Three Graces

*


One thing that will reliably trip up any man is trying to express his complicated feelings about women. Especially as they grow older and more experienced with them. I have been with the Woman on the Verge for twenty four years now and I am every day hamstrung by my bewilderment at her astounding 'her-ness.'

She is no man. She is something altogether richer and more strange.


*

You can put me in front of a fire, or flood, or avalanche, and I know what to do. You can tell me, "Beyond this door, a monster awaits, with fang and claw and foul breath," and I know what to do.

But let me open a door and see three strong and self-contained women on the other side, and you will see me undone.



*



My mother, I am certain, set the stage for this. But also gave me a back-stage pass- so that's kind of a double-edged sword.

She raised my brother and I almost alone for the bulk of our childhoods. Imagine, if you will, a Phd candidate in European History, with a focus on British Socialists and the Second International, recently divorced from a handsome, dashing policeman who chased off after some tall, chestnut-haired beauty, trying to raise two small hellions on her own. She worked menial jobs and talked Gloria Steinem and Ralph Nader to us while we lit ants on fire with magnifying glasses and hit each other with sticks.

We hid our toy guns in the toy chests of our neighbors.

So I learned that the macho-man, G.I. Joe, James Bond, Walking Tall, John Wayne figure was a kind of boogey man, one to be feared or ridiculed. A kind of Frankenstein creature that didn't understand the need for love and sharing and communication and compassion.

The fascist ubermenche.

Batman, Superman, The Rifleman= misogynistic halfwits who did not understand the need for real emotional connection and love.

Men who mistook violence for effectiveness.




*

And, of course, from my father, I learned to belittle and scorn the whole of the feminine approach to the world. Women were to be seduced and objectified, they existed as exotic prey and beautiful bounty.

There was no higher calling than scoring the finest among them.


*



Is it any wonder that I am Janus faced?



That I embrace all of the worst of both points of view?




*



But I think I have been successful in integrating the wildly divergent world views of my two parents. I love and honor male strength and power, and I equally love and honor the female expression of that same strength and power.


I sought out for my mate a woman that could outstrip me in every way.

I sought out for my profession a challenge that would ask all of me, and more.


I wanted always to honor both my mother and my father. And all of life.


I have given it my earnest best in all endeavors.



***


Perhaps I will die in my narrow bed, alone. Perhaps I will.


But I may lay down my life on the field of battle.


I may die alongside my sweet wife.


I may be ripped from life with no seeming reason.


I may limp out, silent and broken.


I may go out swinging, giving as good as I get.



*



I know that it is how I have chosen to live that matters most.

I don't get to choose how I exit the stage.


*




I get only to choose how I move and speak
while I have my brief moment in the spotlight.



*




I will give life a good show, I swear it.



***




Namaste.




***

The Way of The Gun

*


So, shot competitive pistol match on Saturday, trained ten hours with SWAT on Sunday, and hit a house on a dope warrant yesterday.



That's as good as it gets for me.




*


I've been thinking a lot lately about this side of me, this thing that is not about police work, it's not about the law, not about shooting well, being fast and accurate....it's something deeper, more primitive. It is the urge toward violence and the seeking out of danger. It is the predatory, aggressive, hard-bark tough guy thing.

You feel it when you're in that group of other hard men, suiting up in the dark in some parking lot somewhere a few miles from your target, gear checking, weapons check, that roll of the head to get the kinks out of your neck, the clean bite of adrenaline and epinephrine, norepinephrine, just a little bump of it that makes the world come alive and makes you feel all switched on.

There's this feeling of competency, of mastery, that is very powerful. A feeling of brotherhood and camaraderie that is, without doubt, one of the most beautiful and noble things a man can feel. I love looking around at the others with me and knowing that these kind and smart and funny and wonderful guys will turn on this thing inside them if it should go wrong and they will become implacable machines bent on the destruction of what would harm me, or any one of us, or some innocent.

That they would kill to protect me. That they would do what is asked or die in the effort.

And in my world these men are unremarkable. I marvel and rejoice at it. It is one of the very best things about this calling, to keep company with them.

It is an honor and a blessing.


Perhaps I am unworthy of it. Perhaps I am only a pretender, working through some deep-seated issues of insecurity and inferiority that only seeks to play at warrior to soothe my fragile ego and bolster a weak sense of self.

But I don't believe that to be true.


I think, instead, that I merely sought out a place and a role where this ancient and powerful urge could find an outlet, an integration with the rest of my being, so that I could feel whole and alive. I am a big hearted man. I love art and beauty and good food and all of the comforts and indulgences of the sweet and soft life. I really do. But that alone would not suffice. That alone would leave me only half of a man, perhaps less than half.

Yin and yang. Soft and hard. Black and white, hot and cold. "The duality of man", as Private Joker said.





*




I relish it.



I really do.



*


namaste.



***

The Goddess of the Cargo Cult

*


"Tell 'em, 'Boola-boola.'"

