From Ka-ching to Ka-boom
Each time has its own customs and habits…
Nowadays, when the media have incoming news, the tendency is to talk about them and analyze them, until they practically drop dead… unless something else happens (that is new on the news…) and the subject is changed.
If you take a closer look at this observation you will see that: TV shows find (at the speed of light) hosts that are willing to talk all day, books are written over night, products are being created before the milk that is in your fridge expires…
In any case, as a person, to comment and write about what is running on the news bulletin, is not my thing…
My preference is to talk about the news when they get… older. Thus, there is time for them and us to… mature. But what I enjoy most is when something I have written in the past (that looked really stupid to many at the time it was written) is now front line at the news and, of course, the “must thing to do”. It is then, when you can only feel like a… prophet (Hachiman forbid).
So, when you come up… wise, you are proudly entitled into re-appearing your writings, wave them with an attitude, and say “see, I told you so”. Today, in the middle of an economy crisis that spins out of control, I will do something different. I will dedicate a small part from Shania’s Twain song “Ka-ching” to all those who rose an eyebrow on my Martial economy views. This song was written back in 2003 when today’s “crisis” was being constructed…
As for me, I would say to some suits and to those who put their academic degree above common sense, that it’s payback time. But with no money in sight, it can’t even be named like that… can it?
We live in a greedy little world
that teaches every little boy and girl
To earn as much as they can possibly
Then turn around and spend it foolishly
We've created us a credit card mess
We spend the money that we don't possess
Our religion is to go and blow it all
So it's shoppin' every Sunday at the mall
Oh, all we ever want is more
A lot more than we had before
So take me to the nearest store
Can you hear it ring
It makes you wanna sing
It's such a beautiful thing
Ka-ching!
Lots of diamond rings
The happiness it brings
You'll live like a king
With lots of money and things
When you're broke, go and get a loan
Take out another mortgage on your home
Consolidate so you can afford
To go and spend some more when you get bored…
The way of the warrior has little to do with a short temper and a short memory. Some samurai would disguise their tsuba (sword guard) with black paint, hiding underneath it solid gold, as backup for times with a bad turn.
As always, the news sooner or later will be news no more. And as history teaches the entire thing will be forgotten only to be repeated in the future again…
As much as I detest conspiracy theories of any kind, here is a question for strong thinkers: Is this for real an “economy crisis” or is it a sort of prova generale? (dress rehearsal).
For the time being I have this problem of finding my hammer! It’s time to smash the pig…
January 23, 2009
The way-in is going out
In life one can be “into” many things… and it is very interesting to discover how many little universes exist in which we can participate. Nevertheless Aikido is something that one can never be “into” since this is clearly the wrong foot, and opposite direction, in order to join this Art.
The only way to be or get “into” Aikido is by going out to it. I wonder, how else can this be said, how else can it be described? Oh yes, imagine a journey into space… any other place to compare to, seems to be small. So, you start your journey from one point, and then you go out, but without seeking an equivalent point to reach, as the one you started. You go out, you expand, and you stay out…
Aikido is like a key to a door, that once you use to open this door, you find out that you were… locked in. Taking the first step out includes that there is nothing that will persuade you to go back-in…
It is nothing less than that!
The simple things are sometimes the most difficult to grasp, perhaps because they lie at our feet and we step on them with the very first step, in an attempt to advance. One might rightly say: “…and what the hell do you want us to do”. Well… what about sitting down right where you stand without stepping on anything? That would do.
People try to join Aikido and somehow they are refusing to exit to it… because they try… to get in. This looks even worse for people that are already practicing it. They are given a door to freedom and they use it to hang their hat on…
In order to understand and realize the concept of “exiting towards” Aikido, takes a bit of the quality that makes us humans beautifully unique. It takes the quality of imagination…
Aikido is out there, to a direction of a journey… It is not in a Dojo, it is not in a little box for you to open, find it, then put it into your pocket and call it your own… What a miserable and shortsighted prospect anyway…
Explaining the above in pure tangible technical terms is not only possible, but a necessity for the Martial Artist who does not rely on empty words, but seeks proof (though I must admit that in this specific occasion I feel that it’s killing a bit the poetry…).
The fundamental principal of Aikido is to concentrate on your center, but as soon as this is done (with a practical effect that actually proves that you do) the next thing is to extend your Ki to all possible/desirable of directions (again, with a practical effect that actually proves that you do). If one of these principals is missing, or is interrupted during your technique, then you have Aikido no more. It is clearly stated by the founder of the Art and by many more Masters, that this extending of Ki coming from the center should have no limitation on how far it goes…
To perceive our positioning in Aikido… to perceive our positioning in life, determines our ability to orient ourselves and thus chart a specific course of destination. It is the difference of a lost small boat that drifts into the ocean, with the one that carries a compass, a map and a willing man on the deck…
From time to time, a person will look at himself and then raise his head to see the stars, asking the eternal question: What am I doing here?
Among an ocean of assumptions, that is wise to avoid, and among a sea of answers that are to be learned, one is for sure:
The ability of putting this question is the biggest part of the answer itself…
Bon Voyage my fellow practitioners…
“We are a way for the Cosmos to know itself”
Carl Sagan
February 10, 2009
Use your sense/s II-Virtual nonsense
The coming of the video-clip that accompanies songs was an amazing step, no doubt. But it was my favorite group (The Eagles) that objected in doing any, explaining the one drawback that video-clips have, leaving me speechless…
Previous to video-clips a song was remembered according to your own experience, memories and events, which the song was reminding you of. For example I still can recall to this day, where I was and how I felt when I first heard “Hotel California” back in 1976.
About a decade later I must have danced (without any of his grace) Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean” just about a million times. But all I can remember from this song is not a specific party or a disco I was in at the time, no matter how hard I try. When I close my eyes all I can see and remember is Jackson’s video-clip… which was great and even more, but somehow it erased… me.
That was the point that The Eagles were trying to make, and I think that they were right in every respect.
“Good old times” is not for me, I usually keep up with things, but from the era of no video-clips at all, to the time where absolutely all songs must have one, there must be something we miss, don’t you agree?
Today you “see” music, you seldom or never hear a song played as many times as it takes to become a hit all “by itself”. And keep in mind that I consider music video-clips a form of art, as the next man…
For many decades now “images” dominate our lives and they have probably crossed the point of going a step too far. The movies (that I love) the TV (that I love) the computer games (that I love) bring on a virtual reality that is far from the reality of life…
By the way, aren’t reality shows a proof of a spectators total dead-end?!
Seeing something can never substitute or come close as experiencing something, make a note on that!
Many young students joining my Dojo, enter their first lesson with an “I’ve seen this stuff on YouTube, I’ve played the NinjaKiller a thousand times on the net” attitude. Only to exit very-very disappointed and crash landed. Because despite the extra supervision by a senior student on any beginner, the usual outcome is that they fail to perform the simple task of a newcomer’s program, as they find it was hard for them even to tell left from right…and I mean literally left from right.
This was not the case just a few years back, and I’m not the only one to recall on that. Has “virtual reality” in general, deprived this younger generation of its power to visualize without external aid?
Everyone is exalting today’s youth of being so much faster in learning and so much brighter… I wouldn’t have it any other way (and I will add, so much more beautiful as well…) But still, in Martial training, with the appearance of the first difficulty to overcome, it’s a clear step back…
Because you “saw it” doesn’t mean that you’re going to make it happen yourself. That takes practice, and being able to project the “image” of your practice from within!...
