Yodo 2

They were alone in the rear car of a semi-express out of Kyôbashi. The ninja was with them on the JR but couldn’t find a way to keep out sight at the transfer. Instead he stole a motorbike and sped through the narrow streets to the mouth where the train emerged from underground. Perched there, he checked his train schedule. On time, the train screamed out of the tunnel as he dropped onto the roof of the train. Crawling silently between the electrical pickups, he reached the rear car and leaned over to force open the door to the conductor’s cabin. Before he could register the ninja’s noiseless motion, the rear conductor was tumbling in the gravel along the side of the tracks. Hurt badly, he was at first too confused to cry out in pain.

Gendo and Keiko sat in an uncomfortable quiet, both trying to process the events of the night. Finally, Keiko inhaled deeply, preparing to speak. She was cut short.

“You hobo sicken me!” called a voice emerging from the back of the train.

“You are children of privilege, fat bourgeois parasites on the glorious proletariat. You know the lot of the poor but serve only your stomachs and your capitalist masters.”

Gendo leapt to his feet.

“You’re one to talk, cutting down pirates for reasons of spite alone!”

“Pirates!? Pirates are godless fools. They don’t believe in the forms. They believe that justice is the advantage of the stronger. But they should first learn that they are the weak, and ninjas are the nemesis of those infected with foolish hubris.”

Gendo’s hand was on the spike in his pocket. His body was set in attack posture. Keiko sat behind him, almost frozen in terror. Hunan Express was firmly sheathed on the ninja’s back. His arms were crossed, his posture straight.

Gathering strength for a moment, Gendo darted toward the wall, jumped onto it, and ran nearly perpendicular to the floor, before bounding to the opposite window and running along it. Gendo’s speed was incredible, and the windows all but shattered as soon as he put a boot to them, but the ninja wasted no time. He reached up to his sword and unfurled it in a 360 degree spin. He cut through parts of the door behind him and met Gendo’s spike just as it was upon him. Gendo was knocked to the floor. The ninja brought his sword down with both hands, but Gendo rolled out of the way. Hurriedly, he snapped backwards and onto his feet.

¶

Do I love her just because she’s beautiful-sad? That can’t be enough. It never can. She has to save herself. I’m helpless. And yet… Andyetandyetandyet…

•the melancholy wrench acted like descartes’ demon.

“What if everything you see is more than what you see - the person next to you is a warrior and the space that appears empty is secret door to another world? What if something appears that shouldn’t? You either dismiss it, or you accept that there is much more to the world than you think. Perhaps it really is doorway, and if you choose to to go inside, you’ll find many unexpected things.”

what if sauce != sñr jackie??

“[By what timing was it that you two chanced to meet? Think of it. A force stronger than coincidence is at work!]”

¶

This is the age of mappo, the Iron Age. Such decay is inevitable. Do not trust even the Keihan line to endure forever. It too will be acted upon by time, eaten up with decay and rust.

This is Kaliyuga, buddy, the Iron Age. Anybody over sixteen without an ulcer’s a goddam spy.

¶

Keiko stepped off the train with trepidation. Ringing in her ears were the words Mr. Miyamoto had spoken to her a few hours before.

“[To find the Caterpillar Girls, you must go to Hirakata Station. Under the station you will find a shop called “Kiddy Land.” Wait outside the shop for three days, then enter. The girls will then find you.]”

She wasn’t sure who the Caterpillar Girls were or why she needed to find them, but she was willing to wait and find out. With an increasing urgency in her step, she continued down the ramp out of the station. Turning the corner she saw the store and proceeded to sit at a bench facing it. If this is what it would take to find Gendo, she would do it.

¶

“I think you’re good. You’re a good person.”

“No, that’s not the issue at all. I like myself. I can’t not. I’m too me not to feel that way. I just don’t have any illusions about my actions. I do terrible things. I hurt people. I cut them out and leave things shattered behind me.

