ChironTraining Volume 2: 2006

Introduction

If this was a print book, it would run about two hundred pages. It seems like a lot for notes to myself written in spare moments over a year.

With some slight grammar clean up and a few notes, what you have here are the 2006 entries of the Chiron Training blog. If you want to save some money, you can always read it for free at chirontraining.blogspot.com.

In a normal introduction, this would be a good time to tell you what Volume 2 is about. It’s not really about anything. It’s a year and years or lives are never really about…they just are.

This year I appreciated my family and got pissed at the ignorance of reporters and wrestled with how to explain violence to martial artists who only thought they wanted to understand.

We herded the Tactical Team through budget crises and personnel changes, always as a team.

Spent time listening to the violent and the crazy and sometimes found more in common with them than with the cream of society.

It’s just another year.

Fourteen 01JAN2006

I look at my son at fourteen and I see the strength and the promise in him. He's smart. He doesn't see the world the way others do, but since he also hasn't taught himself to look through their eyes the man-child they see is not what he wants to project.

He is thrashing right now, trying to discover who he is, where he fits, what this world is all about. He already recognizes that what the world says it demands is very different from what it will tolerate- something I did not understand until I was much older- but he doesn't have the experience or the wisdom to use that insight safely. Not yet.

I remember that path, and want so badly to walk it with him, show him the traps and the glories of life, but it can't be done. He'll become a man and he will do it alone, the only way it can be done. I hope he trusts at every step that he is loved. I hope he learns early that discovering who you are is only half, the other half is deciding who you will be.

He is cautiously exploring the social spiderweb. He's in a good place with good role models. He will love and admire strong, smart, tough women because those are what he sees all around him... if he doesn't get bound to one of the dozens that he will be drawn to save as a young man. That's a familiar path, too.

For the next years- no one knows how many- he will be driven to put distance between the familiar and himself, to form an identity that is clearly not a clone of his father but himself , separate and real. Then, if I live long enough, we will sit down with a good scotch and he will tell me all the things he doesn't know how to say right now. And I will say the thing he doesn't know how to hear, I love you, son.

Changes 05JAN1006

Things are moving fast with the new year. New schedules, new officers. Designing classes. Preparing for the Alabama seminar.

Moving very fast- I've also heard back on one of the query letters. My first choice of agents wants to see the manuscript. Is it ready? Does it matter?

This is just like an entry on a barricaded criminal. You prepare and train as much as you can, but then it's on. No more time to work out a little more or plan a little more or... you go in with what you have when you get the green light.

This is the green light for writers, a very friendly I'll be happy to take a look at your book ...

It's on. Ready or not, here I come.

By the way, the agent thing didn’t pan out. Rich was willing to pimp my writing, but he was honest enough to add, for a niche market I’m not sure I would be able to add enough value to make it worth your while. I appreciated that. It turned out the contracts my publisher uses weren’t that complicated and I didn’t mind negotiating on my own behalf.

Martial Art 05JAN2006

There's a question that comes up frequently on MA sites- why martial art? Why not martial science or martial endeavor? Where did this art thing come into it and why?

Honestly, it's not worth the time to read crap like that. It's like the people who are arguing about whether jutsu or jitsu is right... there's no letter 'u' or letter 'i' in Japanese writing anyway so it just doesn't matter. Does red taste like chocolate?

However, I did have a thought the other day. It ties in with things already mentioned here about the messiness of combat, the unpredictability, the fact that there really aren't right answers, just stuff that worked that one time.

Maybe that's why it's called an art and not science, because in art it's accepted that there are no absolutes, no right answers. Bach gets his point across and so does Rob Zombie. Pollock and Monet are displayed in the same museum. I shoulder slam, sweep and kneel on the threat's elbow and neck, C picks the threat up and slams him to the ground. We both get the message across but in very different ways.

Rigid thinkers do well in science and crappy in art (though a mix of free and rigid is where the breakthroughs in science happen). Rigid thinkers do well in administration and crappy when it comes time to actually deal with criminals.

Maybe who ever called it 'art' was on to something. More likely it was just the luck of a poor translation. That's kind of a human drive, though, to look for meaning in arbitrary things.

