by Roman McClay
Jack struggled to free himself and relieve the pressure by lifting up on his fallen body but Blax’s left hand pressed Jack’s face down with ease and finally Jack took his left hand that had fallen and was seemingly holding him up and tapped Blax’s left hand which was at his own -Jack’s own- stretched throat and pained neck. This tap was the signal of submission, contrition; sign that moral suasion had indeed worked. It’s the universal signal in marital arts that the loser has admitted to what he is: wrong and thus defeated.
Blax relaxed and released Jack and stood up, pulling Jack’s arm to straighten him up too. Blax brushed some dust and detritus from Jack’s back and hips in a sign of magnanimity and respect.
Jack’s chin was red from the slight punch, the arm was flush from the strain, his hair mussed, his eyes squinting in the sun, his face disbelieving as a smile grew where one was not a second before.
“Jesus,” Jack said in amazement at how easily he had become useless, defenseless and vulnerable in all ways.
“Jesus got nothing to do with it,” Blax said and smiled and patted him on the shoulder. “Look, that took less than 2 seconds, from your first punch to you on the ground. It was one motion for us both, but my motion made sense -body sense- to you, while your motion did not. Expound.”
“Well,” Jack began, “I felt certain of connecting with you, your face was right there, I mean you were coming toward me, not away, and then, your whole body was beside me, like in my ear, and I felt my chin slightly then my chest being stabbed -it felt like a stab- and my knees buckle all at once. I felt the arm, my arm, like it was in a hole under water, with a catfish on it, its mouth swallowing my fist and the elbow -the elbow- felt just like a pile of dynamite and a lit fucking fuse.”
“Poetry Jack; that is poetry,” Blax said.
“Shit, what you did to me is poetry ,” Jack said as the other Jacks nodded and clapped just in two short bursts; even prolonged applause seemed garish to them.
“Yeah LT, that was amazing,” Jack Three said and rubbed his nose quickly, frantically, as if the itch was fire that needed put out.
Blax walked up and down the formation as Jack One returned to the line rubbing his arm. They were stretched at two meters apart, all four men on the 40-foot concrete pad. Blax watched their movements, their weight distribution, their tics and where their eyes went .
“You must,” Blax said, “always assume anyone you fight knows at least as much as you do. Assume it. And this is why. It will keep you out of 99% of fights; if you think that. The gun is always loaded, right?”
“Right,” the three Jacks each said -each in their own time- and Jack Two just nodded and did not speak.
“If it’s always loaded it will prevent 99% of accidents. If you are too cavalier, if you think the gun is unloaded, then you have problems. Fighting is the same, if you fight whenever you feel like it, whenever someone is a jerk or annoying or says something untoward, you will meet someone dangerous one day and it will end badly. But, if you only fight when you must, when it is absolutely necessary, then even if it ends badly you will know you had no choice. But imagine a fight of pleasure, a war of choice or whim, ending, resulting in your death or your crippling. Imagine it. That is not a good feeling gentlemen.
“So, assume your adversary knows at least as much as you and you will only fight him when you must; and if you win then it was necessary and if you lose it was inevitable. You will not regret it and thus not live in shame. Copy that?” Blax asked.
“Copy,” said Jack Four and nodded as the other Jack’s mumbled that they too understood.
“Jacks, my Jacks, I know this is new, I know this is difficult to comprehend; but I swear if you just absorb it, as much as you can, over time it will lock into you as a whole, a gestalt whole. It takes time, lots of time. And we have it. We have two years to get ready; but each day must be treated as important as any other day; there is no down time.
“One of the best lines I ever heard, was that an artist is doing their art even when they appear to be just staring out the window; they may not be engaged on the page, the canvas or the instrument, but they are working, the artist is always working even when seemingly at rest.
