Practicing Martial Arts

This weekend was two for two.

ONE

I've slid through most of my life without habitual physical confrontations, which I attribute largely to my demographic attributes. However, for two days in a row now, I've had the dubious pleasure of putting my training to use. In fact, the first thing I did at martial arts practice this morning was to ask my classmates' opinions about how I had handled an assault situation I encountered in a Berkeley park the previous day.

I was helping out the SF Mime Troupe by guarding their stage setup; they were doing back to back shows in the same park over the weekend. I had the late afternoon/early evening shift on Saturday. A white homeless guy saw me reading all by myself near the stage and started harassing me. I was more annoyed and angry than anything. I mean, I knew I was going to be spending time in a Berkeley park; of course I came prepared. Still, I didn’t want to have to hurt anyone.

I told Homeless to go away. He went off to sit with another homeless guy about 30 yards away, where he kept talking about me in a loud voice. His hapless audience – who had, until then, been napping in the sunshine – eventually got irritated (judging from his tone of voice), picked up all his stuff and left the park to his more irascible counterpart. A short while later, Homeless returned in my direction with a different homeless man in tow. They were headed directly for me as I sat on a bench near the stage, reading my journal. Homeless was talking loudly about how I needed company and how he and his friend were going to provide it.

All this took place in daylight in a park full of people hanging out on the grass or playing with their dogs, right near a playground full of children and parents. While I felt like I could effectively prevent things from escalating to actual assault given those helpful conditions, the insensibility Homeless demonstrated to taking such factors into account did make me think of him as more dangerous than his physical appearance would otherwise suggest. In other words, he might not know karate, but there seemed a good chance he was conversant with ka-ra-zy.

Ladies and gentlemen, I wanted to stand my ground. Dude was a sexually harassing, misogynistic asshole who was violating the sanctity of the commons and MOREOVER did not recognize me as a badass who would show him a thing or two about what women are really like. In order for the world to be a better place, he needed to be taught a lesson!

But here’s the thing. The journal I had been reading while sitting on that park bench was from ten years ago when my life was very different. I was basically reading about how much of an asshole I had been due to the fact that I thought I was right all the time. Even when I had actually been right, I had managed to significantly misread the situations I wrote about in the journal, and ended up paying the price for that. I know this because, of course, I know how the story turned out now! Back then, I just knew that I was right, and I thought that was all that mattered.

I train in Filipino martial arts and had at this point supplemented the items I was carrying on my person that day with items that I had put in my backpack that morning “just in case” and other items I always keep in my car and had retrieved from there. I also had the keys to the SF Mime Troupe truck parked a few yards away; when the volunteer coordinator gave them to me, she had said, “If there’s any trouble, lock yourself in the truck and call the police.” I decided those keys were my best weapon in the situation.

Going to the truck, getting in and locking the doors was sort of difficult. I knew that I was right and Homeless and his sidekick were wrong. It felt wrong to retreat, but it also felt like the right thing to do.

Once I was inside the truck, I realized another thing. I had been very angry at Homeless and, from a Buddhist perspective (I’m a Buddhist), you don’t want to let yourself be driven by feelings of anger. In this case, I had successfully not reacted to feelings of anger, but it dawned on me that this is the kind of thing guys, and particularly my martial arts brothers (because they are ones who care enough to make the effort) have to deal with all the time. It was a revelation to me, because when I get angry it’s mostly self-directed (which is a common Western female pattern).

TWO

So when we convened for our usual morning martial arts practice in a local park the following day, I was interested to get feedback from my training partners on how I handled the situation. The males immediately commented that this kind of slow-moving assault is not how confrontations happen between males; guys just walk up and hit other guys. There’s no slo-mo, there’s no stalking and talking, there’s no trying to hide violence behind the verbiage of intimacy.

Interesting, I thought. The day before, my focus had been primarily on not letting anger and/or pride drive my response. I wasn’t thinking as much about the gendered aspect of the situation, fraught although it was with gender power dynamics. I briefly wondered if telling Homeless he was exercising White Male Privilege would’ve made him feel better about himself and his position in society. It was Berkeley, after all. There was a good chance homie was a fellow sociology doctoral dropout.

We had a nice, late-summer-morning class featuring mainly wrist locks and stance drills. Towards the end of class the teacher put each of us through our paces on a six-count spada y daga (sword and dagger) drill. Spada y daga typically involves a short rattan stick and a large training knife, but we dispense with the knife so as to practice the trap hand instead. Not long before the end of class, an angry, older white male approached us.

