Cash Hertz

Insert Description.

Brooklyn, Brownsville. Shitty hood, as hoods go. Twenty eight years ago on September 14nth, a single mom gives birth to Cash Hertz. Mom said Pops was a big Johnny C. fan, though he was gone before the actual birthing took place. Pops was a rambling man he was. A professional touring musician, he was lucky enough to have hooked up with Deep Purple for an American tour. Mom, named Sue, was in fact left high and dry to raise this youngin’ with the sole aid of her elderly mother.
The Hertz family traced their routes back to Austria. They were Jewish immigrants originally. They came over through Ellis Island after escaping the Nazis via a Polish priest. It was just Henry and Anna then, Cash’s grandparents. And their name was Hertzberg, which was chopped up upon their arrival. Back then, Brownsville was where many of the Jewish families ended up. It was the Jewish ghetto. But that was in the 40’s.
Now Brownsville was host to a new generation of immigrants. The Puerto-Ricans. As the Jewish families slowly moved into Manhattan proper, the vacancies were filled by the new poor, hungry, and tired masses.
The Hertz family lived off the meager wages of the patriarch Henry, who made his living selling vacuums door to door. Needless to say, they never made it out of the ghetto. When Henry died, leaving his wife and daughter Sue, their destiny was written in stone. They’d plant their flag in Brownsville and live out their line. Never mind the hood was crumbling about them under the weight of drugs and street violence. This was the new motherland, here they’d stay.
Cash wasn’t hip to the idea right of the bat. By the time he could walk, he’d figured out that outside was a dangerous, dangerous place in general. Sue. She works hard to look after the boy at a local Pizzeria. She toiled over cal zones and meat lovers pies as Grandma Anna took care of the young boyo at the home stead. He was proving a curious boy, good spirited and bright. Extremely bright in fact. Of course the public school system was just waiting to devour his intellect and bully brow him into the status quo.
Cash grew and things grew tough with him. This was a ghetto, yo. (inserted for dramatic effect.) He was short, kind of smart, into Kung-Fu movies, and most importantly, he was white. This made him a target in his hood. At seven years old, the fights started.
The shit was, all the odds in the world were stacked against the poor boy. As the teen years approached, Cash proved to be relatively smart and quick witted. He was kinda of handsome, if not a tad short. In any other teenaged power structure, he would’ve resided amongst the elite. In Brownsville, during the mid eighties, he lived in the lower rungs of adolescence. Dodging thugs and sinister street kids on his way to the bus. It was like a mini adventure, each ride to school. Would he make it aboard before running into the local bad element? Was his lunch money bound for the Lunch lady and Pizza-boats, or into some other kid’s pocket.
The story played it’s self out countless times. Elementary school would prove a battle ground. For the good part of his formative years, this was his unfortunate lot in life. The target for street violence and scrappin’. He won some, he lost some, but mostly the odds were stacked against him. His escape from this rough street life came on every day at 3 PM. Kung-Fu theatre. Perhaps his fascination with non-fiction was a bit unhealthy. His mom seemed to think so. She’d encourage him to go across the street to play in the park, not understanding that that was an invitation to get a beat-down from street hoods and company. Or even worse. Cash would rather sit in his room and read X-men, or watch reruns of Keth Karradine’s Kung-Fu. His escape was everything. And finally, one day when he was twelve, he found alcohol.
Mom started to worry about the withdrawn boy, even took his comics away for a week and forced him out of the house to enjoy ‘real’ life. When Cash came home with a split lip, minus his new sneakers, she got the picture. But what could she do? This was a single homely woman barely surviving. Her hopes were placed firmly on a boyfriend she kept. His name was Richard, but to the Hertz’s misfortune, he was married. A subject Mom usually liked to side step. Mom was Richard’s side dish, his escape from family life. But Mom always hoped one day Richard would leave his wife and move them both out of this shitty and increasingly dangerous part of town.
She would end up waiting a long time. But in the interim, Cash grew more withdrawn from his hectic neighborhood. Despite the rough nature of his trouble upbringing, the boy achieved considerable grades, wrote impressive essays and finally made the AP classes when high school rolled around. That of course made him all the more attractive to random teen angst. There was more drinking at this point.
