The Killer Instinct
We went to Rat Island to kill, but it was not rats we were after. I was ten years old, as was my companion John. The island lay in the Bronx River just north of the Botanical Gardens in the vast and verdant Bronx Park. It was accessed by a fallen tree trunk and held a dangerous allure. How it got its name we did not know. It wasn’t an official name but was known to all the boys in the neighborhood, whispered like a ghost story in the night. Some said the rats were the size of fat cats and could bite your feet off.
In those days, the park was wild and the Botanical Gardens, bordered by Twin Lakes on its north side, was not fenced in, and on our regular jaunts through it, we would encounter packs of other boys, many older, some being progenitors of The Ducky Boys gang of Irish kids from the adjoining parish of Our Lady of Refuge, from whom we would have to flee. We were after thrills and the frisson that comes with fear.
On the momentous day I speak of, when heading to Rat Island, we carried our rods. We were Bronx boys and even in those days we learned to protect ourselves. I did kill that day, and this tale is my confession, for like then, I still feel guilty. But I was also proud since it felt like a passage into manhood.
We traversed the meandering river slowly, not because the tree trunk was wobbly, but because of the fear of the fat cat rats. We might have to protect ourselves and were very wary, like soldiers creeping up on a hidden enemy. But all we first found on the island were a few beer bottles and cigarette butts.
When the fat cat struck, I was shocked. I yanked him hard and he flew into the air and landed in the river’s edge on the side where the current ran fast. When I pulled him toward me, I was appalled by his ugliness and his sad eyes and old man appearance, his whiskers that extended like wire bristles. He was still alive but I wanted a trophy, so I let him die at my feet.
My sisters and mother were revolted when I brought the big catfish into the house, so I brought it to the yard to show my father when he got home from work. But as I waited, I felt quite guilty for the poor creature, so I prepared to bury him with dignity and dug a small hole in the side yard and found two popsicle sticks in the garbage from which I constructed a cross. My father arrived in time for the funeral and seemed bemused by it all. I buried my victim, erected the cross in the dirt over him, and said a prayer.
John and I were just kids and thought we knew what we were seeking, but as I later learned from Thoreau, “Many men go fishing all their lives without knowing it is not fish they are after.” But what is it?
In the next few years, I did little fishing, just once a year in the Esopus Creek at Edgewater Farm in the Catskills where we vacationed for a week in the summer. There I would go alone in the very early morning while everyone slept and I could watch the mist rise over the flowing water and never kill a fish, just feel being at peace with God and nature. The killer had become a dreamer. But not entirely.
I then turned all my attention to basketball. Hoops became my obsession from the 6th grade on. It seemed clear to me then that I was after self-disciplined excellence and something else I couldn’t name, but here too a strange killer instinct was necessary. Catching the catfish with a homemade rod seemed like an accident, just as later that year I was devastated when my six year-old cousin accidentally shot and killed his eight year-old brother with a rifle that was hidden under a bed in a neighbor’s home in Woodlawn where they were visiting with their mother. It was a year of death.
The schoolyard where the hoop action was happening was up the hill on the next block, P.S. 56. The sound of a dribbling ball became my music, the staccato rhythm that I danced to. To this day, when I hear some kid dribbling a ball, all my senses are aroused and I want to jump in and steal the ball. I was a boy in a basketball bubble practicing a turn-around jump shot and a killer dribble that would leave my defender on his knees at my mercy.
That schoolyard court became my second home, the place where I turned dreams into reality. It was pure fun, although pure is probably not the right word. For I was manically motivated to dominate the court. Rushing to the schoolyard after school and on Saturday mornings to be the first there, to command the court, to compete with the older guys and beat their asses.
In the following years, traveling around the city’s best basketball neighborhoods to play and make my mark. The endless hours in gyms, dribbling in the basement. The search for perfection. The adrenaline rush, the thrill, the joy of the perfect pass, the sweet swish of the net from a shot you had practiced a thousand times, the passes left and right behind my back like Bob Cousy. From the age of eleven until twenty-three, basketball was central to my life and identity. It was my passion. It brought me a full college basketball scholarship to Iona College, a Division I program.
I have heard it said that many men play basketball or golf or fish their entire lives without knowing it is not baskets or birdies or fish they are after. But what is it?
But that is another story, one that involves my hunting fat cat rats of a different sort.