We knew there was a Hostile Neighbor very upset with us for using the local park for our martial arts practice. Our interaction with him had started earlier in the year, when he began screaming at us from his yard across the street. The stick part of our practice made too much noise and woke him up, apparently. HN called the police, but after chatting with us the officer who responded to the call assured us that we were using the park legally. To be courteous to HN, though, we started delaying stick practice to the second half of class, typically after 10 am, and moved the class to a part of the park where hopefully the sound would not carry so much.

Today when the angry, older white male approached us, it was pretty clear this was Hostile Neighbor in person. He asked to talk whoever was in charge of the group. Me being always right, I’m thinking analytically, “Well, that’s either Rey, or I suppose me . . .” and then I start reading the situation. By then, we all turned from the drill we were doing to look at the guy, standing together. This is, after all, Filipino Martial Arts.

Hostile Neighbor started ranting, barely feinting at making a rational argument. In fact, his goal seemed to work himself up into a further state of quaking rage, and he succeeded. I’d seen the same thing years before when I took shelter with family members who turned out to have a secret history of domestic violence. Back then, I theorized that this kind of shaking rage was a precursor to actual physical attack, but I hadn’t stuck around to test that theory. I wasn’t particularly interested in testing it today, either.

There were enough squirrely things about Hostile Neighbor’s behavior in this encounter that I think we all arrived independently at the conclusion that he posed a real threat. For instance:

Instead of approaching our group directly from where his house was across the street, he took a circuitous journey around the park, indicating fear and anxiety, as if he wasn’t sure of the ground he stood on.

He asked to speak with the group’s leader (wait . . . Filipino martial arts groups have leaders? Come on! You must be thinking of Aikido!) but, instead of starting a conversation, he launched into a harangue. The only time he listened to what anyone else said was when he demanded to know where each of us lived, insisting if we weren’t residents of Pinole (the city in which the park was located) we didn’t deserve to use the park. HN being an angry white male and our group, reflecting local demographics, being diverse in terms of skin tone and cultural heritage, I couldn’t help thinking we might be talking to a Trompette. (Trompe (Fr.) meaning deceived, deception; Trompette being a play on words)

After several attempts to speak with Hostile Neighbor, we finally started telling him to go home. It seemed the best possible outcome. He began to walk away, ranting back over his shoulder. Then he took exception with one of us smiling, turned around and started walking back toward our group, verbally asking for active conflict.

I do not know what script was playing in that guy’s head, what twisted, dumbed-down, 21^st century version of James Thurber’s Walter Mitty. That some shred of logic was still working in HN’s head was indicated by the fact that when he approached the group again he walked past the teacher (1975 Lightweight Karate Grand Champion of the Philippines) and basically anyone who was tall and/or holding a stick to go chest-to-chest with the shortest member of our group. I know this because I was standing three feet away, flipping my stick. Seriously, dude? You think I’m not gonna fuck with you if you touch my friend?

Fortunately, we were martial artists, half a dozen people with some pretty significant training between us, which in this case resulted in doing nothing. There were no karate chops, no leaping kicks and or ki-ai’s. We stood, waited and watched as Angry White Male deflated his chest and went home, possibly to run a loving hand along the length of his gun cabinet. After a brief consultation, we decided that Meadow Park in Pinole had become too dangerous to use for recreational purposes.

It was just like the day before. Dude walks up full of incoherent anger. It’s messy and illogical and it’s not doing him any good, but if I have to hurt him I want the reason to be right. I want it to be a form of skillful means inspired by some bodhisattva who had perfected all the wisdoms and all the techniques and is also perfect in appropriate use of force. I want to be like Kanzeon, Kuan Yin and Avelokiteshvara, just whipping that frond of mercy out of a vase filled with the waters of compassion and waving it around to making stuff all right. But instead I have nothing, and can only get into the truck where at least it’s less likely I’ll harm another person. And next week we’ll be practicing in a different local park.

Internet Famous circa 1994

According to Google, when I can be distinguished from other people of very similar name I'm most famous for being acknowledged by Debbie Nathan in the forward to her book Satan's Silence and second most famous for . . . well, just type "Feline MPD" into Google. Apparently my article is still the first result. 22 years and going strong! Back then . . . well, say "PINE Is Not Elvis" and say it like you MEAN IT! Back then there were no tab characters; we had to type all our spaces by ourselves. It was terrible! At least PINE brought line wrapping, and somehow we all survived until html was invented and the first conspiracy websites went online. 