Mentoring 08JAN2006

She's not really my student. She is a friend who learns something from me formally while I learn much from her less formally. She introduced me to her student over the weekend, but he's not really a student either- he's a young friend who is drawn to her as a source of wisdom and experience. So I met my unstudent's unstudent. That's very cool.

There's a certain age where young people (males in my experience, but that's what I've always been) seek a teacher, a mentor. Someone older and wiser and farther down the path they envision for themselves, someone who knows the secrets and the mysteries and the magic. Largely I skipped that, through luck or analytical skepticism or a loner personality or the fact that the earliest closest possibilities I remember were failures on other levels, I spent very little time with self-proclaimed gurus and masters and a lot in the high desert listening to coyotes.

I have met a lot of 'masters', and most were very charismatic and coldly predatory. I remember in particular one called Sylver who was a pure sexual predator behind his smile and words of free love, surrounding himself with women a third his age who he had convinced that it was impossible to lie in the nude and clothes were necessary for dishonesty. To maintain the sterling (sylver) honesty of his house, clothes were not worn there.

So there is conflict here and danger in the quest for a mentor when being a mentor is so easy to fake and so profitable.

The kid's lucky to have her as a mentor. He won't be exploited, he will learn and she won't feed him bullshit to keep him on the string. She won't become addicted to having someone look up to her and her goal is to bring him along the path as far as she has come and farther. A true teacher desires to be outdone by their students. The 'masters' and 'gurus' and 'sokes' thrive on a steady diet of inferiors and keep their students... students.

For a day, I was a mentor's mentor. It was fun and strange and silly. The kid is young and smart and sincere. He wants answers and he is doing the right thing, putting himself in the company of people who live like they have them. But it's hard, because like everyone else, he asks a question and wants an answer... and almost every time the answer is That's not a real question.

What he sees as mastery he thinks of as having the right stuff, having more answers and insights. It's almost exactly the opposite- it's about not having the wrong stuff in your head or your life; about having fewer questions that are more real; clear sight.

So much of the world is attributed. People create panic and drama. They decide that things are important when they are only interesting. People don't spontaneously combust when they miss a deadline. Who wins the superbowl doesn't affect anything real. If you don't watch television you lose no more than the opportunity to talk about imaginary people with your friends. It's a loss, but not a real loss.

Okay, I'm beating a dead horse.

Fatigue Makes Cowards of Us All 09JAN2006

I've heard that quote attributed to Vince Lombardi and General George Patton. It's hard to imagine Patton ever admitting a moment of cowardice, but maybe his ego slipped for a minute.

Sleep deprivation is a big part of mind control methods. The exhaustion of near starvation and constant deprivation may be what allowed people to walk meekly by the millions into the Holocaust gas chambers when they had nothing to lose by fighting.

I'll tell you about my moment of cowardice.

It wasn't sleep fatigue. I just get mean when I go without sleep. It was spiritual and mental, a year of funerals and suicides and families and friends falling apart; doing too much and knowing too much and not allowed to speak. It was a year of bloody empty skull and crack baby and far too many days spent in an office where I couldn't do anything real.

A local guy was going out of business. My wife and I had talked to him a week before and he was pretty distraught over it. On the store's last day we dropped in. People were wandering over the lot (it was a nursery) asking if we worked there. We went into the office. The computer, radio and TV were on. A sign on the counter said, Leave Money Here. Back at 1pm It was already 2 pm.

I looked at K and said, "He probably hung himself in the back.

She nodded. We should go look.

My first instinct, my first reaction was this thought of fear and frustration- No! No! It's somebody else's fuckin turn! It was just an instant, just a shadow across my face that no one except my wife would have noticed. Out loud I said, Wait here, and I searched.

No body. He came back later.

For the most part, I’m pretty good with stress, especially if I can stay busy. In Meditations on Violence there’s an essay about a particularly ugly year—suicides and body recoveries and crack baby delivery and sitting with my mouth shut while guilty, molesting evil people shilled for the TV cameras. But it wasn’t that big a year. Looking back over my personal diaries, there were lots of years that were worse (one with eight suicides of either officers or officer family members in two months). The times I got tired tended to be as I moved up into positions of authority and spent more time in an office and less time acting.

