Old School Meets New School

Merce Cunningham.

2009-07-28T10:24:00.001-07:00

Merce Cunningham, RIP.

British mini-civil war in Afghanistan?

2009-02-26T14:10:00.000-08:00

Interesting report on U.K Muslims travelling to Afghanistan and fighting British troops there:

http://toyoufromfailinghands.blogspot.com/2009/02/afpak-some-of-uks-enemies.html

Go after em kid. Go after em.

2009-01-09T13:27:00.000-08:00

Okay, Rocky is cheesy, but what the hell.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jaaVs5W6T6s

2008-11-21T14:43:00.000-08:00

There are those that do
and those that don't
Those that will
and those that won't

(This image and this poem were posted in front of the power rack at Zach Even-Esh's old gym. It reminds me of my favourite boxing gym sign: "When you're not training someone else is: to kick your ass. )

Intensity, Heart, bring it!

2008-10-30T13:47:00.000-07:00

Check out Ross Enamait's article and definitely watch the movie!

http://www.rosstraining.com/articles/individualfactors.html

And as an aside, Ross' books and character are stellar.

from Henry V

2008-09-22T17:07:00.000-07:00

Whoever does not have the stomach for this fight, let him depart. Give him money to speed his departure since we wish not to die in that man's company. Whoever lives past today and comes home safely will rouse himself every year on this day, show his neighbor his scars, and tell embellished stories of all their great feats of battle. These stories he will teach his son and from this day until the end of the world we shall be remembered. We few, we happy few, we band of brothers; for whoever has shed his blood with me shall be my brother. And those men afraid to go will think themselves lesser men as they hear of how we fought and died together.

profound possibilities of human endurance

2008-07-14T22:34:00.000-07:00

Some Kalahari tribespeople have forged an utterly remarkable and inspiring relationship between human endurance and spiritual hunting:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=52k6FdApB94

For background information on "persistence hunting:"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persistence_hunting

Summer training

2008-07-13T23:02:00.000-07:00

Esme and Dillon in training. Esme is 16 months old.

2008-07-01T13:02:00.000-07:00

"It accomplishes nothing to ask the poem to come to us. We must try to make the pilgrimage to the poem."

-Robert Bringhurst discussing classical Haida oral narrative poems in
A Story as Sharp as a Knife.

classic men of iron

2008-06-30T10:20:00.001-07:00

Ross Enamait over on his site keeps promoting a fascinating and rich resource full of examples from the Old School of hardmen:

http://www.sandowplus.co.uk/

Definitely worth a thorough exploration, whether you a male or female aspiring to strength and hard-as-nails-ness.

Pep Talk

2008-06-25T14:19:00.000-07:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z2Q7YRDL90E

Arts de guerre ou voies de paix ?

2008-06-12T12:33:00.000-07:00

Sadly, my French sucks. Perhaps yours is better?

http://www.tsr.ch/tsr/index.html?siteSect=500000&bcid=447656#bcid=447656;vid=7141201

(The link will you take you to a documentary about Pascal Krieger of Shinto Muso Ryu jojutsu fame).

Rippetoe - What a guy!

2008-06-11T15:50:00.001-07:00

Accumulating injuries are the price we pay for the thrill of not having sat around on our asses. ~Mark Rippetoe

Rippetoe on Crossfit

2008-06-05T15:15:00.000-07:00

from http://www.elitefts.com/documents/texas_bbq.htm

Funny, many of the people whom Rippetoe seems to suggest shouldn't yet do crossfit are many of the people who do crossfit!!??
------------------
People misunderstand what CrossFit is for. People on the internet forums beat up CrossFit all the time. Typically, those who do that are 18 years old and don’t understand that not everyone is in the gym for the same reason. It has been my observation that the people who get the most out of CrossFit are the ones that come to it with a strength training background. I have stated that in print before, and Greg Glassman (founder of CrossFit) agrees with me on this.

If you’re a skinny 5’10”, 155 pound kid who can’t squat his body weight, you should probably wait to use CrossFit until you get your squat up to 300 lbs and you can bench press your body weight. Then when you get ready to do CrossFit, you will do it a whole lot better. No one would argue with that. By the same token, for an active 50-year-old guy like me who doesn’t plan on doing another powerlifting meet but still wants to have fun with his training, CrossFit might very well be a good way for him to train. Also, CrossFit is a great way to prepare for any eventuality you might face if you’re not a lifter. For example, if you’re in law enforcement, a firefighter, or a special operations kind of guy who has a physical job to do but doesn’t know what that job might involve today, CrossFit is a great way to prepare.

bad joke

2008-05-18T22:24:00.000-07:00

Dan John joke:

How many gymrats does it take to screw in a light bulb? Seven. One to screw in the bulb and six to say, "Bro, you're huge, man! Ripped!"

from t-nation.com

Dan Gable's secret

2008-05-17T23:45:00.001-07:00

"If it is important, do it every day. If it's not important, don't do it at all."

on The Fence

2008-05-07T11:04:00.000-07:00

Here are a couple of videos from Geoff Thompson well worth viewing if you are even halfway interested in self-defence ideas:

The fence part 1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T6OJnZG3joA

The fence part 2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2FGLhlakkUk&feature=related

(Someday I will learn how to embed video onto my blog).

Apart from the "technique" of the Fence (basically a way to control the critical space directly in front of your body without appearing overly aggressive)Thompson also touches on interesting concepts for avoiding potential violence such as "the loophole," which involves presenting an easy way out for a potential aggressor while allowing him or her to maintain their "pride" or whatever it is they are attached to.

And as Thompson says outright, these are likely the most important sorts of things that one can learn as regards self-defence. Sadly, they are widely uncultivated skills.

from my friend Robert's blog:

2008-04-22T22:41:00.000-07:00

My two favorite Russian proverbs about love.

"Love isn't a potato. You can't throw it out the window."

"Love is an ugly thing: you'll even love a goat."

http://robertanasi.livejournal.com/

Josh Barnett on S&C

2008-04-18T11:49:00.000-07:00

Stellar essay by Josh Barnett on strength and conditioning for combat sports. A little unorthodox (esp. re: bodybuilding movements) and definitely worth a read if S&C and MMA are your bag.

http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendID=43407027&blogID=37990280

My own current challenge: eating enough protein without going completely carnivore.

Zhuge Liang to his son:

2008-03-21T21:52:00.000-07:00

The practice of a cultivated man is to refine himself by quietude and develop virtue by frugality. Without detachment, there is no way to clarify the will; without serenity, there is no way to get far.

Study requires calm, talent requires study. Without study there is no way to expand talent; without calm there is no way to accomplish study.

If you are lazy, you cannot do thorough research; if you are impulsive, you cannot govern your nature.

The years run off with the hours, aspirations flee with the years. Eventually one ages and collapses. What good will it do to lament over poverty?

-from Mastering the Art of War, Thomas Cleary

2008-01-24T22:15:00.000-08:00

Tonight meant, amongst other exercises, pushups while wearing a 50 pound vest.
I feel as though I've earned the right to go to bed.

Seven Exercises for Martial Training

2008-01-15T22:53:00.000-08:00

1. Experience cold, heat and rain by climbing high mountains and crossing deep valleys.

2. Rest in open fields and sleep in mountains.

3. Never carry money or food on your person; never wear warm clothing.

4. Travel everywhere by engaging in contests.

5. Reside in graveyards, haunted houses, or among savage beasts.

6. Associate with dangerous criminals

7. Live off the earth among peasants.

Bukyo Godan Ryu

David Hinton's Lao Tzu

2008-01-08T17:26:00.000-08:00

from 15:

perfectly cautious, as if crossing winter streams,
and perfectly watchful, as if neighbors threatened;
perfectly reserved, as if guests,
perfectly expansive, as if ice melting away,
and perfectly simple, as if uncarved wood;
perfectly empty, as if open valleys,
and perfectly shadowy, as if murky water.

-Tao Te Ching, David Hinton trans., p.17

Wanderlei

2008-01-02T22:18:00.001-08:00

Incredible training of Wanderlei Silva in preparation for his fight against Chuck Liddell:

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x3vo9j_ufc-all-access-wanderlei-silva_sport

2008

2008-01-02T19:55:00.000-08:00

Well Happy New Year everybody.

There have been dozens of brilliant quotations that I have wanted to share but I guess I've been lazy.

Anyways, here are my simple, pared down goals for 2008:

-be an awesome dad

-don't drive Tara to drink

-train consistently as a runner and perform to a 17:05 5k and 35:00 10k

-hit the dojo as frequently as possible and make the time for some daily kobudo training.

-keep developing myself as a coach and do good worth with my little stable of athletes.

Have a memorable and amazing year friends and strangers!

running??

2007-10-21T23:05:00.001-07:00

Despite my focus on a mixed martial arts/boxing-type strength and conditioning program lately, I have nearly convinced myself to start training "as a runner" again.

Lo and behold though, I do not plan on training as a "runner" usually trains. I want to do a little experiment.

What will happen to me if I continue with an intensive S&C program designed to develop maximal strength, explosive strength and conditioning alongside a pared down running program wherein I aim to do an interval day, a hill day and a long day each week (while dispensing with the usual easy runs for the most part)? How will I perform as a runner? As a martial athlete? What will happen to my body?

My enquiring mind wants to know.

2007-10-19T21:55:00.000-07:00

The only reason that I was able to finish Time Enough For Love: The Lives of Lazarus Long is because the library workers have been on strike for so long. Heinlein's book is fascinating and damn sinuous.

I liked this sentiment: " a family man should not take risks that a bachelor finds acceptable"

And right at the end: "You are you, playing chess with yourself, and again you have checkmated yourself. You are the referee. Morals are your agreement with yourself to abide by your own rules. To thine own self be true or you spoil the game."

from Anasi's blog

2007-10-10T23:11:00.000-07:00

BMJ-British Medical Journal
No strong evidence linking amateur boxing with long-term brain injury
Amateur boxing and risk of chronic traumatic brain injury: a systematic review of observational studies

The evidence linking amateur boxing and chronic traumatic brain injury is not strong, concludes a study published on bmj.com today. As such, the researchers say they cannot firmly prove nor reject the theory that amateur boxing leads to chronic brain injury.

