I Still Have No Way To Survive

For A Long Time I Had Not Approached The Forbidden Fruit Called Happiness, But It Was Now Tempting Me With A Melancholy Persistence. I Felt As Though Sonoko Were An Abyss Above Which I Stood Poised.

Abruptly He Thrust His Snow-drenched Leather Gloves Against My Cheeks. I Dodged. A Raw Carnal Feeling Blazed Up Within Me, Branding My Cheeks. I Felt Myself Staring At Him With Crystal Clear Eyes... From That Time On I Was In Love With Omi.

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.

Yet How Strange A Thing Is The Beauty Of Music! The Brief Beauty That The Player Brings Into Being Transforms A Given Period Of Time Into Pure Continuance; It Is Certain Never To Be Repeated; Like The Existence Of Dayflies And Other Such Short-lived Creatures, Beauty Is A Perfect Abstraction And Creation Of Life Itself. Nothing Is So Similar To Life As Music.

The Purest Evil That Human Efforts Could Attain, In Other Words, Was Probably Achieved By Those Men Who Made Their Wills The Same And Who Made Their Eyes See The World In The Same Way, Men Who Went Against The Pattern Of Life's Diversity, Men Whose Spirits Shattered The Natural Wall Of The Individual Body, Making Nothing Of This Barrier, Set Up To Guard Against Mutual Corrosion, Men Whose Spirit Accomplished What Flesh Could Never Accomplish.