I was also into university tunnels and urban exploration, apparently. And of course intellectual analysis of the TV program The Prisoner. Such innocent days!

Possessed Dogs

Being fully awake and alert at 3:30 in the morning, there are a number of projects on which I could productively use my time. I will write about possessed dogs instead.

Dog #1

Four of us were practicing martial arts in the park, and by practicing I mean mostly standing around and talking (“tongue fu”). Every so often the teacher would demonstrate something on someone, one of us would grab a partner to try something out on, or someone else would test out a stance or strike. To any observer it would be slightly more interesting than watching grass grow.

A very tall young white man with head shrouded in a grey hoodie appeared at the edge of the park being led by a tiny pouf of a dog. People walk their dogs there all the time. This dog was particularly adorable. It looked like an ambulating hand muff (anyone remember what those are?) with two large, bright eyes. And when it saw us it went nuts. It stopped, it stared and started pulling on the leash. The tall, sleepy-looking owner walked along the edge of the park. As they passed by, the dog, its head on a swivel, gazed at us with rapt attention. You could feel it from yards away.

The young man passed by where we were throwing out our desultory punches and stances and started to exit the park. The tiny, bright-eyed dog would not follow him. He was straining at the leash back in our direction, still staring raptly. His owner paused to let him look. By now all of us were aware of this dog’s fascination. Someone commented he must have been a warrior in a past life. Although something along similar lines had been going through my head, it surprised me to hear this particular guy say something so mystical.

Now we had all stopped to look at the little dog who was so fascinated by us. I felt bad for it. It knew what martial arts was, it had found some people who were doing martial arts and it very, very badly wanted to do martial arts with them. But it couldn’t, because it was a dog.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why you should cease from evil and try to do mostly good: so you won’t be reborn as a dog who can’t do martial arts.

I called out to the tall young man that his dog wanted to take the class, he waved at us and then the dog accepted the fact he was just a dog right now and they went on their way.

Dog #2

We were in the same park, which is just down the street from where the teacher of our small martial arts group lives. One of his dogs had died the previous week, a dog I had known from being at the house either to practice or help out with carpentry stuff. Yuki was a very big, very happy, very loving dog, all white with round black spots on his ears. It was impossible not to like him, and he was very attached to my teacher. He was big, he was awkward, and he liked to hump my leg as I was using power tools but he was very, very lovable. However, he got old and died.

My teacher’s son, who had grown up with Yuki, was really upset and I questioned my teacher closely about his state of mind too. I know he and the dog had been close. My teacher grew up in a different culture than me but has always been happy to answer my questions about how he sees things compared to how I am used to thinking about them. He didn’t have a problem with Yuki’s death and told me exactly how it happened, with Yuki’s head on his lap. I wanted to cry just listening to his story. He was very matter of fact: “He was old. He died. That’s what happens.”

However, a week or so later we were at the park down the street from my teacher’s house doing our martial arts class as usual. Five or six of us were lined up doing various stances and drills. A pair of free roaming dogs trotted by on the sidewalk (unusual in this suburban community) and one, when it saw us, raced over to our little group with wild abandon. It greeted me like I was an old friend, leaping with joy, and then made a beeline for my teacher, jumping up and circling around him like crazy. It was definitely unusual behavior, but unusual behavior of a nice kind. The dog was ecstatic, jumping and licking at Rey, and all I could think was that Yuki had taken some existing dog’s body to deliver a final farewell.

We just kind of laughed it off. I probably said something about Yuki’s spirit saying farewell, but it was a very odd event and you couldn’t say anything for sure. In the end, the dog ran back to rejoin his companion who had remained outside the little park and they trotted off together down the sidewalk.

Dog #3

For the record, I am more a cat person than a dog person. But I guess you could call me ecupetical. (Ecumenical, ecupetical, get it? Never mind.) Several years ago and a different martial art school, I was sitting on a low wall outside the building chatting with another student before class started one evening. This was near a major route in a small urban community, so cars were going by and pedestrians were not unusual. What was unusual was some dog that came racing up to us from nowhere – I mean, came out of the dusk at full tilt toward where Zack and me were sitting talking on the wall waiting for someone to unlock the dojo.

