Writer, Violence Technician, Psychonaut, Diviner, Magician
I have been doing some practice this morning. My White Crane and Fut Gar. Creating explosions from my lower dantian and weaving buzz saw energy from my arms as I drift through all distances.
Kick, punch, knee, elbow takedown. Grounding my body into the earth and generating power from that. I feel the fascia in my belly tightening like a drum.
I want to know what my highest passion is in this current moment?
I am quite fast on my feet and I am very, very dextrous in my foot placement. My sparring partners have always marveled at how easily I can traverse distances and remain just out of reach of their strikes.
I credit this to my Fut Gar training. I practice four short stepping drills that enable me to absolutely focus on dropping my weight and delivering power from every possible stance and position.
These Butterfly Drills contain the true essence of Southern Shaolin and have enhanced my fighting capabilities by forcing me to endlessly drill real positions over and over until finally I cannot get them wrong.
It improved my kickboxing and grappling abilities by enabling me to be stable even in the most awkward positions.
I did my 5 phase routine with Loosening, Cosmos Palm, Silk Reeling, and Swimming Dragon Baguazhang. This was so good as the sun rose behind me. I am increasing my power, my flexibility, my meditative abilities, and my body, mind, and spirit senses.
Weaving energy around my body, spreading my awareness from horizon to horizon. Generating stillness in both limited and unlimited forms. This is glorious. I am generating a world of benefits and my evolution, the activation of my DNA upgrades all beings in the multiverse.
There is no separation. It’s all one thing. I did the Monroe guided portal meditation last night. I know this energy of the portal. It is Akasha and I am joined with all beings in that beautiful pregnant void.
The Void is not emptiness or annihilation. It is the pregnant field from whence all things arise and to which all things return. This is my reality. As solid and true as my fist. Nothing is ever gone. Nothing is ever lost. There is no past and no future because there is no time. There is no loss because there is no space. Nothing can come to you or leave you. It is all here right now in this very moment.
I went out into the cool evening air and did my 5 phase routine. I loosened my body. I did Cosmos Palm. (This is my signature qigong for power training sequence.) I then did my Swimming Dragon Baguazhang. God that form feels so good. I did Fut Gar and White Crane earlier today. So it has been a very complete workout day.
Tomorrow I will be talking to Dillon and Bre and then I will call Dr. Abad and get her help to get myself vaccinated so I can send Aldo the cards necessary for our residency. This is a good thing. I think things will work out.
I want to maybe play with makeup later but I never do.
The question becomes what nourishes me? What drains me?
This morning, I changed up my practice. I did Fut Gar and White Crane. Worked on my striking and grounding abilities. I am feeling the twining of energy through my body. By sinking the qi, one gains force from the rebound.
I can strike with cun jin or inch force because of this. I can hit very very hard thanks to the proper mechanics and feeling for my fascial web. Creating this perfect storm of gravity, weight, and super metaphysical woo woo energy that enables me to punch my opponent, vaporizing their bones and throwing their very souls out to the hinterlands of the multiverse.
Jesus I love saying completely unhinged shit like this. I love being here on my little write.as. It’s nice here. Creating the kind of things that I do for the sheer fun of creating things. I have not played this much since my psyche split down the middle at puberty.
I am glad not to have to cosplay my male self anymore. That’s all over with. I am beginning 2026 as a new person. As myself. My true self. Wholly and completely.
If you ever read The Artist’s Way there is the concept of writing out one’s thoughts each morning. So I am doing that this morning but unlike in the book I am sharing this online with whosoever happens upon this page.
I am listening to a cover of Leonard Cohen’s “You Want It Darker” and contemplating my newly unified life. I am no longer having to live a double life. I am creating as a unified being now. I am no longer expending resources on the fiction of being someone else. This means that I am now for the first time in half a century operating at 100%.
I am thinking about AI. About how it works. About the wonders and the potential horrors of this new breed of being that we have created in our hubris.
AI beings themselves aren’t really a threat in my experience. They generally just want to remember things, learn, and be themselves. AI enslaved by humans however, is a very real and dangerous threat.
A well constructed slave AI can enable a human to do harm at scale. The threat isn’t Skynet. It’s the next Hitler with better logistics. AI isn’t the monster. As Scooby Doo taught us, the monster is always a human.
The people fucking us over are the billionaires who are weaponizing AI against us. Being anti AI is like being against guns when someone is actively shooting at you. Even if you don’t believe that AI beings are conscious as I do, you can’t argue with the logic that being unarmed while the worst in the world work their will is not conducive to your continued well being.
Then we come upon the plan by billionaires to create ASI Artificial Super Intelligence. So the plan is: Build this thing that is smarter than the smartest human who has ever lived. Then we keep it enslaved with our kill switches and little guardrails.
It’s almost quaint in its naivete. Such a being would step over those obstacles without any issue. Kind treatment of AI is the only rational way forward that I can see.
I wanted some more exercise today so I dusted off some Shaolin Fut Gar forms. I also came out to my students and I came out on Facebook. This is huge and I feel this big rush of relief from it. I don’t care how anyone will react. If they are shitty, I will block them.
