Doing Scary Things

A close friend reminded me how I used to advise students to do something scary every day. It's one of those diminishing returns concepts, because after a while it gets harder and harder to find scary things. Last Thursday, I had a nice one.

Back Fence PDX is an interesting, fun concept. as a sort of dinner theater, seven people get up on stage, one at a time, and tell a story. The story must be true, personal and un-rehearsed.

If you have been to an ABBB, you know I like telling stories... but that is very different. Stage fright doesn't make sense to me when you are surrounded by people who have held your head when you puked and put on bandages when you bled and would be there in a heartbeat if you cried. At ABBB, we are reconnecting with the old stories and catching up with the new ones.

These were strangers, with bright lights in my eyes (want to make a jail guard nervous? Put him in a room with three hundred people all watching him, and then blind him.) It was something new. And the story was something I don't talk about often. I can only think of twice when I had a failure of moral nerve in my career, times when I followed the policy even though it was wrong. I told about the old one, the one that is not so raw. How a good man died because everybody did the right thing, followed the rules.

The internal state had some adrenaline. I don't think the audience saw much, and what they did see was a rookie trying to figure out a microphone. No shakes, voice steady... just visualizing tripping on the way to the stage...

There was a secondary effect, too. It caught me off guard. When several people seek you out to say they were moved to tears... what do you say? I had no idea. "Thank you," maybe.

It's good to be a rookie again.

It's also fun to tease K: avant garde dinner theater with her husband followed by a book release party for a friend, she's officially literati now, I think.

Is That a Problem?

"Let go of my arm. It's messing up your distance."

"But that's the weapon arm. I need to control it."

I shake my head. "Watch me." I pass/parry/enter "What can you reach with your knife?" I know the answer- if my hand weren't under his arm he might be able to get my thigh, but it is. If he was extremely flexible he just might be able to nick my ear or ruffle my hair. Maybe. Just because it is scary, doesn't mean it can hurt you. What I say is, "If you can't reach me with it, I don't need to waste resources on it. It is controlled, but by position, not grip."

There's a lot of that kind of stuff out there- solutions to problems that aren't problems. We talked about it later. Someone grabs your wrists, what do you do? I just say, "I know you're desperate but I am not going out with you." I know where his hands are. Where his feet are. What he can do and what he can't. For most things he needs to let go, for the one he doesn't, the head butt, I'll feel his intention. There is no problem here, unless you psych yourself into one.

Same with grabbing the shirt. It's an aggressive, scary move if you buy into the hype. Put it down on paper and suddenly it's a gift. "Hi, my name's Ray and I'll be your attacker today. I've decided to open by tying up both my hands in a way that can't really hurt you, leaving your hands free and my knees, throat, ears and lots of other good stuff in easy reach."

Lots of the groundfighting positions on the bottom are good places to rest. There are some holds- kesa gatame and kami shiho gatame to name two, where the person can't hurt you without changing the hold. The only danger in either is to struggle yourself to exhaustion. There is no problem here, not until the bad guy's friends show up.

Recognizing a problem is a critical strategic skill. Recognizing when something is not a problem and you can save your resources is a critical tactical skill.

Stuff

Things have been busy lately, but probably boring for you to read about. My son's play; my daughter's concert. Meeting with old friends. Writing. Evidently a rat chewed into a power line last night and the East end of the house has no power.

Boring stuff, but kind of cool, too. The thing about shiftwork was all the parts of normal life that you missed. I have gone to more of my kid's events in the last two months than in the whole seventeen years before. It's kind of cool. It means listening to bad music (and some very good) but it is also watching kids grow up in an environment that was alien to me.

I always spent a lot of time with my kids. Not a lot, maybe. Very nearly as much as they would tolerate. On my days off I would get them up and see them to school. When I worked nights I tried to sleep while they were in school. If they had a half-day that coincide with an off-shift or a day off we would go bowling or out for lunch or... I've always loved my kids and they have never, I hope, doubted that I loved them. For the first time I am meeting their school friends, seeing where they fit in the social networks that surround them.

