While driving home from training:

“James, since sparring with “King Kong” [James of the North} and receiving this cracked rib, I fee like I finally have some skin in the game. I’m more confident. The shadow boxing is clicking, I’m starting to stress less about getting hit by you and think more about what I can do to you—going on the hunt as you say. Now, I was wondering, since you have experienced so many injuries, in the past, has this effected you positively or negatively when it came to navigating Baltimore’s crime space?”

So Spake Portland Joe, taking me back in my mind through my 38 years working and 4 years visiting Baltimore.

This is a fascinating question about how some injuries bring out the rabbit in your soul and turn the Bantu-hunted, guilt-haunted world into a cast of hungry foxes, cats, coyotes and wolves, while some injuries bring out the beast in your soul.

In retrospect, as I review my various training injuries, I note that most brought out the beast, that I would arrogantly stride amongst the savages as a miniature Tarzan with broken fingers, fractured forearms, black eyes, and even debilitating back injuries and rib injuries. These latter injuries I compensated for by carrying knives.

Just like MMA fighters usually fight hurt, I knew, that due to my hard and constant sparring that I would be hurt in someway when attacked by hyenadon tribesmen. Sparring hard while hurt became an important component of this prepping. Even severely sprained and shredded ankles dd not make me hide or shy away as I envisioned falling into the gripes with my attackers and dragging them to the pavement with me as I stabbed and bit my way up their lags and body.

Walking Baltimore after 25 concussions did nothing to diminish my confidence, not of victory, but of the stabbing and gutting of my conquers as I was shot or stomped to death.

Only one injury brought out the rabbit in my soul, the torn hip rotator. This was the injury that caused me to get fat. The fatness as much as the debilitation caused me to become less aggressive, less savage. That injury had me in constant agony and the bloating up made me less tough. I knew that a hard push would just send me down.

When the Soul Patrol rolled up on me on Sefton, I was unable to get up curb and had to stay in the gutter as I drew my knife.

When Eddie and Arsinio wanted my umbrella at Glenoak and Norhern, I knew I was dad in the water and would have to stab my way out.

When Salt and Pepper tried to mug me at Glenoak and Pine, I yelled, for only the second time in my life, the bitch in my soul having been found.

When the two giant Nigerians came on me after I interrupted their slave girl abduction by dragging my lame foot, at Old Eastern and Eastern, I knew I was helpless.

This all happened in 2017 as I limped about, the hunters smelling the rabbit in my soul. It reminds me now, of the old English stick fighting tradition of fighting with whale ribs. Head shots were good, but leg shots were banned. It was acceptable to kill but not lame your opponent. There is a deep truth here, a tribal recognition that lack of ambulatory capacity makes us less of a man and that walking is part of our developmental structure and the door to our autonomy.

Perhaps our brain washed society is so because people no longer walk but sit and move in machines.

I finish with a quote from Don Quotays in this regard concerning an instructional walk to a coffee shop with a 7 year old girl:

James,

Reading the dialog between you and young Emma, it reminded me of Aristotle tutoring Alexander. Who knows what this young lady will do in time?

Don Quotays