Although the evidence for chronic traumatic brain injury in amateur boxing is less clear cut than that in professional boxing, the safety of amateur boxing continues to be questioned.

The British Medical Association wants a complete ban on boxing (amateur and professional), mainly because of the purported risk of cumulative brain injury. However, no recent or systematic review has been performed to assess the evidence for this in the amateur sport.

So a team of sports physicians and clinical academics reviewed the evidence to determine whether amateur boxing leads to chronic traumatic brain injury.

They identified 36 observational studies of amateur boxing and chronic traumatic brain injury. Differences in study design and quality were taken into account to minimise bias. They defined chronic traumatic brain injury as any abnormality in neurological examination, brain imaging, psychometric testing, or electroencephalography (a measurement of the brain’s electrical activity).

Overall, 15 (42%) of the 36 studies concluded that relevant abnormalities were present, at least in a proportion of boxers studied. However, the quality of evidence was generally poor.

The best quality studies were those involving psychometric tests and these yielded the most conclusive negative results (no long-term effect of boxing on brain function). Only four of 17 (24%) better quality studies found any indication of chronic traumatic brain injury in a minority of boxers studied.

Similarly, in the six studies that used magnetic resonance imaging (generally accepted as the best method of determining subtle damage and degenerative change), only one concluded that relevant abnormality was present. This was a cyst in a single boxer, which was possibly congenital.

Positive findings were generally limited to studies of poorer quality and design, and few were of sufficient quality to conclude anything other than a weak association.

Amateur boxing is becoming an increasingly popular participation sport, say the authors.

This review neither seeks to endorse nor oppose the sport of amateur boxing. Nevertheless, the current evidence, such as it exists, for chronic traumatic brain injury as a consequence of amateur boxing is not strong, they conclude.

In an accompanying editorial, Paul McCrory, neurologist and sports physician at the University of Melbourne, suggests that, because today's boxers have shorter careers and reduced exposure to repetitive head trauma, the likelihood of this condition developing is probably low.

2007-08-01T13:37:00.000-07:00

"Progress doesn't come from early risers -- progress is made by lazy men looking for easier ways to do things." - Lazarus Long

Teddy Atlas

2007-07-23T13:05:00.000-07:00

Teddy Atlas to heavyweight contender Mchael Moorer, on his motivation problems:

" 'Just a day!' Don't you understand anything about commitment, about being a pro, about sticking with what you say you wanna be? You don't do it just when you feel good. You don't do it just when you're not tired. You don't do it just when it's sunny. You do it every day of your life. You do it when it hurts to do it, when it's the last thing in the world that you wanna do, when there are a million reasons not to do it. You do it because you're a professional."

quote of the day

2007-07-18T18:35:00.000-07:00

'A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.'The quote is attributed to Lazarus Long.

Funniest film review ever -- - 300

2007-07-06T17:43:00.000-07:00

I found this today; haven't seen 300 yet myself.

I just saw a movie that’ll give your eyes boners, make your balls scream and make you poop DVD copies of THE TRANSPORTER. It’s called 300. I don’t know what the title has to do with the movie, but they could’ve called it KITTENS MAKING CANDLES and it’d still rule.
It’s about these 300 Greek dudes who stomp the sugar-coated shit out of like a million other dudes. I have a feeling that a lot of high school sports coaches are going to show this film to their teams before they play. Also, gay dudes and divorced women are going to use screen captures for computer wallpaper.
The movie takes place about a million years ago, and it’s sort of like a prequel to SIN CITY. Except way less guns and cars but twice as much skull splitting. If you watch this movie and go into a Taco Bell, and say to the cashier, “I need some extra sauce packets” guess what? You’re getting twenty sauce packets because your face will punch him in the brain.
I can’t spoil the plot because THANK GOD THERE ISN’T ONE. Just ass kicking that kicks ass that, while said ass is getting kicked, is kicking yet more ass that’s hitting someone’s balls with a hammer made of ice but the ice is frozen whiskey.

TWO COOL THINGS ABOUT THE MOVIE AND ONE THING I DIDN’T LIKE:

COOL THING ONE:
HEAVY METAL DURING BATTLE SCENES
Who gives a shit if the music isn’t historically correct? LORD OF THE RINGS could’ve used some Journey. This movie has that chu-CHUNG kind of metal that you hear in your head when your shift supervisor at Wetzel’s Pretzel is telling you that you’ll have to stay for clean up and you wish you had a sock filled with quarters in your hand.

COOL THING TWO:
FOES, MINI-BOSSES AND A BIG BOSS
Basically, the Greek dudes are fighting these Persian dudes, but the director, who must have a dick made of three machine guns, does it all like a video game. The Greeks fight every death metal video from the last ten years. There’s wave after wave of giants, freaks, ninjas, mutants, wizards, and a hunchback who looks like he’s got Rosie O’Donnell on his back.
Would I have been happy if Dom DeLuise from HISTORY OF THE WORLD, PART I had shown up? Maybe, but this movie more than makes up for that glaring oversight.

NOT SO GOOD THING:
DUDE NUDITY (“DUDE-ITY”)
These are Greek times, when there were a lot of naked women around. And there are some naked women in this film, but almost every naked woman scene has a muscular dude giving the screen an ass picnic. Dude-ity is something directors put in their movies so people will think they’re serious, I guess, and not just throwing in naked hotties.
Any directors reading this – IT’S OKAY TO JUST THROW IN NAKED HOTTIES.
Can’t someone make a movie about naked Amazons and call it PAUSE BUTTON?
My final analysis is 300 the most ass-ruling movie I’ve seen this year, and will probably be the King of 2007 unless someone makes a movie where a pair of sentient boobs fights a werewolf.

(Credit to Aintitcool.com)

2007-07-02T00:29:00.000-07:00

Hi,

Last week, on a weekday around noon, I was home with my baby daughter. I had called in sick to work and my partner was off renewing her auto insurance.

We live in a small housing co-op with 5 units, all connected and we share a backyard.

I was in the backyard with my baby trying to calm her crying and I saw two "sharks" prowling along the alley (I live in a friendly but very high crime neighbourhood with an extreme number of addicts living within a 40 minute radius).

I went into my house and saw them walk by the sidewalk adjacent to the front window, obviously peering in through the window. Then they were gone.

About 5 minutes later I was in the bedroom trying to calm my crying baby when through the window, about 6 feet away I saw one of the sharks at my neighbour's back door.

Adrenaline goes into overdrive here. I am alone with my baby, that's the first thought. Second is to protect our neighbour's home.

I put the baby in the stroller, and she's still crying like crazy. The BG doesn't seem to be paying attention to the noise she's making. Then I call my other neighbour on the cell, thinking she'll come around the other side of the house, into my apartment, so I can deal with the situation.

As I am talking to here on the cell I realize that she has gone out into the backyard (where the BG is) by herself. She is also totally untrained though gutsy! So, another priority, protect her!
When I realize this I have to make a quick weapon decision, and I grab my folder (I do not live in a gun friendly place). I open the back door and see her close to the two BGs and they are all lose to the back fence. She is arguing with them, telling them to leave.

I yell from the back porch (about 40 feet away from the BGs):
"Leave NOW. Leave RIGHT NOW or I'll CUT YOU UP" (brandishing my knife).
As they start to leave I yell :"I'm calling 911 RIGHT NOW" and I do so.

Anyways, they take off down the alley and into someone's backyard. I don't think anymore came of it that day.

I know that there are things that I probably did well and at least one big mistake.

Big one: I should have picked a blunt weapon instead of a blade. Adrenaline and pre-conditioned thinking probably effected my decision in this way. (And I simply had no idea what kind of trouble my neighbour was in at that point. A blunt object threat would have simply been easier and less legally dodgy to carry to carry out my threat with.

Be safe.

__________________

My week thus far, physically

2007-06-14T11:47:00.000-07:00

I've been taking it relatively easy the past two weeks or so.

Monday -- 1 1/2 hours assorted jujutsu drills, stretching, ukemi at the dojo.

Tuesday -- road and grass run. 15 minutes easy. 10 minutes at moderate to hard effort. 15 minutes easy. This is the first harder effort I've tried with running in many months. I felt quite good if not a little toast.

Wednesday-- pushups. 20 regular
5 triceps
20 regular
5 triceps
20 regular
5 triceps
10 regular
5 triceps
10 regular
These were done right before bed at 1am and clearly I should have hit this earlier and got some more variety.

today's workout

2007-06-01T22:54:00.000-07:00

Yeah, so I was able to hit the gym this morning, which is a damn sight rare these days.

3 x 2 min skipping with 1 min. recovery between sets.

3 x 50 crunches on incline bench

5 x pullups wide (outward) grip. 5 x pullups close (inward) grip. 1 x pullup wide (outward) grip.

3 x 25-30 medicine ball neck crunches.

That's it for the warmup.

I am not all that much of a heavy lifter and I haven't done it much in ages and have no spotter but I will relate the rest of my workout. I am trying to switch from a bodybuilder's routine to a power routine and have lots of "feeling out" and experimenting ahead of me.

Bench press machine: 5 x 150 lbs. 8 x 135 lbs 1 x 150 lbs.

squats: these went poorly today. I didn't get low enough and was nervous in the rack.
5 x 235 5 x 235

finger curls with Olympic Bar (45 lbs) 20 or 30 reps, a single set.

Then my time was up and I was kicked out of the gym along with the other morning cheap-time people.

I am pretty psyched on www.crossfit.com lately, as well as www.gymjones.com and www.rossboxing.com. I am no animal like some of those folks (yet) but I am working on it.

2007-05-16T21:32:00.000-07:00

from Wu Chi's Art of War

When fierce bandits come you must take precautions against them. It is best to stand on the defensive and not meet them. When at dusk they are about to depart laden and encumbered with loot they are certain to be apprehensive, for their withdrawal is by distant routes and they must travel fast. There are certain to be some who lag behind. Follow them and strike and you can rout them.

