Tracks In The Sand

So where did this all start, all this interest, on my part, in esoteric disciplines?

For most people, martial arts is something you do after you see your third Jet Li movie. It usually comes from a deep seated desire to be able to open up a can of whupass on any future "bully who kicks sand in your face" and maybe, just maybe, get the chicks to take notice. As to yoga and Buddhist meditation, that seems more often than not to be on the path of ennookiement by the guys who gave up on trying to impress the cheerleaders and started hunting the hippie chicks.

Am I being cynical? Not really, just honest about the mind of the adolescent and post adolescent male. In the interest of full disclosure, I took the Fraternity / Military path to sexual nirvana, concluding early in life that the path of the alpha male, more often that not, while beset on all sides by the slings of same sex competition, greatly improves your chances of getting lucky on a Saturday night.

If anything, the past twenty seven years only reinforces that opinion.

So what was it?

Simply, a book.

Not just any book, but a Science Fiction Book. (gads!)

It was the day, at the age of 16, when I walked into a book store and picked up Dune, By Frank Herbert.

Dune chronicles rise of a religious leader in a human universe set some 30, 000 years in the future. I will not try to begin to describe the plot or explain the world that Frank Herbert created in this blog, it is an impossible task. If you are interested, buy the book ( or for a synopses, get the mini series on DVD, the movie sucked). The story is dense and layered with concepts and symbols and themes on history, evolution, the nature of humanity and human existence. It explores what it means to be human, both the mortal, and the infinite.

Many things from that work stuck with me, but the most important was his emphasis on Human Talents. Herbert dialed much of the technology out of his universe and replaced it with extraordinarily trained humans. His Bene Gesseret were adepts at nerve and muscle control, lethal martial artists and almost superhuman in their powers of observation and deduction. Starships were navigated by specially trained and bred navigators, computers replaced with people who were deeply trained to function as computers.

Herbert's primary characters, the Bene Gesseret Atreidies, were magnificent, not because of what they were, but because of how what they were made them who they were. Herbert's work painted a vision of humanity, of humans that I wanted to be, humans that pushed the limits of what it meant to be human, trained in ways that gave them a level of awareness that was profound and captivating and fully alive.

I have dabbled with that path ever since, though it took a crisis, my own gom jabbar, to finally get me onto the path. Late, but better late than never.


Lilly asked a good question. " how do you maintain muscle tone on a diet that sounds very vegetarian. " ( I paraphrase). The answer is that it is not really vegetarian. I do eat a fair amount of lean protein, chicken and fish. Also, low fat milk and yogurt, so it is pretty balanced. The key is to dial out the sugars, simple carbs and a lot of the fats, and replace them with very complex carbs. Muscle stays, but the fat stays off.

Also, for those who have been following, Wife gave birth today to her first and my youngest, beautiful baby girl, hence forth to be know as Baby Girl.

Mother and Daugher are doing great.

Life is a magical trip!