I'm seeing happy, well-adjusted, popular kids. Despite the autism. Despite a father who taught them how to throw axes instead of footballs. Despite all the times I wasn't there.

So, sorry if the blog is lagging or boring right now. It will pick up. But life is in one of the cool, easy happy flows and I plan to ride it for all I am worth. Wish me luck.

News

Thanks for the concern, Viro. The site appears to be up and running. Feel free to check it out and let me know if there are any issues. Big thanks to S. Cole for getting it up and running.

Second, I'll be telling a story on November 19th at the Mission Theater. Details, including where to get tickets, are here. This will be entirely new for me and like most new things there's no way to tell if you're going to suck until you jump in with both feet. Any way it breaks it should be fun. Plus, there will be cupcakes. Which would be more of an incentive if I liked sweet things.

Third, I'm taking a cue from nanowrimo and will be finishing a book in 30 days. I've committed to getting one complete book down by the end of the month. Piece of cake.

Lastly, I want to apologize for the last half of the last post. On re-read, it barely makes sense to me and I know what I was trying to say. Lesson to self- don't rush things, take a breath to re-read or just let it sit. Just because the kids need to be picked up doesn't mean the writing needs to be rushed.

Conscience and the Rules

Working on the website is kicking my ass. It looks beautiful on my computer. Finally got it to upload to the host site... and then it doesn't actually show up on the web. Or it does, but without pictures and in a black-on-black unreadable font. Sigh, time to call in the big guns...

VC wanted more on the value and the cost of a conscience. It's not some deep or profound thing, if you think about it... but many people go their whole lives without being exposed. Some things suck. There are many things that are cool to think about that suck to do.

When you apply force to a human being you should only do it when it is the right thing to do, when the costs of not applying force outweigh the cost of applying force. If you pull the trigger (and you don't miss or...) no matter the circumstances, you will have destroyed a unique thing. Something more unique and of greater artistry than a Rembrandt or the only copy of a Mozart fugue. Would you destroy "Starry Night" to save your daughter? I would. But I would feel bad about it.

The cost of a conscience is two-fold. The fear of bad feelings can make people hesitate or not act at all. Don't get me wrong: fear of other bad stuff can also keep people passive and make them victims- but fear of your own conscience is an interesting thing because it is both very powerful in (some people) and completely imaginary. The other cost is that people can beat themselves up emotionally over things that are objectively good decisions. That's just the way it is. No matter how logical and necessary the action was, you can expect to wake up in the middle of the night for a while (sometimes for the rest of your life) wondering if there was another way.

And the cost is the value. The feeling bad and the expectation of feeling bad is what keeps us from using violence as a convenience. Those that don't have this do horrendous things.

Thus, as near as I can remember in Toby's words, comforting a girl who defended herself: "That you feel bad doesn't mean you did a bad thing, it just means that you are a good person."

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There were a lot of good comments on the post on teaching, but Robert made one about context and permission and working in the jail. I'm going to deliberately misunderstand it in a useful way, a way that ties into conscience:

One of the keys to personal 'permission' was a by-product of working as a corrections officer but is not dependent on it- I knew (and had to know) force law inside-out, upside-down and backwards. Knew it so well that I could compare it with my feelings and internal ethics and work out the issues well in advance. For the most part, I found that when an instructor said something that made my eyes twitch e.g. "You are authorized to use one level of force higher than the threat," my instincts were usually spot on.

There are rules. There are social-monkey rules to conflict that we have learned from birth. And there are legal rules that we are beholden to whether we want them or not. When one person says "I'd rather be tried by twelve than carried by six," does he also say "I'd rather spend seven years in a state prison than take a beating." ? Without a thorough knowledge of force law and probably a good knowledge of real conflict- at least enough to recognize when you are monkey-dancing and not defending yourself- you might find some pretty weird thoughts popping up in a conflict.