It happened so fast I didn’t really have time to react, which is a hard thing to admit if you claim to be a martial artist. This was a young, strong pit bull that came out of nowhere, leaped up on the wall next to me, sat down and then leaned hard up against me with its whole body. It was extremely affectionate and happy, like I was some kind of long lost love. I put my arm around it, checking for collar and wounds. It was definitely wounded, but that bothered me more than it did the dog.

Long story I don’t even remember all that well now short, the young pit bull belonged to a local man and had gotten bloody probably climbing over the fencing around his yard. The dog had tags and when the dojo was opened and everyone arrived she was the center of a highly attentive Dog Rescue and First Aid Committee. Her owner was called and came by to pick her up, expressing great relief at finding her. I washed off the blood, because blood on the mat is not cool in aikido, and changed into my uniform.

I’ll never forget how she raced out of the darkness and pressed herself so happily and wholeheartedly against me. It was joy in the night, but a quixotic one. I desire to help all living beings, but all I got was this friendly, slightly bloody teenage dog to hug briefly.

Go Pokemon, Young Man

There's some famous phrase saying, "Go West, Young Man," which I guess meant that the land of opportunity, at least for white males, was thataways. I'm just mentioning that because we're on the internet now, and anyone younger than me probably doesn't get the outdated styling of this post's title.

In a related vein, I sometimes have dreams which try to convince me they're real. It turns out I'm just as sarcastic and cynical in my dreams as I am in real life, so even when a heavy hitter comes along I usually give things a sneer and then keep my own counsel. It's not that I'm disrespectful of dream life; I have a hard time tolerating bad logic and obvious cons in most of the realms I'm conscious of existing in. That being said, there are things that get automatic bows (a sign of acknowledgment and acceptance) from me, like talking cacti, talking tea-pot like objects that also walk, anything involving snakes, and of course the House, the Lord of the House and certain Thai monks. (And you, if you've rolled by.) But mostly I'm a highly suspicious and skeptical cuss and my dream philosophy is if you can't bring it, go home. There's a reason you're in a dream.

That being said, I had a dream about 15 or 20 years ago, just as the great unwashed masses were discovering the internet and poisoning it for the rest of us. It was one of those dreams claiming to be an alternate reality, only this one claimed to be in the future. A time travel dream. Back then personal websites hosted by something called geocities were common, because the clueless newbies were too dumb to learn about hosting and FTP (remember FTP?) blah blah blah. In the dream, I logged in without any apparent device (back then, think desk top towers and wired connections for contrast) to the location of my dream host, who was a prepubescent boy. Except it wasn't really him, it was what today we would call an avatar of him that did the greeting of visitors and directed them around the site. It was his own website, kind of like an interactive 3D Facebook page but also a fully immersive virtual reality experience.

Then the owner of the webpage inhabited his avatar and started talking to me directly. He explained that I was experiencing where technology would go in the future and that this was in fact a time travel dream. (Never had one before or since. Other planets, yes. Time travel, no.) I was lucid enough to ask him, once that reality feeling started to kick in, what the name of this technology was called. Maybe I could get in on the ground floor and retire to Hawaii like Zachary Fox. The boy said it was called "Gonemon" pronounced Go-noh-mahn.

I looked it up. It wasn't a word. It wasn't even close. There was gnomon, with a silent G, that is the thing in the middle of the sundial that casts the shadow. I tried different languages, but back then I was as yet unfamiliar with dream language and the sneer it has built in. (At least for me. Ya'll might have the Virgin Mary built in, but I came out of the shop with the sneer package. I actually saw a ;) in a pile of alien writing on another planet that someone else who claimed to be real was showing me.  I was like, "Apparently alien writing has evolved at least partly from Earth emoticons, how interesting and do you even have a clue as to what this one means?")

I have not yet done Pokemon Go. The main reason I probably will (from a non-Sue-entity account) is because it sounds, well, interesting and new, vaguely social which I know is good for me, and while it's not the thing I experienced in that dream, it's the first steps toward it. This is going to become bigger, spawn Facebook-like personal internet virtual reality experiences, and take over how people interact with one another via the internet. "Go-noh-mahn" was obviously Pokemon in terms of vowel shapes, with the initial P replaced by a G. I just hope the little brat who welcomed me to his virtual reality of the future wasn't me, because I really want to be a monk in my next life.

