WHAT I LIKE about my martial arts school is that the place makes sense. Dedicated. Simple. Monomaniacal. You're there for one purpose and one purpose only, and that's to learn the martial arts. Nothing else. Not like my life, which is utterly chaotic, or like my family, which is a band of lunatics. Everybody's family is crazy, I suppose, but mine is also big. Big and loony. A difference in degree can become a difference in nature. The whole world is nuts, and you can't count on anything from one sunrise to the next. You try and get things done and something else gets in the way that demands immediate attention, and while you're stomping out that brushfire another one starts someplace else and you rush over to it and start stomping before the first one was quite out, which means that sooner or later you're going to be back to the first one again, and you never actually get anything done. The school is a breath of mountain air, a draught of cool water. If I could, I would spend all my time in this island of peace dedicated to the arts of war, where everything is orderly because nothing else is allowed in. I believe I can tell you why Hitler was elected chancellor.
May 3, 1994
Know then thyself, presume not God to scan;
The proper study of mankind is man.
Placed on this isthmus of a middle state,
A being darkly wise and rudely great:
With too much knowledge for the skeptic side,
With too much weakness for the stoic's pride,
He hangs between; in doubt to act or rest;
In doubt to deem himself a god, or beast;
In doubt his mind or body to prefer;
Born but to die, and reas'ning to err;
Alike in ignorance, his reason such,
Whether he thinks too little or too much;
Chaos of thought and passion, all confus'd;
Still by himself abus'd, or disabus'd;
Created half to rise, and half to fall;
Great lord of all things, yet a prey to all;
Sole judge of truth, in endless error hurl'd;
The glory, jest and riddle of the world. - An Essay on Man (1733 - 1734) Alexander Pope (1688 - 1744)
3/17/99
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