Large Fierce Mammal

“Death Dealer” by Frank Frazetta

For those of you who aren’t privy to the machinations of Canadian politics, our government is attempting to push through a piece of legislation that is widely held by the thinking population, including us LFMs, as a dangerous and intolerable assault on the rights and freedoms of Canadians, all presented as another one of those “for your own good” propositions. Put forward as Bill C-51,  with the working title of the Anti-terrorism Act, the government argues that we are “… at war …” with ISIS and that Canada, “… is under siege …”, thus justifying spying on the interior of the house in case an Ant gets in, instead of finding and rooting out the Ant hill.

Speaking for me and mine, we grow tired of childish parliamentary arguments over what “combat” means, and the persistent doctrine of incremental warfare where the time tested one called “shit or get off the pot” should really be dusted off and put back to work. It seems to us that if an enemy is so vile and unconscionable that its every moment of existence represents a threat to all that Canadians hold dear, then shoring up the ramparts at home is time and money less well spent than sharpening our swords and readying our ships to make the bastards sorry they ever attracted our attention.

In the end, turning the life of every Canadian into a government assigned fish bowl, and unleashing a pogrom, represent extreme ends of a complex but not exactly unheard of situation. One that, unfortunately, is at risk of being exploited in the former extreme. In Truth, if the threat to Canada really is that heinous, then our moral imperative is to turn it into a grease spot as soon as possible. If not, then my advice would be to shut up and go home, because in that case we have loyal people in harm’s way, faithfully carrying out orders to commit, or at least facilitate, violence of doubtful efficacy, all free from any sound reason to be there.

I will have more to say on this subject, but for now I offer the poem that follows, echoing sentiments uttered in The 13th Warrior:

Ahmed Ibn Fahdlan: “Have we anything resembling a plan?”

Herger the Joyous: “Mm-hm. Ride ’til we find them… and kill them all.”

Mark Twain said, “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it does rhyme.” This poem does neither.

Take the Fight to the Enemy

By LFM

“The sky is falling!” came the cry.
“Enemy at the gates!” echoed from the hills.
“War! Fear! Doom!” boomed from the ramparts.
Ears ringing, I left my work and made haste to the wall.

Mounting the stair to the battlement, I stood
And looked across the plain, the sweet wind in my face.
Upon the land below, cattle grazed, and men moved about their business –
Some good, some bad, most neither and both.

Of the Dread Enemy spawning warnings so dire,
None could be seen, and yet every act of mayhem is Theirs.
In the streets, Their name is spoken in whispers hidden in shadow
For fear that to name Them is to invite being marked as one among Their number.

The walls have ears, but none are Theirs, and few notice
That the spears of defense have come to point ever more inward rather than out.
Soldiers are sent with great fanfare to deal pinpricks hailed as triumph –
Muzzled War Dogs best kept leashed if they are not to slake their ravening thirst in blood.

In lofty halls, forked tongues entwine the words of conflict,
At once invoking the name of War whilst insisting the Soldiery
Stand upon the field for reasons otherwise.
That a Soldier exists as the bloody finality of his Nation’s tolerance is forgotten.

An Enemy so offensive yet so weakly pursued,
In concert with the noble quest for avoidance of offense.
So empowered that we must fear our own children, and throw open our homes
To the benevolent vipers sent to lurk protectively beneath our beds.

That the Enemy hath power to change the hearts of men
And turn them to ignoble cause seems strange to me,
For have there not always been those among us who would
Cleave to any cause offering excuse to release whatever particular evil they hold dear?

Standing there upon the wall, the wind stirs my hair
As I ponder how such an evil is granted the power of cowering fear
Instead of a righteous outward vengeful flood with but one goal –
To ride until we find them, and kill them all.

It’s said that you must never suggest to a woman that she might be pregnant unless there is a baby coming out of her at that very moment. In a similar fashion, I would advise that while survival demands recognition of the potential defensive and offensive use of any object, however mundane, as a weapon for or against your continued happiness, suggesting to an otherwise mannerly and devilishly handsome Gentleman that any implement he may have upon his person, and may deign to make visible, might brand him a scoundrel or a brigand is, at the very least, more than a little rude, and deserving of correction.

Here’s a fun story.

