Now

Good thing he never loaded grapenuts!

Before

With the exception of my love for family, and woman, would sell everything I own and park my old hide in a small cabin, Wyoming, or Montana, alone, except for a good bird dog, close to elk, deer, fish, game birds, and all the creatures that I love and admire, grizz too, civilization, which is to me, pissing away your life on nonsense.

My journey  though time, on a remnant of the beautiful landscape, of the west, seems normal to me if lived this way, would never be able to ask my family or woman to live this kind of life, they consider me crazed as is.

Would have my dearest friends visit, to sit by a fire with open beer, roasting wild animals, this gives me more happiness, and joy, civilization, or the state can provide, with the exception of my family.

I believe this was the inner voice that called me to invite you here, for the experience, to taste the life lost, living in your reality, I mean no disrespect, chance deals the cards, and I believe you have played your hand with exceptional intelligence and thought, we are alike in many ways,  I understand why you write, because insanity would follow if you did not, but you owe it to yourself to escape on occasion, I hope your writing becomes legend!

Looking forward to the stars, at night, along the Greys, with my friends, roasting meat, sharing what only mencan share, this primal force binds us, in a brotherhood few will ever

understand...

Your friend, Ishmael.

You and Shayne planted a magnet in my guts when you took me to those mountains under the big skies.

I have to return.

I am experiencing a countdown of sorts.

My lack of fighting and an increased focus on finishing the many nonfiction projects, has left me tilting toward insanity. I had forgotten why I wrote fiction and why I fought and trained. I thank the hoodrats and pitbulls for reminding me. Some days I have to get drunk just to get a nap, half the week I don't bother sleeping. The only thing that stopped the spiral thus far was getting back to fiction, hence the astral weirdness of the Yusef story.

Been training to fight again as a therapy. It seems I will be the only heathen showing up at the heathen versus Christian brawl in Pennsylvania next month, which is fine with me. One forgets how much the body intrudes inward. I'm dipping into darkness in the absence of combative contact. Maybe your grandson will get to re-kill me a hundred times with those airsoft guns and purge some of this.

Thanks so much for inviting me out, keeping the portal open and doing what you can to impart your ways. I feel less like concrete than I did before making the trip.

Your grateful Lowlander,

James

Fighting Smart: Boxing, Agonistics & Survival