JKD Make up Test

Was baffling in it's laid back easy going tone, such is the way of Saturday mornings I suppose. I'm not complaining. (I see the fitness requirements as nuisances, not goals.) Sifu even said we passed the test, which he would never do during the week. He'd make us wait. I'm officially a yellow belt now.

Afterwords I had the opportunity to jaw bone with the Thai black belt. She's an administrator for a children's home. I asked her about her job and its unique hardships. Once, she held a meeting where a mother told the child that she couldn't be her mother anymore and was signing the child over to the state. Thai had to restrain the child.

Another story: As Thai was heading to her car one day she saw a teen who appeared to be making a break for it. Thai chased her down. There was a struggle, and Thai believed the teen was trying to throw herself in traffic. Help arrived. Later, when asked why she was trying to kill herself the teen replied "But I wasn't, I was trying to kill you, Thai." "Why?" "To see how much you loved me.".........................................................................................................................
.............Now that is some serious bat-shit crazy. My head blew a fuse when she said that.

Performing the job she has takes both tremendous empathy and ..a..a..a kind of discipline I don't have a word for, "resolve" perhaps?
And she's divorced. And she has twins. Me? Ask me where my car keys are? If I get that on a first try then I am having one tremendously yellow brick road musical of a day.

Note: Thai has to depend on orderlies in many confrontational situations. Ethical codes of her profession prevent her from using most of her techniques or she'll risk losing her license.

Dreamless

When I was four I stayed up a solid 24 hours, dragging my poor abuelita past the midnight hour, storming through the blackness of 6 am. As a preschooler I despised nap time. To paraphrase Roger Ebert, I hated nap timed. Hated, hated, hated it. I was wide awake in a room full of alphabet clouds and big bold blues, greens, and whites: summer, winter, fall and spring all at once on the poster boards. The cosmic balance of the universe, the barrier forming order out of chaos, a thin black cross, kept the sun from melting the ice which would have caused an avalanche, killing the roses and the little boy skipping to school in his shorts.
It was me alone in that quiet, motionless sea of young bodies wrapped in corduroy. My classmates floated in dreams, I floated on a red mat firmly rooted to the carpet. My only dreams were of the day variety; they were the only stimulus I had for two hours--those, and the questions. I wondered if the teacher knew she had the most beautiful legs I had ever seen, and if she realized I stared at them when she taught us the days of the week. Would the cafeteria serve the best brownies in the world tomorrow, served up on white paper discs? Is papi coming home with surprises hiding behind his giant mustache which unfolds upon the world like a pair of giant batwings [note to reader: do you know the Spanish word for mustache? I'm looking for a particular term that starts with a "b" it might be slang, or possibly a variation created by a 4 yr old mind]--long, dark, and curly?

I tossed and turned and fiddled, very much like I do now as an adult. Fingers twiddling frantically, a glass ball of lighting in a madman's lab. My legs would open and close, flapping without purpose, rubbing...rubbing. My penis caught in the cleavage of my inner thigh and underoos. In these long waitings I discovered myself accidentally. I do not remember the first time I masturbated, all I know is it was there, and it would become a daily activity (and nightly) as I tried to surf through the boredom. I enjoyed the tingle but desired no one.

I've often wondered if these habits said anything about me specifically. Was my sleeplessness at this age a sign of a specific personality? Did it imply something about my home life? Was it a signifier for a learning disability or worse?(My sister was tested, rigorously, and found to have ADD. Papi has an anxiety disorder. Our grandmother wandered the halls of schizophrenia in an asylum). At the end of the day, was it simply the sign of a stentorian imagination, already cultivating my first superhero myth-life?

One time, I wet myself because I had nothing else to do.

A few words on the bad guys

A Decree: A few words on the bad guys

I will not refer to the two perps as men, not ever again. They do not fulfill any definition of man that I find worthy. I am not trying to dehumanize them. They aren’t animals they aren’t monsters. I think it is fair to refer to them as children, stupid children, or ignorant, or assholes or bastards or dicks or perpetrators or perps but I think I like children best. These were the crimes of powerless children, fumbling desperately for some form of control. They couldn’t exert it over the direction of their own lives; they lacked the gravitational pull of intellect, the energy generated by character. They made us powerless, afraid, but they were never in control. They were fumbling idiots who stormed into the wrong apartment, could never agree on a course of action. What they took from us was temporary, whether they know it or nor they are wanted me—children, wanted by the police. They have no idea how fragile their own lives are. When those lives crumble, we will be waiting to confront them. The moment they wronged us they surrendered any hope of true empowerment.

I have no thirst for vengeance though. I believe in the justice system, flawed as it is, I believe in justice not merely as an idea, but as an achievable goal. They should be tried by a community.

I have very definite ideas of what should happen to perpetrators. But I will bring this up in a separate post.