I’m continuing to negotiate my shadow. I find myself wanting to buy a really good knife. I keep looking at this site: https://www.zombietools.net/shop/felon/
Bowie is like .45: classic American.
Somehow I got to thinking about martial arts tonight. I studied what I think most afficionados would call Koryu for some years. And I remain damned impressed how clever those Japanese were.
And I remain vaguely sickened by how many ways I know how to break bones and kill people.
Here is the thing: you can’t live forever. Not in this form. And we all have destinies and fates. It is right and proper to have basic self protection skills and tools. But obsessing about it is a form of dereliction of duty. This is what I am telling myself.
Kum Nye is not athletic. It is not badass. It can’t be competitive, since it all involves subjective internal states. But it gets very close to the core purpose of human life, and as such is the single activity–or one close to it–worth pursuing.
This is me processing some old truths, old ideas, and how I have interacted with life in the past. My past is gone. It is not coming back unless I continue to invite it, and that leaves no room for what is really fucking cool in this world.
I’m rambling, but I think there is some use in this for me.
Edit: We all want to be badass, or at least most men do. I did. But there is no end to it. It can become an obsession which takes away life. I have known men who killed other men in conflict. It leaves a scar that does not make that man richer in any way. What they can say is they did what needed to be done, and carry no regrets. But that is not enrichment, on balance, not how I see it.
My jagged work continues.