-taken from Appendix I of Sun Tzu's Art of War, Griffith translation

2007-04-19T00:54:00.000-07:00

It sucks that google took over blogger.com

Now that I've got that out of the way, I found the following on one of the forums that I frequent and wanted to pass it on to those of my visitors that may be self-defence/combatives oriented:

- Aim small, miss small

- Strike the first thing that moves

- Don’t use violence to solve social situations

- Understand the difference between life or death
confrontations and social violence

- Always focus on striking targets

- Principle based systems are superior to technique based systems

- Never quit until the other guy is non-functional

- Always assume multiple persons in a violent confrontation

- Close distance - step through the other guy
- Always strike never block

- Have a first strike mentality – don’t hesitate

- Become a sociopath in a life or death confrontation – maim, cripple or kill

- Use kinetic versus static force

- Always have a center line focus – don’t look at the face, it will deceive you

- To be in cause state you must continually cause effects in the other guy(s)

- Never get in the middle of a group in a multi person violent confrontation – choose a side

- Your only weapon is your brain everything else is a tool

- In violence never focus on the other guys tools (gun, knife, or club) focus on taking out his weapon (brain) – simply taking away the tools and leaving the other guy functional may cost you your life.

- Walk away from ego based confrontations – there is no threat

- If you can use social skills to avoid violence do so, but if it is asocial then there is only one option – violence

- You do what you train - make sure you train for the real world

- Occasionally take away dominate side during training – it’ll make you a more complete fighter

- Become a 360 degree fighter NOT a ‘one quadrant’ fighter

- Give good reactions to your partner

- Don’t try to ‘teach someone a lesson or you may get schooled’

- Always ask yourself “what is available to me” NOT “what is being done to me?”

- Violence is not give and take – it should be over in 3-5 seconds

- Speed does NOT equal power

- There are no rules in violence – remove any such boundaries or you will suffer the consequences

- Be brilliant at the basics (do your leg dynamics)

- Don’t ever posture with violence

- Feign weakness to gain an unfair advantage

- Don’t mimic your opponent – do the unexpected

- 2 inches of penetration is better than 20 slashes with a knife

- Never square off with the other guy – strike when he isn’t aware or doesn’t expect it

Another one of those time-waster quizzes

2007-03-15T00:55:00.000-07:00

Which Characteristic From the Samurai Code Matches You Best?

Duty and Loyalty: You serve your purpose and do what you must do. People would consider you someone to rely on, and one who keeps his/her word when he/she gives it.

http://www.quizilla.com/users/T1000/quizzes/

Supervillain

2007-03-15T00:29:00.000-07:00

T.'s results:

Your results:
You are Mystique

Mystique		52%
Poison Ivy		45%
Venom		39%
Dark Phoenix		31%
Two-Face		20%
The Joker		18%
Mr. Freeze		18%
Juggernaut		16%
Apocalypse		15%
Dr. Doom		13%
Magneto		12%
Catwoman		12%
Green Goblin		8%
Kingpin		7%
Lex Luthor		5%
Riddler		4%

Sometimes motherly, sometimes a beautiful companion, but most of the time a deceiving vixen.

Click here to take the "Which Super Villain are you?" quiz...

2007-02-07T13:54:00.000-08:00

from Proust:

"Every reader, as he reads, is actually the reader of himself. The writer's work is only a kind of optical instrument he provides the reader so he can discern what he might never have seen in himself without this book. The reader's recognition in himself of what the book says is the proof of the book's truth."

This culled from an article about Kundera's latest book:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/01/AR2007020101754.html

Evening at Chambar

2007-02-05T22:42:00.000-08:00

So, here is my first restauraunt review and to be truthful it is my first experience of French dining (well Belgian really). I have been quite absorbed into reading about and playing with food of late, borderline obsesion really which will come as no surprise to those who know me well. (I am sort of an obsessed type, it is only the nature of the obsessions which comes as a surprise).

So here goes:

---------------------------------------------

I know that Chambar occasionally gets hammered on online reviews for its service. I paid my first visit last night, the last evening of Dine Out 2007.

Perhaps we were lucky. Despite arriving 15 minutes before our reservation the two of us were seated immediately and made to feel welcome. First surprise.

As my dining companion is pregnant and I rarely drink neither of us ordered alcohol. I had expected a bad attitude in return but we were blessed with a very lovely server, I believe his name was Ben. There was no attitude whatsoever.

There was good timing between courses and the plating was splendid. For an appetizer my companion ordered the butternut squash and apple soup with creme fraiche. Wonderfully light and very nicely spiced. Just one spoonful for me and I was longing for more. I had the skewered prawns (I'm sorry but I did not take notes as to the names of the dishes nor the subtle details) and they were solid though I longed for the soup.

For the main course we both ordered the Truitte aux almondes. Beautiful and for me the first few bites were highly flavourful and really quite exceptional. Though this feeling did not last throughout the process of eating the whole piece of fish it was a very nice dish. Although I am a big eater and am never satisfied with portions my dining companion was more than satisfied as she slid half of her fish over to me once I had finished.

At this point, while awaiting the arrival of dessert I felt a slight high that I might normally associate with mild drunkeness and this sensation only confirmed that I was enjoying a good meal.

The finale was a bit of an event for me as I had not eaten a sugary dessert for 15 years. We both orderd the Belgian waffle with vanilla-bean ice cream. Let me say right off that the presentation was absolutely gorgeous. Hestitantly but with no small amount of anticipation I started with the waffle and it was fantastic. I savoured the waffle, the ice cream, the chocolate and the other small elements and fell into a quiet reverie which concerned my companion. There was no need for her concern.

Our server at several tmes during our meal showed a warmth that surprised me and which really topped off the evening for me. We retired home and I enjoyed a headache which was in no way the fault the cooking but more due to the affront to my Spartan relationship with food.

Vancouver oh Vancouver

2007-01-26T10:16:00.000-08:00

Last night I had pretty much the complete big city experience.

The Stroll

After finishing a long day of work at 6 I was met by my friend Kendra. A perfect night as it was cold but not raining. I led her throughon a walk through a dark warehouse area and then up onto the Cambie Street bridge. For once I wasn't concerned about the impending west coast earthquake and was able to enjoy the view of dozens of parked police cars and even the Incident Command Centre parked in the secure lot far below.

Once we crossed over into downtown I led us towards our culinary destination (would the French call this our destination culinaire? It sounds much better). The place that I had in mind was a Lebanese falafel house near the leftist bookstore on Hastings. Apparently not only is their remarkable, but as an embodiment of their commitment to the Palestinians they use the reputable and expensive olive oil produced by their cooperatives. This I had to try.

The Dinner

On arrival though we find it closed due to some kind of plumbing problem. Come back tomorrow they say. Disappointed we head further along Hastings, me acting as tour guide for Kendra who knows much less of the perhaps few charms of this city than I.

Having no idea where we will eat (and neither of us have much money to throw around or throw away) Kendra realizes that we are standing in fromt of a promising place, the Baghdad Cafe, which despite the name is primarily a Turkish place. T. and I had eaten lunch there once before in the summer and were extremely impressed, especially with the better than memorable baba ganoush. Of course we didn't pass up this chance.

On entering we were the only customers and my body quickly slipped into an unfamiliar feeling of relaxation tinged, more than tinged with a welling up anticipation of the lovely oily eggplant dish. Without further ado I'll cut to the chase: they must have been out of eggplant, I made the window fall out of the bathroom door, a whole bunch of people arrived to sit at the long empty table next to us and a young woman who was likely an addict came in and made a scene when she was denied use of the washroom. Despite these small setbacks dinner was enjoyable and I still anticipate the baba ganoush at some future point. And the window didn't break either.

More Strolling

What to do after dinner with several hours to pass until out film? Well we walked more of course. This time down West Georgia to do a little flanuer-ing along the row of exclusive shops clustered around the Fairmont and to A.Gregoriani, the men's clothier where I recently had a wonderful experience in choosing a shirt and tie. They were all closed but that wasn't the point anyways. After more yuppie and hootchy-mama watching along Robson we made our way to the repertory cinema for the main event of the evening.

The Cinema

Finally we settled into a decidedly uncrowded theatre to watch Shohei Imamura's 1970 documentary A History of Post-war Japan as Told By a Bar Hostess. Not much I can say about this except that it is fascinating, contains golden rare footage of Japanese left-wing demonstrations and riots and repression and is an unparalled document presenting a Japanese mama-san's take on her country's social history and her own professional, sexualand family life. am not setting out to write a review here (either of restaurant or film). Anyways, well worth the evening this was.

Evidence That My Cynicism and Survivialism is Justified

As we both live in different directions and as it was now late we decided that we would walk together into Chinatown and I thought that I would wait with Kendra at the bus-stop on Main and then walk on home alone through the Downtown Eastside. Everything is a normal. We talk about the movie, about Kendra's beau, etc. and then as we wait on Main Kendra comments that there are no other women about. True enough, although there are likely some prostitutes and addicts milling about a couple of blocks away on Hastings. And probably some street social workers. As we are standing around there are two guys lingering nearby and Kendra notices that one has taken off his belt. I figure he is going to use it to shoot heroin but then on closer look I see that he is wrapping it around his fist, "give me your money or I'll fuck you up" style. Or maybe I'll fuck you up and take your money style. After getting over a very brief appearance from my ego (in the form of "screw them I'm not backing off"playing through my mind) we turned and walked away and apart from an intense spike of adrenaline we came out unscathed. Once I got Kendra on the bus, and after refusing her offer to pay for my train fare (I'm not just tight-fisted with my own money) I was faced with the prospect of walking through the rest of the downtown eastside alone and a little overdressed. So I just started doing it, knowing that bosy language is everything, clutching my umbrella and reciting an inspired and make-shift mantra:

As I walk through the valley of death
I shall fear no evil
'Cause I'm the baddest motherfucker in the valley.

my unmanageable reading pile

2007-01-24T22:45:00.000-08:00

Well I was getting things under control with the smallest bookpile (usually kept under the bedside table but also on my desk) I've had in at least 6 or 8 months:

-Proust, Swann's Way which is going so slowly though I get much pleasure from this

-Karsten Heuer's Being Caribou which is fascinating and compelling and I think makes T. want to run off to somewhere really remote

-Some silly book about financial planning (yes I'm getting a little concerned for the future)

-Poliakoff, Combat Sports in the Ancient World (meaning, in this case, Greeks and Romans)

-A book on Xingyiquan (asa way to get my head around solo training exercises for internal martial arts)

-Rushdie, The Satanic Verses (all the way up to page 11)

-Angela Carter, Burning Your Boats

-Tony May's Italian Cuisine

And that was about it once I finished Anthony Bourdain. Totally unmanageable but not the least bit intimidating.