You heard it here first.

Casual Thoughts about Buddhism and the Paranormal

I only stumbled into the weird, wacky world of the contemporary Western paranormal because I love ghost stories and am apparently easily led by internet links. In real life, while I have some interest in esoterica and the paranormal, I have way less interest in those areas than I do in, say, deepening my understanding of Buddhist practice. At the same time, I recognize that for some people the necessity for understanding what paranormal thing happened to them or what UFO they saw is as fundamental as is my need for a Buddhist practice. Amidst the swathes of the paranormal world that I view as entertainment, there is that contingent who, insistent with their questioning, exhaustive with their research and/or dedicated to effective communication, make it an intellectually intriguing and rewarding arena for thought.

That’s what I think when I wear my Former Academic hat. Wearing my Buddhist hat, I indulge my longstanding interests in esoterica, etcetera by searching through various Buddhist scriptures for any reference to Others – ghosts, aliens, demons, gods – in search of an (unlikely) answer.

On account of the religious and political institutions of monotheism, in the West we have a long history rigorous dualism. There is one true god and one true church; the rest is evil, Other. The pattern was repeated even after the Enlightenment came and was followed by the Industrial Revolution and then the flourishing of big-S Science. Scientism replaced God, spirituality became superstition, and myth and folklore became epistemological slurs instead of words describing meaningful social competencies. Buddhism, however, comes from the half of the world that didn’t fuss with drawing those particular distinctions and positively bristles with gods, demons, snakes and monsters. (Some of whom, of course, are us.)

So can Buddhists answer questions about the paranormal, UFOs, big feet and more? Can becoming a Buddhist turn you into someone who can get the paranormal answers that no one else has? Such questions come up because it’s known that intensive training (meditation, yoga, qigong etc.) can result in various powers or abilities thought of in the West as supernatural, including chatting with Others. However, Westerners tend not to have the personal discipline to train so intensively or the structure of social institutions that could support such an effort. Moreover, special powers are traditionally held to be mere epiphenomena of training – something of no intrinsic importance that just happens along the Way. While they may seem magical, they can be misused just like love and loyalty, for example. They pose a real question to Science, but as experiences are just another bubble in the boiling pot of water that is a human life.

Yet there’s no doubt that in Buddhism the world is full of Others of various shapes and sorts. Because of the long history of Buddhism and of literacy in China and because I’m writing this in 2016, we have fantastic access to great scholarship and translations from original sources that allow English only speakers like me to understand various sutras (scriptures) and mantras (spells or prayers) in a way that was not previously possible. I don’t mean that we should understand this aspect of Buddhist literature to be empirically descriptive in an ontological sense. But it does reflect the centuries-long heritage of training by Buddhists. When I say that, I am thinking of my martial arts teachers who have trained much longer and harder than me. I have learned to listen to what they tell me; the consequences of not doing so are usually painful.

One traditional Buddhist teaching is that of the six realms a being may find itself born into, according to its karma: humans, animals, hell, gods, hungry ghosts or titans. Another I’ve already mentioned is that superpowers exist and can be obtained, but they're sort of like Kim Kardasian’s butt – fascinating, but not for more than a few minutes.

The Thai Forest Monk Ajahn Mun in the 20^th century regularly talked dharma with devas (some kind of disincarnate or non-human being) during meditation. His biographer, Ajahn Maha Bua, explained that there were terrestrial devas and celestial devas, differentiated by how far above the ground they lived. Reading all this made me wonder about spook lights and UFOs and the story of the Sky-Walkers from The Tower of Myriad Mirrors, a 17^th-century Zen spinoff from a classic of Chinese literature, Journey to the West. Recently I’ve been reading about the Shurangama Sutra, which in part goes into the various delusions one can have even in deep meditation. I’ll just leave you with Monkey in Chapter Three of The Tower of Myriad Mirrors:

Just as [Monkey] jumped up to go search for his master, he heard voices in the sky and quickly looked up to see four or five hundred people swing axes and using chisels to dig holes in the sky.

