Simple Motions

I spent my morning burning off some stress. The folks from downtown have taken to securing the adjoining neighborhoods with amazing zeal, every free person from down there at the fallback point coming here in their spare time to help with our efforts. Not surprising, considering that they are going to be living there, but a nice bolster to our workforce.

I have been patrolling the boundaries in armor, cutting down undead. Going out and sweating inside of the mismatched gear we use to defend against zombie bites, walking into danger with each cut of the blade, is just what I needed to get my mind right.

It isn't that I don't want to mourn. It hurts more than I can say. But sitting at my desk working on figures and plans isn't at all helping me get past the pain and be effective. It just leaves me more opportunities to think about what has happened, to turn it over in my mind, and I know intellectually that I need to do something to snap me out of that habit or it will consume me.

So...

Walking a beat, hearing the swish as the heavy Iaito in my hands cuts the air. Feeling the sudden resistance of cold flesh and bone as my swooping blade meets the enemy. Watching the parts fall away from each other as the threat is suddenly just a pile of meat.

It makes me feel like "The Bride" from Kill Bill. Like Ogami Itto from Lone Wolf and Cub. Like every titular character from Seven Samurai. Yeah, it's corny and stupid. But it takes me back to a time when I was younger in almost every way, in which those characters were ideals of righteous revenge, if not justice. For a moment, every time I see a zombie and mentally fall into the rhythm of motion that at once tenses and relaxes me, I become that ideal. For those few seconds, I don't think about recent events, I simply act.

Stupid, I know. But it's useful work, and if it makes me feel something from my younger days, if it makes me feel like some protector from the movies, then so what? It's just another form of release, something all of us desperately try to find nowadays, and if I get poetic and silly about it, feel free to laugh.

Hell, I would want you to laugh. God knows I wish I could here lately.

But now, of course, it's back to those plans and figures. My brother can't do it all (without losing his mind, anyway) and I have to help him. But you know? I do feel a little better.

Now if I could only get a hold of Patrick and the people with him, to see how far they've made it.