You can choose to believe that you are immune and if you have one or two encounters that only last a second, you might not have felt it, but get a copy of "Deadly Force Encounters" and take it for a read. Even trained officers in life-or-death firefights found themselves worrying about lawsuits and IA investigations.

So part of the context, Robert, and in my opinion more powerful than the uniform or the duty to act, was a really thorough knowledge of the rules. There is no reason why a martial arts student can't know this as thoroughly as I did. For that matter, there really isn't a good excuse for anyone who bills himself as a self-defense instructor not knowing this stuff.

Admin Notice

First things first. Met Toby and he is a damn fine man. One of the ones who understands the value, and the cost, of a conscience- and can explain it to his daughters.  I was most impressed.

Administrative:

The old website, chirontraining, hasn't been updated since I went to Iraq.  The connection there was too unstable (most of the time) or I was too busy (the rest of the time) to do anything with it.  At some point the provider changed the program that runs it, so I haven't been able to work on it.  Turns out our lovely little macs have a program just for making web pages, so for the last three days any spare minute has been spent trying to design a new web page.  Once all the pages are mostly done, we'll see if it up loads.  Wish me luck.

So, question: for the first time this will include a page of the stuff I am willing to do for money. I intend to title the page "Whorin': Things I'll do for Money" but certain elements (cough)wife(cough) indicate that it might be less than professional.  I think it's the oldest professional... but... any input?

Anyway, staying busy.  Thanks for the input on the last post and there is a lot to think about, stuff that deserves an answer in the body of the blog.

Teaching for Chaos

What I teach is dealing with violence, and that dictates a lot of what and how and who I teach.

I don't teach most people. Children don't need to know about certain parts of the world. They need to believe, at some level, that the world is safe and good. Maybe it's not true and maybe it's not necessary, but I want children to have that. I don't teach stupid people. They make me tired and waste my time. I try to avoid the ones who are just augmenting fantasy or on some kind of imaginary power rush, since I can't hide the contempt for any length of time.

So who I do teach tends to break one of two ways- either professionals who expect to be dealing with very bad things in the near future or hobbyists (experienced martial artists) who are just now realizing that what they thought they were learning might not actually be what they learned. They are waking up in other words, pushing away the dream violence and looking for a touch of the real.

There are a few cross-overs, people who pride themselves on collecting reality credentials. A very few who share more than teach or learn, finding comfort in someone who knows the words and the music.

What I teach is chaos, and so in the end, I teach nothing. I mean that very seriously. When the shit hits the fan you will be all alone, no matter how many people you are with. No matter how good or extensive your scenario training it will never be exactly like real life. You (or the student) need to be able to handle it. Alone. Not like me, you need to handle it like you. So I make no effort to teach my way. You find your way. And then you build on it and refine it and broaden and deepen it. You do that until you have achieved something I could never give you. At best, if I tried to teach you, you would be an imperfect me. But you can be a perfect you.

So I don't teach. We explore and I point out what I see and you tell me what you sense.

That's the essence because in a moment of survival, you will be a perfect expression of yourself. Who you are and what you do, both in that moment and in all the hours of training beforehand are who you are. Who you have become. Nothing less and nothing more.

So I can't teach someone to bow and cower and genuflect and call me 'sir', not when I want them to stand up to someone far scarier than me. I can't lie and tell them that they have what it takes, that they've drunk the magic kool-aid, because some days it's bug on a windshield time. I can't let them get away with the whining and 'oh poor me' and 'I don't wanna' or "I can't' because I don't want them to learn that if they give up it will still be okay. It will probably be very NOT okay.

I can't teach them platitudes, "You will get cut" or "You won't get cut" because both can be lies and they don't need garbage in their brains when they see their own blood. They need to move.

It's all about the student and they need to learn to see and evaluate and move. They need to learn how to grow themselves. In the end, they learn how to teach themselves. Then they do and should move beyond the teacher, not as little flawed clones but as men and women who have grown themselves to be as strong and good and courageous as they can be. Powerful enough to be themselves, even when they are all alone and afraid.