Writing: On my Father’s Birthday
My father’s birthday was yesterday.
My brain doesn’t stir up a lot of memories these days. The easy excuse is that my brain injuries have erased, or rather blocked access to a lot of memories..
It’s an easy excuse… like most fables there is truth to it, but it is not the entire truth I am sure. Sometimes not having memories is a good thing. Sometimes they mask things that have been lost so that we can move in the present.
When I was growing up, my father would take me hunting. We hunted for the best….. or at least the most ancient of reasons: To feed ourselves.
We were quite poor. It wasn’t because my father didn’t have options. Certainly he had potential and brains and drive to steer his life in many different ways. He chose to help people. So that meant we were poor.
He had an old shit brown ford galaxy. You know the type; brown vinyl seats accompanied with brown carpet that grew mushrooms when it got too wet. The cracked brown vinyl dash was virginal, as it had never been penetrated by the manufacturer to install an am radio. That option was an unjustifiable extravagance.
Dad always wanted a Jeep… he desperately wanted to be an outdoorsman, but truth be told, he was too much of a scholar. He used to buy field and stream magazines and lust after all the gadgets and locations and antlers.
But that day, we would settle for some snowshoe rabbits.
I don’t even know if those particular kind of dirt roads exist in Colorado anymore… I suspect most of them are now paved to ease the penetration of pampered California hipsters as they document all the secret places on overflowing instagrams.
The pictures capture everything but the ghosts of dead Indians and mountain men scratching their heads over the existence 600 dollar sleeping bags.
How intensely ironic it is that I will probably post this on Instagram.
The bald tires of the shit brown ford galaxy churned the dust, which poured into the open windows and covered our tongues and the cracked dash with wild earth.
I remember the taste… I have tasted many other dirt roads, and have been thrown into the dust in many countries, but there is nothing like the taste of Colorado dirt road.
It tasted like dead cowboys and stardust,
I peered out the window, watching the sagebrush slowly creep by as Dad drove the shit brown Galaxy through gullies and rises. That car had absolutely no business being where it was..
And maybe neither did we. Even back then, I had a sense that there are places that should extract pain for the privilege to see. Some places shouldn’t be so easy to see and feel and taste..
This was long before I read anything Edward Abby wrote, but I know now that we tasted the same dust and, in some ways, had the same thoughts.
I was around 8 years old. I had just figured out how to make babies from the copious books and encyclopedias Dad always kept around.
Normally, these hunting trips had a certain rhythm to them. Dad would drive the shit brown Galaxy, and I would yammer incessantly about very important nothings. He would nod and comment at the appropriate times.
When Dad found the right nondescript juniper tree, or the perfect unnamed game trail, he would pull the creaking shit brown Galaxy off the “road”. We would get out, shake the Colorado dust off, and grab our gear.
Dad had a 12 gauge. I had my precious .410 with no shells.
My job was to scramble into the junipers and masses of sagebrush to flush out our quarry. The rabbits would panic, Dad would shoot them, We would thank the animal for it’s flesh, and take their gutless bodies to be eaten, thanking God that he deigned to make us apex predators.
There is a comforting simplicity to such acts.
This time was different somehow. We were riding completely in silence. Something had shifted between us, and I didn’t know what.
Maybe it was because I knew what girls were used for now. Maybe it was because I was tired of trampling through sage brush with an impotent shotgun. Maybe it was because the incessant childhood prattle was slowly being pushed out of my head. I don’t know..
The Dust tasted the same, but the air between us didn’t,
Dad eased the front left tire into a washout, gunning exactly at the right time to keep enough momentum for the Shit brown Galaxy to avoid being high centered on the bank.
He looked at me, and said nothing, waiting for me to prattle like a child.
I didn’t. I didn’t feel like a child anymore. I had seen dead men, and knew what that meant. I had torn the guts from deer and rabbits, hot blood coating my hands, and thanked them for their flesh. I had thrown a boy through a glass door because he made me mad. I had felt the sweet crunch of a boy’s nose under my fist. I had suffered from someone else’s righteous indignation.
I didn’t feel like a child anymore, but the Wild Colorado Dust couldn’t have cared less. Neither did the shit brown ford Galaxy.
Dad looked at me. Apparently he had found the right unmarked pile of dried tumbleweeds and stopped the creaking carcass of the brown machine. He turned the key off, and it sighed in it’s own unique way; as if it felt every mile separating it from it’s birthplace in Louisville Ky with absolute clarity.
Without a word, Dad reached over to the glove box, and took out a box of .410 shells. He handed me the box.
That was how I became a man.
I miss the incessant prattle of childhood. I miss the bosom of my mother and the long-suffering amusement of my father. I miss that shit brown ford galaxy and the Colorado dust and the sickly sweet blood of rabbits and righteous simplicity.
