If The World Changed, I Could Not

His Conviction Of Having No Purpose In Life Other Than To Act As A Distillation Of Poison Was Part Of The Ego Of An Eighteen-year-old. He Had Resolved That His Beautiful White Hands Would Never Be Soiled Or Calloused. He Wanted To Be Like A Pennant, Dependent On Each Gusting Wind. The Only Thing That Seemed Valid To Him Was To Live For The Emotions--gratuitous And Unstable, Dying Only To Quicken Again, Dwindling And Flaring Without Direction Or Purpose.

He Was In A Room Of The Gesshuuji, Which He Had Thought It Would Be Impossible To Visit. The Approach Of Death Had Made The Visit Easy, Had Unloosed The Weight That Held Him In The Depths Of Being. It Was Even A Comfort To Think, From The Light Repose The Struggle Up The Hill Had Brought Him, That Kiyoaki, Struggling Against Illness Up That Same Road, Had Been Given Wings To Soar With By The Denial That Awaited Him.

We Live In An Age In Which There Is No Heroic Death.

Better To Be Caught In Sudden, Complete Catastrophe Than To Be Gnawed By The Cancer Of Imagination.

..and Certain That Life Consisted Of A Few Simple Signals And Decisions; That Death Took Root At The Moment Of Birth And Man’s Only Recourse Thereafter Was To Water And Tend It; That Propagation Was A Fiction; Consequently, Society Was A Fiction Too; That Fathers And Teachers, By Virtue Of Being Fathers And Teachers, Were Guilty Of A Grievous Sin.