Back in the September of 2013,  Mrs. LFM and I dropped by the house of a Friend on the way back from a day canoe trip in the woods, and so I was openly wearing the usual bush gear with the likewise usual sharp and pointies. We live in a very rural hunting and fishing heavy environment, so nothing I had on would have raised an eyebrow if I stopped by a store on the way home. Not that I flaunt it, but one must understand one’s audience. At any rate, there was a young woman visiting who had come with a man my Friend works with, and who was, let us say, young beyond her years. I recall that her name was Dominique, and I was soon to learn  that she had embraced the implications of that moniker to a degree marvelous to behold.

Upon being introduced to me for the very first time in her life, and sharing with me the status of invited guest in another Man’s home, this ever so young woman immediately and pointedly expressed her concern about my being “armed”, thus presenting me with the option of indulging her in one of “those” conversations. She wasn’t shocked or panic stricken you understand, just opinionated in a dangerously and rudely misguided sort of way. The whole thing was made all the more interesting considering the venue – my Friend has an extensive sword collection and has them prominently displayed all over his house.

Now I’ll skip to the entertaining part.

Normally I’d have cut the visit short and to the point, but I was game in the moment and I said, “So the simple visible presence of my safely sheathed knives bothers you. Let me ask you this; what if I’d come in wearing my favourite tweed dinner jacket, with all this still present but hidden underneath. Would that be better?”

She replied, “Well, ignorance is bliss, right?”

Ah Goode Reader! Never were words spoken that so perfectly encapsulate the incipient doom of society! For my part, after a derisive snort and a pause to sip the whisky my Friend had so generously placed in my hand, I replied, “No. Ignorance is most certainly NOT bliss.”

Mrs. LFM was there, at the time so pregnant she was ready to pop any second. We knew well before then that we were expecting a boy, and I finished with this – “We’re having a little boy soon. Let me use that to illustrate how the mere presence of an object is not necessarily a representation of intent. Let’s say you visit us after he’s born, and as you’re leaving you notice I’m filling the baby size bathtub. Nothing positive or negative about the event, I’m just doing it, but the filling tub and the naked baby, are in plain sight as you leave. Now enlighten me – can you tell from my possession of a baby and a filled bath tub if my intention is to give him a bath or drown him?”

That was a show stopper. Of course, there was the inevitable argument that knives and bathtubs aren’t the same, to which I brought her back to the matter of intention – a bathtub used to willfully kill in such a scenario is, by definition, a murder weapon, but it has no power to become so absent human intention. It was then there came a crystalline moment of blessed silence, Goode Reader, before she suddenly changed the subject to her new found preference for lesbian sex, and I can tell you from long experience that’s a remarkably common segue from disquieting talk about perceptions of certain implements as “weapons” where no justification exists.

Coming forward to today, I’ve never set eyes on the young woman again, but I feel safe in saying this – while I sincerely doubt she’s any smarter, she’ll at least avoid me when we might end up alone together and a body of water is nearby.

We all know that children naturally imitate adults, and how important it is to make sure that whatever it is your kid sees you doing, it’s something you can safely shape into play that’s gauged to their present level of understanding. There comes a time when the child’s development imparts the ability to grasp that there are some things only adults can do, but until that day, we must exercise creativity, wisdom, and stealth.

This is my first real foray into writing song lyrics, and I picture this performed by a man with a drawl in a sort of country rap delivery to guitar or banjo accompaniment. Any LFM loyalists out there who would like to give it a go will be most welcome, and your efforts will certainly be posted here once received, so be warned! Takers?

The song tells a story based on the interest SFM Viktor is showing in my training in the Blade Arts, and my philosophy of Fathercraft in general. He has taken to picking up one or two of our rubber training knives, which in proportion to him are more like swords, and wielding them in imitation of what he sees me doing. His performance of some techniques is incredible, and all of it is simple imitation with over the top encouragement from Mum and Dad whenever he does something truly outstanding. Of course, no hitting the Dogs, who are never anywhere nearby when I am training anyway, and no hitting any other person who isn’t prepared and inviting you to do so.

Yeah, He Did

By LFM

My little boy child likes a watchin’ me train
With my sabre and épée, my cudgel and cane,
But the big rubber Bowie really lights up his eyes,
And to work on his swordplay, well it’s just the right size.

Yeah, it is.

Last night I was trainin’ while he sat on the ground
When he picked up that Bowie and he waved it around.
I saw how he held it in a fine sabre grip,
Then he set up a back cut and he let the blade rip.

Yeah, he did.

Well my eyebrows shot up and I let out a yell,
My Wife came a runnin’ to see what the hell.
Our little boy usin’ that knife like a sabre –
The laughin’ and the clappin’ nearly put her in labour.