Now though, after sending T. a list of books recommended by Bourdain at the end of Kitchen Confidential she brings me home

-Down and Out in Paris and London

- An American edition of Escoffier's Guide Culinaire

-and Joseph Mitchell's Up in the Old Hotel

with more books coming shortly! I am not ungrateful in the least, I want to read all of these and I want to read them now, but things are now gettng out of hand, spinning out of control, taking on a life of their own.

And still, I can hardly wait 'til the rest arrive. Marco Pierre White (whom Bourdain characterises as one of the Young Turks and whom I am acquainted with through reading Bill Buford's Heat) pretty much tops the list. I'll have to spend a lot less time reading my friends blogs or otherwise doing "research" on the internet.

Speaking of, I fortuitously discovered the blog of a long lost friend and her new husband a few days ago and it is certainly the

website of the week!!!

Please pay a visit to endlessbanquet.blogspot.com to see why.

Hey, I'd love to hear what you all are reading.

Ice Skating Tonight

2007-01-17T22:52:00.000-08:00

I just got back from ice-skating tonight. My friend Andrea is taking lessons (she started last night) and we dragged Ann-Marie with us.

As an idea it seemed great but as we neared the arena I could feel the tension building. I am hardly a proto-typical Canadian guy as I have been skating only about 5 times and I do well not to split my head open or break my finger on the ice.

What's with the tension though? While on the ice I had some kind of childhood memory of dragging myself along the ice of the Bow River, crying or whining and hating every minute of skating. I guess this kind of thing stays with us, and it was a challenge to relax and to stay that way.

I didn't fall at all, and walking home I felt a little bit proud of myself, while remembering the Eleanor Roosevelt bumper sticker that I saw this summer: "Do something that you're afraid of everyday."

A rather small victory over fear, but my only one of the day.

2007-01-15T11:15:00.000-08:00

Thanks to T. for the Website of the Week:

http://thesartorialist.blogspot.com The truly hip may already know this site. My homeboy Max comments (and I have to agree with him): "FASHION CHANGES BY REPEATING ITSELF. I like the 1940's Italian movie star look best "

Bourdain's provocation

2007-01-03T16:15:00.000-08:00

Anthony Bourdain:

"Vegetarians, and their Hezbollah-like splinter faction, the vegans, are a persistent irritant to any chef worth a damn. To me, life without veal stock, pork fat, sausage, organ meat, demiglace, or even stinky cheese is a life not worth living." From Kitchen Confidential, page 70.

So, I think I've mentioned here that my pastime-of-the-moment has become cookery. Up to this point my main consideration in choosing food has been it's relationship to ethics and health. Due to lack of effort, lack of inspiration, and whatever else, I have cooked and consumed boring mealing for a significant number of years.

In fact, just last week I ran into an old roomate form several years back (from the days that I was a Chinatown dweller). He now lives in Quebec and works in a co-operative restaurant. I was sitting in a coffeeshop reading Nigel Slater's Appetite and I turned the conversation in the direction of food. He remembered my meals as being particularly peasant-like and even more bland than his own. I still feel some embarassment (tinged with regret?) at this.

Now the last thing that I want to do is to read a bunch of books on "vegan" and "vegetarian" cookery, despite the fact that I function as a sort of strange hybrid of fish-eating vegetarian with vegan tendencies. I am looking for pleasure in eating (and cooking) after all. So I've been reading books in which almost every recipe drips with butter and probably centres on lamb, chicken, beef, prosciutto... you get the point.

Apart from the questionable health, ethical, and ecological issues which this stirs up in me, I also need to keep in mind that my waistline just fits into my Armani. And I ain't buying another.

Anyway, aren't hobbies supposed to be simple and without philosophical dilemma? Mine seems to boil down to pleasure versus ideology and I do hope to discover a different interesting pastime soon.

Toning it down?

2006-12-21T11:35:00.000-08:00

Am I toning down my macho-ness for the winter? (Yes I have been called macho).

This week's remarkable activities consist of:

a)learning to sew

b) reading cookbooks and food-related "literature".

Do I need help or am I metamorphisizing into something very wonderful?

Headbutted a biker

2006-11-15T11:15:00.000-08:00

If I had a digital camera I would post a snap of my facial reconstruction: a nice dent/split running down my forehead. Sorry, no camera!

I wish that I had some great story with which to back it up, something revealing a great fount of bravery, an unwavering sense of duty, or some highly admirable quality. At the very least it could be from headbutting a biker.

But no, I just walked into the corner where the hallway to the bathroom meets the living room.

In better news, I probed the injury to my achilles tendon by hitting the weights for a spell (seated cable rows; dumbell shoulder press; dumbell flys; lat pulldowns; dumbell bent over rows; bench press machine and ab bench) and then after a couple of hours break I went for my first post-injury run (just 25 minutes easy and the flattest ground that I could find. I am only checking out the state of the foot after all!).

I don't know if it is healing very quickly but the run felt okay 80% of the time. That other 20% had its worrisome moments but that was on a very uneven surface.

Anyways, don't trash your good looks my friends.

Big Breakthrough in my Life

2006-11-09T13:41:00.000-08:00

Yeah so I bought a pair of jeans today. Banana Republic from Value Village. Nicely worn in.

Why is this significant (you must be asking this)?

Well, I stopped buying and wearing jeans when I was like 12 or so because I realized that they would inhibit my ability to kick (as in fight). Chuck Norris brought this to my attention in Black Belt magazine or the like. He was featured in an ad for really stretchy jeans in which he was doing a very sweet high side kick. I think they were a signature Chuck Norris brand. I guess that line of clothing died out sometime in the last 22 years.

Anyways, what got me out to buy jeans today? Mostly my girlfriend and her sisters who seem to think that my sense of appropriately 'nice' clothing is out of touch with reality. Also, I have a new job and only one pair of appropriate pants. Most importantly though, it's not because I don't think about fighting anymore. It's just that I've given up on the notion of high kicks.

So there you have it.

Thanks to my fans who have demanded more frequent updates ;)

survival

2006-09-19T15:14:00.000-07:00

I gave up the anti-authoritarian agitational life several years ago. Most of my friends (old comrades) have more-or-less done the same. Maybe a little less so than me. I, and my old friends, generally hold the same values as in the old days of confrontation. Having moved to a new city (though with lots of friends and acquantances from the trouble-making days) I find myself repeatedly characterizing myself in conversations as a "survivalist." One person told me that I ought to move out to the woods but they misconstrued me I think.

What do I mean by survivalist? Well, I don't really know but...

a) I have had a many year (lifelong pretty much) obsession with martial arts
b) I am firmly committed to outstanding fitness, physical and mental
c) I find the world to be an increasingly hostile place
d) I am firmly old school whether we are talking martial arts, philosophy, literature, medicine and much else
e) and yes I am still definitively anti-rightwing and socially very modern and liberation oriented despite the seeming conservatism representing in points a-d. A conservative radical? That might be it you know. But not a radical conservative.

East Van full of parasitic a-holes?

2006-09-12T22:22:00.000-07:00

I am so pissed off tonight. As I arrived home my girlfriend pointed out that someone (@#@^#) had smashed her car window and made off with what.... $15 worth of change? Just this past week in my small housing coop one set of friends had some skinny little runt squeeze through the bars of their windows and get away with many 1000s 0f $$ worth of stuff. Within a night or two of that happening my immediate neighbour (also attached to my building) woke up in the middle of the night to the sound of a drill. Someone was trying to remove the bars from his window. So that makes at least 3/5 units targeted over the last week alone.

I feel like I'm living under bloody siege!

Kelly Holmes

2006-09-06T12:42:00.000-07:00

I can't remember where I found tbhis passage about Kelly Holmes, kick-*ss runner, so no one sue me as I'd love to credit you if I could:

---------------------

By the time she was 18, Holmes was seeking new
challenges, and became what she calls “Army barmy”.
She did that by taking a career in the forces,
developing a reputation as a pocket physical training
instructor, who would bully men twice her size on the
judo mat, or galvanise the Army volleyball team.
Holmes would always be first in line when it came to
abseiling down sheer cliffs, or rafting fierce rapids,
despite her own fears of heights or water.

---------------------
Cool, hey? I hope that she reads Proust too.

more on Murakami, veteran of 16 marathins by 1999

2006-09-01T20:40:00.000-07:00

more from Rubin's book (I admit to a little guilt in harshly criticizing him and yet quoting fairly heavily):

Murakami: I've heard it said a million times that fiction comes out of something unhealthy, but I believe the exact opposite. The healthier you make yourself, the easier it is to bring out the unhealthy stuff inside you (95).

Murakami: You've got to have physical strength and endurance... to be able to spend a year writing a novel and then another year rewriting it ten or fifteen times (95-6).

Rubin: He decided that he would live as if each day were 23 hours long, so that no mater how busy he might be, nothing would prevent him from devoting an hour to exercise (96).

Murakami: Stamina and concentration are two sides of the same coin... I sit at my desk and write every day, no matter what, whether I get into it or not, whether it's painful or enjoyable. I wake up at 4a.m. and usually keep writing until after noon. I do this day after day, and eventually - it's the same as runnng- I get to that spot.... You need physical strength for something like that. . . it's like passing through a wall" (96).

