Author: J. Thorp

The Second Third, Week 20: Good Shootin’

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Blogger’s Note: Sorry about the ad in the clip above; I couldn’t find an ad-free clip online.

Emma Rose turned nine today. Nine years old already, and I have friends and family whose tween and teen daughters are noticing — and worse, being noticed by — boys. I was thinking about this past year, and Emma getting her ears pierced on her own dime, and cutting her hair to donate to Locks of Love. She’s growing up faster than I’d like.

I was thinking about what a beautiful, bright young girl she is — what a tremendous blessing she is to us, and how none of the boys in the area better get any ideas — and a variation on the old “cleaning the guns” scare tactic occurred to me. I’d like to invite the young man to the range with me — my treat — just to get to know him better. And in my Second Third, I hope to master both the shooting tricks shown in the clip above from A Fistful of Dollars. I have the weapons for the job.

Bet I wouldn’t have to say a word…

The Second Third, Week 19: A More Visible Faith

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Some of you might know that I have a peculiar love for ancient or seemingly outmoded codes of honor. It’s the reason I love Jim Jarmusch’s Ghost Dog, in which Forest Whitaker waxes philosophical as a pigeon-keeping urban assassin who lives atop an abandoned building, listens to hip-hop, works for a mid-level mobster in a dysfunctional crime family on the verge of bankruptcy, and strictly follows the Hagakure: The Book of the Samurai. Two old, impractical (and completely implacable) codes of conduct crash headlong, and the result is a weird, violent, foul-mouthed, and (to me, at least) strangely compelling movie.

Film critic Roger Ebert opened his review of the film with, “It helps to understand that the hero of ‘Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai’ is crazy. Well, of course he is.” I, unlike Ebert, am not so sure. Here’s a man who grew up alone on the streets, with nothing to believe in and no one to look up to; who is nearly killed as a boy and is saved by a generally cowardly criminal in a moment of sudden grace; who finds a way (or in this case, a Way) to survive, to rise above his weaknesses, to earn respect, and to pay back the man to whom he, in a very real sense, owes his life. The way of the samurai is not easy, but I don’t see it as irrational. Self-sacrifice is difficult, but it can be beautiful, can’t it? Perhaps his obedience to this ancient Way is what passes for beauty in his broken world.

When I launched my old blog, Yield and Overcome, I was actually reading books like Hagakure and The Art of War. I was doing a fair amount of “kung-fu writing” and adopted the web handle “werdfu” to underscore my freelance avocation. But in the years since, I’ve watched our government and economy go dark, even as my own family and faith have grown bright as a beacon in the black. “Yield and overcome” seems too soft and passive a philosophy for tough times, too gray for this cold twilight. So in my Second Third (as promised), I’m unveiling a new look and name for my blog: Archangel Stomp. Sound like a dance, and it is, in a way: imagine a mosh pit with the Devil lying prostrate at the bottom. Most of the old posts are there, and I’ll still be fighting the Good Fight as best I can. Only this time, I’ll be doing so more intentionally as a Catholic and a believer.

Perhaps obedience to this ancient Way still passes for beauty in this broken world.

Life Stinks: An Early Spring Poem

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Blogger’s Note: It’s a rare thing that I post twice in one day, but this has been percolating in my head for a few days now. Then earlier today, my friend at the Tales from the Domestic Church blog posted on Facebook that the spring air outside her office smelled “delicious.” We’re along way from flowers here, and though I appreciate the early (or earthy) signs of spring as much as anybody, decay doesn’t smell delicious. It smells like BRAAAAAINS!

Decease and Persist
Grey clouds spit chill drizzle on blackening snow;
Bare trees creak and clatter in scattering breeze.
Last leaves of past autumn tear, tumble, and blow —
And something undead stirs below.

The preening of songbirds begins in this cold.
Spring cleaning takes root in the richness of rot.
Aroma of flesh-fertile humus and mold —
Wet corpse-fed worm-fodder of old.

A fragrance of vagrants, impure and unclean;
Stiff leavings of winter now soften and spoil.
It rises but slowly, it’s smelt before seen;
The reek gives new meaning to green.

From ’neath this foul blackness we watch it arise;
Once-dead fingers scrabble from shadowy grave.
The zombie Earth lurches, blinks dirt from its eyes —
And stretches pale limbs toward the skies.

As swiftly the drifts turn to droplets and drown
What passes for life beneath Winter’s hard thumb,
With mindless persistence and sunblinded frown —
The dead rises up from the ground!

A Wee Bit Irish?

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Blogger’s Note: The soundtrack to this post is above. You can about imagine a bare-knuckles brawl a la The Quiet Man, can’t you?

It’s St. Patrick’s Day, which in the U.S. means wearing o’ the green and drinkin’ o’ the beer. (Unfortunately, too many folks are drinking green beer tonight, instead of the real deal: thick, black, and pleasantly bitter.)

I’ll confess that I’m wearing green today. Am I Irish? Depends on how you count. I’m half Polish (my mother’s side: Galubenskis and Koczwaras), and the rest is a mix. According to my late grandfather, Duane Thorp, we Thorps are English, French, Dutch, maybe a little bit American Indian, and Scotch-Irish or Scots-Irish, which, according to at least one account I’ve read, means I’m descended from some really ornery Scotsmen whom the English settled in Ireland to drive out the Irish Catholics in the 1800s. Even in the 1950s, when my father was a boy in the Thumb of Michigan, he recalls an older relative — a bare-knuckles brawler of some repute — having a few drinks and going looking for Catholics to fight.*

So am I even a wee bit Irish? Well, tonight I won’t be drinking green beer, or black stout, or golden Irish whiskey, because it’s Lent, and I’ve given them up until Easter. Instead I’ll be celebrating with the beautiful Lorica of St.Patrick. These Thorps are Catholic now — and more Irish than ever!

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*Of course, the Poles in the area — including the Galubenski family who lived next door to Dad, and their daughter, whom he married — were Catholic.

The Second Third, Week 18: Sleep

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Yale has a tradition called Feb Club — as I recall, every night of the shortest month of the year (and the long denouement of winter) someone hosted a party somewhere in the general vicinity of Yale, and everyone was invited. 28 parties in 28 days. Intensity in ten cities (or at least three: New Haven, New York, and Boston). Or so I was told.

See, I never did the whole Feb Club thing. Why? Wasn’t much of a partier, not enough disposable income, and to be honest, I need my sleep. I also only ever pulled one all-nighter in my entire academic career.* I lived by the creed that it was always better to be half-studied and well-rested than the opposite.

People always say eight hours is ideal, but I don’t know anyone who gets more than six or seven hours a night on a regular basis. I also don’t know any adult who sleeps soundly through the night. (I’d pay for a couple hours of the drooling unconsciousness of my children!)

I also know certain people who thrive on less than eight hours. But not me. Eight hours is perfect. Four to five hours can work for a night or so if I’ve got something to pull me through the next day: an exciting road trip, hunting, that sort of thing. But after six or seven hours — my typical amount — waking is like swimming through molasses. I’m dead tired all day. And that’s most days.

I could attempt to train my body to do more with less, but I don’t want to. As I recall, the Feb Club slogan used to be, “You can sleep when you’re dead.” I was never less interested in accelerating the process. In my Second Third, I want to get to bed earlier. And sleep just a little past sun-up. Because those stolen minutes are the best.

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*It was the last anthropology paper I ever wrote, as a senior, for a professor I’d had for two or three other classes. I didn’t have a topic until the night before. He gave me a B-, not because it wasn’t well written or accurate, but because I apparently regurgitated a lecture from one of his classes two years earlier.