The proverb “one image is a thousand words” is true, but it does not come without a drawback, that should come under our thinking. What if “a thousand words” are confusing? What if, single a line of well put words in a book do a better job?
Not all of the times, but definitely some times…
Where is the song that will go straight to the top, doing so without the video-clip that will mark your memory with a fake story that is not yours?
Not all of the times, but definitely some times…
All this has been a… reality once, as reality is supposed to be, so why is it lost as if it has never existed?
There is a fight on the street and nobody intervenes to break it up…
Direct insults are met by talking about them later on…
Lawyers and psychotherapists are called to solve many of people’s personal problems, not because it is really needed, but out of incompetence to go and deal with them themselves…
Virtual reality, of any sort, distances us from ourselves and distances us from each other.
Time well spent, has to do with how active we are as protagonists of our life. Time spent as spectators, of anything, is also okay until little by little being a spectator becomes main role.
Too much observation has made people spectators of their own lives. You can tell that when something out of the ordinary or something urgent happens. It takes far too long (beyond the normal time) for them to re-act, if they re-act at all, they just stand there and stare, watching with big eyes what else will happen (even to them!).
In an emergency you can truly rely on people. In a split second they will dive into the danger zone, and at the same time reach into their pocket and, fast as lightning, draw their… cell-phone and set the camera in order to record the events.
Whenever I see this I hear myself mumble “spectator effect”.
Uh… there is more. Much later on, when it’s all over, they tend to go from not re-acting to over-reaction. Discussing endlessly the “events” and making up scenarios of what they would have done, should have done, if only…
And they simply can’t drop it, get over it, or let it go…
Deep in their hearts they know, they could do better than this.
And I mumble further…
March 28, 2009
Finding future in a comeback
The King was back
There is a saying (among many) about Elvis Presley: America had many presidents, but only one King.
Back in 1968 I was no more than a boy at the age of ten, when Elvis made his famous comeback after 9 years of absence from the stage.
People went wild… and I still recall myself asking around “what happened?” I was told that the first thing I ever danced, as soon as I was on my feet, was Elvis and here it was once more, everybody (and I mean everybody) was shaking and twisting again… and along with them, me too.
This comeback of the King was so powerful and had such an effect on people, it goes beyond description. You could hear the loud voices and laughter coming from almost every other house. Overjoyed frantic dancing parties were all around, while radios and pick-up players where literally on fire… for a brief moment this comeback felt like that the earth had stood still and smiled…
Of course I was still far too young in order to participate or grasp the importance of this, but much later on when I did realize, I was glad to have lived to be part of it…
The right Hotel
Do you have a favorite song? You know… the one that comes first into your mind when you’re being asked this question?
Hotel California by the Eagles was/is mine…
Few people have been as lucky as I am on that part. Because I was privileged to hear my favorite song played three times by the same band, in versions, I’m still not able to make up my mind of which one is best… So much the better!
For the history they are:
In 1976 the original studio version.
In 1980 the live “electric” version (from the live double album)
And in 1994, the acoustic version, that was accompanied with the comeback of the Eagles.
This comeback showed the world that some folks can still rock… It also showed (especially at the time) that making music is still about turning poems into songs, instead of street talk into a non stop senseless jabber. And the use of fingers in music is primarily for playing instruments, instead of making needless, retarded, spastic gestures with them…
Against all odds, and with musical video-clips being an absolute must, The Eagles stayed truthful to their claim and made none. All we saw was their modest appearance of playing live, to a limited audience in California. But that was more than enough in order to propel their album to the top, world wide. Needless to say it is a classic today.
The day the album “Hell Freezes Over” would hit the market, I left all my daily obligations aside as if they didn’t exist, only to be at the center of the city before the shops would open. So, I found myself standing in front of the “top” music shop of the city and to my amazement I could actually see through the glass door the delivery box, with the fresh untouched CDs. Though it made no real difference I had to have the… first one. I actually have it right here in front of me now as I write this, just to make sure that I remember the dates correctly…
What was it again that Glenn Frey said? “For the record we never broke up, we only took a fourteen years’ vacation”
This comeback never came…
Nobody can deny the fact that in this era, Aikido owes its biggest part of fame thanks to Steven Seagal. Even if some people have/had a hard time admitting it, we all know it by now, that he was so skillful and elegant he made many Masters look like students. For those having “doubts”, if not for his films, his black ‘n’ white videos of practicing in Japan stand proof of that.
All his true fans (from both on screen and on tatami) have been waiting for him to make a comeback, any comeback, like just even a tiny one. But with time this possibility has faded away and will finally never come… and I would be many times happier than you to be wrong on this.
Some time ago I made a deal with myself, to hold on to what I felt being best from this man, and leave it at that… Deserved respect should never die.
Just the other day, not far from this one, I accidentally “fell” on a Steven Seagal video. And I say accidentally, since I did hit the play button before I realized what I’m going to see, because I was actually looking for something else. So, when this video started to run I lost the ground under my feet since it took me a (wonderful) few seconds in order to realize that this was not Steven Seagal back from the past, but Steven Seagal back in the past…
This footage was obviously only recently recovered… and is a 7minutes’ video that was (also) titled “Steven Seagal-awesome lost video”
It is material from a TV show, from a time even before his famous movie “Nico-Above the Law”. And for 7 minutes I was speechless, once more. It totally reminded me that we were not crazy after all, in going bananas about him.
On this video Steven Seagal is absolutely everything he promised when he started out: sleek, fast, mean, sharp, skinny, intelligent, performing an amazing Aikido…
And for a brief moment I fell for it… Like a thirsty sucker in a desert who sees illusions that are someplace else, sometime else. I fell for it and I liked it.
That’s why one more (last?) time… thanks Steve…
Missing Apollo missions
At the early 70s, having conquered the moon everything seemed possible. At that time we were looking ahead and would ask ourselves: “What will it be like, in a few decades ahead? Will we have colonies on Mars? Will we be traveling towards the edge of our solar system? Will scientists be working around the clock to come close to light-speed?”
What happened to us people?! Why did we go so wrong? We abandoned the Apollo missions… can you realize that? We should have been half way across the galaxy by now.
I honestly and truly think that at that time nobody would have thought it possible to “achieve” within a few decades a total stand still in space exploration (that would include humans and not only probes and satellites). We praise ourselves about the internet and the cell phones… Can’t you dig it? These inventions, important as they may be, are only toys for children in comparison of getting out of here… Carl Sagan said in one of his last books, that we are on a trail that is leading us into a new dark age. Are we so willing to prove him right after all?
Did I ever tell you? I never liked the… bus (meaning the space shuttle). Not from the very first moment I laid eyes on it, not ever, and not any of them. I only can feel sympathy for those poor astronauts, which have no choice of their own, and must do the up and down tour to the earth’s orbit and back. And while they are busy up there, they do so with their backs turned towards space. The future (if we have one) will never forgive us for this “dead” time in space exploration and neither do I forgive myself for just standing and watching this… I want to go out and push.
One day there will be the time for a comeback… the greatest comeback of them all… and the Apollo mission will rise again. Will we still be around?!
If this is not the comeback to die for, what else is…?
Star Trek… as it was always meant to be
I prefer reality over fantasy, and an actual plan instead of a dream… My involvement in the Martial Arts carved this axiom deeper into me. If you have a plan it might fail or it might work… and in both cases you can go for the next one. If you have a dream you will… feel good and accomplish nothing. We must wake up from dreams…
But there is one dream that is too far to make it a plan, and I need to have it, so I will stick with it… The nicest of dreams humans ever had was the concept of Star Trek actually coming true. This is not about the ridiculous running around in a Star Trek uniform and saluting “live long and prosper”
…though I must admit that the intention in doing so, is an absolute positive one.