“Jack Three,” he said, and the man focused on him and opened his eyes wider as if to say he was listening, but Blax instead looked -stared- at Jack Two. Blax walked toward Jack Three yet stared at Jack Two. He approached until he was in Jack Three’s space as Jack Three took a small step backward to yield and Blax took over his spot. “Jack Two,” Blax said.
“Yes LT,” Jack Two said.
“Where am I?”
“Right here, next to me,” he paused, “in front of Jack Three, to my left flank, two meters away.”
“Good, and where is Jack Three?” Blax asked.
“He’s one step north of you,” Jack Two said.
“Right, and why is he not in his spot?”
“He moved LT,” Jack Two said with some confusion.
“Right, why?” Blax then said again, “why?”
“I’m not certain LT, maybe Jack Three should answer.”
“Why isn’t he answering, why is he silent?” Blax asked still staring at Jack Two .
“Again, LT,” Jack Two said, “I think Jack Three should answer that.”
“I agree,” Blax said and they all stood silently, as Jack Three thought of what -if anything- he should say; he was caught in a dilemma, was this a trick, was he to remain silent until spoken to, was he to speak up? He knew there was a right answer, and that he didn’t want to look foolish or be the thing that was used to teach the group a lesson. He paused and thought it through again. Blax faced him.
“Jack,” Blax said, “why are you silent and one step out of your spot?”
“I was thinking LT, and I moved to yield to you; I didn’t want to impede your progress,” he said.
“Noble, noble answer. I want everyone to hear what he said and recognize its nobility. He was thinking, which is what a smart man does, and he was yielding to his sifu , his lieutenant, his superior, which is what an initiate -what a humble student and soldier- does. But, Jack, will you always know how much time you have to think? Will you always know the position of the man who encroaches into your space?”
“I think I might know, yeah,” Jack Three said.
“Always?”
“Well, no not always,” Jack conceded.
“Ok, do you have practice with not thinking, or practice with not yielding?”
“I guess, well, I don’t know. I’d have to,” he paused, he was confused, and the brain began misfiring.
“Think about it?” Blax asked, thus finishing Jack’s halting question as the Jacks smiled and shifted in their boots. “You’d have to think about it?”
“Yeah,” Jack Three said and laughed out an affirmative.
“Jack, you treat the world, life, as a game, as a test given by teacher, graded by pencil, and scored with numbers. This is the ludic fallacy and it will get you killed. It will get us all killed. Jacks, know this, you will make errors of logic, of judgment, of execution. This is inevitable. But, you must learn to trust your instincts, instincts honed by logic, not logic honed by logic. The stone sharpens the edge of the metal blade; the broth stews the beef.
“I do not want wild men, rabid dogs, but I do not want men who think too much, yield too much, forgetting they are men , that they are apex predators on this planet and that no one has a right to displace them.
“Jack, you have a right to this ground that I now stand on; it was yours, and I took it without a fight. Now, if you yielded as feint, and used my aggression against me the way I used Jack One’s aggression against him just now; and if you yielded to the side slightly but then moved in immediately, then that would have been ok . But you just stepped back; out of deference, which is noble, and I appreciate it and it means you are a good man. This isn’t a rebuke. Does everyone hear that?”
“Yes LT,” Jack Three said as the others nodded.
�
��But don’t ever give up ground you have earned, established and held, never give it up without a plan to retake it. Am I understood?” Blax said .
They nodded; and they felt something inside them release; bloom like a new vernal shoot.
“Men, I am going to break you of bad habits, habits of submission and subtle defeatism. It will be hard and once learned it will be harder to know when to not use what you have learned. That is the most dangerous; a competent man who has yet to learn when not to use his knowledge and strength.
“Hemingway said that a good writer only says about 10% of what he knows. I don’t agree with that totally, but I get the point and I respect it. And I think it’s close to true. So, first we get you knowed up,” Blax said with a southern drawl to denote he knew this was ungrammatical; a malapropism.