A fifteen year old coming into his own, washing down his troubles with cheap brew and having nothing to do but avoid beat downs by studying hard. This was a recipe to create ether an incredibly smart young man or the local drunkard.
Another way to avoid the street thugs, figured was to be otherwise unavailable for such activities. There were only so many comic books he could read, so much stolen wine. And after a while, his list of unseen Kung-Fu movies grew thin. So instead of waiting further time, he got a job. More accurately, he got a job he truly enjoyed. There was an old movie theatre around the corner that was featuring foreign movies. Not only that, the best of Hong Kong action flicks and a year long retrospective of the infamous Sho Kosugi. Cash was lucky enough to get a gig as a ticket taker.
When he joined the Video/Audio club in 11nth grade, the theatre let him run the projection room out of necessity. There wasn’t a big enough crowd to earn a proper projectionist’s salary, so the old Thai couple that owned the theatre hired Cash.
This is really where Cash found his true love. Not some Mary Jane Rotten-Crotch, not any crack smoking professional athlete, not the latest ghetto trash Gangsta Rap CD. This theatre opened up an entire new realm of action movies to Cash. Bruce Lee. Cash loved Bruce Lee. That and every other Chinese action star he came across. Sonny Chiba, Cho Yun Fat, Jet Li, there were endless heroes to worship here.
Work wasn’t work, work was watching his idols. This was the thousand faced dad he never had. The collective spirit of every Kung-Fu actor presenting him the form of his ideal. He could sit and work the projector all day, and watch the same film with unending interest each time it ran. Day dreams of acting, directing, creating his own movie. His own heroes. He wrote a Kung-Fu Movie script for his creative writing class, got a B. But Cash thought it deserved more than that.
Here, in this theatre, he would get blitzed and do homework. All under the watchful eye of his Kung-Fu foster fathers. Despite his growing fondness for the bottle, his studies excelled. Hands on training in the Video/Audio club and at the theatre, gave him a decent familiarity with movie mechanics and projection. A small career plan began to form in his brain. Possibly movie editing. Maybe TV technician. These years were setting him up for a decent array of potential job opportunities. That is, if he didn’t drink himself to death first.
His drink of choice was now Whiskey. The good stuff. The Irish stuff. Bushmills. As high school came to a close, grama died. This prompted an excessive binge. A teenaged bender, one to rival any adult drunkard. Still though, he never strayed from his duties at school or the theatre. Homework got turned in, projection reels got changed on time, and to the outside world all was smooth. The drinking thing was working out fine in this respect. He could sit in his dark projection room and get blasted off his ass watching Jet Li fly around on piano wire. So easy to forget the ugly world outside. In this dark room every wrong was righted in the end. In this Kung-Fu theatre, karma was more powerful than a stolen pistol or gold toothed thug.
Then one day, he was quite drunk at the end of a long shift at the theatre. Bruce fucking Lee was beating down Kareem Abdul Jabbar. And it hit him.
Fuck this. The world’s odds had long since oppressed him. The weight of his ghetto universe eventually was too heavy. It’d make Atlas himself strain. Fuck Richard, keeping his mom in limbo for years. Fuck the hood thugs with their Gumby fades and oversized Flavor Flav clocks. No more. He wouldn’t live in the shadows like a weak mouse any longer. He wouldn’t watch his mother waist her life in a dead end job and dead end love affair. All his idols overcame much greater adversity, and Cash never even had his master disgraced. In fact, he’d never even had a master. Maybe it was the cheap alcohol, maybe it was the toll the long work hours were taking on him. Whatever it was, it seemed he had a single moment of clarity through his drunken haze.
It was like the movie was speaking directly to him. Not that the words were altered, nor was he watching a different movie than anyone else. He just understood his heroes on a deeper level. Like, reading between the lines. Each section of dialogue threatened to occupy hours of deciphering. That wisdom leaked through each scripted word, normally obscured by the act of following a story. Watching these pieces repetitively seemed to decode the messages in some sense. In Cash’s brain he’d ponder cheesy Kung-Fu monologues at length.
