What does throwing punches have to do with growing peace?

That question occupies my brain after I needed it explained to me that, hello! this IS a karate class. (You are expected to attack, and you are expected to defend yourself.) I was seeing it as something else altogether.

I tried to do two classes yesterday. The karate in the morning, then a bo class. I walked to the second. There I was on a bald mountain in Bernal Heights. Never found the class, but so many hawks. A red-tailed hawk lighted upon a utility pole, eye-level to me mid-trail. Robed in rich brown feathers. A predator’s head but shy, aware I was there, neither inviting me closer, nor insisting I leave. I’d never seen one in the wild so close before.

And then came the lab to the first class. As I walked back home, a young man at a bus stop kicked me in the leg. Out of the blue in front of God and everybody.

It was as though he were saying (like the teacher earlier): Wake up, Linda!

That’s why I am here.