But he made me what I am, and kept me from being who I would have been. We are not the same, and yet will always be the same.
I love you, Father. Thank you.
Writing: Is this Knight thing just a game?
I wrote this right after Rocky’s last Crown Tournament, Oct 2017
I attended the SCA’s Midrealm Crown tourney yesterday.
I really enjoyed myself. Partly because I got to re-connect with a number of lifelong friends. Also, I had the privilege to attend My Beloved Rocky and Jane as they participated in the last Crown Tournament he intends to compete in.
To our knowledge. Rocky is the oldest individual to compete in a Crown Tourney in the history of the “known world” At 75 years old, he forwarded his banner and the name of his Lady as a legitimate fighter in, basically, the one stick fighting tournament that actually has some modicum of consequence..
In general, every tournament has some consequence… After all, the practitioner gambles renown…. In Rocky’s case, he was engaged in one of the greatest gambles a Man of Coat Armor CAN make… Is he, at that age, capable of bearing harness on the field as a legitimate threat, or is he too feeble. Will his efforts be denigrated by patronization from his peers. He won that gamble, and succeeded in gaining much worshipful honor. I love him for that, and will honor him all the days of my life, as is my responsibility as a Member of the Chivalric community.
Crown tourney has “real world” consequence. The winner of that tournament more or less becomes the “president” of the world’s largest costume party/Medieval theme park/Chivalric sandbox. They become the focal point… the archetype.. for other’s journeys. (Regardless of if they ultimately succeed or fail)
In any case, The tournament is the highlight of the six months/ stick fighting tournament play cycle in the SCA.
Later that night, Rocky was recognized by My King and the assembled Knights for His life long constancy in the pursuit of knightly endeavors and pursuit. This was a right and proper thing to have happened.
I told Rocky that one of my goals was to some day beat his record… to compete in Crown Tourney at the age of 76. He is my Chivalric father, my elder. It is my responsibility to honor the love and investment he has given me by trying my hardest to surpass him, as, ultimately, I hope my own students surpass me.
If you boil it down, Knightly enterprise and living the Way of the Knight has nothing to do with costume parties, or Larping, or tournaments.. It is an inward path to Mastery.
The SCA and other organizations, including the global steel fighting community, are ultimately constructs and crucibles to learn, test, and examine one’s self through Deeds. That is a defining function of the Hero’s journey.
One of the highlights of my day was that I got to connect with a kindred spirit in the form of a Man who, in the context of our game, calls himself Rin Ravenfoe. He is a Master of Arms in our Society.
We had actually started a conversation about the Hero’s journey literally three years ago in a stylized living history encampment at Pennsic.
We almost immediately fell back into the same conversation, only this time, we had a little more time to develop our thoughts and understand the type of men we were. I think that our meeting was exactly at the right time in the right place to spur us both further upon our paths; especially for me. Some of the things that we talked about have shed some light on certain struggles I have been trying to come to grip with for several years…. Since one afternoon in Spain when the 29 lost the banners of our ancestors… but that story is for another day..
Later that evening, I got to participate in a ceremony that marked a signpost in another Man’s journey. He was placed on Vigil for Knighthood himself.
This man’s path has been winding, long, unique, and also full of trials. But that is a singular function of this type of pursuit. Perhaps someday I will write more on this…
Then, I had a brief conversation with my dear friend Doug, who’s pursuit of mastery has also been twisting and turning… We started in the sca roughly at the same time.
I have a great feeling of kinship with this man and his beloved family is a jewel of beauty that I have enjoyed and, in many ways, envied over the years. But the trials on his journey have been different than mine.
He is rejoining the path of Chivalric pursuits, and we are, as is so often the case on these journeys, picking up where we left off when our paths diverged some 6 or so years ago.
Our conversation was cut short due to the nature of the day, and we continued it via texts this morning. In those texts, there were a number of themes that are interesting and need further developed.
We were discussing the fact that the Knighthood of our Ancestors are, of course, different than the path that modern practitioners must walk. This concept touches on the evolution of relevance that happens to all warrior paths through history. Again, some day I may try to write more on this topic as well..
There is a continuity of themes, however. The need and the archetypes themselves are universal. For instance, I think for practitioners such as myself, there are two Knightly realities. If a practitioner does not foster excellence in both of these realities, then he or she is, at the least, not reaping the benefits of this path, and at most, utterly failing.
They are both Part of the whole… the yin and yang, the inside and outside path…
I have been blessed with being acknowledged a member of two modern Knightly Orders. But really, is there value in this? My fellows and I have sacrificed much… suffered and exulted in much.. but when it comes down to it, is it REALLY a game that we play? An elaborate lifelong exercise in self delusion and mental masturbation?
