| Kirijini |
[Oct. 23rd, 2008|09:00 pm] |
The fact that we are alive may mean that we have already been chosen for some purpose, and if life is not something we have chosen for ourselves, then maybe we are not ultimately free to die.
-The Way of the Samurai, Yukio Mishima on Hagakure in Modern Life
In the midst of looking for a Japanese language tutor, I drifted to martial arts instructors which lead me to a mixed martial class and then to a Kendo/Iaido class that is taught regularly here in little old Springfield. I attended tonight to watch and ask questions and am elated by what I saw and heard taking place. It's a small class, about six students and I recognized several things from the Iaido and Kendo reading I had done previously.
It also turns out that the head sensei drives to Bloomington for Kendo/Iaido practice every other Saturday with the same group of students. It's ironic that I've been driving to Bloomington every other weekend as well, though for the purpose of visiting a friend of mine. I watched sensei work with a student who asked about Musashi's Niten-ryū style, and sensei demonstrated some katas from it, which was pretty goddamn interesting to watch.
No flair, no bells and whistles, no "belt selling" just no-nonsense, friendly and open atmosphere. The head sensei is kind, but stern.
So this is the path I've been taken, back to the beginning really, back to bushido, back to the ideal I've been molding through bodybuilding alone until now. Now I am Sun and Steel, traditional and contemporary, a step closer to a warrior ethos I've been chasing after for years.
Here we are approaching November as well... |
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| A Love of Pain |
[Oct. 14th, 2008|10:49 pm] |
The limitations of pain are held in the mind. It is important to note that a love of pain does not necessarily come from the moment of pain itself, but from the reprieve when it is taken away. Granted, the application of pain itself, at the moment the nerves are experiencing it is its own kind of pleasure, of appreciation, but the endorphin rush comes post-pain, when the body is given rest and floods itself with reward.
With muscles it is an interesting cycle. You stretch, pull, rip and tear down the fibers so that, when they repair they repair larger, stronger and denser, more acutely tuned to the action that originally tore it down. This brings an interesting thought to mind - if you beat, cut, burn, tear and rip a person's mind down, through physical and emotional pain, does it not regrow stronger, more resilient? It is likely...but like a muscle that is stretched too far, pulled too hard, or stressed beyond - the mind can also break, become damaged and dysfunctional. It is important then, that one be careful in the application of pain to the body and the mind. While I am just as guilty of extremes with physical pain as any other dedicated individual, I must be wary, at least conscious of the potential for premature self-destruction, leaving in my wake a broken piece of myself that sets me back from achieving total tolerance, strength - ascension as it were.
Can I safely draw the conclusion that a painful and extensive means of total self-destruction would result in a death experience akin to the endorphin rush of of the muscles? Now I'm stepping into the extreme fantastic...but it is worth considering when I read of Kiroaki, cutting open his stomach, with the sun exploding in his eyes at the moment of death...this is what Mishima hinted at, and what so many labeled as a sort of necophilious obsession.
It could be surmised then, that such a process of building a temple in the body is for a cheap and shallow reason - a lust to experience some sort of ultimate pleasure response, if only for a single moment before it and the continuance of one's own reality, of one's own "life" ceases to exist. In turn, it has been reduced to a purely sexual, perhaps purely sensual, moment.
This is throwing aside twisted interpretations of honor or glory altogether. Instead, this cuts through to the masochism involved, and just how strongly that underlines the pain/pleasure fascination. Therefore, I have to ask myself - do I follow this path because I am no different than any other addict? Do I weave my addiction up and into a veneer of honor, glory and inflated self-righteousness? Or am I truly following some sort of creed that puts me in the footsteps of the other greats? Am I hiding under a mask of ideals when the truth is that I am nothing more than a deviant? |
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| A More Dangerous Sun |
[Mar. 31st, 2008|08:16 pm] |
Alone, my window is open, I begin my routine. Tonight is chest night, so it's primarily a lot of bench press variants, flat, incline, dumbbell - for the time being. The storm picks up outside midway into my routine, and thunder begins crashing down, chasing its lightning brethren. Music going, for a moment, I am part of that ideal I have in my mind - each rep, I can make out the lightning flashes in my room between the black spots and spirals of exhaustion in my vision, the thunder echoes around, reinforcing my need to breathe, pushing upward, upward, upward.
I stand at the window, I now see a sickly, pale light flooding the green and grays - the sun, just over the houses, burns a bale fire green, it's round shape now evident by the suffocation of the storm it seeks to extinguish - it is then, sweating, tired and sore that Mishima echoes in my mind:
"Thus I glimpsed from time to time another sun quite different from that by which I had been so long blessed, a sun full of the fierce dark flames of feeling, a sun of death that would never burn the skin yet gave forth a still stranger glow.
This second sun was essentially far more dangerous to the intellect than the first sun had ever been. It was this danger more than anything else that delighted me."
Yukio Mishima - Sun & Steel, p. 44
For just a moment, that strange light cascading over me and washing my room away into some strange and lost vista of legends long past. |
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| Mishima |
[Sep. 10th, 2007|09:31 am] |
| [ | Tags | | | mishima | ] |
| [ | Music |
| | Pink Floyd - Wish You Were Here | ] |
So you think you can tell Heaven from Hell,
blue skies from pain.
Can you tell a green field from a cold steel rail?
A smile from a veil?
Do you think you can tell?
And did they get you to trade your heroes for ghosts?
Hot ashes for trees?
Hot air for a cool breeze?
Cold comfort for change?
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? |
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