Dealing with things I’m okay at, but I seem to work through stuff in moments of action.

In moments of action I can see why things matters.

Home 09JAN2006

4 days. 5 nights. About 18 hours of sleep.

One of the best things about the internet is that it allows really specialized interests to connect across continents. There are lots of soldiers and cops, people who deal professionally with violence, but relatively few who have made a career of the dangerous missions and even fewer who are given to pondering the principals and implications of their experience. It would get lonely.

There are also millions of martial artists, but few who are both dedicated and open minded. Fewer who have been with it long enough that they are driven to strip away and understand rather than collect new techniques or new belts. Even fewer who pay more than lip service to practicality.

The internet allows me to connect with both of these groups and even with the very, very rare individuals where the groups connect: the hard core combat philosophers who are also trained in traditional systems of combat.

Last weekend was spent at the Gulf Coast/BudoSeek jujutsu camp. There were probably 80 people in attendance with probably 20 serious martial artists, 15 professionals and a half dozen of that elite of both camps. I think that's more than I've ever seen in one room before. Two of them, Tony and Cliff (and Robert, who is all Martial artist and retired Marine), were my reasons for attending. Whether the classes were good or not (and it was a mixed bag, as always) the time spent with them was sure to be worth it.

There's also something about the internet- you can gauge someone’s knowledge and maybe dedication, but until you see them move you don't know. These guys knew pain and damage, how to withstand and how to create it. They were each and every one the real deal.

The classes were mixed. Good judo, good aikido. Some good jujutsu, some terrible. Some atrocious self-defense (how do you teach a knife defense where you cut your own throat every time and none of the students notice it?) Good introduction to arnis (plus a piece I never put in context before- Thanks, Barry). But even the weakest classes with good partners were opportunities to learn and improvise.

Travel budget allowing, I'll return next year.

Hostages to Fortune 17JAN2006

Cat is a great friend, now half the continent away. When the boy was born, Cat was the one I came to with a confession: I was afraid. As far back as I could remember, I'd never been afraid of dying. The closest thing I had to a survival mechanism was a hatred of losing so severe that I would take on the world and the gods and not give up. I might be beaten but I would not lose. And I would play the game, take the challenge, and climb the cliff because not playing was a form of losing.

With the birth of my son, I started to feel a chill fear of death. Small and weak, he couldn't play the game, not even the safe game of a relatively sedentary life. He NEEDED, in a way that I hadn't needed since I was old enough to kill my own food.

Cat listened and said, With K and the baby, you have hostages to fortune. I turned the phrase over in my mind. Hostages to fortune. The Japanese daimyo would demand that the heirs of their vassals live at the daimyo's castle as guest/hostages so that any disloyalty on the part of the vassal could be swiftly punished by executing his heir. With every one that comes into your life that you truly love, you have a hostage to fortune, to luck.

In the twinkling of an eye, the person you live for can be stripped away by a driver's momentary distraction, an act of casual violence or the honest mistake of a good doctor.

The fear has fallen away as the children grow into a young man and young woman- I would miss them and they would miss me, but they have a good start and will grow into fine adults with or without me.

While I was gone, K had a medical problem. We don't know exactly what- trouble breathing, panic, pain, sweating. She waited until after the seminar was over to give me the message- the kind of silent courage and thoughtfulness that leaves me in awe. She was well taken care of by good friends. She will take more tests...

She has been the biggest part of my life for nearly two decades. The world makes sense because she is in it. K has allowed me to deal with the darkness with a sense of purpose, been the safe harbor after each and every storm.

With the news that she was in the hospital my brain began rattling off probabilities, scenarios and contingencies: the thing I've trained it to do so well. But despite any skill and visualization I can never truly grasp what a loss of that magnitude would be like.

My mother had six children. Three of us survived to be adults. She has buried three children and a husband. She keeps going.

There is so much luck in the world and so few precious people.