For instance, my co-workers don’t know what I have done, what I have faced… They don’t know of the times I almost shit myself in fear, got my dick knocked in the dirt by stronger men, or exhibited exquisite hubris… They don’t know that, for some reason, people around the world know my name. That The name my father gave me is in the congressional record. They don’t know that I have been stopped in crowds to give autographs, or been held in high regard by people of greater worth than myself, or villainized by others..
And is that high regard or distain just part of a game? Does the blood and the money and the life shed by me and those like me merely to serve as a prop for other people’s fantasies? For my own fantasies?
One of the major responsibilities of being a Knight of the SCA, for instance, is to judge the efforts of fellow practitioners; to serve as a guardian of the Fount of Honor, and to ascertain when a fellow practitioner is ready for the public rituals, accolades, and responsibilities of formal Knighthood.
But how is that judged? What is the purpose of the entire thing?
As I said, there are two Knightly paths… An internal and an external… Both have different ramifications and worth.
I have said before that the Chivalric life is not for everyone. In fact, it is a narrow filter.. only those who are broken in certain ways really actually need it…
For those broken men and women who do, the personal payoff is almost entirely internal in nature. As such, it doesn’t really matter if the external construct it plays out upon is a dojo, or a tiltyard, or a stick fighting tournament in the SCA… To tread the Hero’s journey means that rites of passages…. tests… risks with true internal and external consequence, are NECESSARY…
The external “chivalric sandbox” may look utterly ridiculous from the outside… completely and wholly contrived…
But think about something…… ALL rites of passage are, by necessity, artificial constructs.. Ordeals to pass from one stage of life to another… They must be painful, they must be exultant, and they must, in some ways be artificial.
The tribal leader that puts a test before a warrior constructs challenges in an artificial way. The risks are generally controlled, the goal amorphous… but they are constructed in such a way by this elder, by this Knight, to test the mettle of the internal person in an external way.
This, amount other reasons, is why a Knight must always make a Knight… Why an elder must be the one to externally and publicly acknowledge success…. or failure.
For make no mistake, it is not a true rite of passage, not a true test, if there is not the distinct possibility of failure.
Failure is always a part of the Hero’s journey…
I think that is the purpose of these external “games”. They serve as the physical mountain that must be climbed.. the physical stone that must be stacked… the fearful path that must be tread, the enemy that must be conquered.
A Knight always makes a Knight because he or she is the only one who knows the path of the soul that must be tread. If an external accolade is given with no ordeal, then it has little transformative internal consequence, and it truly IS just a game.
These rites of passages, these ordeals of the body and soul, produce different results ultimately, because, well, no two people are entirely alike…
I am a different “flavor” of knight than others… is one of greater worth than another? No…. AS LONG AS we both tread the same archetype,the same hero’s journey of our own souls.
Ultimately, every “type” of knight, as people such as Sir Vitus have pointed out in the past, serve different purposes, different archetypes in and of themselves.
The external purpose of a Knight is to act as archetypes and examples for other practitioners.
This is why, as I believe, the literary Arthurian Knights really boil down to archetypes of different expressions of this reality.
In the SCA, there are Knights that hold entirely different views than I.. Some represent the Knight that is barely constrained, Some represent the romantic idealist, some the Courteous exemplar, some the hardened warrior. Some play the Noble Savage. Some are shaped to play the ideal of the refined Master.
Ultimately though, externally, it is their JOB to be those archetypes for other practitioners… for other seekers.
Some must play the roll of the False Knight as well. Their role in other’s journeys is to be the Brother who betrays, the Knight who taints, The Breaker of oaths… The exhaled Knight who sins against Chivalry..
I have said many times that “we are the instruments of other men’s tests”. And the reverse is true… sometimes others are my test. Sometimes the role of a Knight is to be the exemplar of the hated.
The role of some Knights is to test the practitioner to the point of failure, or the focus of hate, or the stumbling block to the abyss.
I am just now learning the words to understand this truth in my own path… it is the hardest lesson so far. I personally don’t know if I will pass this ordeal in my path or not.. and what is even more sobering is the realization that I myself may play that exact same role in someone else’s path… That thought fills me with dread.
But that is the nature of things: The construct of the test, both in the artificial parameter of the ordeal, and in the internal Chivalric path… The internal reality.
Poetry: The poles of Mars and Venus
Rage black blood, blossomed destruction Orgasms of obliteration, desire to deliver all to void Black is the best color
The death of a billion suns Frenzy of Fire standing against mediocrity Black is the best color
Mars rutting to the burning of totality Joy from nothingness, the mercy of oblivion Black is the best color
Ripe Red Blood, Blossomed creation Spasms of foliation, desire to unfurl the cosmos Red is the best color
The birth of ufathomed lives Rioting life standing against mediocrity Red is the best color
Venus birthing every life, connected. Joy from bounty, the promise of star-flowers Red is the best color
Written July 2017