Duel

Duel is a ritual of turning rivals into enemies by mutual agreement.  But killing is killing.  It may be characterized as a mutually-greed premeditated manslaughter. See also Rivals Are Not Enemies.

06.12.18

Zealots

Zealots sadly never realize, for the most part, that they are zealots, in the belief that they are only zealous, that is passionate and dedicated to the cause they espouse, blind to other causes espoused by others.  If they had eyes to see them. . . buy they don’t and that’s why they are zealots.     

09/26/12

返答 変答 偏頭

届きましたか、と蟻が問う。

蜂が答えて、はい、ありがとう。

おや、蜂ではなくて蝿ですか。

はい、はい、蚤では蟻ません。

06.10.18

Swimming

I cannot swim.  I never learned to swim. By sheer luch, through all these 85 years of my life, I was in no situation that required swimming for survival, like being on a sinking ship or being swept away by a high wave while wading too far off shore. 

As a child I was afraid of the waves washing on the beach.  As a grown-up, I was never attracted to get in the water except in a bathtub.  I claimed that, born late in January and therefore being an Aquarius, I had plenty of water on me and didn’t need to soak my whole body in water.  For the same reason I don’t drink much water, so I reason, and, in consequence, I tend to dehydrate.  

It’s not that I tried to learn to swim.  Swimming was a requirement for graduation when I finished my undergraduate education at UC Berkeley.  I took a course in my Senior Year and I was proud to have managed to learn to float on my back and make a few back strokes, five or six as I recall.  There was one test where, in the deepest part of the pool, I was to shoot straight down, touch the bottom with my feet and rise to the surface.  I never could rise without the help of a teaching assistant who went down with me and lifted me up with hands on my waist.  I like height; so, I enjoyed flying down from a diving board.  But I never learned to shoot into the water head on, so I hit the water with the whole body, splashing the water all over and receiving painful impact all over my body.

I did go to a beach in summer once in a while.  For a period of about ten years, I went to the shore from March to October whenever I had time to go; but I never went into the water. I went to lie on the sand and sunbathe and was never tempted to go into the water.  I cultivated a dark skin that made people say I looked like an African; the color vanished in a year when I stopped sunbathing. 

Once in a while I take a  soaking bath in a tub filled with hot water; but I feel safer under a shower with no chance of drowning.  

There is no chance now I will ever know how to swim, not even in a dream. 

06.02.18