularly point-ful day:

I was presented this morning with a t-shirt upon which was printed in Turkish "This is what a feminist looks like." One of my more amazing students, (I have had quite a few, and this one is indeed a gem,) approached me yesterday after class and prefaced her speech with, "As you may know, tomorrow is international women's day," and as it turns out, I am a sucker for any request coming from an English language learner that begins with the phrase, "As you may know."

That aside, though, I would have agreed anyway, simply because I am convinced that women's issues are one of the biggest issues of our time, and a number of other issues that we spend a lot of our time whinging about would be best approached by addressing the issue of gender inequity first.

In any case, I was happy to wear the t-shirt, and it did indeed cause at least one or two comments from male students, and it did promote a small bit of dialogue, which I imagine was the intent.

If anyone cares, below are the links to the article and video which we covered in class today, which basically reflects my point of view on this subject, which I think, despite all the noise made about it, is still a secondary issue even in the west, and is REALLY a nearly non-issue in the rest of the world, where it ought to be a front-burner issue.

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/sheryl_wudunn_our_century_s_greatest_injustice.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/23/magazine/23Women-t.html?pagewanted=all

Enjoy!

This evening, then, I was scheduled to shoot some pool with one of the professors in the International Relations department. He and I, (his name is Mike, by the way,) have a rare resonance of thought that seems to occur (at least for me,) once in every 5 years. He is one of those rare people who not only happens to spend about 97% of his time talking about topics that are extremely interesting to me simply because that is what is deeply interesting to him, but spends the other 2% of his time apologizing for possibly boring me with his meandering stories backpacking across Africa and motorcycling across India. (The missing 1% is spent ordering beer, for those of you who are anal about math.)

The stories about trying to get across the border of Georgia on the night of the attempted coup against Gorbachev are, of course, interesting, but the fact that all these stories are set in the frame of his relating how he came upon a theory that may utterly upset the current accepted paradigms of International Relations lends it a whole extra dimension.

Incidentally, I may or may not have touched upon the current lady-friend in previous posts - but in any case, when I mentioned Mike's name to her one evening, she did a double-take and said - "Really? You know that guy? He's famous, you know. We all had to read his stuff in grad school." I had no inkling of this, previously. I just thought he was an awfully nice and self-effacing guy who was pretty good at playing pool and had a lot of interesting stories to tell. Just goes to show - you never know who the hell you might be talking to.

So moving on half a step from there - I confided in Mike a year or so ago that I was thinking of changing fields - that English had been great, but I wanted to get into history or IR, and since then he has periodically enquired, and been encouraging me to make the jump, which leaves me asking myself what it is I am waiting for.

I have known for some time that teaching English was not for me. Teaching literature, maybe, but that's not what I am currently doing. I'm teaching the language itself, and while that has been an experience, I am getting somewhat tired of it. And of all the things that call to me, international relations is, depending on the day, in the top 3.

Yet I find myself crippled by a past of (relative) poverty, and a pathetic addiction to the still new creature comforts with which I find myself now surrounded. I spent a number of years with rather little money, and feeling as though my entire future would continue to consist of a constant sense of continual constriction occurring around the area of my metaphorical financial neck. I worried, (and to some extent, out of habit, still do,) about every hamburger and every coffee and every small luxury I for myself purchase.

I saw in front of me a brief chance at a predictable life of growing career security in the US, which I insensibly turned my back on in order to go overseas and pursue learning foreign languages and gaining a broader, more worldly perspective, at which point the financial future question was again brought into sharp relief, as I struggled from month to month to make the stateside payments on time to the student loan behemoth that from a lofty financial perch looked down upon my small, piddling, profit-less life, demanding monthly tribute.

All of which means I am reluctant to now make the pivot to a new stage in my life, because it means deserting the newly attained relative security and financial comfort (I did use the word relative!) that my current job entails, and returning to the grind of being a poor, (though scholarshipped and stipended,) student. I mean, it is only now, for the first time in . . . EVER . . . I finally find myself within sight of the end of my burden of long-term debt - the finish line. If all goes well, within 5 months from today, give or take a week or two, I will be debt free. For the first time in 14 years I will need pay no debt incurred prior to the last 30 days. I will be, again, at ZERO - but not really.

Financially I will, at long last, be back to ZERO. But in every other way, it is true, my pockets are now full. I have, over the past 14 years, got my first masters degree. It may not be much, or from a great school, but I have used it exactly as I had planned to - as a stepping stone to a better career, and perhaps a second masters degree. I have, at long last, possibly met my first real friend since university. In fact, I may have met two of them. It is strange for me to say - strange for me to confess - I don't bond with many people - in fact, if I had to list the drawbacks of being so fabulously me, inability to meet people I like would be number 1 - and yet, I suspect that I may have in this city met 2 people, two male friends, I like very much. Also, in the past 14 years I have had the experiences that have allowed me to begin a novel - and I now, for all my relative poverty, feel rich with experiences, and vitality, and interest in life. I can honestly say, despite a FUCKING WRENCING couple of years there, I feel as though for the first time in my life, I am more completely ME than I have been or could have been, at any time in past 20 years - fuckit - my whole life.