Edward Curtinis an independent writer whose work has appeared widely over many years. His website is edwardcurtin.com and his new book is Seeking Truth in a Country of Lies.
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And I saw that all toil and achievement springs from one man’s envy over another.
This, too, is meaningless, a chasing after the wind.
Ecclesiastes, 4:4
When all has been heard, the conclusion of the matter is this: Fear God and keep His commandments, because this is the whole duty of man. For God will bring every deed into judgment, along with every hidden thing, whether good or evil.
Ecclesiastes 12, 4:4
what is it? the will to dominate? even kill?
that “alpha” shite?
or is it just the hardwired warrior instinct where we know if we’re not competent in that sense, we’ll be the loser, the dominated, weak or even dead?
??
i was taken fishing since i could walk essentially; whilst catching was exciting, i was appalled by the cruelty of the hooked gub (for the wee ones that were put back) and the snapped necks with their splay of gills, or cudgelled heids. i stopped fishing.
what about shooting then? you’ve got to be a good shot alphas!
well i’d shot a few rabbits (usually mixi), but there was one i must just have smashed its spine… with that terrible wail, it dragged itself on front legs into a gorse thicket and i couldn’t even get to finish the poor bugger off. That bothered me. i have never shot a rabbit/anything ever again – except targets and cans, as one should maintain their marksman skills.
Another time a rabbit rolled down a road cutting screaming like a baby, almost to my feet. It had a furry scarf on – a weasel – which i scared off. The wee rabbit was bleeding badly from its throat, gasping. So, it occurred to me to finish the wee thing off. i was going to batter its heid off a big rock . . i couldn’t do it, too brutal, a horrible concept it was, however decisive for the rabbit. so i drowned it in a drain. i could live with that.
I’ve gralloched deer (but didn’t shoot them) and i killed a blackbird with a broken neck that came to my feet, honest, it landed beside me with its heid flopping around (probably hit by car or flew into window). i crushed it with a brick (?) and buried it in the garden.
Enough animal tales.
yeah i played BB to a pretty decent standard for about16 years, boxed for 4, played various other team sports. Great fun, but I just enjoyed playing – victory was good, but as long as we/I got beat fair and square and not by a squad of cheats, i could live with it. it is just a game after all, not the real thing. Street fights are the real thing.
I appear not to have that killer streak (for the birds, fish and beasties) but I could happily smash someones teeth out if they come at me with violence, or worse, no problem. I often wonder at my willingness to fight and knock humans about, but not fish or rabbits, deer and birds.
so, what is that?
killer or survival? Some people enjoy killing, that’s for sure.
Girls? Its a substitution for hunting girls. Fishing girls.
I remember my youth walking the city dry Friday and Saturday night with a friend, looking for girls because we had not a single dime and was too under aged to get in anywhere to a dance hall.
Returning home at night with a hard one, cold feet and empty pockets.
After a couple of years walking around, we got the idea to fish, to sport, to do something else, than looking after girls.
They call me the hunter. https://youtu.be/unZr-VMGXXs
Killing and praying does seem to go hand-in-hand.
I’m a Bronx boy myself and I remember all the locations mentioned in this piece. We lived in the North Bronx, Woodlawn Heights, to be exact, about equidistant from Van Cortland Park and the Bronx River. A solid Irish Catholic neighborhood surrounding St. Barnabas Catholic Church (which I attended through 8th grade), with a significant smattering of Italians and a few Germans here and there (myself included). We rode our bikes everywhere. I remember bicycling with my friends to the Botanical Gardens (this was back in the late ’60s and early ’70s) and the Bronx Zoo. We would play tag and occasionally basketball in the playground behind P.S. 19, on the north side of Woodlawn Cemetery from P.S. 56. Although we didn’t fish in the Bronx River, we did float plastic models of battleships on it. For fun, we would throw firecrackers at them and pretend to have naval battles. One year, after a very heavy rain had flooded a section of the Bronx River Parkway, we rode our bikes as far as we could into the water, then ditched them right there in the water to walk along the guard rail separating the north and southbound lanes. I think a couple of kids drowned during the height of the rains by trying to tube down the rushing water. We would ride our bikes around the Hillview Reservoir, which was close by, and sometimes all the way to Tibbetts Brook Park, which was a few miles away, to swim in the public pool there. On hot summer days we would bike to the Coyne Park Library just to cool off. They would let us play chess there if we were quiet. Boundless energy and no fear in those days.
