June 30, 2009
Non ferir!
Not long ago, a cardiac patient in a cardiac support group I was leading told of his response to a recent incident: He and a female friend were on the plaza at Lincoln Center after seeing a performance of Verdi’s opera “Il Trovatore” when a car nearly hit the woman. She ran after the vehicle, which was slowly moving away, and slammed the trunk with her rolled up program. The driver emerged from the car hurling expletives in her direction. The patient then hit the driver with his cane. The driver shoved the patient into a fender, at which point, the patient insisted, he had no choice . . . It was no ordinary cane he was carrying, but a beautiful 19th-century model with a sleek, sharp sword concealed within. He then insisted that the driver “apologize at swordpoint” in front of a small crowd that had gathered. The characters in “Il Trovatore,” he added, proudly brandished swords.
—Robert Allan, “When the Heart Pays the Price of Anger,” Happy Days blog, NewYorkTimes.com, June 25, 2009
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I wonder if there might be a valuing of justice–even poetic justice–that is not angry. I think it is possible to fight well without being angry, and in fact that the best performance of fighting is done when anger is not allowed into the process. In the words of an old samurai: One must gaze at one’s opponent as if viewing a distant mountain. (Source? No, not David Caradine….)
We have one like this. I used to imagine all sorts of scenarios for it, when I was little. Except it was really too big for me to be casually leaning on my cane/sword, when the Bad Guy came along. We did, however, also have a toy shotgun from my dad’s childhood. They understood their verisimilitude back then. I used to imagine scenarios where there would be burglars and I would round up and um, talk to them.