Battling Toward Peace

After the machete dance—after the bonfire and the drums—he took us to a secret place and threw us in the river. When we emerged, grinning and steaming in the moonlight, we took a knee and he gave us our belts. The black represents a filled page: in the old days, young warriors wore a single white belt which they never took off but to bathe and sleep; by the time they finished their training, the blank page was scrawled with grass and dirt and blood, and no spot of whiteness remained. Christians call it kenosis, emptying the self; Zen masters tell you to “empty your teacup.” It comes down to the same thing—you achieve mastery by the way of being humble, and graduation is only a commencement. Just when you think your work is complete, it starts. And your second birth, like your first, transmogrifies by the way of water and blood.

When I was 43, I was diagnosed with level one autism, formerly called Asperger’s Syndrome. When I was 25, I earned my black belt: the first thing in my life I had stuck with to the end (beginning). When I was 18, I entered the University of Alabama and flunked out after one semester; joined the Army and was kicked out before I finished Basic; joined the Navy, finished boot camp, and spent seven months in Pensacola studying cryptology before washing out with an OTH (other than honorable discharge) for indolence, untidiness, insubordination, and above all, being a general all-around shit sandwich, as they say. I spent a week at a skete in California—an Orthodox monastery in the mountains, haunted by looming redwoods and ululating peacocks—helping in the kitchen when I thought I should be levitating and quippily casting out devils. Then I hitchhiked north, spent a few days in jail, and ended up drinking and bumming my way around the country. Even hopped a train once, in Seattle: look, Ma, I’m a real live hobo!

My older friends are generally horrified when I tell them my tale; the younger ones generally think it’s awesome. It sounds awesome. There are phrases I can now honestly use (“Yeah, the last time I was in a street fight,” for example) that my 17-year-old self would be ecstatic to hear uttered aloud. But the reality is damp and moldy with unwashed socks, Boone’s Farm Wine, and the chirping of cockroaches in the trestles of the overpass you’re sleeping under; with hunger for everything, anger at nothing, crumbling self-worth, perpetually anguished parents, and of course the grubby paws of filthy old men who like ’em young. (#MeToo, I’m afraid.) But the point is, I didn’t seek out homelessness to grow in wisdom or some such thing. I fell into it because I couldn’t keep a job, and I stayed in it because it let me see the country on a $0.00 budget.

And don’t get me wrong, it had perks. At least, for me it did. Because the stress of figuring out how to heat water for Ramen noodles in the bitter Ohio snow is a stress I at least understand. Trying to balance a cash register, use a power tool in front of my boss, operate an office phone with a dozen blinking, chattering extensions while customers and coworkers glared and tapped their feet—these things gave me panic attacks, exacerbated by the fact that I didn’t know they were panic attacks. I thought I just had a horrible temper. I thought anxiety was something for crazy/weak people. Real men just sucked it up and drove on.

Now I’m a janitor. I come to work and do set tasks every day. There’s a written schedule, and I understand my duties. I’ve got a brilliant wife and two beautiful daughters, Sonya Magdalena and Rebecca Eowyn. (Yep! Tolkien nerds.) Learning about my autism not only changed my present life, but put my past in a completely new light.

But one thing hasn’t changed. As a kid, I loved Kung-Fu Theater. I loved watching ninjas and samurai. I watched Storm Shadow kick a tank to pieces on G.I. Joe and just assumed you could really do that. I’ve never not loved the martial arts, and it’s been a strong, pure thread running through every phase of my life, as far back as memory goes. My big brother Pat used to lurk behind the front door and pounce on me when I came home, and we’d rough-house for God knows how long, till eventually he’d hit me too hard and I’d cry. But my God, I adored my big brother. After my failures in the military, a sodden weight of shame hung like a yoke around my shoulders for over half a decade. When I earned my black belt, I finally felt I’d gotten my honor back. When I was absolutely shattered by the first girl I ever loved, my cousin—a principal at a small K-5 school and a fellow black belt—created a children’s self-defense class in the gym. Over the next few years, we produced three junior black belts of our own. It got me through the maelstrom and the void. When I was assaulted on my way to work one night while rocking the graveyard shift, the skinny kid with glasses made his Van Damme-wannabe high school self proud, incidentally proving to his own satisfaction that Jiu-Jutsu is still relevant in the 21st Century, even outside the Octagon.

For inner purpose, I write. For inner joy, I play with my little girls. But for inner peace, as much now as ever in 44 years, I pick up an Escrima stick or drop into a horse stance, and the very breath in my lungs becomes pneuma, spirit, qi. The bounty of the water runs down my face; the Earth rises staunchly to uphold my soles; my heart becomes patient fire. Now that I know what’s been “wrong” with me all my life—now that I have children of my own to teach—the harrowing years of training are finally at an end.

Now I am ready to begin.