Royal Blood / Innocent Blood

I’m usually not interested in the royal family because of a combination of:

A) Having watched Braveheart too many times and seeing what they got up to in the past. (Mahatma Gandhi once said, “If two fish are fighting at the bottom of the ocean, the English probably had something to do with it.”) 

B) My disdain for inheritance, and being given vast wealth for nothing more than being born. This irks people like me who have had to struggle for every penny.

C) My parents are Irish Protestants from Belfast, Northern Ireland, which is part of the United Kingdom. They had photos of the royals around the house for years. I never understood that since Ireland, like Scotland, was not occupied nicely, either. I even asked them one day, “It’s one thing to not want to declare war on England or bomb civilians like the Irish Republican Army did, but do you need to like the royal family so much? Doesn’t occupation demand resistance of some kind?” My father was a very erudite man so I expected an intellectual answer, but he and my mom actually didn’t know why they accepted and even celebrated the royals. “We just do” was their answer. It was very unsatisfying. 

But today, for the first time in my life, I actually enjoyed the royals, too. I watched the royal wedding, but doubt if I would have if not for the following headlines in my home, America.

Ten High School Students Killed in School Shooting in Santa Fe, Texas.

(That last one was enough, of course, but there were also the following bizarre occurrences in the land of the free and the home of the brave.)

Woman Jumps Off Building with Seven Year Old Son in New York.

Man Punches Pregnant Woman and Her Service Dog on Flight.

Shunned Jehovah’s Witness Mom Kills Her Entire Family

Father Leaves 18-Month Old Daughter in 120 Degree Car. (A daily occurrence in America.)

There was another shooting yesterday at another high school somewhere in America but only one precious, irreplaceable child’s life was taken so it didn’t get much attention.

There were also the usual daily robberies, beatings, car chases and murder-suicides in Los Angeles, where I live.

Don’t get me wrong – every news day is bad in America, but yesterday was particularly awful, and it just happened to coincide with the royal wedding. I expected to see a headline that read, “England Celebrates the Royal Wedding! Meanwhile, in America, There Were Two More High School Shootings.”

Growing up in America, I never once imagined that my country would become so hopelessly lost. I maintain the stubborn belief that the vast majority of Americans are getting along great and the screwed up one percent just gets all the attention, but that one percent sure can do a lot of damage to morale. 

Then again, when I hear “music” thumping from car speakers and even in restaurants and bars with vile, psychologically and spiritually toxic lyrics (rap and death metal leading the way), and think of how these “artists” get rich preying on lost children and making them even more lost, I wonder if it’s only one percent of America that’s totally screwed up. (To heck with Joe DiMaggio. Where did you go, Simon and Garfunkel? Our nation turns its lonely eyes to you.)

So yesterday, in desperation to remove the headline images from my mind, for the first time in my life, I celebrated with the royal family.

I needed to see a wedding. I needed all the things weddings make me feel along with the betrothed – love, hope, faith, courage.

I needed to see the cool, clean air over Windsor Castle.

I needed to hear a choir sing a beautiful, hopeful song.

I needed to see the stained glass windows of St. George’s Cathedral.

I even needed to smile at the silly, whimsical hats the ladies wore.

I needed to see a house of God.

I needed to escape, but since I couldn’t buy a plain ticket and flee in terror to someplace that happens to be more sane at this point in history, I turned on the TV. 

When the darkness in my soul had been brushed away a little, I looked at my two young daughters and Googled “home schooling.”

 

 

 

Loving and Killing

Sunday is a day of contrast for me. I go to church in the morning and hear sermons about how to love, then I meet friends in a park and study Krav Maga and learn how to kill bad people.

In case you’ve never heard of it, here’s a good demo video of Krav Maga (WARNING: some violent scenes) – 

As much as I love the philosophical aspects of martial arts, I hate that its still necessary to know how to fight in this world. When I was a kid watching sci-fi movies, the future was always depicted as a time when people communicated telepathically, wore white robes, and swore off violence decades earlier after an apocalypse had finally happened and taught them all (too late) the folly of hatred and aggression. These survivors were usually disfigured somehow. So the message was clear – spiritual advancement comes at a terrible cost.

And isn’t that true? Don’t we learn most quickly and deeply when things are worst? Some would argue that pain and the avoidance of further pain is the only thing that ever changes anyone. It is rare for one to learn anything once and for all, or to learn from someone else’s experience.