Okay, so the book does have it's redeeming features, little gems such as I have quoted above. I can't quote any more. If you dig this (as I do) then read the book. Just be prepared to sift through a lot of unrewarding sections.

Fiction writing as boxing

2006-09-01T20:25:00.000-07:00

Haruki Murakami, as quoted by Jay Rubin in his crappy but interesting book on the Japanese novelist, essayist, short story writer:

The most important thing is confidence. You have to believe you have the ability to tell the story, to strike the vein of water, to make the pieces of the puzzle fit together. Without the confidence, you can't go anywhere. It's like boxing. Once you climb into the ring, you can't back out. You have to fight until the match is over.
This is the way I write my novels, and I love to read novels that have been written this way. To me, spontaneity is everything.

(Haruki Murakami and the Music of Words p.82)

I call the book interesting because Murakami is interesting. And I seem to remember having no trouble with Rubin's translations of Murakami. The book itself though is tedious, full of endless plot summary and occasionally a wonderful little chunk from or about Murakami himself.

training

2006-08-30T22:20:00.000-07:00

Kind of light on the training today as I ripped the skin on the bottom of both of my big toes (recurring problem back when I did judo). I skipped going to the dojo tonight so that they will heal faster. Normally I might have gone just to observe but my instructor is injured. Anyways these toes have ruled out running for now too, even push-ups.

So.... instead it was

A.M. 15 minutes bojutsu tandoku renshu (solo practice)
100 crunches

P.M. 30 minutes hade kempo tandoku renshu
100 crunches

Nothing strenuous at all, but it is challenging to repeat a very small repertoire of kata over and over again. This, of course, is how one acquires skill, has things sink into their bones, or what have you.

The evenings, even the days, are becoming noticeably cooler. And there is a skunk which appears to be living below my doorstep.

Chinatown, Vancouver

2006-08-13T12:08:00.000-07:00

August 11 2006

Completed a tiny volume of Burton Watson stories (essays really) today, entitled The Rainbow Road, or something approximating that. Charming, personal, revealing to a point. Gary Snyder not only provided a jacket review but I was surprised to learn that they were acquainted.

I am now sitting in the Sun Yat-sen garden and there is a quite large orange and white koi approaching me and now passing. Walking through Vancouver's Chinatown on my way to the garden I am as usual aware of my ownfeeling of incongruity with what is one of my favourite neighbourhoods of my new city. Really I haven't even been able to comprehend but a fraction of what goes on around me here. I find the garden quite peaceful; I can relax into the place and sometimes I am even able to harmonize with the large numbers of tourists who frequent it. Mostly I try to ignore them. I am more interested in the frogs and the plants. This garden is one of the places of solace or sanity for me here.

This is becoming a year of gardens to me.

Training Log: First Week in Vancouver

2006-07-10T22:34:00.000-07:00

I have ended my first week as a "Vancouverite" or whatever they call it. I won't even start about how dissapointed I was to see France lose to Italy and how I was forced to leave town until the celebrations died down (truth be told I was going to leave anyway).

Here is a synopsis of my uneventful but successful week of running, if any who reads my blog is even the least bit interested in this. I think that my art-friends are more likely to read this than my jock-lite friends.

July 3 -- 8:30 am 1 hour on grass. easy.
9:00pm with Tara. 30 minutes on gravel and boulevards. [both runs at Trout Lake]

July 4 -- 59:13. night-time run on sidewalks up Hastings and into Burnaby. Accidental progression run as I slowly sped-up on my way back due to a dire need to relieve my bladder.

July 5 -- 1 hour @ Trout Lake. Try to keep it easy but ran a little too briskly. As I have been ramping up my mileage quite a lot I am trying to keep most of my runs very slow but I am having trouble controlling this.

July 6 -- 1 hour easy on grass at Trout Lake. I need to find other soft places to run besides Trout Lake.

July 7 -- 1 hour on the roads at an easy pace, mostly with Tara with 3 long hill repeats thrown in for good measure towards the end.

July 8 -- 1 hour easy. Into Burnaby but on the meelower streets this time. Very big hills and rolling hills, all on road. Ran strongly up the hills, quick and loosely down them but otherwise slow.

July 9 and 10 -- 2 days off. This week I hope to run two doubles (two workouts in one day for you non-runners who've hung in this far).

Thanks for dropping by.

Run Log: June25 2006

2006-06-25T10:31:00.000-07:00

In the spirit of blog-variety, and since I didn't bring my running log to Vancouver on this visit, I will let you all know what I got upto this morning.

A Hot day day, even by 9am or so when we got out.
warm-up: 11:08 easy jog with Tara to gravel and cement trails of Trout lake, East Vancouver.
5:31 at about 8k race effort with 53 seconds recovery
4:58 at about 8k race effort
13:30 easy run (lots of uphill) on road, sidewalk and grass and dropped off Tara
5:01 at about 8k race effort with 60 seconds recovery
4:59 at about 8k race effort
12:58 at, as Henry Rono might say, "Grandmother's Pace."

Total: 1 hour

Workout felt hard the whole time, and I am surprised that I even pulled off the last two harder efforts. I really wanted to skip the cooldown too.

Now, getting close to the Netherlands-- Portugal game. Down to Commercial Drive for me, where I can silently hope for the Dutch to prevail while surrounded by Portuguese fans.

My own comeback

2006-06-24T08:30:00.000-07:00

I am straining for a little comeback of my own after a year long injury layoff and a year and a half without racing.

At the end of April I ran the Times-Colonist 10k in Victoria with little training and a very tight IT band and managed an unimpressive but not horrible 38:09. AT least I ran intelligently, having really paced myself well in the opening kilometres.

This was the result I needed in a way to launch me into more earnest training. I began what will be a long preparatory phase (which still continues) of easy to moderate effort building up the weekly mileage and running frequently with my friend David (who is preparing for a 1:20 half-marathon in October). Last weekend I ran a very hilly mostly trail "8k" at Royal Roads and placed 5th overall, 2nd in my age division (30-39) with an unoffical time 0f 31:27, not bad considering the challenging layout of the course.

I would like to start laying out some of my training later.

My goal for the year is to run a 36:00 10k and its equivalent at the shorter distances. I am much more drawn to 5k and even shorter races these days and will focus there this year, knowing that 10k fitness will also benefit. The major thing is to learn to really listen to my body and such and tho work on mental clarity and strength. I have a fairly good grasp of the physiological end of things. Long tern goal at this time (more like the dream I guess) is a 32:00 10k (or equivalents) when I become a master at 40.

Season Over!

2006-06-24T08:18:00.000-07:00

It's been awhile. Boxing season is over for me. I am moving to Vancouver in a week and so I let my gym membership expire. I may eventually seek out a gym in Van but I would like to check out a couple of more classically- oriented Japanese dojo first.

I've been running alot, really fired up now by Henry Rono's comeback:

http://www.letsrun.com/forum/flat_read.php?thread=1390583

http://www.ronorun.com

For those who don't know him, Henry Rono broke 4 world records in the space of 81 days in the late 70s and now, at 54 and over 200lbs, is preparing himself for an assault on the world master's mile record. This guy is totally remarkable and clearly one of the all time greats of athletics (his record-making streak included 3000m, steeplechase, 5000m and 10,000).

Since I have become a little overly focused on the internet lately (since Rono started documenting his comeback really) I might as well try and be a little more contributive and do a bit more writing here. I am pretty absorbed into running for the time being and this seems an obvious focus. I considered starting a separate blog for this but in the spirit of variety I will just plow on.

bringing a knife to a gunfight: don't count on the odds but sometimes it works

2006-06-05T19:36:00.000-07:00

original story here

Former Marine uses pocket knife to fend off gun toting muggers in Atlanta

A former U.S. Marine pulled out a pocket knife after five people, including a young girl, allegedly tried to rob him late Monday evening in Midtown. That girl died.Advertisement

Another one of the alleged assailants is in critical condition.

Investigators are calling the case one of self-defense. They say no charges will be filed against the victim in the case.

Police say they have been talking to three of the suspects, trying to find out what happened.

Atlanta police say around 11 p.m., the victim -- a former U.S. Marine -- was walking home from work at Jock's and Jill's in Midtown. He says that when he got to 4th Street and Penn Avenue, five people jumped out of a Cadillac with guns. He says he kicked the guns out of their hands, and fought back with his very own pocket knife.

Police say that two of the suspects were armed -- one with a handgun, the other with a shotgun.

Investigators say two of the suspects got stabbed. They all took off and drove themselves to Atlanta Medical Center. One suspect died, a second one is listed in critical condition. The remaining three suspects were taken into police custody.

"These are the individuals we have been looking for, for the past two nights," said Atlanta police Detective Danny Stephens. "They've were riding around in this area. They were actually robbing people. There's actually been a lookout for these individuals, and tonight, we caught up with them."

The older sister of one of the three people police have been talking to said she had been warning her brother about running with the wrong crowd.

"I'm really disturbed by this," she said. "We're always telling my brother that he needs to straighten up, and get it together and not run with the wrong crowd."

No charges against the victim, but no word as of yet to what charges the suspects will face.

Police have not released the names of the suspects yet

Japan Journals

2006-05-17T10:24:00.000-07:00

May 16-- Donald Richie's Japan Journals grow increasingly lucid and come to hover over death. Richie looks at the frequent deaths of his closest friends and the great figures in his social circles without flinching while at the same time suggesting shock or maybe awe.

I cannot help but feel a heaviness in my self as he moves moves through the early-to-mid 'nineties meeting the news of passing after passing of those very people whose friendship he has documented for some fifty years.

And, Richie is known by some as the guy who knew everybody (Ozu, Kurosawa, Oshima, Sontag, Yourcenar, Coppola, even Richard Brautigan).

