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e799e1f
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Murakami liked to fight. Hell, Pride wasn't enough for him. He needed more. And it wasn't the money. Pride, with promotions and pay-per-view, would pay a lot more, to the winners and losers. No. It wasn't the money for this guy. It was the excitement. The proximity to death. The high you can only get from killing a man who's simultaneously doing everything in his power to kill you. I know the sensation. It both fascinates and repulses me.
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Barry Eisler |
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8b054ed
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Boxers wear tape to protect their hands. But you get dependent on the tape, and then you don't know how to hit someone without it. Even Mike Tyson once broke a hand when he hit another fighter barehanded in a late night brawl. In a real fight, if you break your hand, you probably just lost the fight. If you were fighting for your life, you probably just lost that, too.
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Barry Eisler |
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542bbb6
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My speed and strength were still good. Endurance likewise. Recovery times weren't what they once were, but a steady diet of liquid amino acids for the muscles, glucosamine for the joints, and Cognamine for the reflexes all seemed to help.
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Barry Eisler |
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4201ca3
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Men who have survived close-quarters killing know that humans are possessed of a deep-seated, innate reluctance to kill their own species. I believe there are evolutionary explanations for the existence of this reluctance, but that doesn't really matter. What matters is that the fundamental purpose of basic training for most soldiers is to employ classical and operant conditioning techniques to suppress the reluctance. I know modern trainin..
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Barry Eisler |
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10df70d
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My American and Japanese personalities are distinct, and I carry myself differently depending on which language I'm using and which mode I'm in.
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Barry Eisler |
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cc6629b
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We were quiet for a few moments. Then she said, "You were right. I wouldn't have reacted so sharply if what you were saying were untrue. These are things I've been thinking about a lot, and I haven't been as honest with myself as you just were." She reached out and took my hand. She squeezed it hard. "Thank you." I felt an odd confluence of emotions: satisfaction that my manipulation was working; sympathy because of what she was struggling ..
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Barry Eisler |
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8b71303
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I sighed. Two goodbyes in one night. It was depressing. And it wasn't as though I had a whole Rolodex full of friends. But no sense being sentimental about it. Sentiment is stupid.
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Barry Eisler |
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84fbb15
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I've gotten used to hoping for so little that I seem to have lost any natural immunity to the emotion's infection.
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Barry Eisler |
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b1b651b
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I thought of how Midori had once articulated the idea of mono no aware, a sensibility that, though frequently obscured during cherry blossom viewing by the cacophony of drunken doggerel and generator-powered television sets, remains steadfast in one of the two cultures from which I come. She had called it "the sadness of being human." A wise, accepting sadness, she had said. I admired her for the depths of character such a description indic..
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Barry Eisler |
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9887a10
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My mother would have wanted me to say a prayer, crossing myself at its conclusion, and had this been her grave, I would have done so. But such a western ritual would have been an insult to my father in his life, and why would I do something to offend him now? I smiled. It was hard to avoid that kind of thinking. My father was dead. Still, I offered no prayer.
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Barry Eisler |
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77f9659
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I sat silently for several minutes, resisting the urge to speak, knowing it was stupid. There was nothing left of my father. Even if there were, it was ridiculous to believe it would be here, hovering around ashes and dust, jostling for position among the souls of the hundreds of thousands of others buried in this place. People lay the flowers and say the prayers, they believe these things, because doing so avoids the discomfort of acknowle..
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Barry Eisler |
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16519e1
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After all, killing is the ultimate expression of hatred and fear, as sex is the ultimate expression of romantic love and desire. And, as with sex, killing a stranger who has otherwise provoked no emotion is inherently unnatural. I suppose you could say that a man who kills a stranger is not unlike a woman who has sex under analogous circumstances. That a man who is paid to kill is like a woman who is paid to fuck. Certainly the man is subje..
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Barry Eisler |
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6f43543
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The next morning, I worked out at Murakami's dojo in Asakusa. When I arrived, the men who were already training paused and gave me a low collective bow--a sign of their respect for the way I had dispatched Adonis. After that, I was treated in a dozen subtle ways with deference that bordered on awe. Even Washio, older than I and with a much longer and deeper association with the dojo, was using different verb forms to indicate that he now co..
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Barry Eisler |
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42eff99
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He glanced to his left, which for most people is a neurolinguistic sign of recall rather than of construction. Had he looked in the opposite direction, I would have read it as a lie.