                             - Gary Busey, The Buddy Holly Story










*




So, the WOTV has done left up outta here. Attending to her filial obligations in the great flat and sandy state of Florida.


Leaving me to my own devices.



So far, my devices have been cleaning the house, pacing, and competing in an action pistol match this morning. Tonight I'm going to watch the fights with my buddy, and tomorrow we're going to train with the SWAT team.



Yay, shooting! Yay fighting! Yay, more shooting!




I know, I know.



*






But I cain't hep mysef.






*



You seek a great fortune, you three who are now in chains. 
You will find a fortune, though it will not be the one you seek. 
But first... first you must travel a long and difficult road, 
a road fraught with peril. 


Mm-hmm. You shall see thangs, wonderful to tell. 
You shall see a... a cow... on the roof of a cotton house, ha. 
And, oh, so many startlements. 


I cannot tell you how long this road shall be, 
but fear not the obstacles in your path, 
for fate has vouchsafed your reward. 


Though the road may wind, yea, 
your hearts grow weary, 
still shall ye follow them, 
even unto your salvation. 


                                     - Lee Weaver as Blind Seer



*


And big props to my brother, the brave and tough one in the family, for completing his first century ride, one hundred miles from Cayucos to the Piedras Blancas Lighthouse and back. Next month he's back in the ring for his first fight since his last knee surgery which sidelined him for a year. He's fighting at 165, twenty pounds lighter than he usually fights.

The kid looks damn good, I tell you what.

I never met his equal for doing the hard work. Since he was seven years old I don't believe he's taken a day off from training. Boxing, Jits, Krav-Maga, Muy Thai, Kickboxing. Triathlons, open water swims, adventure races, kayaking, windsurfing, surfingsurfing, paddle board, you name it, he's done it. While carrying a boulder in his arms. And shooting. Carbine, long rifle, shotgun, handgun.

He's the best man I know.

He's got no quit in him. I've seen him blow out his knee in a SWAT competition and just wrap that bitch up in duct tape and keep going for five more events. When he was in the Marines in boot camp he broke an ankle jumping off a high platform into a sand pit, then he broke his other one trying not to land on the one he broke first when he jumped again.

I never said he was smart.

Just tough.


*

But he is smart. And tough. And the most easy-going, laid back motherfucker.

Way to go, bro.


*




I did a restorative yoga practice last night, and I'll go again tonight. Every night for the next few weeks, see if I can establish a bit of a practice.

I liked it pretty good. It seems like just laying down and breathing, like meditation. Only comfortable.



I like doing things that when you've done them, you know something has changed.


I'll keep you posted.





*



Damn, we went to Suchada for some Thai massage while we were in the city?

Holy Twisted Spines, Batman!

Those ladies just disassemble the fuck out of you and when they put you back together you function in a whole new way. They are like the quantum physicists of the massage world. They do not exist on any ordinary plane of reality.

And they have the strength of ten ordinary men.


I'm telling you, you ever get the chance, plunk down a hundred bucks and have one of these wizzards walk all over you, work your shoulders with their knees and twist you up like a washrag, wring you out and hang you out to dry.

You think it wasn't worth it, I'll go your hundred for you.


I'm serious.




*



Damn I miss that woman. I know she's doing what's necessary and I don't begrudge her doing it at all. I admire her for it, point of fact.

But still.


I do miss her.



*


We supposed to be together, man.


***




Namaste.





***

Singing For Odysseus

*




who among us is not in danger?




yet we cling to life, thinking we'll be spared.




*




it's entirely normal...






but not very sensible.






*



the samurai believed that only the intentional refusal to value your own life gave life any value at all. or not that you didn't value it, but you knew that it had value and you were going to spend it. On something good. If you tried to keep it, you got nothing in the end.





you gotta put your money down.



*

battening down the hatches here for the woman's imminent departure for points East.


I should get used to it when she leaves, but I never have yet.



*


While she's gone I'm going to try some restorative yoga practice every day. Add it to my pistol work and my morning calisthenics. The woman's been reading this book, yoga for emotional balance,  by Bo Forbes.

I snuck a look at it.


It made a lot of sense to me. Not that I need emotional balance or anything. Or a yoga practice. Or a mindfulness practice.

Shooting, running, pushups and pullups. Hitting things.

That's enough, right?


*



I like to stack everything on one side of the see-saw.



*




Slowly by slowly, as the Monk says.


Slowly by slowly.


*


Of course, the other thing the monk says is, "Okay! Pee-pee time!"



So, make up your own mind about that.



*



Namaste.



***

Interlude with Diana

*

I have by some miracle these two women in my life, my daughter and my wife. There is such fierceness in them. It manifests in different ways, but neither of them is someone you'd want to go up against. The kid is at war with the entire world. She's lost every battle, gotten her ass kicked hard. She never cries about it, never despairs. Just takes a deep breath and plunges back into the fray.