Yeah, it did.

I fenced him a spell ’til he started to tire,
And his eyes started droopin’ from the warmth of the fire,
Then we put him to bed with a smile on his face,
And his wasn’t the onliest one in the place!

It still ain’t.

He slept through the night ’til an hour from dawn,
I heard the bed creak and the sound of a yawn.
More rustles and knocks sped me spry up the stairs,
And I laughed when I saw me the state of affairs.

Yeah, I did.

Well, he’d got into the bin where the trainin’ blades live,
And he got him a Bowie and he grabbed him a shiv,
He met me at the baby gate armed to the teeth,
With a full mornin’ diaper hangin’ down underneath.

Yeah, he did.

Now some of you are thinkin’ this is right off the wall,
And what a little boy needs is toy trucks and a ball,
But don’t you be thinkin’ we’re violence prone,
A blade ain’t the only thing needin’ a hone.

No, it ain’t.

Our boy’s got toys of the usual kind,
But don’t forget playin’s ’bout shapin’ the mind.
A boy needs shapin’ ’til he stands as a Man,
And his Mama and Daddy, they’ll do what they can.

Yeah, they will.

All times of the day, a boy watches his Dad,
And he’ll copy that man, all the good and the bad.
So whatever the man your boy grows up to be,
You can say to yourself, “Well, he got it from me.”

Yeah, you can.

A boy is a boy, but for only so long,
And there ain’t too much time fer to play out the song.
A Man owns what he does and he navigates strife
Finer tempered and sharper than any old knife.

Yeah, he does.

So I’ll teach him to think and I’ll teach him to fight,
How to Love and to build, and to put what’s broke right.
I’ll teach him to drink and I’ll teach him to curse,
And I’ll know in my grave that he coulda did worse.

Yeah, he could.

I recently came across an article published a couple days ago on a Gizmodo blog called Indefinitly Wild, and more specifically, one by Wes Siler titled What Knives You Can Carry Where In The United States. I don’t live in the United States, but notwithstanding that I found it to be a pretty good article with wide application, well written and with a lot of insights that are far too rarely understood in today’s world. For example:

“A knife is a tool. As evolved apes with opposable thumbs, we’re pretty good at grabbing stuff, pretty good at pushing stuff and even pretty good at twisting or pulling stuff. The thing we aren’t really good at is cutting stuff. At least not without putting it in our mouthes (sic), which leads to all sorts of other problems. A knife gives you the ability to cut stuff and carrying one with you gives you that ability in a package that’s accessible almost instantly and with a single hand. Carrying one is just an essential part of being a capable human (Emphasis added).” ~ Wes Siler

A capable human – AH! There it is! – by concise definition meaning (at least to my mind) not one who would rather tear their lunch open with their teeth or the tip of a Bic pen than be in the same room with a sharp blade, regardless of size. Well said Mr. Siler. we are indeed on the same wavelength.

Now if I am to be honest, and with no disrespect intended, this otherwise good article falls afoul of an iteration of a widely espoused misconception that for some reason seems impossible to exorcise. One that I would like to highlight now, and not in the spirit of taking Mr. Siler to task. Nay! Rather in thanks for giving me this most splendid opportunity for public education.

“But, yes anything can be a weapon. Here’s instructions on how to fold a newspaper into a weapon. A ballpoint pen can make a fairly effective impact weapon. But in the hierarchy of stuff you’d grab to fight someone, knives aren’t really high up there. Not if you know what you’re doing (Emphasis added). The trouble is that, while they are capable of inflicting fatal injury, they aren’t capable of stopping someone quickly; the fatality tends to come later. That’s a bad combination for any weapon, potentially exposing you to much liability and doing so without saving your own butt.” ~ Wes Siler

Let me repeat that sentence I highlighted above just to cut it out of the herd so we all can take a look at it – “… in the hierarchy of stuff you’d grab to fight someone, knives aren’t really high up there. Not if you know what you’re doing ….”

Now, at this point, people who don’t know me “in that way”, and possibly even a few who do, are thinking that my problem with the sentiments expressed in that excerpt lie in its discounting the knife as a candidate, “… in the hierarchy of stuff you’d grab to fight someone …”, and most particularly with the implication that the knife would never really even be considered for the purpose, “… if you know what you’re doing ….” . To those I would say you are only partially right.