He is not afraid of criticizing either (few ex-pats in Japan are I suppose). I found the following passage very provoking though I am hesitant to enter into agreement:

[from 7 June 1997]: At International House Mr.Tanami told me that at the Japan Society recently they were speaking of intellectual exchange - country to country. Then they realized that there were no Japanese they could exchange, because there are no intellectuals.
We tried to decide why and agreed that there are none, because to be an intellectual you must espouse your own independence and your own probity, unswayed by political affiliations. This is an impossibility everywhere, true. There ought not to be Catholic or Communist intellectuals, yet it is said that they exist. If so, however, then they might be, like Sartre, intellectuals first, Communists second.
In Japan, however, everyone is, whether they like it or not, Japanese first. Intellectuals, like everyone else here, are spokesmen for the political (Japanese) identification. Even if they are anti-establishment, or what passes for dissident here, they are still oriented by their nationality and its demands.
Until there are real individuals, there can be no real intellectuals. (p.411)

This strikes me as implying as much about Europeans and their breakaway cultures as it asserts about the Japanese.

Donald Richie

2006-05-17T10:07:00.000-07:00

May 15-- Current reading: The Literature Machine, Italo Calvino; Tsurezuregusa (Essays In Idleness) , Kenkou; The Japan Journals, Donald Richie; The Perfect Mile, a book about Landry, Santee and Bannister. Am spending most of my time with the Donald Richie, whom it is interesting to watch change as a writer and as a man over an almost 60 year span. At the point my reading is at now (1993) he is, it seems almost weekly, seeing his dearest friends pass on while he remains relatively vital. The Japanese funeral: proper place for an outpouring of emotion. I would do well there.

Calvino may number amongst the few "great" novelists whom I would not regard as mentally ill.

website of the week, promising book of the week

2006-04-10T20:37:00.000-07:00

Check. Old news to some but new to me:

www.rossboxing.com

I found the promising book of the week on Ross' site as well:

Never Gymless

Work hard but take it easy and enjoy the upcoming holiday.

Cus D'Amato, Sheeplove

2006-04-06T14:45:00.000-07:00

"What I do not want in life [...] is a sense of security; the moment a person knows security, his senses are dulled - and he begins to die. I also do not want many pleasures in life; I believe the more pleasures you get out of living, the more fear you have of dying." Cus D'Amato from Gay Talese, "The Loser."

(I forgot to mention this when I wrote, weeks ago, about Reading The Fights).

I think that this is a great quote which just maybe really encapsulates the man himself. AAnd although this resonates with I tend to fluctuate in my own asceticism and opinion of asceticism. Such a way of life I think is more powerful when it is not, in some veiled way, a kind opf self-torture or self-punishment. I think that I believe in pleasures but I want to choose my pleasures carefully and indulge in them in a considered way as I acknowledge the inherent dangers of desire.

Whereas I can really relate with the buddhist critique of desire I have also loved this quote from the Italian autonomist movement of the 1970s:

"We are desiring machines, machines of war."

---------------------------------------------------------------
Well, I am closing in on the last few empty pages of a journal, containing for the most part quotations from books that I found interesting, which dates back to February 3 2004. Maybe for the next fews weeks I will pick a quote of the day sort of thing to share out to the masses who read my blog. What follows is the very first quote dating back to day 1.

To live in Wales
is to love sheep
and to be afraid
of dragons.

from "A Welsh Wordscape." Peter Finch, Selected Poems (15)

From last century

2006-03-27T21:59:00.000-08:00

Ancient picture taken at Honest Forms Gym demonstrating how not to box. It was hard to work the bag as it hung in a closet door, thereby eliminating most possibilities for lateral movement . circa 1997

Death of boxer

2006-03-22T10:59:00.000-08:00

Kevin Payne wins welterweight bout, receives brain injury in the process, dies in hospital.

http://sports.espn.go.com/sports/boxing/news/story?id=2376842

How was getting hit in the head?

2006-03-22T10:28:00.000-08:00

My correspondent Robert asked me, on the comments to my previous entry, how was getting hit in the head?

Well Robert, I have to say that (thankfully?) reading your book has made me highly concerned about doing this very often.

The guy that I decided to spar with intitially is a 28 year year-old guy named Shane who weighs about 150lbs (to my 165lbs). I have the better reach. He has good skills but not alot of experience sparring, more than me however. Unlike me he would like to take a couple of fights ('for the experience' he says as he is older than all these young dudes at the gym too). Anyways, to make this paragraph short: I feel that I can trust this guy. He is friendly and seems to be in control and seems to be at the gym for similar reasons to me (though I am just guessing on this point as we haven't got into much discussion). He also agreed to make an effort to not break my (fairly Roman) nose.

Any anxiety which I had was less about getting my ass handed to me and more about permanent damage. I rseem to remember that he got the first good shot or two in but I was able to stay calm and avoid flailing away and I think that I gave as good as I got. Trainer Seth wanted us to use jabs and I often veered from this and threw hooks as I seem to be in love with fighting on the inside right now and dream of becoming a magnificent defensive-boxer and counter-puncher. Of course this is all much simpler when beating the bag or the man-dummy, and even easier when shadow-boxing. Those first shots to my head woke me up and I loosened up, trew some, I seem to remember pulling off some good slips in between getting nailed some more. Took a nice solid punch high on the nose, smoked Shane harder than I intended, I think it was on the forehead, and apologized for it. Remember getting in a nice hook and, just as the round was coming to an end, I got hit solidly at the end of my nose but no blood.

Had a round break as Shane went in with Seth (who must weigh at least 240). Then it was my turn with Seth and damn I was terrified by the big dude, experienced, skinhead, heavily tattooed (even though he is my coach and is obviously going to take care with me). Shit I didn't even get a solid punch on him as I was terrified to going into his range. He repeatedly got me into the corner against the ropes and hammered away and instead of keeping my height advantage and staying up straight-ish I bent over way too much thereby unable to see much and keep a handle on things. Pitiful round but I learned alot: about my mind. Afterwards Seth said that he was scared of me (!) because I am a southpaw (as he is) and he rarely goes in with a southpaw. I'll have to remember that I have some sort of natural advantage in that regard.

Oh yeah so K., my friend and ex-girlfriend works with Shane and he gave her a report on our sparring and said that I did well and gave him some pretty strong shots to the head (which I didn't intend to do by the way. I am really reluctant to hit nice people in the face. Go figure. I guess this will take a little time).

That night I felt thich-headed and my temple ached a bit. My neck was sore for a couple of days. I spent a lot of time thinking about a cost-benefit analysis of sparring and am not convinced that I want to pay the price on any kind of regular basis. Maybe occasionally, with the few people that I trust. Of course their is my ego which must be kept in place as I want to feel like I belong in the gym without succumbing to macho shit.

Anyway, neck is fine now and however much I want to go and immediately re-read Robert's book maybe I will hold off as I am already scared enough of brain injury, not to mention broken face. I still have to marry myself off or some variation of this. Ah what the hell, maybe I'll read his book again today anyways.

2006-03-16T22:54:00.000-08:00

The terrible sacrifice of the boxer: in order to develop skill one must risk the firmity of their mind, their face, their sight. Tonight I sparred for the first time and I don't know how I feel about it.

a little flattered, a lot scared

2006-03-15T11:21:00.000-08:00

Last night at boxing practice my trainer Seth seemed impressed with my hard work. Yeah, I try to work harder than all those teenagers for sure. A tiny little guy, age 12 and named Nico, came out to his fiorst class last night. Obviously quiet and shy, heightened by the big skinhead of a coach who asked him if he's going to be champ. After callisthenics I showed him how to put on his wraps. Smart little kid I think.

I've been staing late after class for extra training with the 4 young guys (14-16 years old I would guess) who are preparing for their first fights, along with assorted hangers-on who want to put out the extra. So last night Seth told me that I should start sparring soon, when my hand's better (I bruised my knuckle when I was shadowboxing at home and somehow smoked the edge on my bedroom door). The intial feeling of pride has turned into something a little more akin to anxiety but what the f*ck, what I am going to learn about fighting without learning slips and sparring? How to big a bag is what. Now I have a new threshold to pass, for the most part a mental one although certainly concerns about getting my pristine but not small nose busted or having my brain damaged are legitimate. I gotta drop a chunk of money on 16-oz gloves and headgear too but that is secondary. Hope the ladies will still love me if I'm ugly and stupid.

I am not enjoying Nick Tosches' book

2006-02-20T15:18:00.000-08:00

Despite my friend Peter imploring me to read this thing I am definitely not enjoying The Devil and Sonny Liston. The guy (Tosches) keeps totally overstating things and is just way too heavy-handed as a writer. Let's see some bloody delicacy man! The best quote so far is not about boxing, per se:

"I remember Christopher Walken being asked if there was a role that he felt he could not play. Yeah, he said, he couldn't play a human being, because he'd never been one, as he'd been on the stage since childhood." (188)

Enough about that book. I am probably going to take it back to the libray 2/3rds finished.

I find myself pausing, or stopping, before thinking or writing words like "men" or "masculinity" as regards the boxing gym because there are, simply, no small number of women and girls there. Why are they there? What do they want from themselves? The same things as me? They make my job as chronicler and philosopher much more difficult. I ought to be glad for it. Is "toughness" then a more accurate or inclusive concept than mere "masculinity" ? I see a few women around, almost daily, who come across as being a lot tougher than me. More "masculine" though? The question, the whole question, must either be re-examined or rendered ridiculous.

Valentine's Day: Boxing and Chocolate Soy Ice Cream

2006-02-20T15:01:00.000-08:00

During last week's visit to observe training at the local boxing/kickboxing club, instead of the terrifying menagerie of battered and angry male warriors that I was expecting I encountered a 10 year-old kid, a variety of women and girls, some inoffensive looking young men and just a few scary looking dudes. And the coach wasn't there. A really nice guy named Keith was filling in for him (dude who works the front counter).