Management for My Amusement 23JAN2006

I thought about writing a book, Management for my Amusement: The Cat and Mouse System of Supervision. Catchy title, huh? Some people take supervision far too seriously. No one wakes up in the morning and thinks, You know, I'm going to do a real shitty job today. I'm going to make sure that my workplace is less safe and all my co-workers hate me. Okay, there are a few who do, but they're rare.

If you are a supervisor, you have employees who are people. Since they are people who have to be there and do that for so many hours, there are a few universal things. They'd rather be proud of their performance than ashamed; they'd rather be interested than bored; they'd rather spend eight hours with friends than with enemies... they want to do a good job and they want to have fun doing it.

I work in a jail. Most of my deputies spend an eight hour shift locked alone in a dormitory with up to 75 criminals. Most of them enjoy it. The ones that hate it also hated working at a mill or teaching or being a dog catcher. The ones that hate it, that turn every day into a battle haven't figured out that for the most part, the criminals are people too- who would rather be interested than bored; safe than in danger....

Two people can be in the exact same event and one will be bothered for years with the tragedy or just the smell and the other will have just another great story. Who do you think lives longer? Who has the better career?

Given that, and given that since I really care about my people one of the most powerful effects I can have as a sergeant is to get them to the end of a long, healthy career, it makes sense that I get them to see the absurdity and when they are making the decision whether to laugh or to cry to let them see some one laughing. It also means that they have to see me have fun.

Cat and Mouse- two of my deputies can't stand each other. Each believes that he is a good officer and the other is a lop. They both made the same mistake at about the same time and are the only two people on the shift to make that mistake... so I pretend to have trouble telling them apart. They know it's a joke and they're laughing, but each is working harder than ever before to prove to me that they aren't the same, that they are superior officers.

Years ago, there was a deputy who was extraordinarily bad, a martinet of the worst order. We have a running joke that in this job, at least the worst people will eventually get hurt and then they'll learn. He didn't. I'd tried counseling and coaching and setting very clear boundaries and expectations as did every other sergeant... the most we got was a grudging agreement not to do specific things when we were watching. I finally said, I'm recommending you get some remedial training. Not that you will get anything out of it, you already think you know everything. This is to cover my ass. You are a disaster waiting to happen and it's only a matter of time before you get yourself or someone else seriously hurt. Basically, I'm writing you off as a lost cause and just trying to minimize my personal liability.

Being written off was the first thing that ever reached him. For awhile, he actually did good work.

Supervisor means the same thing as overseer, if you break it down. A supervisor looks at the big picture and tries to make it better. The best supervisors do it by helping things change for the better, identifying needs and filling them. The worst do it by looking for mistakes and attempting to stop anything that might go wrong.

Managers manage- they manipulate paper, numbers, resources and people to either get something done or perpetuate a bureaucracy. The best look at what the people need to do the job and make that happen. The worst look at the numbers and try to add and subtract people and behaviors to reach a bottom line.

Leaders get things done. The best live an example that makes people want to live up to that standard. They remember that the job always centers around two things: the troops and the mission. The worst center everything around themselves and the mission.

I'll never write the damn book. I care about my people too much to be that flippant on paper. But if you have power over someone else's life, use that power to help them have fun.

Use your power for good.

Hands 24JAN2006

The baby is tiny. She is a little girl without a name yet born to a mother in custody. As a sergeant, I check in on the deputies assigned to duty outside the jail-- at hospitals and birthing centers, for instance. So there I met this tiny child.

I ask and the mother gives me permission to hold the baby's hand. The hand is so tiny, with long fingers. The child has huge dark eyes and dark hair. Bright eyes. She grips my finger in her fist and tries to pull it to her mouth, her baby attempt at controlling her world. For a second, I'm caught by the image of our hands, the uncalloused fist wrapped around the stubby, scarred finger. For just a moment, it is a perfect image: she is weak and I am strong; she is defenseless and I exist to defend; she is precious in her unlimited possibility and I am dedicated through experience...

It's just an image, though. I can't protect her. Her unlimited possibilities are at the mercy of a mother who may be too addicted to care for her; a