Notes from the Dojo and Fluffland, Sept 20 2025. (Patreon)

Hello loves

Mid-weekend-melt with the kid and the house is abuzz with sleepovers and Ash-pals. It’s wonderful and exhausting and the air is starting to dip and bite, the sweaters are coming out at night. Getting firewood ready. I deeply love this time of year, the summer-fall cusp. The crickets are fading. Still barefoot weather, but the planes overhead start to sound sharper and brighter. You can literally hear the difference when the temperature drops. My ears know the seasons.

…….

The dojo….and the state of my life and the state of my country, all interswirling. I have some notes from Jiu Jitsu. I never don’t.

I didn’t cry today and Ash did great. The metaphors in this practice are almost too overwhelming for my poet-brain to digest in any given hour and I wonder how any artist manages to get past the distraction.

Defend, then stabilize, then attack.

Do not aim to harm. Aim to neutralize.

Do not stay standing up if your attacker is on the ground.

The lower person is more powerful.

There is a reason they’re aiming at the comedians.

If you knock your attacker to the ground, you gotta join them there, or they’ll sweep you to the ground in a second like a rickety old dead tree.

There is no point in trying to submit your attacker when they have the weight of their body on you, when they are atop and crushing you and have the upper hand.

You cannot go on the attack from a position of weakness. You’ll just exhaust yourself and give your precious energy away. Get out. Get away. Get out and away.

Get out of danger first.

Keep your guard up.

Then work on the rest.

You cannot be everywhere at once, people.

Get out of danger first.

….

Also, to balance it out: sugar.

From grades 1-5, in Lexington Public Schools, you could opt out of the $1.25 hot school lunch and get a peanut butter and dough sandwich instead. Much like my son, I hated all foods, so I ate a peanut butter and fluff sandwich pretty much daily and, know, # I turned out ok so I’m just saying.

Ash and I were both yesterday years old when we found out about the existence of the Fluff Festival in our own Somerville, MA, and I gotta say it was GOOD TIMES and Ash tried fluff for the first time in the form of a fluffed utter sandwich being sold for charity and it went over as expected. Now I have one more battle to fight in the sugar department but given the state of the nation I really do not give a flying f at the moment.

Fluff forever

Go Boston

Go World

Enjoy whatever while we are alive

And yay Sabrina, thanks for the invite.

Also, Ash is obsessed with stranger things; IYKYK

I love you all.

Next week, much more.

Xxxx

A