Friday, July 25, 2008

an opportunity to kill

At twenty-nine, Miyamoto Musashi retired, undefeated, as a duelist. More than thirty years later he would write that a person should think of every movement as an opportunity to kill. I imagine him eating a ball of sticky rice and brushing some dust from the table, and thinking, I must let them know what they are about. If it is not killing, then what? And in each line of the Earth Scroll, he must believe that every stroke, every word, is an opportunity to live. If not living, then what?

No comments: