Soldier Ghost, Part 4
The $538 Billion Defeat
Jews Jaws One Up
Shark America Nine Down
Number of Earthquakes in the Past Seven Days: 211
Virgil Kret's Cell Phone Number: (530) 276-4923
Expect a Disastrous Earthquake on December 26, 2008
George W. Bush Will Destroy the World
Looking for the Peru-Chile God Event
Today: Tactics of the Smallville Battle: The Secret Story, Soldier Ghost (4)
Today's code is "60th Day, Last Year".
When we first came here some 57 thousand years ago and stood upon Earth's stillborn Sister Moon, there was nothing between us but Mars and Venus. Do you know what I mean? The Earth was gone, exploded, killed by human gasoline.
So we traveled back in Time, hoping to head off what the Earth died of; and, you, you were all lost, everyone of you, so saving one of you was a victory, saving two was a big thing to do; but unless we could save this Earth, there was no way in God's creation we could save all of you.
Within that drama was The Secret Story of how we at least temporarily saved the Japanese; but let's move along that trail slowly, you still do not know the story of the Space Birds and the Space Bees.
So let's sidle up to our fourth installment of our serialized story, Soldier Ghost, because within Soldier Ghost and the stories which follow is hidden the Secret Story, Himitsu No Monogatarai, of how we God's Space Sailors saved the Japanese.
There is in American law the right for self defense, but that law goes further, it says there is a duty of self-defense.
Americans not only have the right to defend themselves, they have the duty to defend themselves; as do all living things.
The concept of self defense is now so eroded in the United States of America that the American people have become helpless before all forms of assault, be it Big Money cheating them by the millions out their homes, or the fiction called "Homeland Security" taking their land to build a fence to keep out Mexicans it will never keep out, or the mugger who robs them on the street.
(Whites are particularly crippled in this way; and a mugger knows if he approaches a Yellow, or a Black, or a Brown he might be in for a fight, but a White will crumble and say, "Take my money but please do not hurt me".
In battle, running toward is better than running from.
As all American rights since the days of powdered wigs and fancy swords have been under assault, so to has there been an assault on the right of self defense, and that is the reason the American people are now spineless, mean little people who send their soldiers to preemptively murder those who "might" attack them; and allow Big Money at home to blind them, then rob them blind.
Since today in our story of Soldier Ghost we learn of the fencing style of Praying Mantis and how it led to his acquiring his Soul Name Praying Mantis in a previous life; I thought I might tell you a little about my God's Space War swordsmanship, and reveal my Soul Name, which is Faithful.
(My Soul Name was earned in thousands of years in the Service of God, but that's another story.)
You should understand that slavery is perpetual war on its lowest, most vulgar level; and when my country, the United States of American, established its torture-enslavement of me some 35 years ago it declared war on me.
In doing that my country betrayed me, committed treason against me; and I was compelled by the laws of God, Nature and America to fight back.
How does one fight many? How does weak fight strong?
God knew America would betray me before God asked me to be born in North Dakota in 1939; because God knows America always betrays its ideals. God has a memory, Dear Reader, and God is not stupid.
God determined how I would fight by the tools for fighting God gave me. I do not have one fist of iron and the other of steel; but my brain, Dear Reader, one hemisphere is sharp and the other is quick; and it is with that sharp quickness I have successfully out-fought America..
Thousands of Amricans are dead to my metaphysical, metaphorical blade; and tens of thousands of Americans are dead to their own blundering, blunderings they would not have fallen into had they allowed God's One True Telepath to live and work in peace and freedom; and millions of Americans are in Hell right now, so serious was their treason.
I will tell you more about the damnation of those millions of American souls as we move along, particularly after you know I am blowiing fire up your ass, not smoke. At that time telling you what you psycho-fascist Americans are in for will be more fun.
And really, Dear Reader, war is fun. You know you love it. That's why you watch it, lick it, make it.
For the moment I will just briefly describe Hell to you as it actually is; The Land of God's Rejected.
At this time in human history The Land of God's Rejected is just a sad segment of, a bad neighborhood of, The land of the Dead; but later, when God raises the dead, God's Rejected shall remain behind, rejected and forgotten, with no one to betray but each other.