During this bender, he stayed in the theatre over night. It was his turn to lock up, but instead of closing shop and heading home, he stayed awake over a poor man’s bottle of Scotch and replayed Enter the Dragon six times back to back.
What’d this lead to in the end? Nothing. The bender faded and he’d forgotten those clear moments when things that were said made sense. When wisdom shined through the common word and tales told more than the ear could hear.
He’d prepare for his final years of high school and look into post school options. There was college, yes. His grades were good enough, his family fit properly in the financial aid category. There were also the trade schools. Places like Devri and the ITT institute lured the developing Cash with attractive commercials.
So it was, Cash took his beloved script under wing and sent off applications to the trade schools. It was gonna be his angle, see. He’d come in a tech, join a shoot or studio, and eventually sell his Kung-Fu script from the inside. He thought that a better way to approach what was becoming an obsession. There would one day be a movie starring his own heroes, to add to the genealogy of Kung-Fu icons.
One day the big screen would play the story of Cash.
Devri was easy. Real easy. There was no bullshit extra classes. There weren’t any thugs to fuck his program up, as the class rooms were filled with people who were actually there to learn. He had to take a train into Jersey, and after the first year he bought a shitty car with theatre money he’d saved up. And yes, during this time he stayed faithful to the job which had given him the love of his life.
This is where he got his technical chops. He’d even let the drinking calm down as this was serious business. Yes. These tech classes were infinitely more important to his future than bullshit high school classes. For this, he’d sober up and fly straight. Well he tried anyways. The drinking didn’t return till his final year of trade school, and under the celebratory flag.
Something else was going on though. Not that Cash saw it, but things were happening around him. The movies. There in lay hidden a watcher. Someone spying on the young man from outside his perceived reality.
Thousands of years ago in rural China, there was a feud. A Blue Skinned Tiger of Vajrapani got into a vicious argument with the other Blue Skins. At the heart of the matter was a bottle of Rice Wine. The –last- bottle of Rice wine handed down from the 4th dynasty to the current Magistrate of a small province. A whine hog, this Magistrate was considered. And a booze whore was Sun Fook.
A drunken Master can rarely control himself around such a prize. The best wine of China, a treasure to be gargled down with veracity. The Magistrate should have known better than to invite Sun Fook within one hundred miles of his wine cellar, especially after a dramatic battle against Mongolian hordes.
Basically, after an inebriated feast to honor their battle, the Magistrate tried to sate Master Sun Fook with as much wine as possible. But they underestimated his epic thirst, and the man would not stop drinking. In such a deteriorated state, drunk with wine and victory, he went through every bottle in the cellar. The Magistrate was furious, and contacted the main arm of the Vajrapani. Sun Fook, known for his lecherous ways, had often given in to the temptation of wine and women. A known scoundrel throughout the brotherhood.
The schism erupted; Master Sun Fook was excommunicated for dishonoring the Magistrate. Wine is for drinking! Sun Fook told the Vajrapani, and took one of the Magistrate’s daughters as a wife into the mountains. But he soon found why the Magistrate never ventured after the duo. This daughter, Hop Li, was plagued by a demon.
Into the deep Umbra realm, Master Sun Fook delved after a spirit had stolen part of Hop’s soul. He had, in fact fallen in love with Hop Li in the interim and was now bound to rescue her. The spirit was the embodiment of an old Chinese myth, about a demon and young girl. This was a common myth, something told to children before they sleep to inspire proper etiquette.
Unfortunately this myth was so powerful, that it ended up creating an embodiment of the antagonist in the spirit realm. The combined belief in this story constructed this creature. It wasn’t the first time the belief in something predated the actual object of that belief. But never had such an entity actually dared interfere in the goings on of real people. This Akashic was not only out to save his latest young wife (of six), but completely appalled by the lack of etiquette of this demon.
This battle took place in a realm unknown to sleepers. And by Earthly standards the completion of the fight took over six weeks to complete. Master Sun Fook would not be denied the soul of his wife. She was freed and returned to her material form. He, however, found himself stuck in a portion of the spirit world reserved for fictional characters created by man’s dreams.