I’ve studied boxing, Dutch kickboxing, Okinawan karate and wrestling, but my black belt is in Northern Shaolin Kung Fu. My latest love is Krav Maga, the Israeli army combat system, which I’ve been studying for about four years now. The two styles are very different. Kung Fu is soft. Krav Maga is hard. Kung Fu is pretty. Krav Maga is practical and direct, not dynamic enough for movies and tournament kata demonstrations. There are hundreds of techniques in kung fu, most of which are based on the movements and fighting styles of animals. Krav Maga tries to limit the number of movements so there’s less to remember, and those movements are based on natural, instinctive reactions.

I chose this style because it’s considered one of the most deadly modern martial arts, because I’m getting older and my daughters are, too, (and prettier), and because I’m alarmed every day by the craziness in the news. Things don’t seem to be getting better. Every day a new collection of horrors assails all us normal people who have never had a problem not assaulting, molesting, raping, or killing anyone, and to whom such things are inconceivable. 

And that is the reason martial arts are still necessary. Most people wake up and do their best to be happy and kind to others, thinking about their goals and how to achieve them. Others, thankfully the extreme few, but the ones who get all the attention on the news, wake up and immediately start planning who they’re going to rob, rape or kill that day, where they’re going to sell their drugs, what area they’re going to search for houses to burglarize, what schoolyard they’re going to hang around hoping to catch a parent not watching his/her child. Evil has always existed and it still does. It even appears to be growing. The reasons are many and a subject for another blog or series of them.

So I’ll keep training to protect those nearest and dearest to me, and even a stranger if I see someone being victimized, even as I wish it weren’t necessary. I’ve never been the type to look the other way, to my wife’s dismay. I’m proud of that. When someone who is victimized in broad daylight is interviewed, they often say what made the assault worse was all the people who looked the other way, who walked by as if they didn’t hear her/him screaming. Most people are just too terrified to help. Some have a good excuse – being small physically, being unarmed/untrained, age, etc., but too often they’re just selfish, concerned only about their own skin. So evil wins again.

The battle between good and evil has always been and always will be. I know what side I’m on. Jesus said to turn the other cheek, but we only have two. And as the saying goes, evil flourishes when good men do nothing. So I’ll love people, even those with evil in their hearts, and do my best to steer them away from evil before they do anything wrong. But if they act on their evil impulses, or if they already have and are unrepentant, and I have a chance to punish them, the full weight of my thirty years of training in how to break bones and cut off their air supply will crash down around them. Our forefathers didn’t create this beautiful country at the cost of hundreds of thousands of lives so that their sons and grandsons could just hand it over to the trash of the world.

On the back of the U.S. dollar, there’s an eagle with a quiver of arrows in one talon and laurel leaves in the other. The leaves are a symbol of peace, which the U.S. always tries first. But the arrows are there just in case the leaves are rejected. All men’s arms should be equally able to embrace or destroy. All men’s minds should hope for the best but prepare for the worst. And all men should possess weapons that can be laid down or picked up, depending on whether an angel or devil crosses their path.

For instance, many years ago, I was driving past my local mall when I saw a woman with a very worried expression walking along a sidewalk and a man walking equally fast about twenty feet behind her. I passed by at first, then trusted my instinct that something wasn’t right and turned around. I followed them for a few blocks and he turned every time she did. I finally pulled into a driveway behind her, blocking his path, and asked if he was following her. With a horrified expression, she said, “Yes, he started following me in the mall and won’t go away!” I got out of the car and stopped him, asked him what he was doing, etc. He tried to go around me so I stopped him again. He got mad and took a big, primitive swing at me. I spun him around and put him into a chokehold until he passed out. That’s when the woman’s husband came flying out of her house, which was only a few more doors down, thanked me and finished him off. He was still beating him senseless when I drove away. The woman waved and said thank you as I passed her. That is a much happier ending to me than the alternative – the woman getting punched unconscious and raped in an alley or some bushes.

I want to be everyone’s friend and love everyone. Unfortunately, not everyone else feels that way. So I train so I can be who I am (happy, loving, friendly) with the knowledge that I can be very dangerous if I need to be, and only if I need to be, after all other options are exhausted, only when cornered or unable to ignore an evil act. As Imi Lichtenfeld, the founder of Krav Maga, said, we train “so that we may walk in peace” – the same reason I go to church.  

When I get to heaven, I hope Jesus pats me on the back and says, “Well done, my good and faithful servant” – for loving people, and protecting them.

Holocaust

The white dove again lies maimed and bleeding.
Statistics, cold and hard to fathom,
tally the losses of one more day.
Horror and heartbreak between weather and sports.

But I don’t cry anymore
when the newsman tells his tales
of death and destruction.
In some worlds, death can be a blessing.