Forgotten is key here...forgotten is key here...forgotten is key here; because though they drift in airless, frigid space, souls without bodies, souls without home or hope of home, no one in the Universe will give a Tinker's Damn.
But how does one God's Space Sailor use his sword against 350 million traitors? Skillfully, skillfully, skillfully,and constantly falling back so I am not standing on traitor-bloodied ground where I might slip and fall, thus allowing the mob of American cowards to pounce upon me.
If you could see the marks on all the psycho-fascist Americans who bear my mark you would see what a swift and mighty sword God's One True Telepath has, and, sure, if Telepath Torturers fell dead at the moment of my infliction of that mark it would be another story, wouldn't it, cowards?
Yet when I go to a supermarket or walk along a street or attend a church service or eat in a restaurant and cowardly Americans torture me there, I mark them for the slaughter to come.
What seemed to be to the cowardly, smirking psycho-fascist Americans a constant retreat on my part was actually a draw play, a play drawing them into a time and place where there are tens of mllions of God's Space Sailors lying in wait.
The priests of America's state religion, psychiatry, say this is the delusion of a man in a hopeless situation; but bear in mind that what America had done and does to me is counter to the fundamental laws of God, Nature and America.
The only way...the only way...the only way you psycho-fascist Americans are not going to have your pathetic souls shredded is if there is no God; and that there is no God is a fundamental teaching of America's state religion, psychiatry.
Lucky are those who have not tortured me.
(Remember those "UFO" sightings over Stephenville, Texas, not long ago? That was a message to me, not to you; like Indians talking with bird sounds in the dark of night, talking about how they will attack the hated circled wagons at dawn.
(You snidely ask, so where are your Indians in the night; where are you Space Sailors coming to shred our souls? If you can defend yourself come down from this invisible cross we have you tacked upon.
(My answer is; it is not dawn yet, Stupid.)
But enough about psycho-fascist America's doom at the hands of God's Space Sailors, let's return to our story of Soldier Ghost, let's return to The Secret Story, Himitsu No Monogatari, and listen as Praying Mantis tells Tea how he became a great swordsman long, long ago, in a life that now seems far away.
Soldier Ghost, Part 4
“My sword style,” the phantom said, “and my practice of singing sutras throughout duels gave me my name, Praying Mantis.
“I was good with the sword, though I appeared not to be, due to the odd way I held it.
“Picture the arms of the insect I am named after. My arms were held nearly like that. This led the opponent to believe I had no reach. This illusion persisted even after I became well known as a swordsman.
“I would go about dueling for prize money at the tournaments that were popular then. With the prize money I built a small shrine for my order.
“I was born about the time the famed swordsman Musashi Miyamoto died. That would be the second year of the Soho era, 1644 by the Western calendar.
“That was my life of Realization. That was the life in the course of which I got a glimpse of the bigger picture. Prior to that early dawning of my soul I struggled in darkness both when I lived in the Land of the Living and when I lived in the Land of the Dead.”
It took perhaps five visits for Praying Mantis to tell Tea that much of his story. In each of these visits he appeared as a shaven-headed monk in dirty robes, usually holding his long, two-handed sword casually over his shoulder, like a boy his fishing pole.
“I was born near the village of Toba in Kansai, near where the famed wedded rocks stand just off the shore in the Pacific Ocean.
“Many fine swordsmen came from that region. Musashi was born a few days walk away and during my childhood was either dead or in his old age, living in a cave in Kyushu writing his work on swordsmanship, known as A Book of Fine Rings.
“My father was a farmer, though at one time he had been conscripted into military service as a regular soldier.
“He was not a samurai and had little interest in war, but he did participate in a campaign and was recognized for his service.
“Upon the field of battle he found an excellent sword which he managed to secret home. The samurai sword then was permitted to the samurai and the outlaw only. Those of the farmer class were allowed only a shorter, straight blade; so he hid the sword away.
“My father had no love for that contraband sword, but saw it as a hedge against economic hard times, it being richly made and signed by a well known smith.
“I found it during my snoopings as a boy of four. I knew I was born to be a swordsman at the first touching of its sharkskin grip. I dreamed of that sword constantly for two years and finally asked my father if I could swing it, and to my utter surprise and joy he said yes.