But what was/is Star Trek all about?
The literature and analysis on this question has no end… adding something more to it, is only more noise and confusion. My best advice (for those interested) is to find the book under the title “The making of Star Trek” by Stephen E. Whitfield and Gene Roddenberry. The fact alone that it was written by the Star Trek’s creator back in 1968, makes a looot of difference, and will save you the psychoanalysis approach…
One of the best comments on the original Star Trek series lies somewhere here in my library. I’ve been digging in my books like a mouse for two days, but I just can’t find it. It’s a line or two and I promise you if I will get my hands on it (as always happens, it will come up to me when I’ll be searching for something else…) I will put it up as a P.S. right under this text. For the time being, and if memory serves, it was something like this:
The magic of Star Trek was not the series itself, neither was it its protagonists, the crew, the ship, the phasers, the exotic places or space… The magic of Star Trek was its people, its audience.
There are two points that one should consider in understanding why the original Star Trek series was loved as much and became that famous…
A. It was aired at the end of the 60s (almost hand to hand with the Apollo missions) and at that time everything seemed (and was?) possible…
B. With the entire space as canvas, Star Trek is a no-end story. The key phrase is one: Where do we go next? Think about it. From all stories that have been told or will be ever told, from even the richest of imaginations, Star Trek could be the greatest story of all. Do you know any bigger playground scenario than space?
The following is my personal voyage on how Star Trek affected me… Though, through my travels and encounter with other people, I saw that my opinion was never a lonely one…
The original Star Trek series was cut short early on…
Back in those years we had reruns… and reruns again. And we never complained, because from one rerun to another we went from black ‘n’ white TV to full-color… and it was all worth it.
And the years pressed on…
The movies that followed later on, including the original cast, were good. Some of them were excellent, and nobody can deny that they got better with each new one… but they were somehow lacking the exploring/adventure spirit of the original Star Trek. In this regard, these Treks were one step up… and two steps back.
And the years pressed on…
With time a strange thing happened. More and more “Star Treks” (there are no extra large quotations on my typing board!) would appear. And sadly, they would gradually drift further and further, away from the original one.
Once, my significant other said to me: Have you ever noticed that in all those “Star Treks” the common thing is that these people are eating all the time? Is this a space series or a restaurant documentary?
And the years pressed on…
That which had started with an original idea, had become a gigantic industry, but why so many of “us” where even more nostalgic? At some point, I thought to myself: “Great! Now even if they want to make a comeback of Star Trek, there is so much debris of story telling, there is simply no room left, and people are going to be exhausted in hearing about another one yet”
And the years pressed on… even more.
For a long time now I was no longer expecting anything. Here on my shelf lied the 78+1 original episodes… and I was grateful for them, end of story. And suddenly, like out of the blue, they got a new one that was… the old one. In the beginning I “ignored” the incoming info, I simply stood numb to it. “This cannot be” I thought. But more and more I realized that this was the Star Trek I’ve been expecting for so long. Star Trek by J.J. Abrams was true to the original idea.
And here I stand, a half century of a man… watching the comeback of “the greatest adventure of all” simply parading in front of my eyes. After all these years, after all these decades… the original Star Trek, the Star Trek as it was meant to be…
From now on they can do what they want. But for once they delivered it right! And that alone works for me…
For me, this new beginning is the best of ends. As an old Trek fan I would like to… abstract something. There is a motto, on one of the TV spots, which is aired for promoting the movie… It says: “This is not your father’s Star Trek”
This is an impressive and catchy thing to say, to a… youngster, but my response is the following: This is your father’s Star Trek. And yes, this is your father speaking! Because, you know, I have been waiting all my damn life for this Star Trek to return, and now some kid is gonna tell me it’s not mine? Choose your gun mister, you’re going down…
There are many punch line phrases from Star Trek that people use worldwide for decades, as a standard. Among them, mine was “Beam me up…”
I never believed it possible, for a new punch line to make a chill go up my spine. But it did, when I heard Captain Pike propose:
“Enlist in Starfleet”
We can revise this… all of us who are in active service and wear… the uniform. A sense of duty towards others, should be part of our training anyway… We can revise this… it is the least we can do, when we meet a person that carries the spark of promise in his eyes. And then like Captain Pike, in our turn, we can propose:
“Enlist in Aikido”
May 7, 2009 (Just after Star Trek’s premier… losing sleep and watching the stars)
“The little green men”
Some of Batman’s lunatic villain adversaries, fit only too well for a part, in this text. (For the record, and if anyone cares to know, I prefer the “Batman Animated” Series version)
So, if Poison Ivy would jump out from the comics into real life, she would get elected as President in no-time… and from there on she would make sure to establish herself further more, on a global scale. Poison Ivy is “green” to the extreme… just as the extremist environmentalists, which are gaining ground and control by the minute…
You’ve got the wrong coloooor…
Once we were being told that Martians are green! Nowadays everybody wants to be Mart… green I mean…
It has become a very profitable business and the politically right thing in every respect, to state that you are green. Political parties, oil companies, fashion designers, environmental organizations, supermarkets, my aunt Marie… When you’re green you’re clean…
But unfortunately I have two shocking news to break through:
To begin with, and put as simply as possible, we live on a blue planet! Yes, the one with the blue oceans (covering most of its surface) the blue seas and, if it has occurred to you, the vast blue sky above us. We actually drift in space as a blue dot.
It is a scientific proven fact that the majority of the earth’s oxygen is produced by the (blue) oceans. In comparison, only a small part of the earth’s oxygen comes from the green. But as with many great things in life, the misconception on this… prevailed, and green became the color of a flag on a “movement” that doesn’t exist… “Taking out the trash” and “cleaning up” is no movement. It is the shameful result of where we have come to, and what is left for us to do, due to our total absent mind-ness.
So, my green friends, I herewith announce you that you’re into the wrong color. Now don’t turn “blue” on me (in any way), colors have little to do with the environment anyway. Just remember that like in colors, we began to use the term environment, not like the term originally intended to (describing where we are in). Mostly, when you hear it, the word describes something, but the sound in the ears rings as a kind of recognition of what we have destroyed…
The realistic approach to the matter clearly shows that it is not the environment we do care about or the birds and the trees… it is us we worry about, who will suffocate in it, if we continue like this.
Global warming by… Mr. Freeze
The environment has far too many of those who care to “protect” it “save” it, and far too few of those who will just leave it alone.
We are not only into the “wrong color” we are into the wrong direction as well. The environmental issue that produces the biggest noise today has to do with climate change. We are “overheating” our planet, it’s been said, and as a result, entire strategies of the economy are “heading” towards “investments” that will “heal” this situation. While this is going on, faint voices of scientists are silenced by the hysteric green screaming. Faint voices that are telling us it is the Sun’s behavior that is responsible for the overheating. This overheating is a natural phenomenon and an indication of a change that will come soon. But it will come from a totally different direction than expected. After a rapid decline of heating it will shift us into the next… ice age! (21st Century Science & Technology Gregory Murphy και Laurence Hecht)
But the investments are made, the media are all over this, the public is persuaded and the “beats” are on… who has the spine to “call it off” now?!