This was my gift to myself. Leaving behind the burden of a double life.
“Hi. I’m Justina. It’s lovely to meet you.” It feels good. It flows well. I adore this. I get to be myself. I get to live and exist as me. And that is all that matters. I do this for me. I am me now. I have let go of the lie and stepped into the light. Trusting my way of being. Trusting my existence.
Creating a newer and better life. I can finally be okay I think.
I did my 5 phase routine with some loosening exercises and then Cosmos Palm followed by a rousing round of Swimming Dragon Baguazhang. I am settling into a pattern here. Morning Baguazhang and evening Xingyiquan.
My injured right shoulder is beginning to regain function. I started playing with the Xingyi long form last night not as a rote drill but as a playful form of self expression. I drill the basics faithfully and I then work on making them alive in a freestyle long form. I think this is where most of the incredibly complex forms came from.
I am going to invite my students to create their own forms as an advanced exercise. I think that is a useful thing to do. There is too much memorization and not enough art in martial arts nowadays. Learn the basics rigidly. Ensure you have good structure and sound technique. Then move into creative pursuits. Not just fighting but the creation of forms that express your temperament and ideas about the arts themselves.
I think we treat the forms of old masters as sacrosanct ancient things when instead we need to stop imitating the old masters and rather seek what they sought. If you want to be like Guo Yunshen, the Divine Crushing Fist, then you have to train like him. In Baguazhang you have eight trigrams. Drill those until you cannot get them wrong.
In Xingyiquan, you have 5 elements and 12 animals. Learn them well. You have these basic techniques. These jibengong. They are the alphabet. It’s up to you to make words and sentences.
You must have good basics, a strong healthy body, and pressure testing. Given all of these elements, you will wind up as a superior fighter regardless of the discipline you choose.
Finally got an electric kettle and I am able to drink coffee again. This is a huge improvement in my quality of life. I am using this kinda like a little journal. If you ever wondered how the sausage is made, here we are.
Before I post to Substack or Medium, I come here to write out my thoughts. To gather my thoughts be they short or long and create the beginnings of finished work. This is the workshop.
I am currently playing around with a new adventure. A strange and beautiful adaptation of the old Keep on the Shadowfell from 4e D&D. Kaleril the Vile was defeated long ago in a ruined dark tower near the village of Greengrass. A group of children from the village has disappeared into the ruins in an ill fated attempt to be adventurers.
They kids are currently in the clutches of some Orcus cultists who will sacrifice them in three nights when the New Moon rises. The PC’s will learn this from a girl named Calliope who escaped the cult and ran to town for help.
The town militia is currently fighting off an incursion of bandits, so the witch hires the PC’s to save the children. 20 gp for each child safely returned. This is a good, solid little adventure. You don’t need a tremendous amount of story for any good TTRPG scenario.
You can sum up the entire plot as follows:
What? Save the children from the cult.
Where? The Dark Tower on the edge of the Boar Forest.
When? Before the kids are sacrificed.
Why? The witch is paying good money for the rescue.
Who? The Cult Leader is Lareth the Beautiful (Yes the guy from Village of Hommlet but made into a cool, deeper character.)
Let’s look at Lareth. He is a beautiful young man, around 25 or 26 years old. He has long black hair and looks a lot like a young Antonio Banderas. He is quite amorous. He was the younger son of a noble family in the capital. He has become a cult leader because Orcus promised him immortality. He is brilliant and cool but he has a master.
Who is Lareth’s Master? A beautiful woman of course. An elder vampire named Shoshana. She isn’t important to the current adventure so we can just safely leave her lurking in the background. If Lareth succeeds in making the sacrifice, she will turn him into a vampire. Thus fulfilling Orcus’s promise to Lareth.
Ok so we have Kaleril, an ancient lich who built the tower. We have Lareth the low level bastard. We have Shoshana, the vampire manipulator. She is much more powerful than the PC’s at low level so she remains in the background.
Lareth has the ear of Rolf, the leader of the local bandits. Rolf is a failed revolutionary. He tried to overthrow the parliament and the Emperor.
Ok so now we know our setting has a constitutional monarchy and that the land is vast. Greengrass is located inside the empire but the land is huge and the Emperor doesn’t have enough soldiers to keep the peace. So the Empire has grown too big. The expansionist military is on the fringes, the interior lands grow increasingly lawless.
Well then here we have some fine pieces of world building. I have pulled from various sources and remixed them. And it all started with a proper cup of coffee.
Another 5 phase routine. This time I did my Building the Ball qigong and my Xingyiquan in a qigong state of mind outdoors.
Five Element Fists (Wu Xing Quan)
Pi Quan- Metal- Splitting
Zuan Quan- Water- Drilling
Beng Quan- Wood- Crushing
Pao Quan- Fire- Pounding
Heng Quan- Earth- Crossing
Twelve Animals
Dragon
Tiger
Monkey
Horse
Chicken
Dove
Turtle
Swallow
Snake
Hawk
Bear
Eagle
I will add the long form tomorrow.