“I could barely lift it, but by the time I was ten I could swing it nonstop for hours.
“I had no interest in farming, so my father farmed me out to an order of martial monks near Kyoto. There I entered a classic apprenticeship into the learning of secrets I had never dreamed existed, secrets of the spirit and secrets of the steel.
“It was a pleasant enough life; no bed of roses but no bed of spikes either.
“They started me first on the Way of the Stick. My father’s blade did not go with me, and I was not to touch another until I was sixteen.
“For the first year my only job was carrying wood, and I was always addressed kindly and as a child, the diminutive forms of speech being used.
“On my twelfth birthday the abbot called me in, saying without ceremony, ‘Today you receive your first blade.’ It turned out to be a hoe, and I was apprenticed to the head gardener.
“Toil and religion were my lot for the next two years, but I was not afraid of work nor devoid of interest in spiritual speculations, and I found it a good life, and upon my receiving my hoe I was spoken to as a young novice, no longer as a child.
“On my fourteenth birthday I was given a light, sword-length stick. I was thrilled. The next day, however, every monk at the monastery was carrying a like stick, and would strike me at every opportunity. Awake or asleep, I was never safe from them.
“You must understand, these were not monks of the damp and musty sort.. They were famous throughout Japan for their martial skills and attitudes.
“I was a very strong youth. I mean I was physically strong from work, not ‘strong with the sword’, as we say. As strong as I was, however, I was no match for the monks. They all worked hard at their chores, practiced the sword before and after chores, and meditated twice daily, before and after practice. Their combination of skill, speed, power, and concentration kept me black and blue for six months. I would sing sutras to pass through the pain.
“I was given no instruction, but if I warded off the blows I was praised. If I bowed to accept the praise I was struck on the head.
‘I landed my first blow on one of them after about two months of taking it. After that, more and more of those dear friends of mine bore my markers.
“My first great breakthrough into the understanding of things came when I was sixteen. I was the oldest novice. I was very strong. I was devout in my prayers.
“As sometimes happened, a wondering samurai in search of enhanced reputation stopped by to ask for the privilege of dueling one of the monks.
“I was digging yams in the garden when I received the message to go to the practice hall. I had never been invited there before. The novices were not even allowed to polish the floor.
“The first thing that struck me when I entered the cool, dark dojo was the beauty of the floor, made of wide, dark boards rubbed smooth by a hundred years of bare fencers’ feet and monks’ polishing rags.
“Then I saw the dojo was perhaps thirty yards long and twenty wide. The ceiling was high and supported by four huge pillars of wood. Shafts of light came through latticed openings near the ceiling.
“I then saw that the monks were sitting on knees and feet, backs straight, knees about a fist apart, hands on legs, elbows tucked in. They made a line of thirty robed men in order of rank, the lowest closest to the door, the highest closest to the abbot who sat facing the door on a thick, circular woven straw mat at the head of the room.
“Behind the abbot hung a calligraphic work which read, ‘Be Pure’.
“Opposite the monks, alone and unkempt, sat the samurai. His posture was perfect. His clothing was road-warn. His thick, black hair was wild and long, but tied back with a strip of red cloth.
“On the floor to his left was a wooden sword, not a toy as ‘wooden sword’ might mean in your language, but a beautifully formed hardwood bokken, shaped like a samurai sword. If used with restraint, it was not a lethal weapon.
“The abbot motioned for me to approach and sit (formally of course) on the floor in front of him for instructions.
"When I had settled into position he said in a voice just audible to the visitor, ‘This samurai has walked all the way from Osaka to measure his skill, Praying Mantis. He tells us he is very good and has killed seventeen men in duels. We feel it would be uneven if he were to duel one of the ordained…’ (I could feel the samurai bristle at what was clearly coming, a duel with a novice with garden dirt on his novice’s robe) ‘…so we have called you in to fight him. You may not kill him, but you may break his right arm. If he can defeat you he may chose any one of us to fight, thus making a reputation for himself. Are you ready?’
“’Yes, Thank you,” I answered, and from the center of my heart my first rapture expanded throughout the known me and beyond, to even the me I am today, a long-dead 1944 soldier three centuries later.
