I Had No Taste For Defeat -

Dreams, Memories, The Sacred--they Are All Alike In That They Are Beyond Our Grasp. Once We Are Even Marginally Separated From What We Can Touch, The Object Is Sanctified; It Acquires The Beauty Of The Unattainable, The Quality Of The Miraculous. Everything, Really, Has This Quality Of Sacredness, But We Can Desecrate It At A Touch. How Strange Man Is! His Touch Defiles And Yet He Contains The Source Of Miracles.

We Tend To Suffer From The Illusion That We Are Capable Of Dying For A Belief Or Theory. What Hagakure Is Insisting Is That Even In Merciless Death, A Futile Death That Knows Neither Flower Nor Fruit Has Dignity As The Death Of A Human Being. If We Value So Highly The Dignity Of Life, How Can We Not Also Value The Dignity Of Death? No Death May Be Called Futile.

Time Is What Matters. As Time Goes By, You And I Will Be Carried Inexorably Into The Mainstream Of Our Period, Even Though We’re Unaware Of What It Is. And Later, When They Say That Young Men In The Early Taisho Era Thought, Dressed, Talked, In Such And Such A Way, They’ll Be Talking About You And Me. We’ll All Be Lumped Together…. In A Few Decades, People Will See You And The People You Despise As One And The Same, A Single Entity.

At No Time Are We Ever In Such Complete Possession Of A Journey, Down To Its Last Nook And Cranny, As When We Are Busy With Preparations For It. After That, There Remains Only The Journey Itself, Which Is Nothing But The Process Through Which We Lose Our Ownership Of It.

When Silence Is Prolonged Over A Certain Period Of Time, It Takes On New Meaning.