This was a realm rarely explored, where time wasn’t fixed and the landscape changed with the collective consciousness of mankind. Here Greek heroes lived in the Elysian Fields. Tales of Gilgamesh, Beowulf, and the Wendigo took realm form. The Story Realm, Sun Fook would come to recognize it. Even here though, Sun Fook was able to make a name for himself. As the fictional characters were bound to the scripts of their making, Sun Fook was truly free willed and the other entities flocked to him for that. Here he lived with an infamous harem for two thousand and three years before he’d even asked for the time. Reality beyond didn’t effect those living here, and so the ages passed undetected. Then one day he decided he hadn’t known all he’d like to about this strange new home. He descended into the lower realms, and found newly created spirits living amongst human society. The spirits awoke and formed the essence of these neo-mythical beings. To his amazement, there were certain windows he could look through back into the world. Connections between dimensions bridged by the story of these characters.
After a time though, his love faded for this realm. At first he didn’t know why. But soon he’d come to realize the true fate of myths. Eventually, people forget them. And so he’d seen some other mythical beings start to fade back into obscurity. This upset him. Most of all though, it scared him.
Because the worst possible thing began to happen. He wasn’t dieing, that he could deal with and had long since been willing to accept his own demise. He was fading from existence. People had begun forgetting him, and once was the process was complete he’d
be barred from moving on to the heavens. A fate worse than death.
Master Sun Fook was first Sifu to a man by the name of Huang Chino. That had gone wrong. Huang had rejected the idea of his book speaking to him and promptly went insane.
The second student had more success, though when Yan Fat began conversing with the small picture of a mythical Chinese hero he held in his pocket, the rail road barons had him killed for practicing some kind of foreign magic.
Cash, would be the third. Cash would take on Sun Fook knowledge, thusly perpetuating his name and restoring his life energy in the great book of stories.
There’s a movie called Shaolin Soccer. It’s obviously about Kung-Fu soccer matches. It’s really as good as it sounds. Cash thought so to. What had happened in the years past had attracted Sun Fook to Cash through the celluloid. Cash had awakened, seen his avatar, and had been waking about without training for a couple of years. Ripe for training.
When Sun Fook addressed Cash, it was through the bottle. Shaolin Soccer was running, Cash was in the projection both swigging from some Bushmills and studying for an editing class.
Odd thing it is, to be addressed by a movie. Firstly Cash thought it was the drink. Yeah, must be a tad buzzed. Then perhaps he thought there might be a pinch in the reel or something and began checking out the projector. No. It was a man in blue robes who kept appearing in long shots of the Kung-Fu soccer field. A swaggering figure, cavorting about the rowdy crowd. A bottle of wine and long black whiskers.
Sun Fook would end up appearing seven times to fully gets Cash’s attention without him running away from the screen nauseous. Of course no one else could see Sun Fook, because Cash was partly looking into the spirit world. So this extra footage was just for him.
After the first calm exchange between the two, Cash was still convinced he was going nuts. At least he’d been able to stick out the whole interaction without running off in total shock. But his mind rejected it, and for a long time after he couldn’t or –wouldn’t- hear/see Master Sun.
So time marched on then, this odd episode in his life hidden by his own psyche. After graduating Devri he got set up with a small Video production company in the city proper. Thus began his fated normalcy as a Manhattan citizen.
Life behind the scenes was infuriating. Again with the drinking, he fell into old habits. He wanted to be making the movies, living the movies, not editing them and splicing reels. It was too heavy, that tech stuff. Perhaps he’d gone about it the wrong way. But he had perseverance. He’d do his time as a grunt, just as everyone insisted was necessary. The monkey on his back grew large though, and it demanded more and more whiskey.
Slowly, after three years of moderate success in the editing field, his drinking began to interfere in his world. It wasn’t like before, when he could drink and be productive at the same time. Living had begun to take its toll; this young man of twenty two was a full blown drunk.
