2018, a hardback draft with unnumbered pages

My friend, head coach and doctor, David, has published an integrated collection of his essays on martial arts training. These 25 meditations on using the various warrior disciplines of older societies as a method of coping with the lingering physicality and lurking psychology of our limp-wristed modern world is not a collection but an integration of 15 or so essays via the glue of 10 or so linking essays.

My favorite chapters are A Warrior’s Code, Mushin, chapters 3-4 on ego and combat, Sweep the Floor, Violence of Action, Head Meet Stick and Fighting Without Fighting.

David, who is also a professional song writer with tens of thousands of dollars in sales to recording concerns, has interspersed some of his pleasing verse throughout the 130 page hardback. As a student of three of Bruce Lee’s assistant instructors, it’s clear that the author is practicing an Occidental-Oriental fusion, which places him on the horns of the cultural dilemma and likewise positions him for the defense of what is, in today’s world, the indefensible: men preparing to maintain their physical autonomy by the use of force—with no sin other than pedophilia currently more repugnant to the typical modern person. Below is an insightful passage:

“The evil, inherently violent man abuses pacifism and utilizes it to his advantage…violence of action is a switch by necessity that is turned on and off…”

David’s entire thesis of disciplined self-instruction and preparation for combat in a society purposed to negate and invalidate all combat, a society which ironically through these measures places the inherently violent man in a position to prey upon pacifists, is, in this reader’s estimation the baseline credo for waging a culture war from the perspective of guerilla masculinity.

Like Water is an alternately friendly, ranting and lyrical tribute to David’s teachers, training partners and fighters, with the centerpiece his seven-stanza poem wherein “The braggart relinquishes his stain,” a testament to the conflicted art that every fighting man practices behind the stained baby bib that is Civilization.