“And that means, as your teacher I’m to be respected but not deified. You own your bodies, you own the ground you tread. It’s yours, demand that I respect it, not out of haughty pride or tyranny, but out of the idea that each creature on this planet has a right to some ground, some air space, something that is theirs for as long as they can hold it.
“Jack, you could have held it, as I had already determined to stop if you refused to retreat; you would have had no fight to contend with. That was true then and now. Now, retake your ground,” Blax said.
Jack Three breathed and thought -and then stopped thinking- and strode forward one step as Blax stepped back perfectly in concert so that neither men touched in the exchange.
Blax turned his head away from Jack Two and looked at Jack Three and Jack Three settled into his space and smiled as the other Jacks looked on and Blax returned the smile.
“Good,” he said and began walking again, up the line, toward Jack One.
“That was good. The difference between strength and tyranny is mindset and mindset comes from instinct. Do you have the instinct to defend your ground or not; do you want to abuse others or not. What is in your heart? That determines mind set.
“And in order to defend your ground you must use the malice inside you to actuate your strength. Strength is mere potential, but action requires moving through space with intent. And malice will be used, you have it in you like I have it in me. We’re the same, I know you. And you know me. And I know why you refuse to act maliciously around me, and it’s not because you are good. It’s because you fear me, and fear the opprobrium of me, the contempt or disappointment of your peers. It is not just physical; your fear is social, emotional.
“I feel it too; I do not discount it; I do not say turn it off. I say, know it. Understand it, understand every part of you from the weakest to the strongest, the most noble to the most contemptible. Know you and your shadow , inside and out. This is the way to moral action, not around your capacity for tyranny, but through it, with it; with it in hand. I will not tolerate a tyrant, and I will not tolerate a victim of tyranny either.
“You have both in you, and I have both in me, and we join them as one thing, we combine them into something noble, something annealed and strong, but incorruptible. We know what we are, what we want to be, and how to get it. We break it all down, piece by piece, until we can reassemble it and know it, and know that we know it,” Blax said .
“Jack One I could have broken your arm today, and there was nothing you could do to stop it. One day you will have that power in your hands. What kind of man will you be when that day comes?” Blax asked.
“I hope a righteous man,” Jack One said.
“Men, there is chaos out there in the treeline, just behind the black of the trees, out beyond that in the black. And there is chaos out there in man’s culture, hundreds of miles from here is man’s cities and media and cultural artifacts of all kinds, and there is chaos in them -in average men who seem nice as pie- there’s chaos in them too. And in man’s ancient heart there is chaos, the unknown in all three domains. There is chaos in my heart and in yours. We do not know what we are, we have explored so little. Just as the forest is unknown, millions of acres still yet unexplored, right?” Blax asked.
“Yes, LT,” Jack One and Three said as Two and Four nodded.
“And how much do we know of the culture, how much? I’ve lived in cities, about 50 of them, on four or five continents. I’ve been inside institutions from universities to foundries and at dinner parties for billionaires and families with literally no furniture at all. I’ve read the canon, well maybe 20% of it, maybe 2% of it, but some of the great works upon which culture is built.
“So, I know some culture, I’ve picked up some cues. As do you, but how much is yet unexplored? How many books written by our ancestors have we not read, or not understood? How many sub-cultures that make up the larger culture do we not know anything about? I’ve ridden with biker gangs, hung out with inmates, I’ve lived at a cult with 60 weirdos bent on radical honesty and environmental religion, I’ve dove with scuba divers 60 feet down in three oceans, flown with skydivers at 20,000 feet, I’ve been on military bases and in countries with life expectancy of 45.
“I’ve seen the pieta , the monoliths of Stonehenge , I’ve been in pubs where English is spoken in ways I’ve never understood at all. I’ve been in foreign schools so small that k through 12 was in one building, I’ve read the speeches of Lincoln and Hannibal and Malcolm X too. I’ve been in tattoo shops from Hawai’i to Amsterdam and spoken with Monks in a temple that one must hike into for there were -and are- no roads.