Rightly one might say: “…but you’re a Martial Artist… environment is far from your field of experience or science…”
Well… to put is as simply as I can, weren’t you not persuaded until this morning that blue is green?
Make no mistake, this is no “paradise”
It is easy for a person, who has not even spend a night in a tent, to grow a love for nature as he is imaging it from his flat apartment and not as the great wide open really is. And spending a day or so running around in the wild, fully equipped with outdoor gadgets and gear, doesn’t count either as a real contact with nature…
It is easy for modern man to grow a false love for the “environment”. He can easily idealize it, put it in a jar and then keep it in his mind. It is also so much “in” these days.
Nature is not a… garden with flowers, actually it never was…
What is described below are conditions that have occurred in the earth’s past and for sure will happen again, so take your pick. The earth will get rid of us in the following ways.
I will exclude our own self-destruction that would occur out of stupidity or incompetence, because I still need… a reason to live and look into our future.
But even without the above list, earth is no paradise for man. In order for him to live here you’ll have to exclude both poles, a great number of deserts and wastelands, all high altitude mountains and that’s only the beginning, since we cannot live on the oceans or seas or lakes or rivers… Early humankind has struggled for ages in order to make sure it could survive here… The Earth is our place of birth, but sooner or later (no matter how good we take care of it) it will claim our species…
The Earth is the egg from which we hatched, and our true destiny is not to sit on that egg, but to spread our wings and fly…
I have expressed it before and will do so again, personally I already feel marooned here…
*BBC, Science Series, SPACE, with Sam Neil.
Humans are the earth’s epitome
Extremist environmentalists (or shall I say the little green men?) tend to build an icon of humans that cultivates guilt. And they are giving a hard try to pass this icon further on, to children, institutions of education, magazines and so on and so forth… Of course, for a “good reason” anything can be said in order to save the earth.
Yes, we do pollute, and yes we do much more than this that needs to be dealt with, but we are no way the… scum of the earth. In fact it took the earth’s efforts of countless millennia in order to create its top… model. Us! We didn’t pop up out of thin air and we didn’t have the idea of creating us…
The greatest judge is ourselves… A man could stand alone and apart, even if the entire mankind would turn against him. But he could easily destroy himself (literally or in other ways) if you successfully push his guilt button…
We should correct our mistakes, whatever they may be, but nothing should take away our pride in being humans in the process. A man with inferior self-respect is a ticking bomb. He can be easily manipulated into far more dangerous actions than throwing around his trash…
Batman is training
Painting roofs white! …for ecological reasons, has been proposed just a few weeks back. This is practically an… ancient idea, that was mindlessly abandoned and will now cost nothing to politicians to drag back from the past. So, is this all they came up with, now, in 2009?
Just click under Greek islands pictures, and you will see this “new idea” in thousands of houses that are scattered across the Aegean Sea… But furthermore, these houses are not only totally white, but have thick walls with little windows, in order to be warm in the winter and cool in the summer… These houses are not needlessly oversized, but are ergonomically built according to human measurement... and nevertheless with a breathtaking view of endless miles into the Sea, that will elevate the soul far above the, so much admired today, concept of a big fat “property”. Houses, which will collect the winter rains, from their tiny flat roofs and right into self-made wells, for household use… Houses that… oh somebody stop me…
“To paint the roofs white” is only a fraction of what some civilizations have been doing for (I don’t dare to look) how long…
We don’t need little green men and we don’t need guilty-free white roofs.
We need education, training and attitude… But beware! Not of the kind that measures man by a piece of paper. Not the kind that measures life itself like an “investment”. And not the kind, that treats nature as a helpless pet.
One might say “the Aikido promoter is about to do his punch line”. Yes he is, but just think for a moment. Education, training and attitude, can be cultivated in many Arts, outside mine, if you wish.
A solution, a proposal to the environmental problem, is like all other problems. And they are many of them, like wars, drugs, ethical decline… We can be absorbed at solving problems, but in how many directions at the same time? At the end of the day you will have solved some, and some not.
Do you wanna “invest” in solving problems? Well do so into the right direction. In the only direction that will refrain from causing as many problems in the first place and to such an extreme…
Invest in man himself, in order to see a difference!
Unbelievable Japanese tradition
There were no roads in feudal Japan… and though the use of wheels was known, it was not used for transportation. The idea was that building roads would destroy the land. So, they used natural created paths, on which they traveled in a single line manner, either on horse or on foot. Of course they knew all about roads from info that would come into the islands from other countries… but still they resisted to them for centuries…
And what are we doing? We can’t even get our colors in line. White roofs for houses and “green horses” for cars…
Time well spent
In many ways I am an extremist too, I guess. When I use the term “everyday practice” my senior students start to grin… They are the only ones who actually know what I mean by that… They know it only too well!
But still non practitioners come with the query: And Sundays too? and at Christmas? and at New Years Eve? …and some continue their grinning.
If I see my life so far, if I see myself as a… polluter of this earth, then environmentalists owe me something. Don’t they have an award? In green of course! Well I won it. Because me plus a number of my students have spent most of our lives, day in day out, practicing on a few square meters of straw tatami. We are fulfilled environmentalists…
I even use dim light at evening lessons (long before lamps became… a crime) regardless if some students protest. Most attacks happen with dim light, I keep telling them…
The more one practices, and spends time for his Dojo, the more one stays off, from negative acts, even later on (…including polluting). One can speak only for himself, but can you realize how many more of “us” are out there? How many that quietly practice, day in day out, as a way of life?!
So, where have you been spending your time little green man?
Class dismissed!
June 14, 2009
Carman III-Easy driver
Chess is a very interesting game... to say the least. It is deep-going as only few, and is based on the concept of war maneuvers. When I first learned the basic moves by a student of mine, he would set me up for a trap that is well known as “The Spanish retreat”.
For those unfamiliar, the idea is to lure your game partner into an attack at the very beginning of the game, and before he knows it, make him fall into a well set retreat, that is actually neutralizing the entire game against him… Check mate! Game over! Kaput…
In driving I use the term “Spanish retreat” when I find the least amount of horsepower in a car, that will be just right in order to “beat” its more powerful “brothers” while driven in real circumstances and in real life…
If “Carman” is our icon of what the perfect driver would be… then for sure I will have to find a sidekick nickname, too. In looking back at my own history so far as a driver “Car-Kidnaper” should suit me just fine… To meet me in person means, still to this day, to hide your car keys. Because if your car is a model that I haven’t driven yet… I won’t ask twice. And the spinning-at-the-corner fool will not be a car that looks like yours, but definitely yours, with me in it… Most of the time people give up their keys sooner than this, probably because of that desperate begging look on my face: “Can I drive your car for a mile or two, pleeeeease!” I gave that phrase a lot of practice, too.
At this point, and in order to be honest with my readers, I must admit and confess the following. I am an egomaniac when it comes to my own car and I don’t feel guilty in hijacking other people’s car either. If there is a worse term than egomaniac please be my guest… but nobody gets to drive my baby, never did never will…
This year, among many other cars, I drove (shall I say kidnapped?) two cars that find themselves at the top of line of production cars…
I will not give you their full… resume, or dazzle you with many details. A simple outline will do… I would hate it to be a bore for my female readers.
The first car was given to me with full consent.
