Greetings James,
I am just a small unassuming ant in the rotting intestine of society. Would like to think of myself as a wandering odinic barbarian, but hey, who can say? Long time reader here and more recent customer. Been buying quite a bit of your books. And reading them as well. Love to read and find I'm the only one in my small circle.
Some of my interest is in the pugilistic arts. Me being a bouncer/bodyguard. I've...seen things. Been training arts on and off since childhood, won't bore you or try to impress you with details. I took a break after entering the maw of the factory known as college. Then after getting out of the brown-nosing bureaucrazy called higher ed, and after floating around doing various jobs, started seriously training all types of combatives, and have been for a while now. Again won't bore you with the details of what I train but boxing is definitely the base. Would prefer wrestling to be added to base but the class availability is limited in my area.
Was injured in July 2023, damn hammertoe type injury, so had to wait until April 2024 to get it fixed with surgery. No training in between, and had to mend after. Had a skewer on my toe. Been back to training since last December and am starting again with just my old friend boxing. Will get back to all the other stuff, but need to get my cardio back up.
Anyway, it is fortuitous that I stumbled upon you and your writings. Another man that enjoys fighting, history, enjoys the written word, and who writes? I was looking at one of Aaron Cleareys books, on Amazon, and the website suggested one of your books (Ishmael Recollections). Clicked on it. Then it showed more of your books. One thing led another and the rest is history. Well Amazon did something right, crazy ain't it.
So, I myself am a big fan of Gene Wolfe, Sci-fi, fantasy, history, etc. blah blah blah.
Just wanted to say that your books on fighting, especially the books on boxing, like the Solo-boxing one, have helped immensely in getting me back to where I need to be. On top of that I know tons of people in all the different arts I train, and to say some are deluded would be generous. Especially when it comes to weapons and predation.
More on such nonsense in a later email, hopefully. Finally was able to bring myself to write you, so it should be easier from now on. What in the flying hell was I gonna say to Graphomaniac? What could I say? Eh, just let it flow, I said to myself. Plus life and all its attendant bullshit prevented me as well.
Sincerely,
Oscar
Dear Oscar,
Such ether letters from men among Evola’s ruins are an honor—I live with one now, a man in a high place, generous beyond compare, who works hard and lives aloft and yet cannot abandon for the world that has spurned him his sense of earnest care.
In your letter I sense a man light with a perspective of social scale, naturally placing himself as microscopic and interior to Leviathan’s rusty scales. Your letter has helped affirm this writing work while I am emerging, hopefully, from a crisis of eye sight and illness. I must train 4 hours to be able to sit, stand or walk. Lately it requires 14 hours of daily sleep to keep the right eye from boiling out of its burning socket. Speaking pains the eye. If not for your email here, I would have went for 15 hours of sleep. For a man who spent three decades sleeping 0-4 hours a day in order to write and train, this is like death, as if being a shade lingering in advance in a not yet corpse-bearing tomb.
Thank you so much for inspiring me to write from this ear-wailing wane.
Solo Boxing was an attempt to frame the art in a self-training context, with a variance on bio-mechanical descriptions from The Punishing Art and the Broken Dance. I am glad it is useful.
It sounds as if you are over 30 years and under 40. I do not know. Injuries tend to hit fighters in their 30s. Since age 30, I have spent a total of 16 months crippled, unable to walk, stand, lift, bend, etc. In my working life I missed 11 months of work in 38 years. I have been able to come back from these injuries, largely by never stopping the training process. Whatever motion is left to me, becomes the foundation of the new physical me.
There will be injuries in your future and I pray that you will use them as rungs on the upward ladder of serenity, which is the ultimate gift the Giver grants to those of us who fight against corrupted and intentionally ireful aspects of His creation. That we have been permitted the will to contest life with wicked forms and within depraved social norms, is, it seems to me, a blessing granted to those souls who are not slaves to the chained body.
I suggest for you, to begin developing your own boxing and weapon doctrine from unfavorable postures:
-Back to the wall, weight against the vertical surface, basically fighting against the ropes.
-Seated, focus on knife, flashlight, baton, hand stick and common table objects, on trapping and pulling in foes and climbing them with your hands to get at the second actor.
-Prone combat shifts and strikes and traps from the floor with a focus on the knife. Just as my back failed me six times for 16 months from age 21 thru 61, [0] expect a return of the old foot malady and be prepared with work arounds. I have rarely felt better then when I chased a full buck Negro up a Baltimore City alley on crutches. To be even marginally useful and still blessed enough to project your will into this sordid world is one of Eternity’s rare gifts for those of us consigned within Time to this meat space.
The best to you, Oscar.
Notes
-0. I never missed time from work due to injury until age 30, just grunted through.