Problem wasn’t the drink though. It was he had refused to see Sun Fook, and thusly missed his guidance and teaching. All the while, Sun Fook himself began to fade. It got to a point, where Sun Fook would have to create a vulgar display of authority in order to get Cash’s attention.
After his twenty third birthday party, Cash walked home rather busted after a night of partying. Yeah partying. The fates were stacked however; the forces of entropy had been swayed against him in a final attempt and transdimensional communication.
A mugging. Cash had lived through four of them already. This one took place near Soho, in front of a TV store. The mugger attacked the lone drunk figure before the glass display of twenty screens. On the TV screens, the Sword Master 2 played. When the scuffle started, Sun Fook appeared on all twenty screens and guided him through the fisticuffs.
This night; Cash remembered, instead of tucking that memory under the door mat. Sun Fook appeared again on the screen of his small TV in his shitty low rent apartment. That night they talked without vomit or screams. Cash accepted this vision as real, without fear. Sun Fook, would now be his Sifu.
What Cash had dreamed for all these years was now proven hallow. What Sun Fook offered him was priceless and bounds and leaps above his wildest fantasies. The story of Cash would be written on earth, in real life, staring Cash. A Drunken Master in the making, the role this man had been studying indirectly for all his life. But what of his normal life? Career, mother? All matters would be settled, and debts paid. He took a night job back at the old theatre, while keeping his Manhattan gig. It was all he did for three years. As the projector rolled, Sun Fook’s wisdom poured out and into Cash. He would learn Do, and how to channel his Ki through various means.
At work in the video editing department, Sun Fook would often appear at random in any of the pieces Cash was working on. These visits would have a lesson each and every time. Like an animated fortune cookie that keeps appearing inside yer watch and ‘s always right. Some days Cash was confident this was all the symptoms of some kind of psychosis. Other days he fully accepted the fact that an ancient Kung-Fu master was teaching him drunken style through spirit realm in the local internet café.
A computer was one of the many types of media in which Sun Fook could appear. Cash never knew when or where his Sifu would show up next. This kept him honest and on his toys, his training demanded this. Soon came time for a communion of sorts, a seeking. Living in Manhattan still, working two jobs, editing during the day and getting drunk in the projection room by night, his level of understanding the Dharma deepened. His avatar appeared to him in a boozed state. And yes, it was an infinitely tall hero, faced a thousand times over with every Kung-fu hero ever imagined. Each face connected to a body split between two thousand arms. Each frozen in the form of their unique style. His avatar was the embodiment of stories he loved and people he idolized.
He could do no wrong at work. His life felt healthy. His mind open, awareness peeked. Able to master his Ki whilst his spirit Sifu looking on from beyond the screen.
His mom, like any other Jewish mom, kept constant tabs on the boy then. Sue had always known about Cash’s drinking problem, but it seemed to fade after the initial benders of a man newly on his own. Though she became a tad concerned when Cash abruptly gave up his steady day job in Manhattan. Seemed he just left one day. For no particular reason other than he felt the need to move on.
See, all Kung-Fu heroes need a story. Thus far, the story had been the creation of the hero. To further his teachings, Sun Fook wanted Cash to walk the Earth like Kane. He would travel from town to town and get into adventures. It became an integral part of the experience. What could a hero know about himself if he was never presented with a true antagonist.
Brother Cash would be tested three times. At the end of the third test, Sun explained, his name would have gained sufficient spiritual power to exist for an eternity in the Story-Realm.
The first test was tragically predictable. Sun Fook’s name had been disgraced by certain members of the Akashic Brotherhood. Worse than disgrace was disbelief . Those of the Brotherhood had started to forget the stories of the mighty Sun Fook, and his name was obscured deep in the Akashic Record.
Young Brothers, uncaring of the figures of old. Cash was sent to seek one such Brother out, defend the honor of Sun Fook in single unarmed combat. This would send him to D.C. He kissed his mother, dropped off his apartment keys and walked from New York to the country’s capital city.
There was a bar out there ran by a shady figure people called Benny. Who knows if it was his real name or just some moniker for a criminal to hide behind? But Sun Fook pointed Cash towards this bar and instructed him to go looking for a ‘Crystal Scale’.
