XXII.
Whoops, I feel a bit drunk when I get home. Funny
that, you feel
alright while you're walking about, but as soon as you get out the
key
and try to put it in the lock, difficulties arise. While I was sizing
up spaces
between objects and insertion points, the guy in the shop downstairs
comes out.
"Nice afternoon," he says.
It is Tetsuwon, he has a shop, but he made it into
a space for people to come
and get taught how to sit and breathe and chant without stopping for
a long time.
Sometimes I can hear it upstairs from our place, so I turn off any
sounds I'm playing
and listen to it then.
"Yeah," I say, "It was nice this morning too, that's why I went out."
I hardly ever see him, so I decide to talk a bit, I can't get the key in the lock anyway.
"I wanted to ask you a favor," he says.
"Sure," I say. He's always giving me things he
doesn't want, so I really would like to
pay him back some way.
He comes up close, and asks me about practicing on
the roof, he wants me to teach him
kyudo. I tell him that I don't have a proper bow, just an old second
hand olympic standard,
and that he couldn't use my arrows anyway, as they are the whiskers
of my father's mustache,
dangerous and heart-seeking missiles handed down father to son since
time immemorial.
Then I look at him, there's something strange
about him, I can't work it out usually. Then, it
hits me.
"What's the matter with you? You have no sexual
desires or what? Don't you need to eat or
shit either?"
"I'm sorry," he says, "Does it bother you? I have
spent so much time training my body and its
desires, I spend so much time concentrating on higher chakras, I
forget to look after the essential
lower ones upon which all is based. Here, I will turn it back on, if
you'll just wait a moment."
"Okay, " I say, and try the lock again, but then a
wave of sickness and nausea comes over me,
erhg, I drank too many martinis I think, leaning on the door.
"Can I help there?" he asks, and I turn around,
noticing that he seems to have changed into
something fairly pulsating, I really do need to go inside and lie
down.
"Please," I say, handing him the keys.
He opens the door for me and lets me pass, then
follows me up the stairs, but I am feeling my
whole body tingling now, I really cannot think of entertaining any
guests.
"Ja, chotto, guai ga warukunatte kitta," I break into Japanese.
"Daijoubu dayou," he says, and reaches past me to
open the door of the apartment.
The side of my body where his arm is now passing feels like a
radiator. Heavens, if I
wasn't so drunk... there are little electrical storms happening on
the surface of his arms
and interfering with my radar. My sense of smell is much poorer under
influence of alcohol
but the subconscious or whatever nerves that still keep me breathing
and responding are
responding to something which is making my legs into some jelly-like
substance, I just have
to get to the sofa.
Inside, he brings me a glass of water.
"Now let's go up on the roof," he says, "please,
show me what you've got up there,
I can hear you practicing you know, the sound carries quite
clearly."
I feel a bit better, so I get up and go over to
the ladder, climb up, raise the trapdoor easily.
He's right, I am fine, and I clamber out, take a look at the plants,
show him proudly, then
open the potting shed where I keep the tack.
"Here, take this in your left hand, now, I have an
arrow, don't let it over the roof, there's the
target down there..." I grasp his hand on the bow, and put my other
arm around his shoulder,
arrow in hand, slipping it between his fingers and his fingers
between mine. "Now look at the
place you want the arrow to go," I say, my chin on his shoulder,
"Become the arrow, thrust
yourself at the target, fly at the place you desire to be with all
your might, nothing else matters
but what is in your sights, until you and the desired are one, never
let go of that goal, there is no
turning back there is only forward, only ahead. Death is your goal,
fly into death's arms as you
would a lover, and die a thousand deaths a day, become those who die
at the same time as you
pierce again and again the hymen of your lover, die with them again
and again and then pluck
yourself into life to repeat an endless cycle of becoming..."
I wonder at myself then, vibrating here in harmony
with some body under me encased in my
arms, yet still talking, talking from nowhere, words I haven't
planned, nonsense words.
I draw back the bow pulling my head behind his to
line up with the arrow, my left arm lying
now on his outstretched, muscles of my own right arm straining to
keep all inline.
"Take your last breath now," I whisper in his ear.
Nnnnnng Pphhhhhhhhhhht Thwaaaackk!
Gotcha.