“The samurai I was to duel was known as Sakaide No Yoshimori. He was six years my senior. He was a veteran of one clan war. He was of good martial spirit. He was upon The Way, seeking enlightenment. He stood a head above me.
“I knew I would defeat him, and therein lay the novice’s dilemma; for to break his arm might wrench him from his path, and I so loved that path it seemed somehow damning of me to so damage him; yet it was perhaps better that I break his arm now rather than some other fellow cut it off later; but there was little time to ponder.
“’Begin!’, the abbot called out, and Yoshimuri brought his bokken two-handed up over his head in what was called the Jodan position. It took no insight to understand that his plan was to take advantage of his height, for the better shot for the shorter man is the taller man’s right wrist, which was now safely above his head.
“I looked for intent in his eyes, and I found at least intent to maim me, possibly to kill me; for he was deeply angered at having a teen to fight, and he was determined to ruin me.
“I found it amusing, this jodan-posed samurai coming at me with the most blood-curdling noise one is ever likely to hear, and a jodan-jodan play on words popped into my mind, jodan in the second sense meaning something like ‘joke’. His jodan is a jokan, the thought went.
“I held my bokken in the style I received my name from, and stances such as the jodan were impractical for me; but I had become lightning fast over the torso area, and as I had grown in size and strength the bokken had become faster and lighter; so the bokken I now held in my hand was like a hard, terrible feather, and its movements were almost invisible to the eye.
“The classic response to the jodan attack is to cut off the fingers of the attacker’s left hand as it holds the low end of the grip, (his right hand being high on the grip, the Japanese sword almost always wielded with two hands), thus disabling him as a swordsman; then, if things were serious, take his head.
“I had, however, been instructed to break his arm, not his fingers.
“There was but an instant left. His weapon was speeding toward the crushing of my skull. I did what one would expect. I stepped aside. His bokken brushed along the fabric of my right sleeve.
“Of course, before he could recover, his weapon pointed down like an axe in a stump, I broke his right arm just above the wrist.
“As Yoshimori was led out of the hall for medical treatment the abbot motioned to me to sit down in front of him again. One by one the monks passed behind me, each striking me most viciously with a stick. I rang with pain and shame, wondering what I had done wrong. I knew I had made some great mistake. There was true anger in the blows. I looked straight ahead as best I could, though blood soon covered my eyes, and tears filled them.
“When the monks had left and only the abbot remained he waited a few long moments before he spoke. I was ashamed; and I was afraid I was going to vomit onto the beautiful floor. ‘You may remain among us,’ the abbot said quietly, 'but never again think such a poor joke in our company'.
“That is how I learned that all the monks in the order were mental telepaths.
“Years later, when I died,” Praying Mantis told Tea at the closing of his story, “the abbot met me in the Land of the Dead and was kind enough to recommend me to the Bushi Bushi Kai.”
Tea had never heard of the Bushi Bushi Kai, though he had anticipated its existence. It was the parent group of the Not Forgetting Society (which he had not yet been introduced to) and was apparently old enough to be considered ancient, a thousand years at least. Roughly translated, Bushi Bushi meant “No death on the path of the Warrior”.
As if to let Tea absorb this new information, to contemplate the scope of the Japanese Land of the Dead, Praying Mantis did not visit Tea again until the occasion of Tea’s going to Vietnam to cover combat for UPI; or, as Tea later stated it, “When the whore called war crooked her finger at me I went to her like a horny john”.
The visit came on Tea’s last night in Tokyo. Tea'd been told three days before he would be going as an emergency replacement for another UPI man who had been wounded, and was now fighting for his life on the hospital ship Hope off the coast of Vietnam, his distraught wife waiting for word in their apartment in Saigon.
Praying Mantis, for that visit, was again the soldier who had died fighting Americans under the sickle moon. He said only this: “If you live, or if you die, please return to Japan.”
Meanwhile, the USA, unaware it was about to eat the fire, passed through the 60th day of its last year.