I’ve addressed the efficacy of the knife as a tool of conflict resolution, even by those who do, in fact, know what they’re doing, in previous articles, and I would direct your attention to two in particular:

• Dark Sentiments 2011 – Day 6: Cold Steel; and
• Forsooth, Is’t Better to be Shot or Stabbed? THAT is the Question!

But I would particularly like to highlight that there is a particle of accuracy to Mr. Siler’s reference to the knife not necessarily being the first choice of those who know what they’re doing. Let me illustrate with a fictional scenario.

It’s a beautiful spring day, and I’m standing at my ironing board, hot iron in hand, getting the wrinkles out of my kilt. So I’m probably bare assed but what of it? Nearby, on the sideboard (lacking a laundry room I’ve set up the ironing board in the kitchen don’t you know), lies the chef’s knife I was just recently using to slice the onions that are now fragrantly frying in my weighty cast iron frying pan, on my belt (which I’m wearing in spite of being bare assed) is my 10 inch hand forged Bowie knife that I have trained with daily for years and moves like an extension of my body, and opposite that, the equally familiar .44 calibre hand cannon that my concealed carry permit allows me to take everywhere with me. As to that last bit about the hand cannon and the carry permit, we don’t have that sort of thing here in Canada unless you’re a REAL good friend of the Prime Minister, which I am not, but this is an illustrative fictional story intended for educational purposes, so just shut up and listen.

All of a sudden, the kitchen door bursts open as two miscreants charge through in a cloud of profanity, bent on robbery and who knows what else. In a room full of options for the inflicting of fear, pain, and even death, what do I do?

Sad statistics show that many people who train with a particular defensive weapon – like a gun – will abandon more immediately available defensive options in favour of a delay inducing reversion to what they hold in their minds as their go to option. In this I find similarity to the way people die in theater, night club, and restaurant fires because they trample one another trying to evacuate using the same door they entered through, routinely ignoring much nearer alternative exits.

So speaking for myself, I’d start braining those motherfuckers with the hot iron before they had a chance to take a second breath, and work out organically from there. Thus endeth the lesson, and thanks again Mr. Siler.

Taking me back to my earlier piece called Great Pith an’ Moment, today’s poem was also inspired by actual events that played out in their dark drama only the nicht … eh night … before last. While this sort of thing has been anticipated for quite a spell, it has only just happened, to a Father and his wee lad all of 19 months in age.

A shower ensued, for all involved.

Th’ Nicht We Shite th’ Bath

By LFM

Wee Viktor was a shiter,
An’ a shiter’s what ‘e was.
‘E’d shite fer reasons usual,
An’ sometimes, just because.

T’was just last nicht, in bath ‘e was
An’ Father pulled the plug,
‘Is wee bum spoke a bubblin’ fart –
Th’ drain a mournful glug.

An’ so it came to pass th’ lad,
Tho’ rescued from th’ goo,
Was found transformed from freshie fresh
To smellin’ like the loo.

The Knight Errant , Sir John Everett Millais, 1870 (Click to enlarge)

“The Knight Errant is a large painting in which the figures are almost life size. When shown at the Royal Academy in 1870, it was accompanied by a text of Millais’s own invention which was printed in the exhibition catalogue: ‘The order of Knights errant was instituted to protect widows and orphans, and to succour maidens in distress.’ The moonlit scene apparently depicts an act of medieval chivalry in which one such Knight errant, clad in armour (based on examples that Millais had seen in the Tower of London), is on the point of freeing a woman who has been stripped and tied to a tree. The tree, a Silver Birch, was commonly identified with the female gender in the nineteenth century and was sometimes referred to as ‘Lady Birch’. Birch twigs were also traditionally used in flagellation. The woman’s clothes lie on the ground to the left and her molesters, assumed to be robbers by one critic, are seen fleeing the scene in the top right corner of the canvas. There is blood on the Knight’s sword and the torso of a dead man is visible behind him.” ~ The Tate Gallery

Today’s poem was inspired by a couple of things, but most notably by the painting that appears at the top of this piece. In decades of close examination, I’ve always felt the knight’s sword to be poised in a moment of hesitation, and his facial expression to be reflective of lascivious second thoughts. Ah well, that’s probably just me, and … well, you know how I am. (more…)

Only slightly tongue in cheek snow melt prediction map for Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, courtesy of CBC Meteorologist Kalin Mitchell. (Click to enlarge)