Went back there about 20 years ago and it was like being in a time machine. Although the businesses had obviously changed, and the apartment building where we lived (even now called Spencer House) had been converted into condominiums, the neighborhood looked just like it did when I was 10. Single family homes were still there in abundance, staunchly defying the merciless march of time, with Irish flags flying from porches where people sat oblivious to a world that had passed them by. Even now, using Google Maps, the place looks mostly unchanged. If I moved back there now, I would be right at home, geographically at least.
Anyway, your thoughtful piece made me nostalgic for the blissful innocence of youth in a time it is now hard to believe ever existed. Thank you for that.
That neighbor is still the same. My parents lived there and my sister now does. I know all the places you mentioned and I also swam at Tibbetts’ pool. It was a great place. Rory Dolan’s and the other Irish places are still there. Go back and have a pint or two of Guiness.
It’s of course so far beyond a truism to have become a cliche that kids are inherently mean. They are. Perhaps it’s the trauma of being born that makes them that way – a sensible protective mechanism for animals in the wild.
But we’re no longer in the wild. Yet we’ve carried the meanness of being kids with us into our present “civilized” world. It’s just sitting there, inside, to be called forth by those given or assuming the right to summon people to do their bidding.
Nature is not a goody two shoes: it’s a raging beast with pretty flowers for skin. It’s best characterized by the Venus Flytrap. It doesn’t want its species to be kind and gentle and loving; it wants killers to stalk its paths and enrich it with blood.
It did, however, make a serious mistake in giving humans intelligence, which can be used to rebel against its dictates. So it attempts to correct that little mistake by compelling humans to use their intelligence to further its darker purpose. And most humans are right on board.
“Make love, not war!” humans might say. “Make bombs, not beads!” Nature counters.
God thanks you for your service, and I for the chuckle. Surely, the world’s greatest religion!
Maybe it was just fun. I too spent endless hours of my youth in gyms, also got a college scholarship, played in Europe and ended up playing competitively until I was 50. I wasn’t chasing anything other than competition and fun exercise. And my next basket, I was a great shooter. Sometimes things are what they are.
Self-preservation Instinct: the Dragon hugs the Bear.
https://youtu.be/CA58IXBIJcs?si=Aohzyn33xF6XFCzu
Great link Nick.
They’re not just hugging, they’re dancing.
Wonder when the USian Warmongers will step in.
The EU$ian warmongers are treading very cautiously. Even if NATZO were to take on Russia OR China on their own, that would be no pushover. NATZO has fed for years on easy meat like Serbia, Iraq, Sudan and Syria — all small prey. Grown fat and slothful, NATZO has tried to snatch Ukraine from Russia, and retreated howling — no match. The very thought of taking on Russia AND China is banished from polite conversation in the corridors of Washington, Brusselrs and Whitehall.
And of course the USians don’t have a good ‘track record’ warring against poor nations.
These two guys are Putin and Xi? I dont see they give each other a hug. Fake news again again!
Here it was.
Value-fulfilment is integral to being (& thus to being you).
Seeking outside ourselves is a world of conflicting or competing values. But the experience arises from a creative ‘casting out’ and being caught!
Aligning our giving & receiving has an outer aspect – wherever your focus is actively manifesting-such as sport, or writing as a quest-ionic uncovering of ‘deeper fishing’ by which to undo or release ‘being phished’.
Are we ready to be ‘realed in’?
or is there something ‘out there’ that MUST be different than it is, because we made it an image of self-conflict. How many hoops must a man jump through…
That Gorilla suit attention test comes to mind.
Your mission; count how many times the basketball bounces.
Identity contracts to such an external fulfilment as value ‘achieved’ – excitement! Don’t take your eyes off the ball!
A spotlight hides far more than it illuminates.
Such is an attention to a received situation- whether incisively focused or fragmented and diluted.
A Field-awareness is always and already beneath, prior & embracing our harvest of each according to its kind.
Non duel awareness is not locked down in conflicts seeking external fulfilment but embracing the richness of polarities that might once have been appreciated as life engendered.
My first angling catch was a perch – a stunningly uncategorisable experience that I didn’t know how to respond to. It wasn’t properly hooked as it wriggled off the bank back into the lake while I stood there like a boy whose first date says “yes”. I regained my wits to run and tell my siblings and parents in the pent up excitement that outweighed the ‘got away’ – “I caught a fish!”. None of them believed me, but laughed at me as if nothing had happened ergo I was nothinged.