Jews Jaws One Up
Shark America Nine Down
Number of Earthquakes in the Past Seven Days: 211
Virgil Kret's Cell Phone Number: (530) 276-4923
Expect a Disastrous Earthquake on December 26, 2008
George W. Bush Will Destroy the World
Looking for the Peru-Chile God Event
Today: Tactics of the Smallville Battle: The Secret Story, Soldier Ghost (4)
Today's code is "60th Day, Last Year".
When we first came here some 57 thousand years ago and stood upon Earth's stillborn Sister Moon, there was nothing between us but Mars and Venus. Do you know what I mean? The Earth was gone, exploded, killed by human gasoline.
So we traveled back in Time, hoping to head off what the Earth died of; and, you, you were all lost, everyone of you, so saving one of you was a victory, saving two was a big thing to do; but unless we could save this Earth, there was no way in God's creation we could save all of you.
Within that drama was The Secret Story of how we at least temporarily saved the Japanese; but let's move along that trail slowly, you still do not know the story of the Space Birds and the Space Bees.
So let's sidle up to our fourth installment of our serialized story, Soldier Ghost, because within Soldier Ghost and the stories which follow is hidden the Secret Story, Himitsu No Monogatarai, of how we God's Space Sailors saved the Japanese.
There is in American law the right for self defense, but that law goes further, it says there is a duty of self-defense.
Americans not only have the right to defend themselves, they have the duty to defend themselves; as do all living things.
The concept of self defense is now so eroded in the United States of America that the American people have become helpless before all forms of assault, be it Big Money cheating them by the millions out their homes, or the fiction called "Homeland Security" taking their land to build a fence to keep out Mexicans it will never keep out, or the mugger who robs them on the street.
(Whites are particularly crippled in this way; and a mugger knows if he approaches a Yellow, or a Black, or a Brown he might be in for a fight, but a White will crumble and say, "Take my money but please do not hurt me".
In battle, running toward is better than running from.
As all American rights since the days of powdered wigs and fancy swords have been under assault, so to has there been an assault on the right of self defense, and that is the reason the American people are now spineless, mean little people who send their soldiers to preemptively murder those who "might" attack them; and allow Big Money at home to blind them, then rob them blind.
Since today in our story of Soldier Ghost we learn of the fencing style of Praying Mantis and how it led to his acquiring his Soul Name Praying Mantis in a previous life; I thought I might tell you a little about my God's Space War swordsmanship, and reveal my Soul Name, which is Faithful.
(My Soul Name was earned in thousands of years in the Service of God, but that's another story.)
You should understand that slavery is perpetual war on its lowest, most vulgar level; and when my country, the United States of American, established its torture-enslavement of me some 35 years ago it declared war on me.
In doing that my country betrayed me, committed treason against me; and I was compelled by the laws of God, Nature and America to fight back.
How does one fight many? How does weak fight strong?
God knew America would betray me before God asked me to be born in North Dakota in 1939; because God knows America always betrays its ideals. God has a memory, Dear Reader, and God is not stupid.
God determined how I would fight by the tools for fighting God gave me. I do not have one fist of iron and the other of steel; but my brain, Dear Reader, one hemisphere is sharp and the other is quick; and it is with that sharp quickness I have successfully out-fought America..
Thousands of Amricans are dead to my metaphysical, metaphorical blade; and tens of thousands of Americans are dead to their own blundering, blunderings they would not have fallen into had they allowed God's One True Telepath to live and work in peace and freedom; and millions of Americans are in Hell right now, so serious was their treason.
I will tell you more about the damnation of those millions of American souls as we move along, particularly after you know I am blowiing fire up your ass, not smoke. At that time telling you what you psycho-fascist Americans are in for will be more fun.
And really, Dear Reader, war is fun. You know you love it. That's why you watch it, lick it, make it.
For the moment I will just briefly describe Hell to you as it actually is; The Land of God's Rejected.
At this time in human history The Land of God's Rejected is just a sad segment of, a bad neighborhood of, The land of the Dead; but later, when God raises the dead, God's Rejected shall remain behind, rejected and forgotten, with no one to betray but each other.
Forgotten is key here...forgotten is key here...forgotten is key here; because though they drift in airless, frigid space, souls without bodies, souls without home or hope of home, no one in the Universe will give a Tinker's Damn.