Monkey thought, “They don't have the look of celestial workers or ominous or evil stars. They are obviously people from earth, but why are they doing this sort of work here? They aren’t monsters disguised as men because I see no evil aura about them. Come to think of it, maybe heaven has grown extra bones and has asked a surgeon to remove them. Or maybe heaven is too old and they are chiseling it away so they can put in a new one. Or maybe heaven has been covered by a screen, and they are removing the false heaven for the real one. Or maybe the Milky Way is flooded and they are channeling away the excess. Or maybe they are rebuilding the Palace of Magic Mists and this is an auspicious day to break ground. Or maybe Heaven likes elaboration and asked people to carve a thousand and ten thousand lines to make a beautiful scene. Or maybe the Jade Emperor is thinking about this world and they are opening an imperial road so he can come down often.

"I wonder If Heaven's blood is red or white. Or If Heaven's skin is one or two layers thick. Or if there will be a heart or not when Heaven’s chest is opened. Or if Heaven's heart is slanted or straight. Or if Heaven is young or old or if it's male or female. Or maybe they want to open Heaven and let Heavens mountains hang down and surpass earth's mountains. Or maybe they are opening the mouth of Heaven to swallow the Underworld. But even if any of these things are true, no one on earth could have such power. I'll just go up and ask them then I'll know for sure."

I love how Monkey – think a Buddhist Wiley Coyote – wildly ratiocinates a la an Andrew Basiago or Grant Cameron while still desperately grasping after the keel of rationality. He comes up with all sorts of unlikely post hoc explanations for selectively chosen data sets in a way that people who follow ufology are all too familiar with. Yet in the end, he seems to rein himself in and decides that he should just find out, instead of speculate.

The Professor and the Abductee

Let me start by issuing a global apology right now. Things happen. This was one. The poem is The Walrus and the Carpenter by Lewis Carroll, which was also put into music by Donovan. But I blame Paratopia.

The sun was shining in the sky

Shining with all his might;

He did his very best to make

The UFOs smooth and bright.

And this was odd, because it was

The middle of the night.

The moon was shining sulkily

Because she thought the sun

Had no respect for UFOs

When all was said and done.

“It’s very rude of him,” she said,

"to say there were no nuns!”

The sea was wet as wet could be,

The sands were dry as dry.

You could not see a USO because

They had forgotten how to fly.

The only things were pelicans

Against an endless sky.

The Professor and the Abductee

Were walking close at hand;

They wept like anything to see

The aliens try to land.

“If they don’t crash those noble ships,”

They said, “it would be grand!”

“If seven researchers with seven slides

Researched it for half a year,

Do you suppose,” the Professor said,

“That they could get it clear?”

“I doubt it,” said the Abductee,

 And wept a bitter tear.

“O Aliens, come and float with us!”

The Professor did beseech.

“A pleasant session, a pleasant regression,

Along this starry slope.

We wish to probe your memory,

And test your telescope.”

The biggest Alien looked at him,

But never a thought it sent.

The biggest Alien winked one eye

And shook its outsized head

Meaning to say it did not choose

To play weird games in bed.

But other Aliens hurried up,

All ready for MPD.

Their eyes were slanted (but that was not at all a racial thing), their faces expressionless,

There shoes were clean and neat –

And this was odd, because, you know,

They hadn’t any visible feet.

Four other Aliens followed them,

And yet another four;

And thick and fast they came at last

All through Disclosure’s doors –

Hopping through the frothy speeches

And scrambling to the fore.

The Professor and the Abductee

Walked on a parsec or so

And then they rested on a famous landing site

Conveniently situated close to a conference hotel;

And all the little Aliens stood

And waited in a row.

“Time is irrelevant,” the Professor said,

And so is history;

We can pretty much make up whatever we want

And call it ufology

Or prove the sea is boiling hot

And aliens have MPD.”

“But wait a bit!” the Aliens cried,

“Before we download our binary code;

For some of us have Rh- blood,

And all of us are ancient!”

“Don’t worry,” said the Abductee.

They thanked her much for that.

“A pair of panties,” the Professor said,

“Is what we chiefly need:

DNA and fluids too

Are very good indeed –

Now if you’re ready, Aliens dear,

We can begin to research.”

“But not on us!” the Aliens cried,

Turning a little grey.

“Regression hypnosis would be

Inadvisable methodologically!”

“The night is fine,” the Professor said.

“Did you see that UFO?

“It was so good of you to share

Your experience with me!”

The Abductee said nothing but

“Will I be in the book?

I wish you were not quite so deaf –

My agent is on the hook.”

“It seems a shame,” the Professor said,

“To play them such a trick.

After we’ve misrepresented them

And falsified their data.”