My conflict over what to do in the future stems from the fact that I have had, all my life, two competing visions to pursue - two competing ideals of self-creation. (WARNING: NO APOLOGIES WILL BE MADE FOR OVER-ROMANTICIZED BULLSHIT IN THE FOLLOWING PARAGRAPH. THE WORD "IDEAL" WAS INTENTIONALLY EMPLOYED TO CAUSE THE READER TO NOT BE OVERLY RELIANT ON A REALISTIC FRAME OF REFERENCE WHEN READING THE FOLLOWING DESCRIPTION.) I have had, throughout most of my life, at least two competing visions of what I should pursue. One was, as they put it in Pulp Fiction, to be "like Cain, in kung-fu. I will simply walk the earth." I recall expressing this sentiment to Stephen, my best friend from high school, as a desire to be leathered from the sun, having only enough possessions to get by, and live humbly, travelling the earth, learning everything I could. The second, other, contradictory ideal I had once was to be a wealthy man, who has the ability, the option, to taste of the best in life, wear the best suits, travel to the best places, stay at the best resorts, dive at the best spots, drink the most liquor, eat the choicest foods, fuck the finest ladies, and converse with the most scintillating intelligentsia. I assume you see the conflict, there.

I nearly joined the merchant marine once. I wanted to travel, and experience life at its most raw.

I currently have a drawer of nothing but scarves. I match them artfully with my shoes and belts. I really have a splendid variety of fashionable shoes these days. I have two different pairs of two-toned wingtips. They are so gorgeous I think I may have inspired an orgasm in girl just by walking past her. Ok - totally fantastically hyperboling - there's not a shred of truth in that - I have yet to even get a single unsolicited comment on my shoes from anyone other than my girlfriend - but that's just cuz they are utter philistines. But even utter philistines can't help commenting on the incredibly sexy coats I wear.

I worked in construction periodically for years - my hands turned into crabby calloused claws - I kept returning to it because it was the best paying job that was hassle-free to come by, and because it kept me fit, and because . . . it suited my fantasy of learning of the roots of life by studying the ways of the down and out and drug-addicted people who populate that particular field.

I go shopping now days for antiques. In particular I favor brass and copperware, and I occasionally pick up the odd bit of ephemera for fun - an old accounting ledger to use as a journal - I'm currently looking for an interesting head of an antique cane to substitute for the boring umbrella handle I currently suffer with.

A couple of times a week, and every Friday, I practice or teach the techniques of physically damaging another person's body, and leaving them in a broken pulp. Common questions involve the advisability of head-butting, and the legality of eye-gouging. In case you were wondering, most of my answers tend to end with utilizing knees to the midsection - not that you asked.

And so I recognize that what began when I was a small child, and first caught my attention as an adolescent, which is to say the dual urge to a life of grit and humility or a life of style and refinement, have thus far compromised, and produced the life I have now - a life of silly, superficial concerns mixed with blood-in-the-teeth immediacy. Yet no matter how much I stare at what has come before, I cannot rid myself of my apprehension of the stages that are yet to come.

I will not hate Starbucks.

I sat myself today in a starbux, across from the door, out of which I could see across the Golden Horn and to the Hagia Sophia which rises on the far side, outlined against the grey sky. The ferries ply the water between me and it, and I sit, and read, and look out across the water and up to the ancient monument, and then back to the working men selling breads or grilled fish on the street, then the tourists that come between us, then back to my book.

Today I am reading, today I am finishing, today I will finish, today I have finished Rousseau's Social Contract. If I had it to do over again, I would read a summary - most of his ideas do not benefit from his wording of them, and in too many places the prejudices peculiar to him and his age shine through too clearly, contrast too vividly with those of our own age to allow my eyes and brain to float by them without noticing.

I have, however, made a list of the books that I will read over the next few years, and having made such a goal, absent a compelling reason to change, I will stick with it. After all - were it not for this list, and my semi-irrational devotion to it, I would not have begun reading John Stuart Mill's On Liberty, which by chance made me aware of a thinker whose ideas are not so close to my own as to be redundant, nor so far as to provoke outrage, thus falling in that fertile middle ground where I find my own conceptions of things questioned and alternatives proposed, all of which is couched in language that is clear, and easy to read. It does, however, suffer the same fault as Rousseau, in that it displays its prejudices and assumptions toward Christian and Western society a bit too clearly to escape notice by the western reader.

In looking through the glass door at the Hagia Sophia outside, the contrast between the white letters "STARBUCKS COFFEE" stenciled upon the glass, and the towering antiquity seen through it gave me pause - a moment suspended between the modern and the ancient, between the quotidian, even crass, and the sublime.

Now for fact: I chide myself slightly for coming into starbucks. In this environment of mood music and furniture identical to 57 other locations in a 20 block radius, I ask myself why I came here, of all places here, to this safety base of American/globalized aesthetic and cheap commercial presentation. I asked myself this question in earnest as I paused from my book, and for better or worse I found my answer.

I came here for the value for my money. The fact is that I can buy here for one lira more a larger amount of quite pleasant coffee than anywhere else, while accessing free internet. Thus, I do not see equivalent value in going to a more "authentic" locale. I ask value for my money - and my time: in flavor and taste, in amount, in not being disturbed by overly-friendly intruders-into my moment. One may question my tastes or my misanthropy, but my tastes being what they are, I shall no longer apologize for patronizing a global enterprise simply because it is a global enterprise.

Having articulated my requirements, I no longer see a disharmony between the elements. As much as I appreciate the ageless beauty of the Hagia Sophia, and turn my eyes that direction when I wish for a tiny jolt of awe, and similarly enjoy the serious subject matter of eternal questions of governance at which Rousseau all too ponderously tilts; just so, are not coffee and comfort and solitude of equal value to these? And why should I treat with distaste that which in truth I love, except that I am aping not just the values of others, but worse, an unarticulated impression of the values of others?