Impressions:
The BMW was smooth (as all BMW’s are) well balanced, even when taken off balance, and a sledgehammer when you would put your foot down. It was a true “bat-mobile” for everyday use. I got to drive this black beauty twice and did put it to its limits only for short (if the owner is reading this… to its limit but like a gentleman)
The Porsche was a car screaming for a race track right from the start. The engine produces massive noise and the balance is not that fun getting back once lost. Performance stands above anything else, with the top speed (302km or 187+miles per hour) coming without effort. I could not believe how comfortable its interior was for a sports car. I got to drive it (don’t ask how) for three days, and nights!
Comparisons and conclusion:
Both cars are performance cars and each of them has its own way of doing things. The more you drive them and discover them, the more you feel that they do go apart… So, comparison is out the window here (this being my opinion). For the record, my significant other fell in love with the Porsche and at the end of the long weekend I had to drag her out of the co-drivers seat… One of the highlight of moments we had was when she asked of me “can you go any faster?” My jaw dropped to my chest but I recovered fast screaming above the engine’s howl “yes it can, but I don’t remember where the… warp speed button is!”
A cavalry of horses
I know that every kid (and I mean the grown up ones) dreams of a car that has excessive power… Usually more power than… the next man has. The motto was and remains “the more the better” And I also realize that if you have the money to buy starting from the top of the price list, and not from the bottom of it, who would go for the “lesser” car?
BUT in order for a car to produce the power for achieving performance and speeds that go beyond a certain point, they are obliged to overtake the “fun to drive” factor.
A “fun to drive” car even when pushed beyond its limits leaves a smile on your face (needless to remind that this applies to the experienced driver)
When on the other hand, a pure sports car designed for performance, will pass beyond that point and lead you to a driving that will make you sweat…
My main argument (with just about everybody) is that “a cavalry of horses” built into a car, is a needless show-off power, that produces nothing but trouble. Too much power from an engine, will take to adjust the entire car towards being able to put that power on the street and control it. The body-frame, the transmission, the suspension, the tires… all mechanical parts must be reinforced, made heavier and above all have a tuning that accords to handle this force. Okay, you will reach 300+ kilometers per hour in no time, but in order to do that you will have to “kill” the feeling of the car which exists at a level bellow that point.
It’s a question of choice of what you really want. Personally I never had doubts on this, but this last test-drives where a reminder that I thought of sharing. I would gladly trade “a cavalry of horses” of any performance car, with the free, relaxed, playful feeling, of a drive offered by a humble roadster. And make no mistake! On certain tight mountain roads the agility and handling of such a “lesser” car can be unbeatable, too.
All our Martial Arts training, and the concept of applying martial principles into everyday life… has to do with doing something more with something less. In the great Japanese tradition of Yabusame (horse riding combined with archery) the rider is to bring in harmony himself, the horse, the bow and his target.
“Jinba Ittai” translates from the Japanese as “Horse and Rider as One” And a Japanese car manufacturer uses this motto for its latest marvelous roadster (Mazda Miata MX-5). This beauty costs half the price of the… interior extras that I rode the other day. It also has about two thirds less horses… to feed. But if someone could invent the “fun meter” to this car and put up a price for it, then it would cost a fortune. “Jinba Ittai” is of importance here and not… Napoleon’s cavalry!
The entire sum of everything I ever mentioned and wrote so far, on the subject of cars, goes into a single direction: To approach the car with the attitude of a horse ride, rather than a coach ride.
A sentimental tribute to my cars
Not everybody has the chance to own a car, nothing to speak about owning a car of his choice. Some people are so poor, they have to struggle for years, just to be in a position to have one. From that point of view… any car is good as long as it becomes yours! It is good to remember that…
It is a fact that my… Hippy approach towards life (when it came to money) left me crawling for the biggest part of it. Especially when Hippy times were over but I would nevertheless continue the Hippy act! Don’t take this wrong, I don’t make any complains… but I think that this is a good way of introduction, in offering a few lines to the cars I owned so far.
All my cars had names… that they got according to their character!
“Christine” At the beginning there was a light! No, forget that… wrong start. At the beginning there was darkness. Because long before I owned my first car, I knew well how “the right car” should be… and I also knew that I would never get to own it.
In the spring of 1988 I gathered a ridiculous sum of money by the method of… working. I will not say by working hard, since this term is terribly overused these days… After a long search and discussions with friends and car mechanics, I ended up specifically looking for an Opel Kadett. This car was a genuine rear wheels drive… the last of its kind in its class, and as it proved later on, for many decades to come. Its more powerful versions were winning in Rallies, and that did mean a lot, because at the time they would race most cars just as they would come out from production!!! No modifications, no super-cars.
With the little money in my pocket I started to look for my car… and there she was, staring back at me, built in 1977 and despite the terrible open green color it whispered “buy me” And I did… only to discover a few days later, while thoroughly washing her by hand, that she was a taxi cab for her entire life, then painted and sold to any stupid sucker that would fall for it… Stupid spelled as in me!
The biggest school of my life, as a car connoisseur, was about to begin. Anything that could go wrong did go wrong, my car was a piece of junk, but I was… in love with it, and on the top of it I tried the impossible journey of fixing her… Junk yards became my second home. Of course I had no choice but name her Christine, after the film by John Carpenter. There is no way of telling how this car even moved after so much mileage it had on it. I even had discovered how to “dry-clean” it, because any other way of washing would allow the water getting through, from everywhere. I was heartbroken when I had to give her away 7 years later and people around me did not believe their ears on how affectionate I was about this car.
“Dolly” In the spring of 1994 I gathered a ridiculous sum of money, again, by the method of working, again! Feeling like a traitor I gave along with the money my Christine, but I was comforted by the fact that she was going to the hands of a friend. Unbelievable as it may sound my next car was still an Opel Kadett… Born in 1986 she was two generations further down and was in a very good shape, too.
This car was a large leap ahead in comparison with Christine… The old German Adam Opel Company had changed hands now and General Motors tried to do its best for its new pride. My new car was light, fast and she could travel at the top of its speed with comfort. On a bumpy road she would jump up and down like a happy horse, absorbing everything. Jolly was Lucky Luke’s faithful horse, but in some translations from the original French this would appear as Dolly. In this funny way my new car maintained its female character. Dolly had a terrible color of dark green, which looked even more terrible than Christine’s light green. And she was a front wheel drive, a characteristic that I was destined to find… in front of me.
Both of my cars, so far, had one thing in common. They were at the bottom of the price list and “extras” was an unknown word to them. Also there was a total absence of any kind of “technology” as we know it today… or yesterday… or the day before…
No air conditioner, no electric windows, no injection, no hydraulic steering, no air-bags, no anti-break system, shortly put… no nothing!
Last but not least, driving Christine to its limits in the wet, did mean that you could actually see from in the rear mirror a black shadow approaching holding a reap…
“Blondie” The proverb “they don’t make them like they use to” is said mostly for cars. And I used it a lot in what I call “The dark ages for cars” Because I saw three decades parading in front of me, without even the slightest attempt of producing a rear wheel drive car, in the segment that I loved the most. The C segment… (where C stands for Compact) All manufacturers had gradually turned to front wheel drive. Only BMW used a modification of its 3 Series, by cutting it short, and naming it (what else?) “Compact” The only problem was that this car was not built from scratch in the category, and above all, it was far too expensive for a guy like me.
My Dolly was an old horse now, gradually falling apart. And due to its more industrialized build, compared to Christine, she was becoming impossible to repair and maintain… Ironically, for once my economics were becoming better (I did send the Hippy on a long vacation!) but I could not see to which car I could turn to.