Themes of our lives repeat like a tapestry in so many different situations and perspectives.
Now I am caught by a life I thought to run off with as mine to win friends & influence people or at least be someone to someone else.
James Carse writes in ‘Infinite Games’ that we seek to prove we are not who we think our parents* think we are. You may need to read that again. (*or other significant placeholders for authority – that are inherently facets of our self).
Casting out is projection. It has been said Man is the measure of all things – or that as a Man thinketh, so he is. Giving and receiving are one without a second, but in time we can seem to scape our unwanted consequence or fruits to others, to world or a life gone wrong-including our bodies.
A Prodigal wasteland is really a reflection of an inner landscape or terrain – like factory pharmed humanimals or laboratory experience.
All truths can be misused or ‘taken in vanity’ as a permission slip to mask agenda in covert identities judged real. yet all that we deny or ‘kill’ thereby now lives within us as the shadow to a right to be seen, honoured and accepted.
It is fashionable to say ‘everything is connected’, as a cutting edge science in search of a Spiritual connection – or value fulfilment. I’d say that nothing can truly be disconnected, but that we die trying, over & over & over again. A resonant integrity of being need take no thought for itself alone and apart, nor teach another they are what we do or don’t need them to be.
Balance points of consciousness are more of a fluidity of renewal within flux than a lockdown to an Ideal by which endless hoops are manifested from failure by design.
Biodiversity of consciousness is aligned purpose of joy in being (and thus being you).
Neither forcing inclusion or exclusion as the fish is one with the current flow of living waters.
I didn’t set out to copy – but to join with, which for me always involves a tuning into qualities. I don’t mimic other’s songs, but give them life through my attunement to the spirit of their being through me. But I have appreciated a ‘give & take’ or dance of qualities through words and meanings of value appreciated and felt in the singing.
Judgement is a killer instinct. I now see that first fish was a greater gift than if I’d netted it to show my score and claim to title. New eyes to see release a tired world else I let baited react engage in futilities of hype-fully framed netting. Not because action is uncalled forth, but because ungrounded reactions block a true Calling – that cannot be defined externally to ‘resolve a past in a future’ by sacrifice Now!
I drowned a poisoned & dying mouse once – I’d found it on the lawn. There is a spirit that comes into the release that honours the spirit of life in death – when the mind is not ‘charged’ with the function of control.
I killed ‘Morning Flower’s’ (American groupie) bird, a thrush she had adopted, but a cat got it, and it was screaming and writhing. So I killed it for her, because she couldn’t.
And my first real love said ‘Yes’ and I said ‘No.’ She was beautiful and perfect, 16 and I was 17, but I was still in school for at least a year, and we were separated by about the distance between Newton Aycliffe and Chiswick. We met on the seafront at Bournemouth. I just got this strong funny feeling, and there she was, standing just behind me. I went up to Co. Durham to see her. I have regretted that decision ever since.
And we had the local 18 children local Irish family (with hangers on) the Walshes to contend with. In the end I to do a chicken run and mandatory fight with the Chief Walsh. Blood was drawn, and honour was apparently satisfied.
However we (my little gang) was blamed for vandalising the local recreation ground when we knew it was the Walshes. I told ‘Haggis’ our muscle from Motherwell who became a real gangster later that I knew how to make a Molotov like the ones that got used against Soviet tanks in Prague and Budapest. He said ‘Go for it’, so when I had made a couple we went over the railway line (750V) at 1 am, and into the rec. from the back. Worked a treat, torched the keeper’s hut. and the keeper who had banned us from the rec lost his job, and we could go back to our favourite hangout.
Growing up in West London.
As children we ‘think’ with our bodies.
As adults we think with our heads.
It’s a shame we forget how to ‘think’.
It’s never too late to re-connect with the physiological basis of our thinking..
“My ideas first take shape in the form of complex muscular-skeletal sensations. It is only later, when I can reproduce the train of sensations at will, that I re-cast the ideas into a chain of equations that can be written down on a page. ‘ — Albert Einstein.
First things first hey Nick?
we need to use our four ways of knowing ‘thinking’ – emotional, intuitive, embodied and cognitive, we could extend this to include spiritual.
The last being the most important.