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Barry Eisler |
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6f0d26b
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She nodded. "At first what I thought I wanted was revenge. I kept thinking of how to hurt you, how to cause you pain, like the pain you caused me." I wasn't surprised. "And I resented you for that," she went on, "because I've always believed hate is such an unworthy emotion. So weak and ultimately pointless." I marveled briefly at how innocent a life someone would have to have led for such a philosophy to emerge credible and intact, and for..
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Barry Eisler |
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af721aa
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We took a cab to the hotel. We looked at each other on the way but neither of us spoke. I checked us in, and when we got to the room, we left the lights off. It seemed natural that we should walk over to the enormous windows, where we watched the urban mass of Shinjuku twinkling in the violet light around us. I looked out at the city from my lofty perch and thought of all the events that had led to this precise instant, this moment I had im..
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Barry Eisler |
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cf80c5d
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If you knew at the outset what you understood at the end, would you make the same choices, take the same risks, accept the same sacrifices? No. No one would. You can't appreciate the weight of that burden until after you've assumed it. You can't comprehend what it really means.
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Barry Eisler |
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e12b5de
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It was only later that I came to learn how dangerous it is to allow yourself to be seduced by that first attractive theory. If you don't keep testing for alternatives, you might wind up satisfying yourself with, and proceeding on, what's no more than a partial truth. And a partial truth, I would understand soon enough, can be more dangerous than a lie.
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Barry Eisler |
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26e7bf0
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When I'd killed Ozawa at the sento, I'd briefly wondered whether I was now one of the bad guys. By the time I did McGraw, I'd figured out there are no bad guys, any more than there are good guys. There are only smart people, and stupid ones; puppets, and puppet masters. Better a wise ronin, I decided, than a naive samurai.
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Barry Eisler |
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35b688c
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I wish I'd told her I loved her. It bothers me that I didn't. I'd been so close, and then I'd held back. I tell myself it would have made no difference, and I believe that's true. But at least then she would have known.
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Barry Eisler |
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4056fae
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I heard a bolt moving, then the door opened. It was Washio. "You're early," he said. I shrugged. I rarely make appointments. You don't want to give someone the opportunity to fix you in time and place. On those infrequent occasions where I have no choice, I like to show up early to scout around. If someone's going to throw me a party, I'll get there before the musicians set up."
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Barry Eisler |
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cd81908
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Springbank.
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Barry Eisler |
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91f91db
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I picked up the earthen cup and went to take a sip. "Not like that," Miyamoto said. "Let it cool a little. Give yourself a moment to appreciate the aroma, the feel of the bowl in your hands." I was a little surprised and didn't respond, though nor did I drink any tea. Miyamoto flushed. "I'm sorry," he said. "This is why my children prefer to avoid me. Only...it seems a shame, not to pause to appreciate the small things. So often they're mor..
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Barry Eisler |
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a1c14e8
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I closed my eyes, listened to the music, and began sipping the coffee. It was ungodly strong but also delicious, and I realized someone had employed a lot of care to impart that much richness without bitterness or anything else creeping in to overpower the flavor. I had been expecting just a routine cup of coffee, and was struck by the notion that even in an everyday thing like coffee preparation, there was a way of doing things right, with..
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Barry Eisler |
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a09dfcf
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People talk about morality. Sometimes I think there's just what you can do, and what you can't.
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Barry Eisler |
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050ba75
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The guy was shrewder than he looked. I realized I had given too much credence to the scrawny body and the obvious age, and had underestimated him. Watching him set up what would be our makeshift classroom, I wondered whether there would be some value to that. Getting people to underestimate you. Not letting them see what was under the hood. Preventing them from seeing it coming. I thought of the Japanese expression No aru taka wa, tsume o k..
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Barry Eisler |
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edf5a39
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In the movies, they always make sure the hero kills only in self-defense, typically in the instant before the bad guy gets the drop on him. Even in that film Miyamoto had mentioned, Dirty Harry, Clint Eastwood blows away a guy who had kidnapped, tortured, and killed a teenage girl only when the guy goes for a gun. To me, that's all bullshit. More than anything else, killing is about survival. About doing everything you can to deceive, and c..
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Barry Eisler |
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503e22a
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I resolved to never again be unprepared for the shit hitting the fan. I would pay attention to small things--the way people dressed and spoke and walked. The things that made them part of a background environment, or made them stand out against it. I would watch them, try to consciously identify the signs and behaviors that made them who they were, and then imitate and adopt those things as my own. It would be like performing a role, with t..
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Barry Eisler |
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d55802a
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What was that Churchill saying? "Nothing in life is so exhilarating as to be shot at without result." That's what this felt like."
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Barry Eisler |
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536d0ac
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I thought of an expression my father had once told me: Be good to people on your way up. You may meet them again on your way down.
