I was looking for a particular quote recently, and to find it, I’ve been rereading Hagakure.  Which, if you’ve read it and are like me, is never quick going.  Other books I can just thumb through until I find the quote I’m looking for, and it generally doesn’t take a particularly long time.  But Hagakure is different.  Whatever random page you open to, there is almost always something that engages you right then in that very moment and you forget all about the quote you were looking for and start reading.  So of course, that’s what happened.  After the flip of maybe two pages, this jumped out at me, and it was exactly what I needed to hear at that moment.  I’ll find the quote I was looking for in the next day or two, but in the meantime, check this out:

“Even if it seems certain you will lose, retaliate.  Neither wisdom nor technique has a place in this.  A real man does not think of victory or defeat.  He plunges recklessly toward an irrational death.  By doing this, you will awaken from your dreams.”  ~ Yamamoto  Tsunetomo

Goddamn right, dear reader.  That’s beautiful.  There’s been a lot of reckless plunging lately, and it’s kind of just the way I do things sometimes, but it can be stressful.  Hagakure is, as always, comforting.

N.P.: “Tie Your Mother Down” – Lemmy & Ted Nugent

These 17-hour days are getting to be a bit much.  Perhaps things will ease up in November.  Or maybe by Christmas.

It’s not really the time or physical exhaustion that bothers me.  It’s how much disparate stuff is on my mind all the time.  All the time.  It’s like as soon as I wake up, some pressing business or decision I have to make or thing I need to deal with pounces on my brain, followed immediately by two more.  And there those things sit, all day, all week, all month…however long it takes to deal with each of them.  How the fuck can I be expected to compose beautiful verse when I’m I’m trying to remember when the property tax is due?  Dire times, dear reader, dire times.  But we shall persevere, shall we not?  Goddamn right we will.  What the hell else is there to do?

N.P.: “Scherben bringen Gluck” – Megaherz

As I mentioned before, dear reader, I’ve been trying to convert my eye-rolling cynicism into a more healthy stoicism, and it’s probably time for a progress report: things are going swimmingly.  One technique that has been proving helpful has been negative visualization.  Yeah, I know, hippies…hear me out.  If you begin every day with some bullshitty Disneyesque positive meditation about how great and fair the world is, how all of your fellow human beings are really decent people who would never intentionally hurt you or fuck you over, and how everything happens for a reason, that life is a journey, and all that other god-awful twaddle, you’ll start your day off in a terrific mood, only to have each of the above false platitudes disproven repeatedly before noon, only to end your day in a fit of jaded disappointment, depression, and defeat.  That’s a terrible idea.  Instead, follow the teachings of Marcus Aurelius:  “Begin each day by telling yourself: today I shall be met with interference, ingratitude, insolence, disloyalty, ill-will, and selfishness – all of them due to the offenders’ ignorance of what is good or evil.”  Mine goes something along the lines of: “This entire day is going to be filled with explaining the obvious to completely self-centered yet somehow totally un-self-aware idiots who aspire to learn in this lifetime a fraction of what I had already forgotten by the time I was 30, and I’m expected not only not to murder any of them, but to actually smile and maintain relationships with as many of them as possible.”  I come to truly accept this as reality (which is, alas, not particularly difficult seeing as how the day before was likely spent doing this exact that).  But then, in the middle of the day, when some point of light comes along and actually makes you laugh or teaches you something or shows you a different or new perspective, the day is suddenly great.  And at the end of such a day, when you lay your head on your pillow and wait for the propofol to hit, you can’t help but be pleased by how wrong you were in your pessimistic morning assessment.

This might not work for you, but it’s been most effective for yrs. truly recently.

N.P.: “The Undertaker – Vagina Mix” – Puscifer

If anyone ever tries to feed me a “hamburger” made out of plants, birds, or anything that didn’t used to moo and dream, I shall punch them in the mouth.

N.P.: “Take Out the Gunman” – Chevelle

Yes, dear reader, the world is going to hell.  The apocalypse must surely be just around the corner.  The end is nigh.  The state of California, the tech capital of the world, is have multi-day blackouts in the 21st century because it’s a bit breezy.  There are so many homeless camped on the sides of freeways and under overpasses that it looks like the road to Burning Man no matter which direction one is going.  There are plagues.  There is pestilence.  The moon has turned to blood.  The four Horseman are saddling up.  But none of that matters.  Nobody cares.  Wanna know why?

The McRib is back, dear reader…at long last, the McRib is back.

N.P.: “Enter Starman” – Ten Second Songs

It’s frustrating, most of the time, to feel that you run on one schedule and the rest of the world runs on a different schedule, one that is much slower.  But that’s really how it feels most days.  And today was like most days.

N.P.: “Sugar – Archigram Remix” – Ladytron

Dammit, dear reader, the night got away from me again.  I need either a manager or an assistant.  Preferably both.  I don’t know how the hell I’m supposed to write books and also shop for groceries and get the oil changed and all the pedestrian, time-consuming tasks that everyone else seems to be able to get done whilst still having a career.  I should have factota.  I suppose the upside is, in the words of Kobayashi, “One cannot be betrayed if one has no people.”  But if one has no people, one ends up spending a lot of time dicking around in lines at grocery stores.

Anyway, enough of this drivel…time to drain this pen of bitter ink.  And to pawn a biting phrase with tongues hot with blood.  Heh.  Yeah.

N.P.: “Sex Type Thing” – Stone Temple Pilots

Today should have been better.  A day’s potential goodness is limited when book-ended by reports of Ginger Baker dying in the morning, followed by reports of Rip Taylor dying in the evening.  Think I’m just gonna go to bed.

N.P.: “Black Velveteen” – Lenny Kravitz