Anger despair and violence : taming the mind, training the hands

Thich Nhat Hanh wrote a poem with the title : "Call me by my True Names" ~ perhaps Larry can find it for us. With this in mind I offer the following blog........ " Angry Hands"

The first time I heard a handgun shot was at very close quarters, less than 20 feet away I'd say. Boston 1981.
After our show finally opened, the assistant electrician and I went out dancing. We were sitting at a small parisian style cafe table at the edge of a tiny dance floor. A commotion at the entrance, a very slight scuffle, then the shot.

We dropped to the floor under this tiny table. I was alarmed but didn't feel that I was in any real danger. The shot was not meant for either one of us. Just one shot. This was Bostons' underworld, another strange market place, I thought.

Theatres are often close by such shadows. Drury Lane in London for example ~ when I was working there it was IRA pipe bomb time. We went through three long runs with that ~ Good Companions, A Little Night Music, Billy. Only by A Chorus Line had we stopped checking under our cars and under the hood, every time, before turning the ignition. During those years we always crossed the road rather than walk past a post box, which was a favourite depository of home made bombs. Yet in all those years I never actually saw a gun (the British police did not carry them), nor did I see a bomb explode or encounter any harm other than the daily mental exercise of sustained caution.

Boston and New York made me ever more cautious. I escaped Hells Kitchen by going to Boston. At least here I was not afraid to walk out at night (foolish child!) ~ until the shot.

Under the table I sensed a containment of the issue. The door opened again, this time hustling people out. The shot, I guessed, had missed since there was no screaming. I glanced at my friend and said " get up - let's dance - we need to bring everyone back to normal." He looked at me petrified. I got up and he of course scrambled to join me, trembling. We simply began to dance.

One reason I went into theatre as a career rather than stay with teaching 'Drama' in middle schools (as I was trained to do), was because our schools were so dangerous. I taught briefly at an all girls school in South London where the girls were searched upon arrival and their knives confiscated. London 1972. Knives were the weapon of choice : quick, quiet and very personal. These girls scared me and they knew it. One day one of them picked me up by the throat and slammed me up against the wall with my feet off the ground. How could I teach Shakespeare here? I quit. I ran away to the real deal! Funnily enough, ten years later the property master of our big Broadway show did the same thing in a moment of psychosis and had to be hauled off me. Roughed up but never truly harmed, I am a fortunate one.

I have not seen a street gun since Boston, nor a knife, nor any other weapon but an angry pair of hands. Those I have often seen.

Angry hands ~ even without a weapon they can cause great harm. With a weapon those hands become efficient at that. With a knife (or a box cutter) it is up close, silent and personal. With a gun it is more overt, noisy and perhaps easier, due to the long distance of the bullets' trajectory. The hand that pulls a trigger does not feel the warmth of blood running. With the ability to spray one's emotions through a device that does not need you to think or think again, mayhem is let loose. Massacres by individuals happen more easily with explosive weapons because the anger in their hands can't stop the explosion of adrenalin, it can only express it.

When you don't have to take your finger off the trigger, either to re-load or to fire again, then you are no longer in control, unless you are trained to do this for the purpose of real war. We see most of our armed combat people in masterful control of their weapons, taking orders and remaining within the bounds of an institutional system : police, national guard, the armed forces. Without this container there is likely to be much less discipline and far less responsibility for outcome.

We are not going to be taking people's guns away. The NRA has somethings right. The second amendment stands. Yet we could ask if it is really fulfilled.

If we exercise our Right to bear arms then we must also recognise our duty to do so Responsibly ~ within the framework of a militia.

No one under drinking or driving age can own a gun, though many youngsters are introduced to guns through parental guidance - (sometimes parental foolishness). I live outside the house of a very good family man and his fifteen year old son. G. spends hours playing violent video games and has a number of BB guns which he shoots with his friends across the road from our home. They are 'playing'. He likes to wear old army jackets when he goes out to play. He also plays clarinet, let's hope the music wins, it might.

I have talked with him a little. It occurs to me that some might find it really thrilling to shoot a gun. I really think it must be, to let your hands hold something dangerous, to load it up, point it at some live or lifeless target and pull the trigger, again and again. It must set up a real adrenal rush far beyond hitting cans with a sling shot.
I know it is strangely liberating to pound ones' angry fists against something to express rage. I chose a car. I really don't think I could ever hit a person. I can get angry though and that used to go badly. Now, when finally tweaked enough, I throw something. My hands still move toward expression (or is it release?) of rage.
The car I pounded upon had to be sent to the body shop when I was done. Just my small, bare, angry hands - no bat, no weapon, just anger raging through my hands. I remember. That's when I turned myself in ~ to the monastery. I needed an institution, not a lock down, not a mental asylum, but a framework, a schedule, a container to hold me while I wrestled with my demons. I knew I had to control myself, to take responsibility for my actions, to tame my emotions. It was those emotions that fed the actions and I was very upset.

I have spent the last thirty two years dealing with this in so many ways, deeper and deeper til the anger, the rage is calmed. It rarely bursts forth now, but it does. I throw a glass, I slam the door. My teenager is still able to get enraged by weird painful stuff. It doesn't last now, the anger, it passes up and through my body as fast rising heat, then it is done. It does not possess me anymore.

I went to a monastery, an institution that helped me gain control of my mind, my breath, my emotions and my hands.

Since we are so subject to arising anger, and since we do not have the right to take guns away from regular folks, perhaps we need to look at the beneficial effects of an institution when it comes to learning how to use and respect these weapons. Anyone who wishes to own or use a gun at all when they are of age, after high school, could do so within the container of the National Guard.

I think that is the right 'militia' for us to consider here. One years service in the National Guard could teach the disciplined use of guns, respect for these dangerous tools, personal conduct, civic pride, discipline and awareness of the tools of the Armed Forces.

It might even be possible to imagine some kind of college aid after this one years service. Without this training there would be no gun ownership. After this training all guns would be registered, licensed, insured and put into a data base as all our cars are. Every year every gun would get checked just as our cars do. Everyone owning a gun would have to do eye tests, health disclosures, written tests and carry an "armed" ID. Just think, more jobs here!

This would not mean fewer guns, but they would be in safer, more responsible hands.

Guns are made to kill. Hammers hit nails, guns kill. Yet when guns kill children, women, strangers, people who unwittingly and unknowingly enrage others, then it is not the gun that kills really, its the anger, the rage, the hands that hold the weapon that kills.

Mental health is elusive. Guns are not. Giving gun owners a path to ownership and skill, in exchange for their part in upholding the second amendment, might just help us out a bit here. A monastery was better for me than a mental hospital. The National Guard might be better for some than prison.

rev. skye taylor.
www.skye-talk.com