S Sorrensen
My place. Wednesday, 11.30am
After the rain, comes the heat.
I stay inside and try not to move. I am practised at this. When it was raining I also stayed inside. A samurai moves only when required.
I am a samurai in meditation mode. I’ve been doing a lot of lying-on-the-bed meditation these past few days.
After Yuletide encounters with family, a samurai seeks refuge in nothingness. After grandchildren speeding off their faces on Santa sugar and parents spiralling in a Moet rush, time has slowed to almost a stop (Einstein’s Special Theory of Relatives).
So, here and now at my place, I do nothing. The grass grows, bottles pile, washing up teeters, but I care not. I do nothing because doing creates heat exhaustion.
Yesterday I tried to do something: I wrote a few words before sweat wrecked my keyboard. Just a few words from a heat-delirious brain. Incomprehensible. Haiku.
Not doing is the Way of the Holiday Samurai. Especially the Way of the Hot Holiday Samurai. Not doing is also the Way of the Now-Frugal Samurai who overspent on Christmas presents, organic wine and rice crackers.
But a samurai has a duty to maintain himself (or herself, if one is a samurette).
So, a few minutes ago, I made a smoothie. I rose from my mossie-netted meditation, carefully donned my Godzilla t-shirt (too hot for the kimino) grabbed my wakizashi and wandered to the kitchen.
Using the wakizashi (the smaller of the two swords all samurai must wear), I sliced a mango into three with a skill perfected over many days (three). I flicked the seed onto the overflowing compost bowl where it promptly slid off yesterday’s seed and fell onto the beer bottle pile. Then, I deftly cubed the remains.
I made a mango and banana smoothie with egg, yoghurt, rice milk and the stuff stuck to the blender from yesterday – the food of fat warriors doing nothing.
Many scholars have wondered what the wakizashi is for. It is smaller than the regular samurai fighting sword (the katana) but deadly sharp. Some have suggested the wakizashi was for close-quarters fighting (often) and seppuku (just the once). I have found it excellent for fruit dissection and toad cleaving.
The Santa-season samurai always keeps his wakizashi sharp; toads are many in the modern period.
So now I sit, wakizashi on the table (in case that mindless gas bottle deliverer, who smashed my zen concrete steps, comes back) and sip slowly at my smoothie. (It has a toady taste.) I’m tired.
The Way of Doing Nothing during these final days of Heisei 26 (also known as 2014 AD or Aquarius 41) has so exhausted me I sometimes need to have a little samurai nap (meditation) in the morning as well as the afternoon. Such is the Way.
It was a crazy year. A year when the emporer betrayed his people, when the world warmed even more, when the people – enfeebled by comfort and distracted by toys – abandoned the bushido in favour of the The Voice.
But I feel change coming. I feel the bushido returning.
In this Christmas Torpor Period, I let go of everything – work, household maintenance, even phone charging and shaving – to look deeply into the stillness, like a Zen master on Valium. What did I see?
I saw… nothing.
But, yesterday, sitting on the toilet, I had some insights. Actually, I read them in Hagakure (The Art of the Samurai), compiled by Yamamoto Tsunetomo in the early 1700s.)
So, dear warriors, I offer you these bushido maxims for the new year:
Victory or defeat is a trivial matter.
Civilty is the etiquette of the samurai.
Everything is in the present moment.
Oh, and one should clean one’s wakizashi after toad cleaving.
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