The Abductee said nothing but

“The truth will come out later.”

“I study you,” the Professor said,

“I deeply telepathize.”

With sobs and tears he sorted out

The ones whose stories fit

Holding his Lam-owl spectacles

Before his dimming eyes.

“Oy, Aliens!” said the Abductee,

“You’ve run the needed tests.

Shall we be shapeshifting back to Zeta then?”

But answer came there none –

And this was scarcely odd because

They’d made up* every one.

*Almost

Rh Negative Folkore

We all know the UFO field is intellectually crippled (present company excepted of course), and the rain of inanities that continues to fall from the lips of UFO pundits about the Rh negative blood factor as being somehow linked to manifestations of the phenomena is just more proof of this. I admit to getting exercised about this issue; the whole Rh neg thing gets my panties so twisted that I doubt even Dr. Jacobs could straighten them out into one of his books. It’s a sad statement about the intellectual desert that UFO/phenomena studies finds itself in that even the people I hold to be the most informed and interesting thinkers in the area make themselves sound like idiots when talking about the Rh blood factor. Possibly they feel forced to address the bizarre approach ufology takes to the topic because Nick Redfern recently published a craptastic book on the topic. If that’s the case, then Redfern has done a much greater disservice than bilking me out of ten dollars; he’s promoted complete bullshit to the top of the paranormal agenda.

In the age of Trump and Brexit, it may seem quaint to get upset about something like the Rh negative factor being used to resurrect racist and eugenic agendas. If America is about to leave behind even putatively mythical values like religious tolerance, freedom, democracy, etc., why fuss about long-ago bankrupted pseudoscience being used to prove that one race is somehow superior to another? Don’t worry; we’re not talking about intelligence this time—now it’s paranormal sensitivity. The compass needle has swung; it used to be that natives and savages were considered to be more sensitive and superstitious, but with the Rh factor mythology, whites (with a little admixture of Cherokee thrown in for good measure) are now reclaiming direct access to the gods and the privileged knowledge that entails.

Is the Rh factor mythology gaining popularity in ufology as a measure of ufology’s waning, as nativism is gaining in white national communities unable to adapt to changing economic and demographic circumstances? However, it’s pointless to ask that question until people recognize the Rh factor myth as a myth, or trope, or meme, or narrative – whatever term your generation uses. Which involves recognizing it as NOT FUCKING BASED IN ANY SCIENCE WHATSOEVER.

Sorry. Had to pause and unknot the knickers once again. How anyone can get through a college or even high school education and not have enough basic knowledge to see through the whole nativist Rh factor argument is just beyond me. Like I said, though, even the best and the brightest in the paranormal have swallowed it hook, line and sinker with only a couple nervous, giggling hiccups of references to “well, we don’t want to be racist now; we’re not being racist, are we?”

And yeah, they were all white guys. In a way, you can’t blame them; how would they even know? It’s like telling a fish about water. A fish obsessed with algae: “I can feel it all around me, and sometimes I can see it; I KNOW it’s out there!” and you’re like, “And there’s this matrix it travels in, it’s called water—” and the fish is like, “That was a blue one! Yesterday I saw a green one that was smaller.” “The thing about water is—” “Holy shit! Was that a purple, round one? Right over there by my nest? Holy fucking shit!”

Setting aside the subtexts, though, how anyone with a basic education in science can give the Rh negative mythology any time of day at all is just beyond me. Something like Project Core that collects self-perceptions of Rh status as data points isn’t a problem; the problem is people who don’t seem to have the intellectual equipment to think critically about applying a not very difficult idea from the world of science to ufology and ufology’s confreres.

Originally I got exercised about this topic after listening to an episode of Where Did the Road Go. I felt like writing something to express my opinion but didn’t want to be just another asshole on the internet. Later, going about my business while listening to an old time radio podcast, I heard a character protest to cop/hero Danny Clover (Broadway is My Beat), “I am from Rh negative blood, Lieutenant.” That was 1949, folks. Very, very close to the period when blood antigens were becoming better understood and in particular the all-important Rh factor which affected childbirth and blood transfusions. If this mention in an old radio show is any indication, inchoate claims of superiority due to possessing Rh negative blood factor appeared in popular culture almost as soon as the discovery of the factor did. If that’s true, than UFO pundits are just the latest in generations of dupes and we’ve got a very interesting case of scientific folklore to investigate.