I don’t cry anymore when I learn
that another child has been slaughtered
because I know my tears would be useless
and tainted with hypocrisy.

I don’t cry because I know
that the murders I hear about
night after night
from the warmth and safety of my living room
are only the final, minor deaths.
Deaths of the flesh.
The true carnage took place long ago
when their young spirits were abandoned
to wither and fade
like unattended gardens in a desolate place
where beauty is buried too deeply to be touched,
where innocence is choked and pounded
until every trace of sweetness is gone, forever;
where the angel of mercy,
helplessly fleeing the bloody scene,
stumbles, shattering her delicate face
on the asphalt, unnoticed,
and the pastel dreams of childhood
swirl and die
in the hot dust
of the ghetto sidewalk.

Paradise Almost Lost

Do you ever feel like our parents and/or grandparents got the best of America? Open any American magazine before 1965 and you’ll see people who dressed impeccably, had haircuts that actually improved their appearance, and generally looked terrific. Now people wear shorts and sandals to the opera.

Imagine what it feels like to walk through any neighborhood at night without worry. To know you can take your children to a movie and not be dive-bombed by inappropriate content or veiled political messages. To be able to trust other people. To feel comfortable in your body just as it is without feeling compelled to go to the gym every day. Men were “wimps” and women were fat by today’s standards (that was the ideal, actually) and everyone was happier.

Imagine what it feels like to make enough money at a normal job to pay for a house and car. To drive a car that’s more like a UFO. To listen to music that didn’t need mature audience warning labels. To live in a world where being a thug is shameful, not something to be proud of. A world where modesty was still a virtue. (Jayne Mansfield showed her boobs in a movie in a desperate attempt to revive her career and she was shunned. It ended her career forever.)

I suppose we needed to loosen up a bit, and the music and movies were so clean largely because of censorship, but it seems we’ve thrown the baby out with the bathwater. It depends on who you ask, but even with the things that needed to improve in America like race relations (and did), I’d happily go back just so I could go two full days without hearing about a carjacking or gang shooting.

 

I’m probably more nostalgic than most, especially about California, because I lived part of the 60’s, the tail end of a period of grace. The guy on the left in the photo above (Bill Cunningham) was my dad’s best friend. My parents, brother and I visited him and his wife and three kids or they us every other weekend for most of my childhood. He influenced me to stay in shape and honor my health. He was a bodybuilder in a sea of other Irish immigrant males who smoked, drank and had horrible diets. He always had a joke at the ready and helped me take life less seriously. He greeted me enthusiastically and made me feel special, even though I was just a kid. He also made me interested in Frankie and Annette movies. 

Watching those old movies today, they seem like pure fantasy, but for the late 50’s and early 60’s in California, they were the reality most surfers knew. California was still a mostly undeveloped paradise, and if a surfer saw another surfer pass him on Pacific Coast Highway, they probably knew each other. I was a very observant child (probably why I became a writer) and absorbed that culture – the happy energy of the beach, the parties with Sinatra, Sammy and Dean playing in the background, my parents and their friends laughing with strange, brightly-colored cocktails in their hands, cars like Hot Wheels in a caravan to Palm Springs swimming pools, kind adults who seemed happier than I perceive adults to be today, and flower children determined to change the world with peace and love. I know nothing gold can stay, but I never expected it all to be washed away so completely either. 

So what do we do? The best answer, as the old saying goes, is to “become the change you want to see in the world.” There’s no going back, but we can bring it back with our attitude and become the kind of person others say “they don’t make ’em like him anymore” about. I feel like I do that most of the time, but I sure wish I didn’t have to share air with the monsters this society seems to be churning out. Those noble men in WWI and WWII didn’t die to create a better America just so I/we could hand it over to trash. So I’ll continue to be wholesome, but I’ve got a black belt to go with it and am working on a second one (Krav Maga) so if a monster makes its way into my wholesome world, trying to hurt me or some other wholesome person, God help him. I’m old school that way, too. I will get involved. I love peace, and innocent life, and I will kill to protect them both. We can no longer afford to keep our heads in the sand. Paradise must be protected.

Sorry to end this on such a sour note, but I just read another story about a carjacking. A daily occurrence in Los Angeles, but this time a six-year old boy was in the back of the car, and the car was found with him inside, shot to death. I probably shouldn’t write when my heart is so heavy. A line from one of my favorite movies, Tombstone, comes to mind. The bad guys attacked a house full of women and ambushed Virgil. Morgan says to Wyatt, “They’re bugs, Wyatt. There ain’t no living with bugs.” Nothing has changed except firepower and tolerance.