“I’ve taken drugs with drug addicts and with novitiate alike, I’ve suffered ego loss with psychonauts , cancer patients and those that had no formal education at all. I’ve been with pre-literate people, I’ve argued with people light years smarter than me. I’ve worked jobs in the wilderness, in factories, and on farms and with horses, goats and machines as large as buildings that cut men in half. I’ve hunted all alone and side-by-side with old men who have killed more things than I’ve laid my eyes on in life.
“I’ve seen the gun culture from antebellum southerners and from a helicopter over the ocean; I’ve been naked with grown men, been swathed in custom clothes at Mexica rituals for 15-year-old girls. I’ve investigated this country, and the west and the lands before or beyond the Occidental at its best and its worst. I’ve learned so, so much. But how much explored territory do I really have on my map? How much is yet still chaos to me?
“Men, we know almost nothing, we have explored 1% maybe, and then, at last, there is this thing we call, me ; the self . The self, the body and psyche, of each of us; how much have we explored? How much do you know of what you would do in this situation or that? How do you know? You think you know, I am sure, you think you know what you’d do if hungry enough; thirsty enough; scared enough; angry enough; desperate enough? Do you think you know ?
“You only know what you’d do to the extent that you’ve actually been hungry, thirsty, scared, angry, desperate. And Jacks, I can assure you, you’ve barely scratched the surface. You’ve maybe been 1% as hungry as you will be, 1% as thirsty, 1% as sacred and angry and desperate. That means 99% of you -the real you- is yet unexplored.
“I say this not knowing much more than you, I’ve maybe been 5% as scared and hungry and angry and desperate as I could be, maybe 10%. And I thus, have yet a lot to learn.
“I promise you this: I have as much to learn as you, but I know -at least- that I do not know. You still think you know who you are and what you’d do. You think you’d stand up to the Nazis or stick up for your girlfriend if she was insulted or turn your nose up to horse blood as a beverage or maggots as food.
“But I can assure you, you’d do things you cannot imagine now, because the desire has never gripped you like it will. You -all of you- and I will be pushing on those limits each day for at least 23 more months. And you will hate me, and hate each other, and go nearly out of your mind.
“But, the you, the real you, that comes out the other side will be 1,000 times the man that you are now and you will know it, you will fucking know who you are, do you fucki
ng hear me?” he began to scream. And they were wide eyed and awake and feeling the fear.
“You will know who you are, or I will die teaching you. I have one job left on this earth and that is to compress 100 black-light years of experience and knowledge and wisdom into you in twenty-four months. And Jacks, you will know who you are at the end. I guarantee it. If you want out, you say so right now, because after tonight, by 0500 tomorrow there is no turning back. I want a verbal assurance that you get this, pronto,” Blax said and remained silent so that they may speak.
“Yes sir, LT,” they all said in unison, almost without thinking, and heard the echolia each themselves as it imbued them with pride and strength and fealty in just a spark, but an illuminating moment undoubted by all. It was not unlike the brain when disparate -but related, connected- parts all fire together neurally and this builds a stronger connectome for next time.
“Nothing is more important than the individual in western society and we will assent to that; but the individual’s life, in that life, nothing is more important than in helping their comrades become individuals too. Your job is to help each of you become the men you all were born to be. I will not countenance, and you shall not countenance either, a waste of one drop of potential in yourself or your comrades, or even in me.
“You all will demand that each of you become great, make even your flaws great, make even me great. We will rise and fall on this; the individual must first develop in order that he never be subsumed by the group, but from that vantage point he is to make it his duty, his deepest desire to make sure that group, his tribe, is comprised of nothing but the best of the best of the best. Everything is your job; all of it. There is no separation from one another once you become known to yourself.
“First shit first, each of you become known to you, and then, you have the right to design you, and then the duty to help each other learn and know and design themselves.