“Rorty says that there’s no utility in trying to use language to represent what is assumed to be ‘out there,’ independent of the observer. However, he is missing the whole root of philosophy. Philosophy is a disease that some people catch when they se their world sink out from beneath their feet. Philosophy is catching the falling floor. Philosophy is holding onto what cannot be held. Probably, Heisenberg is right about the world. There’s no way to view our own lives without changing them. However, when you see love fade, people drift away, and everything you thought you could trust fail— that is when philosophy becomes an act of desperate necessity. All that’s left is to sort through life and find that one thing that will hold up the floor, be it forms or God or self. Maybe it’s foolishness, but it’s not a disease you recover from. You either find something to hold onto or drown. Once you set down the path of philosophy there are no other roads.

“Keiko, I don’t— I can’t— understand my love for you. I can’t say if it will hold together for a day or a lifetime. But I know that at this moment, it feels like the most adamantine thing in my life.

“That’s why I have to ask you to let me go. I have nothing for you. I cannot help you. Perhaps that insistent thing in the back of minds is right. Maybe we really are alone, even in a crowd the size of Ôsaka or in a bed with one’s beloved.”

“If you really love me, why are you pushing me away?”

“I think that’s exactly the problem myself.”

She thought of the meanest thing she could say and said it.

“What’s the point of all this. The only thing we have in common is we’re both in love with you!

“You know, you really are some kind of hobo-astronaut. All you do is drift from place to place, cutting off everyone who ever cares about you. Wagamama na koitsu ya zo! What about me? The one time I thought I found someone I could rely on…”

She was interrupted by her own tears.

“Look, Keiko, I l-like you.” The stutter had already betrayed him.

“Please, don’t cry.”

“You p-pretend to be s-so above it all, but you’re more concerned about what other people think than you are about.”

“Well, if I’m so bad, then why are you wasting your time with me?”

“Because it’s love, you idiot. Don’t you see, I have no choice! Can’t you take some pity on a girl who loves you?”

¶

«So the ninja was right then? I am merely self-interested? I have no connection to others? Maybe so. But this time, there something and it isn’t about me, and it isn’t about you…

«You’ve gotta listen to me Kei-tchan! If we don’t find that ninja hive, it’s the end! Not just for you and me and Keihan line, but for everyone! Free people everywhere!”

«I care about you Keiko. But I know that there are things more important than my life, or even our love.

身をすつる 人は誠に すつるかは 捨てぬ人こそ すつる也けれ
Mi wo sutsuru / hito wa makoto ni / sutsuru ka wa / sutenu hito koso / sutsuru narikere
He who casts himself away— / has he truly / cast himself away? / The real castaway is one / who casts nothing away at all! [1]

•Did you ever read Tom Sawyer?

•”It’s funny that pirates were always going around searching for treasure, and they never realized that the real treasure was the fond memories they were creating…” “Huh?”

街をつなぐ、心をむすぶ “The youth of today are only too willing to don the eyepatch. They’re an age of hypochondriacs. Each scratch becomes a scar, and each scar fills their heart with blackest lust. They are a generation of October. The gods have all been taken off to the mountains. They look at the suffering in the world and curse God’s name. Then in their atheism, they ravage the earth, inflicting more suffering than the Lord they’ve forsaken. These freetimers and layabouts, they rob the society that created them, gathering bytes of digital flotsam without remuneration for their benefactors. They sacrifice civilization’s existence for their comfort. There will be no future in Japan, because they have thought it higher to pursue Prada than progeny. They prefer their nation’s dissolution to their own discomfort. They look at the world and say, “life is hard, give peace a chance,” and then through their avarice push others into hardship and war. If there is to be a future, it must be without these pirates. They chase oceans, oceans, oceans, as far as the eye can see, but decline to labor upon the solid earth. Though they had hands, feet, eyes, and ears, these were cast off for the hook, the peg, the patch, and the parrot, and for no sake higher than passing fashion. They pollute their skin with foul patterns and defile the oceans with their excrement. They are pleasure drenched hedonists, and like the Devas await hellfire.

“My blade is such a fire.”