Flagellation

Oh dear, I'm must punish myself again. Impulsiveness is a problem, and should be curbed. I'd don't want to be seen or thought of as the John McCain of bloggers. I'd like to be smarter than John, which isn't saying much. Talk about lowering the bar. Maybe it's my age and underlying mental illness, but I just blurt out the damnedest things sometime.

Of all the weapons in my arsenal, I am probably best with a gun. Yes Sarah, I can shoot a gun quite well, and I'm accurate. But a gun isn't a weapon to punish yourself with, it's a way to end it all, and I'm too interested in the outcome of the presidential campaigns, for that. I can fence. I still have my custom made foil, and I sharpen the edges of the blade, hoping to wear away the bead of steel at the tip so it could really be used as a weapon of self-defense. But it would be damn hard to do more than scratch and scrape my legs and feet since I am too close to myself to do much harm. I have my strait edge razor, but I don't really want to bleed out, that's not the point of self-punishment. The point of self-punishment is to hurt yourself, not kill yourself.
Jesus everyone knows that.

When I was a kid we had every kind of weapon to play with. Guns, knives, and whips, mainly. If I had looked a bit I probably could have found the poisons. I had no use for poisons. Or at least not the imagination. However, I did love the guns, knives and whips. It never occurred to me to use the guns, knives or whips on myself. And in mastering the use of these weapons, I didn't really think of them as weapons to use on a person, especially not on my person. But along with the target practice of shooting cans and bottles, I threw a switchblade at trees, loving the thunk sound and the quivering of the handle when the point was firmly sunk in the bark. I'm not proud of hurting trees, but I didn't really think of trees as having feelings back then.

Now let's move on to the whips. Why did we have whips? I have no idea. I never saw a whip used on anyone, except in the Westerns my dad and I went to on winter afternoons after school. But I did still want to master the use of the whip, even if, in my young life there was little likelihood I would be asked to keep the cattle moving on a long winter round-up. But just in case, I thought it would be good to be able, on a long cattle drive to send the long tail of the bullwhip to crack just above their heads. So I practiced, and got pretty good. The arm action that worked best for me was to give my arm almost the same motion as throwing a rock or a baseball. It was an overhand or sidewise action with a snap of the wrist that seemed to travel down the length of the braided whip and end in a loud crack sound, like a small boom. A crack a boom a snap. And you can't use a bullwhip on yourself--it's too long. What you need for flagellation is a cat-o-nine-tails or a quirt. Now I have used a quirt. And any Ag store worth it's name would have a nice selection of quirts, mainly used in horse training, dog training, and the like--moving livestock is its intended use. I was a horse rider from my earliest memory and some farmers insist that knowing how to use a quirt is as necessary to riding as spurs. I don't agree about either the quirt or the spurs, (I've used both) but as a kid, what did I know? I just wanted to ride. So I used the damn quirt, mostly held in the right hand, the hand not holding the reigns, and I wore the damn spurs, but never used them the way intended. I thought they were cruel and I was a better rider than that. But my impulsiveness as a woman who blurts out whatever is in her mind, often at inappropriate moments, and often in writing is making me want to punish myself. Maybe I need to make a trip to the Ag store and get me a quirt to remind myself that there will be consequences for future screamed on the page brain farts. Cause who needs to read that. It's just embarrassing.

I know writers who crumple the page and throw it away or delete it. I've done that. But sometimes I like to look back at how damn dumb I have been. It's instructive to have your humiliation out there. Reminds you what you don't want to do in the future. And in the end allows me to forego the trip to the Ag store.