I don't know what it is inside her that drives her to war with everything we tried to give her, but she won't rest until the landscape is a smoking ruin as far as the eye can see.

Perhaps she will rebuild her own golden city on the burning plain.

Perhaps she will.

*

That other woman, the one I married. You wouldn't maybe know it right at first, because of her quiet nature and her beauty and graciousness. But if you weren't careful you might brush up against something that made you want to back up a little bit, make some space for what felt like there might be a bear or a lion or a bull somewhere close by, something so goddamn strange and strong and indifferent to you that it makes the hairs on your neck lift.

*

I make my living studying violence and passion and this has in no way prepared me in my lifelong dance with these two women. I am wrong about them over and over again, with little hope for improvement in the future.

I don't think it is my fate to understand everything about them. Obviously it isn't. 

But what sheer joy to be in orbit around them, careening through life, headlong, throwing sparks, watching things burn, hanging on by my fingertips as they break against the world or each other, or me, or themselves.

It isn't always easy, but it's a hell of a ride.

Thank you for the honor of your company.

*

To you brave warrior women!

Skoal!

***

Namaste.

***

Bedtime Stories

*






What better for a freak than to be loved?






There is naught.





*




Lucky, blessed beyond all measure, strong in hand and heart and back, I yet fuss and mewl. Wanting to understand friendship, I shy from it and what it asks of me. Obsessed with fighting and shooting, loss and violence and rage and fear, I pretend that the other thing does not exist, or isn't important. Openness, gladness of heart, compassion, trust and warmth. Instead I add another layer of pointy sticks to my armor, search out a stouter staff, batten down the hatches and pace the floors.




Yet she still takes me close to her and reads me a story and soothes my savage soul, as if I did not offend.


*






She is the sea to my stone.






*



In all my life I am most proud of having won her to me.



***


Namaste.



***

Swimming To Antarctica

*

everywhere I turn it seems like I'm looking at the end of things. I feel caught up hard in the gears of the world. My kid is having a baby any minute now and up the street my grandparents are careening toward death at an alarming rate. 

The world is a magical place, but it's a mistake to think it has a personal regard for you. For any one of us.

i am all the time swimming in the waters of deep time, of limitless space, the cosmos, the utterly, incomprehensibly vast, and the vanishingly tiny, too. Quantum mechanics. String theory. Quarks and muons and the elusive Higgs boson. dinosaurs and plate tectonics, evolution, heredity, epigenetics. The nature of things. 

as if to soothe myself. not for any other reason than just to try to comprehend it. As it is. As it seems to us from here.

but i can't live in deep time or deep space. i can't be a cowboy or an astronaut. i can't hunt with a tribe of Neandertals in some french wood.

i got this tiny handful of years and these few beloved souls around me and this is the secret of it. 

what is it. to love without reservation or regard for the cost of it. to be stripped of every tender mercy and be ground up in the jaws of the great machine, and see your loved ones ground up, too. and to yet love, and to begrudge none of it, the grief and the pain and the measureless sorrow of it.

for you are given the great bounty of it as well. and free to do with it what you will, in whatever manner you choose. for as long as you've got the stage.

i don't know what the hell i'm talking about.

*

i claim i want peace but i seem to strive against it in my bones.

*

you want to be equal to what's asked of you. 

that's true.

i don't want to be found lacking.

*

namaste.

***

Mighty Garganta Eats a Sandwich As Lu Waits For The Inevitable

*


The Woman on The Verge snapped this gem of a portrait of me and the dog while we were boondocking lunch in the parking lot of a middle school in Gilroy on our way home from Napa.



It's a low-res deal shot on her cellie, but it still captures a moment.


*



We had a hell of a good time up there.







Although some of us remained dubious.....

*

The diRosa was absolutely insane. I can't even talk about it.

This is what it looks like when you walk up:

And this is the kind of shit you see inside:

*

Here is a shot of one of the sculptures in the sculpture meadow:

This is a stack of filing cabinets that rises fifty feet into the blue sky. It is supposed to contain the artists' MG convertible, disassembled and sawed into tiny pieces, weighed, then filed according to weight.

It felt like standing in front of the monolith from 2001. I wanted to throw a bone into the air.

*

There was cool shit everywhere you looked:

*

We loved it bad. We got all recharged and renewed and relaxitated.

I owe that woman my life, man! 

She's privy to all the new developments, the in and outs, the what-have-you's. 

*

That is our concern, dude.

*

Namaste.

***

Fleeing the Robots

*

We took the Sweet Lime out for the weekend. Mostly to escape Pinedorado, but also to visit diRosa up in Napa.

That place squoze my heart.

Made me see stars.

I stopped breathing.

*

If there is anything better than seeing that kind of art in that kind of place with the woman you love more than life itself, I don't know what it could be.

It was one of those made you feel like you could die happy, just for having been there.

*

I will die happy, for that is my aim.

***

Namaste.

***