We live in the times of information and one day, totally out of the blue, info was starting to pour like rain. BMW was announcing the creation of a hatchback in the C segment, which would be a genuine rear wheel drive, with a price that would start at 16.000 Euros… This was more of a promise than a price, but finally it did not go much higher than this. The auto-press went wild, the internet went wild… I went wild! There was a long wait of post production talk, and I was hanging on every piece of information coming in, thanks to the internet. A student of mine… inherited Dolly and she still runs to this day, and in the fall of 2004 I placed the order for a fully personalized 1 Series. To the amazement of some sales people I did so the very first day that was possible, and that means, long before that model was anywhere to see on the market or streets… When my ride finally came in, for a while I was something like the king of the road. Believe it or not, people from other cars, pedestrians, bikers, were smiling at me, waving and giving me the thumbs up…
Journalist Stuart Birch of The Times called the 1 Series “…first cousin to a roadster…” pleasing me no end.
I will forever love Christine and Dolly and the journeys we made, but beyond that, I felt like going from a horse to a starship.
I left the best for last. The name…
Everyone assumes, when I call out… my car, that I mean it’s a girl and it’s blonde. But no! I mean Blondie as Tuco means it (Eli Wallach) when calling out Clint Eastwood in the all time classic “The Good the Bad and the Ugly”.
Behind the nickname of a girl lies a cool fast draw…
Only standard issue, Mister!
World wide, a great majority of “official buildings” are supported and decorated by reproductions of ancient Greek columns. The design is absolutely clear… there is no question about that.
Few of them are… the Gate of Brandenburg in Berlin, the Federal Hall at Wall Street in N.Y and on it goes… all of them are just like the columns of the Parthenon in the city of Athens. The right term when referring to this style, is columns of “Ionian Rhythm”
The reproduction of this particular design is going on for centuries… correction, for thousands of years. If one looks into history more carefully, he will see that, when speaking of the ancient Greek civilization, there were other column rhythms as well. Like the Corinthian Rhythm for example, that is of unsurpassed beauty, too. But from all these different styles, the Ionian Rhythm is the one that remained, representing the classic. This is not by chance. Those columns are of a design that includes tenths of details of perfection, which extend from esthetics to mathematics and from ergonomics to geometry… I remember that once, in a discussion with an expert of archeology, it took the man about fifteen minutes to explain just one of them. Specifically how the Sun’s light reflects intelligently, on the particular oval curved surface of these columns, and then transfers part of that reflection, to the inner part of the temple…
It is only natural to take the best of moments from each of man’s culture and civilization and then continue its existence, by applying it again and again… Thus, some parts of tradition, when spontaneously accepted by all, become of timeless value.
Tradition that lives on, in this manner, tradition that keeps on marching into the future, is a heritage that is far more interesting, and has little or nothing to do with merely reproducing or “saving” the past…
Japanese Martial Arts, and especially Aikido, didn’t make it so far in any different way. They didn’t just survive, but they flourished here in the West and gradually are becoming an “imported” culture that is reproduced… here.
But when something is as old and deep, it undergoes a loss of originality, a loss of purity, if you like. Decadence is a normal process, and it also happens to the country that originated the Art. That is why “reproducing” and practicing the Arts as the Japanese did/do, means little. The idea is to understand the originality of an Art, to understand why it became timeless and to preserve that understanding above a copy-paste attitude.
When an architect decides to build a modern building, which will nevertheless stand on columns of Ionian Rhythm, he does not go to the Parthenon of Athens camera on one hand and a measure on the other…
But he goes back to his archives and records, in order to find the specifications of the particular design, its geometry, its mathematics. So, he makes sure that he will be in accord with the original ancient idea and not only with something that looks like it.
When a beginner comes to the Dojo we are supposed to take this person and, before any training, dress him/her properly and arm him/her properly. This procedure can become a headache of major proportions (if you’re up to maintaining some standards)… To begin with, if I leave a beginner to go shop his/her Aikido gear and then come to the Dojo he will at the most go as far as the edge of the tatami and then never get permission to enter the premises… And this awkward situation will never be the beginner’s fault…
The standard Aikido wear, and practicing weapons, are part of what can be referred to as dress-code. Of course small individualities from Dojo to Dojo are natural to exist and, when done with elegance, they can give a distinction that characterizes yourself, your Dojo and your Sensei…
But our tendency to westernize the Art, along with other facts, has created a deviation of enormous size, to the “standard issue” of dressing… In order to avoid going into the details of this, I will try to draw the outlines of it.
By now it is extremely difficult and limited to have a Gi (Aikido uniform) that its pants has the traditional inner cord-belt made of fabric, which allows the practitioner to adjust its tightness around the waist, according to how one feels on each particular day (since the region of the belly is not solid). Instead, most companies have rubberized the inner belt of the pants, which of course chokes up any normal abdominal breathing from the Hara. This “detail” is big deal to all Aikidoka who wear their pants with a cord that can be adjusted…
The Japanese sword (plus the other weapons that are related to it) is practically worn along with the clothing. The relation of wearing clothes and “wearing” weapons into them, is as inseparable as can be, and it’s safe to say that one influenced the design and shape of the other…
In the spirit of avoiding mortal injuries (or destroying one’s sword) the Samurai wooden weapons were the standard tools to practice with, a characteristic that was continued through Aikido to this day…
It is once too often repeated, that the great Miyamoto Musashi has killed most of his opponents in duels, armed only with a wooden practicing sword… In Aikido we use three major wooden weapons for practice: The Boken (wooden sword) the Jo (short staff) and the Tanto (knife). Luckily we avoid mortal duels and killings, and hopefully we use weapons in order only to practice… But on the other hand these practicing weapons have become so weak, and badly built, the only thing they are good for, is to hunt down flies or other equivalent in size insects… A Boken should, as much as possible, represent the weight and balance of a Japanese Katana (not to mention that it should be able to “deal” with a Katana)
Instead, we do see the rise of a crazy random fashion, going sideways with the entire dress code… There are more and more Gi (Aikido uniforms) with patches of any kind, Gi with patches of… sponsors, colorful Gi, Gi combined with gymnastics clothing, total “eclipse” of Gi replaced by “wear whatever you wish” clothes and also partly or full synthetic Hakama, plastic Zori (footwear) and (how do I even write this?) plastic… wooden swords. And the market is blooming…
It has come to a point where in order to “suit up” a student I have to order his gear from around the four corners of this world. His/her clothing, practicing weapon… not to mention the nightmare of a true sword and Tanto… and while the market is constantly changing, we are on a permanent hunt. Worst is, you find the right stuff somewhere, you re-order that same stuff, only to discover that it’s the same name, the same stuff in a… brand new lower quality at a bigger price… And I stand there looking at my new “wrong stuff” and I mumble in disbelief: Is it me or what!?...
In some Arts they abandoned traditional wear all together…
Naturally, when traditional wear in Aikido only looks traditional, the thought crosses your mind… what about finding a way of skipping, and eventually escaping the entire thing, by replacing it for something “modern”. But this turns out in a funny way, since any idea that you could think of (especially the very good ones) are leading you right back to the damn traditional clothing…. It’s like a labyrinth leading you to the same door all the time… anything that could be designed from scratch gradually is leading you back to the original design.