“For my own part, I’ve been around long enough to know the Winter just past as the normalcy of my childhood, when we kids were playing “king of the castle” flinging snowballs in defence of battlements built atop the lofty snowbanks thrown up by the plough that cleared the school parking lot, and this all before Christmas break. I remember hiking in to fish lakes and stillwaters when the blooming of May Flowers, the swarming of Blackflies, and a few deep and persistently slow melting snow drifts, all coexisted in the deepest woods of a Nova Scotia May.” ~ Nature’s Jocularity

Under the headline Maritime snowmelt may not happen until May, says Kalin Mitchell, that worthy explains the inexact science of predicting how long it will take for Nature to reverse the pasting She gave the Maritimes in the comparatively short interval from the start of February until now. Considering what I wrote yesterday, and quoted above, you will understand that predictions that fall near the middle of May come as no surprise to me.

In that vein, I have another picture for you that I took just yesterday morning in my back yard, after the previous day’s sun and slightly above freezing temperatures had succeeded in revealing the top inch or so of my chopping block. That would be the dark oval object in the middle of the picture. This inspired the poem that follows.

Chopping block revelation, 1 April 2015 – a foot and a half high, and sitting on top of a two foot retaining wall. (LFM photo – click to enlarge and make the snow look even deeper)

Deep Thoughts

By LFM

Here you see my chopping block
Revealed just yesterday.
It’s not been seen in all the months
That snow and ice held sway.

It stirs my heart to see it now,
Its brow above the snow,
But n’er forget that this decrees
How far we’ve yet to go.

Full eighteen inches doth it stand,
This chopping block of mine,
Atop two feet of garden wall
Of which there’s still no sign.

The rising Sun reveals jewels of ice tipping the branches of Maple trees at the LFM Enclave on the first calendar day of Spring, 2015. (LFM photo – click to enbiggen)

“Oddly enough, this poem was born from an intention to write something with a pretty beginning that set the reader up for a funny punch line involving the way Spring unveils just how much frozen dog shit has been slumbering under the snow and ice in our yard, and that blessed day when Nature does Her Big Reveal. As it turns out, today was the day.” ~ Spring

With those words, I introduced my poem titled Spring back on 6 March 2011, and that you might want to read or reread before going any further. I wrote it when the arrival of that season was still consistent with a decades long perception of normalcy that had spawned a sense of Natural entitlement, at least among the Human population of the World. That has now been more or less put to rest as we plod snow-shod toward a very different Spring. One that will require the melting of more than 6 feet of snow depth in some places before the true measure of Winter’s privation can be revealed in the form of remains left behind by those things that simply couldn’t wait any longer.

For my own part, I’ve been around long enough to know the Winter just past as the normalcy of my childhood, when we kids were playing “king of the castle” flinging snowballs in defence of battlements built atop the lofty snowbanks thrown up by the plough that cleared the school parking lot, and this all before Christmas break. I remember hiking in to fish lakes and stillwaters when the blooming of May Flowers, the swarming of Blackflies, and a few deep and persistently slow melting snow drifts, all coexisted in the deepest woods of a Nova Scotia May.

Dark thoughts for the introduction to a decidedly undark bit of verse, inspired by the serendipitous sighting of an oddly shaped Dog turd, but that’s the me you all have come to love, so here’s today’s rhyme.

Nature’s Jocularity

By LFM

A warming breeze blew through my yard
And showed me something funny.
A turd the melting snow revealed
Looks like a choc’late bunny.

The hair referred to in this poem was particularly glorious in this morning’s sunlight.

One Red Hair

By LFM

Since years agone, this time appeared
An auburn hair upon my beard.
A present from my Mother’s side,
And not a thing I’m wont to hide.

Instead, I’d rather raise a glass
To ancestry that’s come to pass,
And bless the day the Celt appeared
Who left this trace upon my beard.

“No man is an iland, intire of it selfe; every man is a peece of the Continent, a part of the maine; if a clod bee washed away by the Sea, Europe is the lesse, as well as if a Promontorie were, as well as if a Mannor of thy friends or of thine owne were; any mans death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankinde; And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee.” ~ John Donne, Meditation 17, Devotions upon Emergent Occasions

Dark Sentiments 2014 – Home Invasions spoke of one example, drawn from personal experience, of the inevitable need to draw the line. Now, as Mrs. LFM and I are newly returned from our cellar and dealing with the aftermath of a late Winter onslaught, I offer this brief verse in memory of the recent fallen.

It Tolls for Thee

By LFM

Last night in my cellar,
A Mouse and two Moles,
Discovered the answer
For whom the bell tolls.