The Crystal Scale would need to be challenged outright in Sun Fook’s name, and defeated handily.
When Cash arrived, he found the place a hotbed for spirits. An awakened bar-tender and scheming mentor that was Benny and Penny. The exchange was formal, as if Benny knew Cash was coming and had expected his arrival. As to the where-a bout of the Crystal Scale, that information would come at a price. Behind closed doors, in a room Benny claimed to play poker in, the two sat and hammered a deal. The Crystal Scale was in Phoenix Baltimore and could be contacted through the Phoenix Times. Though in return, Benny asked something of Cash.
Benny was about to send Penny abroad. She was quick with the grift, tits on the heat, and murder behind the wheel. But Benny still wanted her watched. The deal, for the information passed on, Cash would keep an eye on Penny after she bailed town. Why not then, San Francisco could be fun anyways.
And so it came to pass, Cash confronted the Crystal Scale after contacting him via the Times. They fought on a basketball court, the Crystal Scale turned out to be a formidable first opponent for the young Drunken Master. Though Sun Fook knew better than to send Cash out against an unbeatable foe. Thusly, Cash defeated him. The conflict still cost him a few cracked ribs and two dislocated fingers. But word was sent to the Brotherhood via the Crystal Scale. Master Sun Fook would be remembered and gain new life in the Story – Realm.
Off to San Fran then, Cash walks there to find Penny. All debts would be paid. Sun Fook pondered the next test as the soles of Cash’s shoes wore down over the plains of America

Paradigm

It’s a testament to Master Sun Fook that he was even able to reach Cash, let alone pass on a system of workable magic. So far removed from Cash’s age and space, it would’ve proven impossible to teach his student in the classical fashion he had been taught centuries ago. True Akashic training requires argues years of mental discipline and physical mastery. For it is the Cosmic All which each Brother carries within himself, that must be channeled in order to control Ki. These skills are usually limited by their anchor, mental and physical activities.
But Cash was too old to start that traditional path by the time Sun found him. There were no common reference points between the two individuals. It would probably take an additional decade to familiarize Cash with Cantonese, proper etiquette and history, before they could even start. His brain was fat and lazy, several years past ripe.
Instead, Master Fook devised new paths appropriate to Cash’s environment and understanding in which to manipulate his Ki. It was a quick fix for his sloth-like intellect. He watched the man for years, decoding his belief system and forming connections to the Cosmic All. Plotting modern courses for his Ki to run through.
It was a cross reference project. Master Fook broke down several Akashic principles integral to the Brotherhood, and sought the counter parts which Cash would identify with. A preconceived paradigm and tailor cut for a student who required special attention.
Most other Akashics would be quite puzzled by Cash’s Drunken Style. Technology is rarely found within the Brotherhood after all. Not that Cash exists as a pure technomancer per say. It’s true he does use some technology in his Drunken Style, but it exists more as a symbolic component then a mechanical function. Spirits, for the most part, appeared to Cash through Film and TV. Thusly, he interacted with the spirit world in this same fashion. Not because he’s figured out the frequency on which spirits exist, nor has he found an electronic path or photo-emulsion process to access the dead. It’s the archetypal meaning described by the act of believing in myths or tales that gives this path its functionality. It’s the symbolic equivalent of traditional Magic Paper.
In this fashion Master Fook has taught Cash. Through trial and error, he has helped the man understand the equivalents of the old ways. Still though, the Akashic ways are the skeleton on which these ulterior paths hang. Balance of the Cosmic All is what Cash seeks, despite using tools which most brothers would find alien.
What’s more important is that Cash believes in these tools, finds them perfectly fit to channel his Ki, and strengthens them with his belief. It’s not odd or weird to him that these techniques should be steeped in his neo-culture. He doesn’t know much else, besides.
The Cosmic All even equates nicely to Kabala teachings, a form of mysticism closer to his comprehension. Not that Cash spent much time deciphering the Kabala spheres in Sunday school at Temple Emanuel. But still, this didn’t seem an entirely incompatible moral or belief structure to compare to the seldom religious Jewish upbringing he received. It made it all the more attractive as his new ideology.