It is somehow the same effect that the… ancient Parthenon columns of Athens have. You have a thousand new ideas of building a modern court house and you end up with a five thousand year, or so, old design…
My latest thought (my students were terribly worried that I would actually put this in action) was to take a step… further back, and apply fully traditional clothing for my Dojo, just as some Iai-jutsu schools have it… Yeap, the original Japanese Samurai clothing… For those lifting an eyebrow, may I remind… in the early days of O Sensei’s Dojo that’s the way it was…
But each time I feel like going into that direction I realize, once more, the simplicity, the absoluteness (and the… hundreds of details that you find in your way) which constitute the classical white Gi and black Hakama of Aikido. Also, who could overlook the noble intent in keeping an equality of appearance between all members of a Dojo, including the leading man…
Two kinds of traditions
Keeping one’s eyes open and choosing between what is to be maintained as all time classic and what is just a mere copy of a tradition (that has place only in a museum) is no easy task. It extends to all corners and details of a Dojo… Timeless inventions can remain timeless, if we, who use those inventions, spare them from needless deterioration and decadence…
For this reason I will never cease to protest against the awful plastic mat that replaced the tatami… or a “Japanese sword” that fails to act in performing the kind of cutting it was designed for… Nothing more, nothing less!
In the same manner I will never cease to protest against needless tradition, whenever it is crystal clear fake, hypocritical, blindly followed, and of no use.
The lesson before entering first lesson, is for a student to learn what he will dress in, how and why. The same goes for his personal practicing weapons. Put into one phrase, to suit up correctly. He/she should take pride in his outfit, demanding the correct and best, right from the start.
My dressing space lies right next to my students’ separated only by a… straw wall. Senior students inspect beginners to exit from there only when perfectly dressed. If something is out of place I have to suppress my giggle, while hearing their harsh remark…
Only standard issue, Mister!
September 29, 2009
Being afraid of symbols
There is a war plane that became famous by its shortened name, which did not represented the model or the company that built it, but the nature of its missions… And though it is a model of the second World War’s “dark side”, even today, people recognize the name “Stuka”
This literally is short for “Sturzkamphflugzeug” …a German word meaning dive-fighter-plane…
In aviation, and aviation history, this particular plane must have held the all time record of… the fear factor. No other plane caused so much fear, because it would vertically dive down, straight from the sky on its ground targets (very much like hawks do) only to lift back sharply before reaching the ground.
Its design was beautifully-ugly (there is no other description that fits it better) and beyond its cannons, machine guns and various choices of bombs, it was equipped with a… siren that would produce a terrible howl during the procedure of diving, causing total panic and chaos…
Being aware of my admiration for that particular plane, a student of mine presented to me as a gift a 1/72 scale metal replica of the famous Junkers-87 (that is its “official” name). The amazing thing is that this little model for display, was so well detailed you could practically spend a full hour in inspecting it… and so I did too, book on one hand, info from the internet on the other. Please note, I didn’t find the slightest of errors, of technical or historical nature. “My” Stuka has desert painting, fought in North Africa, and belonged to a specific German pilot. This highly “personalized” Stuka, was not the only one… They were, hold on please, six more variations of that same plane, which belonged to different pilots, had different paintings, having fought in different locations… All of them perfect in their variations, down to the last detail…
No other single model, in the specific company, could even come close to that number of variations, seven in all, which could mean only one thing… That even as a “toy” the famous Stuka was earning a respect that no other plane, tank, ship or vehicle would do…
One thing that occurred to me from right… out of the box, was that, to my surprise, it was missing the swastika signs from its rear vertical wing. But what do you know… to my, second, surprise the swastika signs were in a tiny plastic bag at the bottom of the box. I though “oh well, I will put it up myself, they didn’t want to offend anybody who was still sensitive in seeing the Nazi symbol” (and please note that the box photos where missing the symbol altogether as well). But then I was surprised for a… third time. The swastika that was left for me to put up, was designed to show into the… wrong direction. I did check it over and over again, because I could not believe my eyes that they would do something so stupid deliberately, I even asked a friend or two, if maybe it was just me seeing things… into the wrong direction, but no. This plane was so well done into the last of every detail, there was no doubt this was done deliberately. And I highly doubt that the company producing it had anything to do with it, otherwise why would it undergo into so much trouble in finding historical details of the pilots, places and dates where they fought, numbers of the specific “wing” they belonged etc. At that point I felt that I had enough of this. The bitter word came out of my mouth without any effort: “Scheiße”…a German word meaning… shit! And it was perfectly matching the occasion that I was faced with for one more time in my life…
I was born on the loser’s side of the World War II. I was born a German… And though I had nothing to do with the war, since I was born later anyway, I experienced first hand the old proverb, which tells us that “History is written by the victorious”.
As a German I don’t feel any guilt about the war, or for any of the war crimes that occurred back then… I had no part of it, I didn’t do anything, I wasn’t even born then, but some people just can’t leave it alone. For the German generation/s that followed the war the demand was to feel guilty because you were a German…
I’m not making this up, this is not my opinion, this is simply the facts as they are. After the war there was a systematic effort in achieving this and it looks like… it went well.
As a teenager I practically had to… grab family members by their collar, to say the least, in order to extract any information about our own family members which died fighting. And there is absolutely no way in conducting any normal conversation, even to this day (without people turning in the color of yellow) which would include names like Hitler, Gestapo, Nazis or Waffen SS…
Germans today do not protest against the systematic visiting of death camps, death trains, torture chambers or anything that will bring a chill up your spine. They (you will allow me to exclude myself) behave as if they had the original invention, the patent, the monopoly on this…
Russians were far more intelligent on this one. As soon as they opened their borders (around 1989) soviets managed to blow up the entire chain of Gulag that ever existed. Mostly built in remote places in Siberia, it is estimated that they were up to 500 death camps, and millions of people died there, in horror and pain. But even if Russians wouldn’t blow them up, what good is it to drag “tourists” into such a place anyway? Since any normal person will only feel his stomach go up and down, what is the purpose of this exhibition? To remember the horror and avoid in doing this again? But it did happen again, over and over… by the Red Khmer… in Yugoslavia… in Rwanda… you name it.
The display of any death camps, wherever they are, brings only negative feelings to the surface (and guilt?!)
There are countless other actions that can take place in promoting peace, understanding and friendship, and could make old enemies think of friendship… politicians and diplomats know that best (and of course keep on talking about it all the time)
Since I was brought up in Germany, but also in different parts of Europe, people had a strong opinion about “Germans” and I needed to know what it was about “us” that created dislike… And maybe unlike other Germans I was taking this “investigation” a step too far. I was fortuned to be thorough enough on my research, and so I found out about who Erwin Rommel was, who Hans-Ulrich Rudel was, or Erich “Bubi” Hartmann… and many others. But of course these Germans (and their books!) belong to the losers’ side, don’t they? Why would I need an excuse for feeling proud for these men?
For more than half a century armies of the word are marching up and down on every occasion in declaring the winning of WWII… And we Germans have managed to hide our heads in the sand, instead of honoring an entire generation of soldiers that served and died for their country…
But this is not entirely a German affair… have you ever noticed that there is not a single movie (yet) that would narrate the story of a German soldier, or pilot… and not make him look being the “bad” guy or stupid officer or the lunatic leader or the sadistic Nazi and so on and so forth… Until now they don’t dare do a “genuine German hero” though we all knew that the truth is they were German war heroes, just like in every country… Their stories will wait patiently in time, for the day when they will be heard and admired.
Forbidding the display of the swastika shows only needless fear of the past and I can only have understanding for that. But putting it into the wrong direction shows stupidity of the largest scale… and I could comment it only like a German would do: Ze sign should point into ze ozer direction you idiots, to ze right!