So I go back a week later (Valentine's Day) because I want to see the Seph (the coach) in action and shit the first class is free so what the hell, eh? I'd been damn nervous about going all day, to the extent that I had to cut through all kinds of excuses about why I ought not to go, or that maybe I should just observe class again. I had skinned my knuckle breaking in a new pair of bag gloves, and it simply wasn't getting a chance to heal, after all. So shit I walk up the stairs, all excuses behind me, and survey the room before me and sure enough my eyes fall upon this big skinhead and of course that's gotta be him. And it is. I wonder if he is racist with his spiderweb tattoo on his elbow and all but I figure that there is an asian, a black guy and a guy who might be South Asian so probably not. He looks like a hard-man that's sure enough. And there are a lot more intimidating looking dudes this time (though none as intimidating as Seph). I'll cut this short but I will tell you that I barely got through the calisthenics without puking and that ispent the rest of Valentine's night by myself with a little tub of chocolate soy ice cream and that it was pretty brilliant.

friend's new blog

2006-02-20T15:00:00.000-08:00

check it out, cool photos and he likes Paul Auster:

littleharrison.blogspot.com

All Things Are One Thing

2006-01-27T10:58:00.000-08:00

No longer what I could call a 'politically active' guy, I sometimes feel either confused or guilty about this. My anarchistic values remain more-or-less intact. My faith and interest in what largely passes for revolutionary activity, organizing, agitation or activism (call it what you will) is largely gone. Against the banality of what tends to pass for 'the struggle' in the West, and to be honest out of exhaustion and fear, I chose withdrawl over mediocrity. Instead of selling out my values and becoming a mediocre liberal out of political expediency I felt that to withdraw from the overt aspects of the social struggle would be more dignified. I threw myself into literature, athletics, combatives, meditation - the very things which my previously obsessive focus on political activity kept me from for a decade.

A number of my friends, mostly as they grew older, made a similar move as myself, not always deliberately and not always for the same reasons. My old comrade P. is one of these although I think maybe because he is a father he has a little more of himself remaining in the game than me. Anyways, P. has been digging into a collection of interviews with Allen Ginsberg and has been struck with how A.G. came to an engagement with politics through the realizations which he had first through drugs and then, increasingly, Buddhist meditation. The way P. explains it, it all seems logical to me. The premise that all things are one thing can certainly elicit certain commitments and any number of further investigations whci may take on a social, political and religious character.

Anyways, it is in this frame of mind that I found out this week that an old friend has been arrested in the U.S.A. and subpoenaed to a Grand Jury investigating the radical earth and animal liberation movements that have been a persistent bane to certain economic and legal bodies in that country.

If you are interested check out www.freedarren.org and maybe write him a letter or something. He is a decent man.

2006-01-17T12:38:00.000-08:00

"Some of the intellectual lessons Joe Brown taught were brutally simple. In boxing, for example, he was fond of reminding his guys that to win in boxing you had to hit the other guy. To hit the other guy you had to move in close enough for him to hit you. No other way. One of the immutable lessons of boxing was that there was no free ride. No free lunch. To succeed you had to be at risk. You had to choose to be at risk. That choice was the chief act of will and courage. After that you might win or lose, on the basis of luck or skill, but the choice itself was all that mattered".

This comes from George Garrett's "My One-Eyed Coach," detailing the lessons of master-teacher and great man Joe Brown: fighter, coach, sculptor, and maybe artist in its fullest and best sense. Same Halpern/Oates book that I've been discussing the last few days here (page 257).

There's one more quote from the book that I 'd like to finsh up with. Michael Stephens this time, in his tough little piece "The Poetics of Boxing"(266):

"In the morning, I am forever kidded by my wife and daughter for the way I noisily breathe at night, all the results of those constant breaks to my nose. But then as a writer I see boxing today as a durable metaphor for a craft, and when it is done well, I recognize it as an art, and that these brutal men are artists. As Aristotle said, we humans are fascinated by imitation, and boxing's mimesis is a structured, patterned imitation of certain lives, those that were poor and tough, full of pity and terror, and capable of catharsis. This, too, is what Antonin Artaud might have meant by a theater of cruelty, the actor totally sacrificing himself to a deadly craft -- the boxer boxing".

"a great fighter redefines the possible"

2006-01-16T15:04:00.000-08:00

After finishing Anasi's book I waited a while and then picked up a collection of writings edited by Joyce Carol Oates Daniel Halpern dating back to 1988, Reading the Fights. The essays have stirred up a number of questions for me to ponder, real fundamental stuff like why am I drawn to boxing, how do I reconcile my revulsion with the abject violence and class/racial exploitation for entertainment and profit within boxing with its powerful and dramatic aesthetics and morality of redemption? (I know, that's a rough sentence). My own relationship with boxing and combatives is so ultimately personal and so deeply rooted in my weather-beaten psychological matrix that it is damn hard to be honest or even clear-headed about it.

Anyway there are a bunch of passages which I have noted and which I would like to propogate for your consideration. It is not that I necessarily agree with these, just that I find them provoking. I would like to start with this from Gerald Early, "I Only Like It Better When The Pain Comes" (p46):

"What is its secret, primeval appeal to its viewers? Part of the answer, no doubt, lies in the boxers puritanical regimen: the hard training, the abstinence of sex before a fight, the Spartan diet. The boxer's leanness and physical conditioning become a sign of his virtue, a virtue worth a great deal in a land where the fatness of sin is the sin of fatness".

The 'viewer' of boxing, eh? I find myself and I think most of my male friends who have an interest in boxing feel drawn to the training and practice of boxing as if they yearn for it themselves but, whether due to age or latent fear or maybe just wisdom do not pursue it. There seems to be something redemptive, something to identify with in the boxer and a concomitant longing for that toughness, that courage, that self-possession which is the domain of the fighter. As for myself as example, I love the training and am drawn to the martial arts, western and Asian. I am fearful of getting beaten, hit in the face, humiliated. I keep training, strengthening my body, my mind and seacrhing for what I think the fighter has. It's like an aspiration; I want to be capable of what the fighter does. I do not so much mean applying a beating but embodying some Spartan spirit or ideal of warriorship. In my own complicated schema to be able to fight equates with love and human courage. I am the last to deny the problems with such a logic. The fear of risk holds back the boxer, the wannabe fighter, the lover.

Ah yes, risk. Here is a quote from Ronald Levao, "Reading The Fights" (12):

"It may be, and perhaps should be, difficult to accept the notion that a prizefighter's work merits the same kind of attention we lavish on an artist's, but once we begin attending to and describing what he does in the ring, it becomes increasingly difficult to refuse the expenditure. The fighter creates a style in a world of risk and opportunity. His disciplined body assumes the essential postures of the mind: aggressive and defensive, elusively graceful with its shifts of direction, or struggling with all its stylistic resources against a resistant but, until the very end, alterable reality. A great fighter redefines the possible".

I should end this with one more comment. I do not mean to suggest that boxing should be regarded purely for its metaphoric value or for what it teaches us about something that is not boxing. Both of the quotes which I have selected hint at the essence of boxing as itself , which is very difficult to approach directly and there is much that one would like to ignore, overlook or wish away. There is some mysterious or at the least very difficult to apprehend aesthetic or lifeblood to boxing which makes it unique. Certainly other pursuits, many sports for example, invoke Spartan comparisons, involve profound training and preparation of the mind, body and spirit and thrown one into the world of risk. Still, however, we have boxing.

Sport of the Month is Boxing

2006-01-14T20:30:00.000-08:00

Welcome to my overly earnest blog. Once in a while this will be funny.

So the sport of the month is boxing. It started with an excellent book:
The Gloves by New Yorker Robert Anasi. I won't go into a review here,
just a strong recommendation. Even if boxing doesn't interest you and
maybe especially if you hate it I suggest that this will be a worthwhile
read. Not a conventional 'journey into boxing' book for at least a couple
of reasons.
a) Anasi is (was?) an amateur boxer himself and this book is as much autobiographical as it it an insider look kind of thing. After laying off boxing for several years he is nagged with the feeling that he was never really a boxer because he never entered the Golden Gloves. At age 33, his last year of eligibility, he hooks up with a maverick trainer with maybe way too much personality and just goes for it.

b) This Anasi guy is just really interesting. I don't know of many boxers who cite French theory, Balzac, Susan Sontag in their books or in their blogs. He is also possessed by, lets call them doubts or maybe questions is easier, questions about his own masculinity and masculinity in the broader social context (and very much with masculinity and race). Add to this the persistent presence of his own aging body (or at least I think that he sees it that way, shit I hope that 33 does not constitute 'aging' but it is certainly a time of reflection for most and the physical body seems close to the apex), analysis of race and class in New York City and wonderful portraits of gym life, a few intangibles and a crisp prose style and you've got a really decent read. The most compelling boxing book I've read, well, maybe ever but I don't want to be too dramatic.

Check out his blog here.

I guess I did write a bit of a review.

Maybe I hope I don't fit in with my friends

2005-12-31T22:10:00.000-08:00

In the spirit of Robert Anasi's blog (www.livejournal.com/users/robertanasi), why I love my friends (from a recent email):
-------------------------------------------------

hey al...my little humbugger!(that's k**'s
phrase of the season)
haha...i wish someone would come and humbugger me! maybe a
[deleted to protect
the guilty]friend!!
hahahaha.humbugger.... we made a few buttons.....
very popular...... thanks for talking today babe!
the only way i could get groceries today was to
let e** sit UNDER the cart.... not in or on the back...
but underneath! well... m** said it "you parent like shit"
i made m** a deal today...i'll sew your scrubs if you
mouth kiss me the way i like it....so i sewed, and he
didnt deliver! he said it was gross the way i was acting
about it....and he doesnt want me yelling "tongue" around
the children. i wish someone would just come and piss on me!
or let me piss on them....right on their chest so that it
splatters up into their mouth....hmmmm....al what i really
want more than anything else is a composting toilet, and
a rifle!(did i already say that to you?)
love you....youre a crazy fuck just like me.....arent ya?
xoxoxo
t**
read this to your friends!
------------------------------------------------------------------------

Oh yeah, and I found a couple of videos that are pretty crazy. Turn your sound on
for both of these.  The first is apparently of private "security contractors" in Iraq
(read: mercenaries)
and has led to a fair bit of controversy:
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2005/11/27.html#a6076

The second is just really cool:
http://www.russianmartialart.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1710

Despite what the url would suggest it is not a martial art video.