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Barry Eisler |
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6d24cd8
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I read Reinhold Niebuhr's Moral Man and Immoral Society, where Niebuhr talked about how the baser self has to deceive the better self to get the better self's buy-in for behavior it would never otherwise agree to.
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Barry Eisler |
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54a5d6a
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some traveler from the undiscovered country. I know as well as I know anything the dead are simply dead.
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Barry Eisler |
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db45f3c
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When Mom and Dad die, they're taken care of by strangers in a nursing home two towns over. The kids don't have to see them go. They don't even have to see them after. They just get a "we're sorry to inform you" call late that night from the institution's management, for whom such calls are as routine as putting out the weekly garbage is for a suburban homeowner. The funeral home picks up the body. The cemetery buries it. Unless you're a pro..
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Barry Eisler |
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fa1abba
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I pulled on a pair of shorts and did two hundred and fifty Hindu push-ups, five hundred Hindu squats, several minutes of neck bridges, front and back, and a variety of other bodyweight calisthenics and stretches. What you can get done with nothing more than a floor, your bodyweight, and gravity in thirty minutes of nonstop activity would put the fitness equipment industry out of business if people caught on.
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Barry Eisler |
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b520c8f
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I was surprised at how much the genuine clothes made me feel like a monk. I would remember that--that the details mattered, not just in how you looked, but in how you felt, in the kind of unconscious vibe you emanated and that people might key on one way or the other.
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Barry Eisler |
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a8236f0
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I miss her. God, I do. It's beyond missing; it's a kind of mourning. And not just for everything we had, but for everything we might have had, could have had, if only I had made other choices, if only I had been someone else, or something else. But who, or what, would that be? I try to imagine it and I can't. It feels like a delusion, a deception, a dream. All the world's a stage, isn't that what Shakespeare said? And all the men and women ..
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Barry Eisler |
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4a51e61
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I had been watching the yakuza for over a month now, and knew his routines. I'd learned that he liked to vary the times of his workouts, sometimes arriving at the gym early in the morning, sometimes at night. Probably he assumed the resulting unpredictability would make him hard to get to. He was half right. Unpredictability is the key to being a hard target, but the concept applies to both time and place. Half measures like this guy's will..
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Barry Eisler |
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1a85c66
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Seriously protecting yourself calls for the annihilation of ties with society, ties that most people need the way they need oxygen.
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Barry Eisler |
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1ba90b0
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Harry, I only ask because, when you're young, you sometimes think you can have it both ways. If you're just having fun, you don't need to tell her anything. You shouldn't tell her anything. But if the attachment gets deeper, you'll need to do some hard thinking. About how close you want to get with her, about how important your hobbies are. Because you can't live with one foot in daylight and the other in shadows. Believe me on this. It can..
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Barry Eisler |
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f98aa32
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I was taken aback by his gumption. He sounded more petulant than afraid. I realized this kid didn't understand the kind of trouble he was in. If he didn't tell me what I wanted to know I would have to adjust his attitude.
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Barry Eisler |
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d42506a
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There was Asuka, birthplace of Yamato Japan, with its long-vacant burial mounds, surfaces carved with supernatural images of beasts and semi-humans, their makers and their meaning lost in the timeless swaying of the rice paddies around them; Koya-san, the holy mountain, reputedly the resting place of Kobo Daishi, Japan's great saint, who is said to linger near the mountain's vast necropolis not dead but meditating, his vigil marked by the m..
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Barry Eisler |
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692b490
|
you might find yourself passing a lone octogenarian, his shoulders bent with the weight of age, his slippers shuffling along the cobblestones, his passage as timeless and resolute as the ancient city itself.
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Barry Eisler |
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549b7e9
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I also went to Kyoto. I had found no occasion to visit the city in over twenty years, and was struck to find that the graceful, vital metropolis I remembered was nearly extinct, disappearing like an unloved garden given over to vapid, industrious weeds. Where was the fulgent peak of Higashi Honganji Temple, sweeping upward among the surrounding tiled roofs like the upturned chin of a princess among her retainers? That magnificent view, whic..
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Barry Eisler |
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c8b3c48
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I walked for hours, marveling at the extent of the destruction. Cars drove through Daitokuji Temple. Mount Hiei, the birthplace of Japanese Buddhism, had been turned into a parking lot, with an entertainment emporium on its summit. Streets that had once been lined with ancient wooden houses accented with bamboo trellises were now tawdry with plastic and aluminum and neon, the wooden houses dismantled and gone. Everywhere were metastasizing ..
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Barry Eisler |