Have you ever noticed that every other youngster (that lives in… Utah or …Australia) that goes through “a phase” is drawing the damn swastika cross simply because it is forbidden? Or how proud the neo-Nazis salute and tattoo on their body “their” symbol? Did you hear the latest news? Now in some countries they have the “Hammer-Sickle” communist symbol on the run! …ridiculous isn’t it? My sympathies to the Russian…
By forbidding signs, any signs, we only demonstrate that we are lesser democrats.
To dispense evil by wiping out symbols would be nice… in the fairytale land… and by the way, the swastika cross is a thousands of years old… religious symbol from India, representing the wheel of life and it is also found curved in ancient Greek marble temples, too. Shall we burn them to the ground?!
War crimes…
The Americans were the occupant forces in the Northern part of (the former) West Germany, the place were I was born and lived as a child, and they must have done a good job too, because ever since I remember myself, I simply loved Americans, and along with it whatever it was they represented… and I still do.
When Germany was defeated it was common sense for German soldiers to surrender to the Americans...
A thing we can not say about the Russians! We Germans were not prejudiced against Russians… we simply had “experiences”.
Those experiences were somehow denied to Germans, or better said, were conveniently overlooked, since Germany was “rightly” suffering back its own aggressive war.
The number of German troops that died in the Russian Gulag can only be “estimated”. Worst is that these troops were needlessly dragged there, right after Germany was defeated, in total ruins and on its knees. These soldiers died after Germany had surrendered in an act of revenge…
War crimes are committed by people, which are of flesh and blood just like you and me. There is no monster race, or monster sign, or monster leader, which you will isolate, wipe out, or kill and have it done with…
Unfortunately the monster lives in each and every one of us.
If we deny this, we stick our heads in the sand once more…
Mark my words: The violence of a justified cause is equal, and some times exceeds, the violence of an aggressor…
We see this example in Martial Arts every other day. When a person is attacked unjustified and without any reason, he will have much more trouble handling this after the attack is over… The number of people, who take up Aikido because they were attacked, is always (regardless of “times”) a countable percentage. And it takes them considerable effort and amount of practice, in order to put their anger aside…
Two wars for one man
I would like to offer just a few lines to man of peace, whose destiny was to fight in both of the great wars.
My great-grand father was a person that, as a boy, I had the honor to meet. From all my family without exception, he was the one I sincerely loved above all. Everybody seemed happy around him and his loud like thunder laughter.
When he died I was no more than a boy and I simply cried like a dog… Not because he died, but because on our last meet, sensing his death, he whispered into my ear for nobody else to hear “I will never see you again my boy” and he never did. This man fought in both World Wars, on the loser’s side, only to see his fatherland in ruins twice…
The axis
The other pole of the “evil” axis was the Japanese… They also fought and lost the war, suffering also a great loss of people (both civilian and military) not to mention the two atomic bombs. Hiroshima was a town purely full of civilians, without any military installations, totally untouched by war, and therefore was considered “ideal” in order to see the effects of the new toy…
In the German surprise attack on Russia in 1941, the Luftwaffe destroyed the greatest air force that ever existed (and nobody was aware of so far) while it was waiting on the ground, to do what?…
And is it ironic coincidence? In the great Russian-Japanese war in 1904 the Japanese attacked and whipped out the greatest armada of Russian warships that ever existed (that was certainly not built for… fishing).
Was General Patton right after all? (Just an academic question…)
One last question to consider (of academic nature as well)
How can that be? While other countries that won the war went… backwards, Germany and Japan, which were practically “floored” became… shall I say excellent?!
Out of the ashes of war the German missile V2, created by Wernher von Braun, became the American Gemini and Apollo that did send man to the moon. The internet points out elegantly that this man wore the “death’s heads uniform” of the SS only once and only because he was ordered to… Oh yeah?! And what was he wearing while sending missiles into London, his bathing suit? And what’s the difference anyway…
My little Stuka toy is lonely on its shelf… I was thinking to buy it some company, something challenging. Challenging as in adversary… And since it is ugly-beautiful, a contradiction with a drop-dead-beautiful plane would be nice. The American Mustang P-51 is a war plane to admire for its shape. It looks much more than a plane that is part of an acrobatic team and looks nothing like a warplane. Shiny silver is my favorite, with the big blue-and-white star sign all over it… which, believe it or not, for my taste, is the best in looks of all signs ever! Yes, I will do that. Hang the Stuka like in a steep dive, with the Mustang on its tail chasing it…
What?! You took me for a crypto-Nazi lover and now I confused you?....
October 6, 2009
Swordwriting II-Sharp reading…
The beach was full of people… Everyone was relaxing and enjoying the sand, the sun and the sea. The colorful umbrellas were scattered almost everywhere and the only thing moving, on that hot summer’s day, were a few swimmers, children that played with the wet sand, windsurfers that were looking to put themselves into a fair wind and a few pairs of beach-tennis players (can you see me?…) But the majority, were sitting or lying in the shade while reading books…
Though globalization has transferred cultures and habits to all corners of this earth, it is quite clear, reading habits are different from country to country, from place to place and from person to person… If we put practice aside, reading books is far more important than any other study a person can undergo. There is no school, no education, no degree, no university, no “master”, no doctorate or anything equivalent… that could go above reading books…
It is a fact that countries with higher educational standards, countries that are ahead in what we call civilization, have citizens that are practically reading everywhere they find themselves… in the metro, in cafés, in parks, everywhere. And they don’t wait only to read at the beach…
This summer I was very happy with the reading material that was waiting for me under my umbrella… It’s not always easy to find a satisfying combination of reading stuff, exactly as you want it, exactly at the time you want it. But here I was, after a hard beach-tennis duel, and a short swim with dives to cool it off, I was happily returning to my private shade, to simply do what all folks do… read my stuff!
Now what did I bring with me this time? Oh, yeah… first of all, I managed after a long period of search, to complete the comic-book collection of Lucky Luke… at last I have all of them and now it was time to enjoy them, issue by issue… and while reading them I had to contain myself from bursting into laughter, since this happens a lot with Lucky Luke and I was not exactly alone at the beach… What’s next?! It’s the story and life of the Japanese swordsman Miyamoto Musashi. A book I stumbled on in a bookshop in London last Christmas. Detailed to the extreme, regarding information, it leaves me no choice but use a pencil on it, in order to underline sentences and make useful notes which I will discuss with my students later on… Another one was the biography of the German pilot “Bubi” Hartman (which I also mentioned in a previous text) that was a true eye-opener on History. No doubt, his life was so full, it could easily become a movie scenario… And last but not least, where would I be without my favorite “4wheels” magazine about cars?! Hm… it has a preview of the upcoming car exhibition in Frankfurt…
But what was the menu under other umbrellas!? What is it that people read? It is novels of course… and novels only! Tons of them! Unfortunately novels dominate the scene not only at the beach, but also in the metro, in cafes, in parks, everywhere… Don’t get me wrong here, this is not a critic, it’s an observation. I don’t see novels as a “problem” and I read, of course, novels too. But reading only novels looks like a dead-end doesn’t it? It transforms the act of reading into a “pass-time” activity… Since when do we have time to simply pass (or kill)?! Because, correct me if I’m wrong, I was under the impression that our time is limited, and of value…
A book is like a sword that cuts through ignorance and then becomes part of your knowledge.
But much like some swords, though they appear like swords in every detail, they can’t cut anything, because they are built for “safe” practice only or to be used as decoration on the wall…
November 29, 2009