Happy New Year!

Investigation into new training methodology

2005-11-15T12:58:00.000-08:00

Over the past several weeks I have been researching and have begun a little training in Systema, a very comprehensive martial art employed by elite units of the Spetsnaz (Russian special forces).

www.russianmartialart.com

This art strikes me as quite remarkable particularly in the way in which it is based upon "internal" or "soft" principles which I have come to expect only in Asian systems. A martial artist no less reputable than James Williams( www.dojoofthefourwinds.com) has deemed to characterize it as "Russian Aiki" and from what I have seen (and admittedly the little that I know of aiki) this seems to bear out at least as a generalization.

A young guy who has done some training with one of the primary teachers, Vladimir Vasiliev, is living in town here and, as his training partner has moved to Toronto, I am now working with him. I mentioned methodology in the header and one of the things that intrigues me about Systema is that many practitioners seem to learn through a seminar format by working with Vladimir or Mikhail Ryabko (Vladimir's teacher) when they have the opportunity to attend a seminar or visit Toronto or Russia and then work out with fellow students in the meantime. Myself, I am used to having a teacher with whom I train under on a regular (or not so regular!) basis and in some cases occasionally a more senior teacher will come to give a seminar. This is the first time I have worked in what is more or less an informal study group basis (just the two of us right now). Indeed my training partner has no formal authority to teach but he is skilled enough and good enough of an explainer that we can try and work together for co-development. Alot of similar but larger groups in the U.S and elsewhere have been forming along these lines in past years to study Daito Ryu, Niten Ichi Ryu and I think also Suio Ryu.

Although there is no replacement for an excellent teacher I nonetheless look forward to exploring this way of learning.

Bob Dylan Show Last Night

2005-07-18T09:23:00.000-07:00

The first concert which I ever went to was Bob Dylan, and last night, after years of wanting to, I got to see him again. However much I dislike the whole notion of the new arena in town, I really felt that this was not a matter of choice. Compulsion reigned.

The crowd was mixed but as I expected alot of middle-aged former hippies filled the ranks. I was situated near, on my left some really friendly and chatty longhairs who were, as it turned out, serious potheads and to my right in the row in front of me a John Belushi figure and his two buddies who arrived drunk and rowdy (borderline annoying but always amusing enough to negate this quality to a degree ) . The Belushi guy had an envelope full of joints on him.

The showed was scheduled for 8:00 pm and got going at maybe 8:17. When the band first walked on the stage I fixated on the bass player whom I mistook for Dylan. It was the black hat. Dylan, as I soon figured out, was the guy at stage right at the keyboard (where he was to stay for most of the night except for during his harmonica playing stints). He was wearing a cool white hat and a black suit which embodied, in a very subtle way though, his recent country man sensibility.

Victoria, British Columbia
Save-On Foods Centre
July 17, 2005

Maggie's Farm
Tonight I'll Be Staying Here With You
I'll Be Your Baby Tonight
Lay, Lady, Lay
Most Likely You Go Your Way (And I'll Go Mine)
Blind Willie McTell
Watching The River Flow
Ballad Of A Thin Man
Highway 61 Revisited
New Morning
Stuck Inside Of Mobile With The Memphis Blues Again
Positively 4th Street
God Knows
Summer Days

encore
Don't Think Twice, It's All Right
All Along The Watchtower

I tried not to inhale too much second-hand smoke while I felt my eyes drying out a bit. The music first really hit me during Lay, Lady, Lay and I don't blame any possible contact high that I may have been experiencing. I won't bother even trying to explain what it was about this song or the other songs that I particularly enjoyed (namely Blind Willie McTell and the two encore songs. Damn it they really nailed All Along the Watchtower. The band was smokin') because I just spent a few minutes attempting this and gave up. His music and his persona are full of all these intangibles which I can't get my vocabulary around right now. I spent alot of time thinking about how weird it would be to have thousands of fans completely obsessed with you and every little aspect of your music. He is intelligent enough that I imagine he would think that the whole thing is silly or stupid or something. But he plays on anyway. He must be doing pretty well for himself off of these freaks (and I am one of them at times I'll admit but I do try to keep it reasonable). I think that he might find it disturbing or unsettling or whatever anyways.

The new arena didn't collapse on our heads. The security guards had succes in taming the crowds until the encore when nobody listened anymore. And shit, my buddies and I had great seats!

AMONG WHALES

2005-07-05T10:30:00.000-07:00

On the recommendation of my new girlfriend K. I am now reding this excellent book, Among Whales , by Roger Payne. I would like to dig up a quote about how amniotic fluid in mammals is of the same constituency as the sea, where scientists figure life first emerged from. How humbling that each of us mammals emerges into life the same way. Whales, awesomely enough, emerge from the world of amniotic fluid into the sea itself which is much like an endless world of the same stuff.

Here is another quote from Payne's book which I find both marvellous and terrifying, from a passage in which he is describing the plants of Patagonia (which are some real tough customers):

There is even one species of grass (called "flecha" or arrow grass) which has a particularly cruel mechanism for dispersing its seeds. Each seed is tipped with an exquisitely sharp and multiply barbed point. When the seed gets picked up in a sheep's wool, every motion by the sheep causes adjacent wool fibers to slide back and forth a tiny bit along each other's length. This motion against the barbs on the arrow grass seeds moves the barb deeper into the pile of the fleece. When a sharp-tipped seed reaches the sheep's skin, it penetrates both skin and underlying body wall musculature. Once inside the sheep's body cavity, it penetrates the internal organs, eventually killing it - the sheep's decomposing body suffocating competing vegetation beneath it and also providing, I suppose, an excellent bed of fertilizer for the next generation of arrow grass.

Among Whales p.72

on fear

2005-05-05T22:56:00.000-07:00

I have been thinking about S.'s climbing accident alot today. This morning I bought some climbing gear off of a guy that I know who is getting out of climbing. Afterwards, on the way home I guess, I felt more than the usual anxiety about spending money. I am scared to return to the rocks. This bothered me all day but I more or less let it pass once I got to the climbing gym after work and did some light bouldering.

Tonight on the way home I had an insight about the "meeting between climbing and martial arts" that interests me and which I first came across on a web page about Hirayama Yuji. In relation to danger and training the mind I reflected on the odds that, in swordmanship, in a meeting between equals there is a1/3 chance that I will cut my opponent, a 1/3 chance that my opponent will cut me, and a 1/3 chance that we will cut each other. Perhaps this is over-simplified but basically there is a 2/3 chance that I will be cut in encountering my equal. Indeed, the odds are much better in climbing, even in the higher risk endeavours of trad climbing and mountaineering. Because of the fear that I am experiencing in relation to climbing, I am presented with the opportunity to train my mind in a way which is indeed very rare for contemporary martial artists. One of my former teachers of Muso Jikiden Eishen Ryu was himself a serious mountaineer and big wall climber in his earlier years and I have wondered if this has contributed to the focus and intensity with which he carries himself, a quality which I have found to be truly rare amongst iaidoka.

Just thinking...

Trip Report--In Search of Ice and Snow on Cokeley

2005-05-04T18:44:00.000-07:00

On the morning of May 30th I was picked up at 6:10 by local alpinist-legend Sandy B. After rendezvousing with several groups our party numbers reached eleven bodies (9 adults and two kids) and we headed along the highway to Port Alberni with the Saddle Route of Arrowsmith/Cokeley in mind. The purpose of our trip was to learn and practice the use of that essential tool of mountaineering -- the ice axe. For this we needed firm snow or ice. We hiked for awhile before encountering any significant snow at all. As it was soft at best we hoped for better conditions but did not find them. We chose the feature which I beleieve is "the saddle" itself for our experiments with self-belay and self-arrest technique and, though many found it difficult, I found all of the contortions manageable, both right and left handed. I won't pretend that these drills and driven deeply into my unconscious and my muscle memory though. They will be fun to practice again.

After the workshop the 9 of us who were able to stay did a scramble up to the summit of Mount Cokeley, which I believe, after her neighbour Arrowsmith, ranks as the second highest mountain on the southern part of Vancouver Island (that is, south of the impressive peaks of Strathcona Park). The only injury: one guy (fairly excitable) tried to get involved in a race to the summit and ended up falling on the rock and mildly injuring his leg. Nothing that he couldn't walk through though. I found the route easily manageable, with a few tricky parts downclimbing but there was no real exposure to scare the pants off me or anything. If there had been a lot of snow or, especially, ice, it would have been quite a different climb.

This was my first close encounter with rock since a couple of weeks ago when my rock-climbing mentor fell about 40 feet and broke his back while we and two others were on a day trip to Samson Narrows. He just had a 12 hour surgery 5 days ago and after being in intense pain afterwards I have now received word that he has stood up a few times. He is so strong in both will and body that I have great hope that he is already on his way to a remarkable recovery.
As for the three of us who were with him that day, we will have our own bridges to cross in returning to those unforgiving positions characterised by rock and exposure..

what movie are you?

2005-04-26T09:46:00.000-07:00

What Classic Movie Are You?
personality tests by similarminds.com

Really though, I think that I am Billy Jack.

Heroes Both Real And Imaginary

2005-04-25T19:10:00.000-07:00

As a product of conditions varied and elusive- elements, ancestors, cinema, literature, history, plants, sun , water, friendship, enmity- my heroes are both real and imaginary (imagined).

Japanese warriors
indigenous warriors
artists
characters in films and books
historical figures that I acknowledge as ancestors
writers
survivors
combatants
athletes
people who crossed to the other side
strangers in books, magazines, stories and legends who maybe are not really strangers.

Somehow out of these threads I continue to discover who it is that I am. I live in a mythology so personal that I wonder if anyone else can possibly make sense of it all.