Introduction: Love and Kung Fu

I am at a bread restaurant, doing the floating office thing. You probably know the place. Almost rhymes with the last name of the guy who plays the cat on the ogre movies. Yep, that one. One cup of coffee buys air conditioning and free wifi for a work day if I need it.

It's not all flying purple monkeys and rose gelatin, however. Getting rent paid, sometimes at all, is a challenge. Sometimes I can't wait for the zompocalypse, where survival will be harder, but simpler. Kill zombies. Find food. Find shelter. Rinse and repeat.

I started this whole blog thing with Trip the Light Fantastic bit, but really, just getting through a day can be the challenge. Summer of 2010. It's the future, from much of the science fiction I've read, and I gotta say - the future kind of sucks. No Jetsons air cars. No peace or prosperity. Greed and idiocracies are the rule du jour. Rampant suckology.

Following are the items on my mind:

Love: Having someone who loves you is amazing. Again, not all lemming and scotch cocktails, but it is pretty amazing. It helps that she's hot. And sweet. Like those really good sweet chili tortilla chips, only better. Hot tamales. Mmmmmmm- Hot Tamales.

But that's not all about Love - those zany Greeks had several different kinds: agapé, eros, philia, and storgé. The beloved above has most of that built in - to one person. Cool. But there are some other types not truly covered here, perhaps because they are covered in other greek words - pathos for passion, for example.

There is something that happens when I am in front of a classroom, teaching students art, or programming, or some aspect of graphic design - it is a kind of love, but a different kind - similar to natural familial, or storgé, but of a different kind. Taking students, as my father put it once, into the Hall of Knowledge, and sometimes of Skill (a different kind of knowledge), is an honor and a privilege, and whenever I can sense that happening, see lights going on, see skills developing, there is a kind of passion for the art and craft of creation that arises in the air, almost palpable, in the room. Invocative. Evocative.

Also, I really like being in front of people, talking.

Kung Fu: The actual translation of Kung Fu is, roughly, knowing what to do. It means something like being trained - your whole body knows what to do. This is where we get the idea - where it enters the West - martial artists from China knew what to do to defend themselves, and they called it Kung Fu. The common Mandarin term "Wushu" more correctly defines the concept of Martial Arts. While studying Chinese Martial Arts has been something I have greatly enjoyed*, I take the expansive term Kung Fu for developing knowledge and skill in whatever it is you do.

Love and Kung Fu:

Love, in all of it's variant forms, and I DO include Pathos in this, in the precise notion of Passion FOR something, for doing something, and Kung Fu, in its expanding concept of Knowing What To Do, and Kung Fu, when taken together as a maxim, give one the guidance needed, and the understanding of what the obligation required, for the Aristotelian Megalopsychos, the Great Souled Person. When I die, I would like to be remembered for giving the world this phrase: "Love and Kung Fu."

H. Todd J. Moore, Sr.

2010, July 9