Coupled with the fact that Master Fook had shown him how drinking whiskey actually made the world around him more pliable, this particular modernized Akashic philosophy fit like a glove.
You can’t have Drunken Style without drinks, right? Brain juice, fire water, whatevs. Master Fook said it had its place in the cosmic hierarchy, a powerful one. It could be used in enacting Balance upon the Drahma. The Cosmic All was more easily tapped through the bottle; it opened doors in the mind to allow the Ki to flow quickly. Like quint on tap, Whiskey is the galactic lube.

Foci, part 1.
Spirit – The Celestial Realms. This is a place ruled by the Celestial Court and Jade emperor for the Brotherhood, though Master Sun Fook has never seen hide or hair of them. Thusly what Master Fook taught Cash about the Celestial Realms, mimicked his own experiences of interacting with unworldly places. There are many corners of the Celestial Realm unknown or undiscovered to the Jade Emperor, places that don’t obey his word and laws. Most Brothers pray to statues representing lesser deities and participate in high rituals to contact the spirits of the Celestial Realm. Since these beings have decided to make their presence known to Cash through film/video, this is his how he interacts with the other side. In a sense, the act of watching one of his favorite Kung-Fu flicks is rightly akin to idol worship. A liquid prayer is usually involved, and a comfortable position in which to drink in is preferred.

Forces – Traditional Akashics describe the sphere of Force as ‘Riding the Flow’. The act of adjusting the balance of the ‘flow’ (prime) creates currents and ripples. While most of the brotherhood can manipulate this balance through meditation or specific Do movements, Cash alters the balance of ‘flow’ via white horseradish when not used directly in a Do movement. Its true Cash can meditate, to force his will upon the balance in a semi-traditional fashion (that being, seated in lotus position and watching ‘Enter the Dragon’ and having’ beers). But he’s found the ingestion of really spicy herbs, such as white horseradish or wasabi, opens up his Ki in a way which fuels his mastery over the balance. It works best when added to an alcoholic beverage, as most things do, but it can be applied directly to his gums for an instant effect. The symbolic connects between the visceral experiences of acidic spices on the taste buds, is intrinsically connected to the manipulation of the ‘flow’. The sudden rush of sensation is a psychological metaphor for ‘Riding’ it.

Life – The body is an illusion, created by the mind. This ideology has remained the heart of Akashic teachings since their formation. It is the power of the Cosmic All attuned and imbedded in the inner self, which is the source of all things. The Mind’s connection to the illusion of flesh is one of the few things that have remained unchanged since Master Fook’s journey into the Celestial Realms. The human form is still the same, as is its connection and reliance upon the intellect. Therefore Master Fook was able to teach Cash in the Akashic tradition of pressure points, in much the same way he was taught centuries ago. The body’s Ki can be focused, changed, and redirected for a variety of functions by applying pressure to specific points throughout the body. Cash appears as a traditional Akashic in this sense.

Mind – The One Mind is the sum of Prime shards that make up the total of all human intellects. And each single mind represents a splinter of the whole. Thusly, a lone mind is still connected to the infinite vastness of collective thoughts and sub consciousness. The usual route to focusing one’s Mind involves a form of scroll writing or verbal components. The common term for such things is ‘Magic Paper’ or the ‘Secret Language’ amongst Traditional Akashics. Cash, not having had time to learn the full array of Cantonese verbal nuances, hadn’t learned ether classical tool for accessing mental energies. Though, Master Fook was able to replace these foci with ones that carried heavier symbolic and applicable weight for Cash. Yiddish is the secret language of his family. It’s what his Bubbi and Moms cursed in when they wanted to hide foul language from him. Yiddish always had this mystical aura about it for the young boy, a harsh verbal interaction that no two persons spoke the same. It resents things conspiratorially kept from the masses. The thick layer of intrigue with which these foreign words were clouded in, empowers it with the same resonance of the traditional Cantonese ‘Secret Language’. To mimic the effects of ‘Magic Paper’, Cash can print out Photoshop projects imbedded with subliminal Yiddish words.