But how does one God's Space Sailor use his sword against 350 million traitors? Skillfully, skillfully, skillfully,and constantly falling back so I am not standing on traitor-bloodied ground where I might slip and fall, thus allowing the mob of American cowards to pounce upon me.
If you could see the marks on all the psycho-fascist Americans who bear my mark you would see what a swift and mighty sword God's One True Telepath has, and, sure, if Telepath Torturers fell dead at the moment of my infliction of that mark it would be another story, wouldn't it, cowards?
Yet when I go to a supermarket or walk along a street or attend a church service or eat in a restaurant and cowardly Americans torture me there, I mark them for the slaughter to come.
What seemed to be to the cowardly, smirking psycho-fascist Americans a constant retreat on my part was actually a draw play, a play drawing them into a time and place where there are tens of mllions of God's Space Sailors lying in wait.
The priests of America's state religion, psychiatry, say this is the delusion of a man in a hopeless situation; but bear in mind that what America had done and does to me is counter to the fundamental laws of God, Nature and America.
The only way...the only way...the only way you psycho-fascist Americans are not going to have your pathetic souls shredded is if there is no God; and that there is no God is a fundamental teaching of America's state religion, psychiatry.
Lucky are those who have not tortured me.
(Remember those "UFO" sightings over Stephenville, Texas, not long ago? That was a message to me, not to you; like Indians talking with bird sounds in the dark of night, talking about how they will attack the hated circled wagons at dawn.
(You snidely ask, so where are your Indians in the night; where are you Space Sailors coming to shred our souls? If you can defend yourself come down from this invisible cross we have you tacked upon.
(My answer is; it is not dawn yet, Stupid.)
But enough about psycho-fascist America's doom at the hands of God's Space Sailors, let's return to our story of Soldier Ghost, let's return to The Secret Story, Himitsu No Monogatari, and listen as Praying Mantis tells Tea how he became a great swordsman long, long ago, in a life that now seems far away.
Soldier Ghost, Part 4
“My sword style,” the phantom said, “and my practice of singing sutras throughout duels gave me my name, Praying Mantis.
“I was good with the sword, though I appeared not to be, due to the odd way I held it.
“Picture the arms of the insect I am named after. My arms were held nearly like that. This led the opponent to believe I had no reach. This illusion persisted even after I became well known as a swordsman.
“I would go about dueling for prize money at the tournaments that were popular then. With the prize money I built a small shrine for my order.
“I was born about the time the famed swordsman Musashi Miyamoto died. That would be the second year of the Soho era, 1644 by the Western calendar.
“That was my life of Realization. That was the life in the course of which I got a glimpse of the bigger picture. Prior to that early dawning of my soul I struggled in darkness both when I lived in the Land of the Living and when I lived in the Land of the Dead.”
It took perhaps five visits for Praying Mantis to tell Tea that much of his story. In each of these visits he appeared as a shaven-headed monk in dirty robes, usually holding his long, two-handed sword casually over his shoulder, like a boy his fishing pole.
“I was born near the village of Toba in Kansai, near where the famed wedded rocks stand just off the shore in the Pacific Ocean.
“Many fine swordsmen came from that region. Musashi was born a few days walk away and during my childhood was either dead or in his old age, living in a cave in Kyushu writing his work on swordsmanship, known as A Book of Fine Rings.
“My father was a farmer, though at one time he had been conscripted into military service as a regular soldier.
“He was not a samurai and had little interest in war, but he did participate in a campaign and was recognized for his service.
“Upon the field of battle he found an excellent sword which he managed to secret home. The samurai sword then was permitted to the samurai and the outlaw only. Those of the farmer class were allowed only a shorter, straight blade; so he hid the sword away.
“My father had no love for that contraband sword, but saw it as a hedge against economic hard times, it being richly made and signed by a well known smith.
“I found it during my snoopings as a boy of four. I knew I was born to be a swordsman at the first touching of its sharkskin grip. I dreamed of that sword constantly for two years and finally asked my father if I could swing it, and to my utter surprise and joy he said yes.
“I could barely lift it, but by the time I was ten I could swing it nonstop for hours.
“I had no interest in farming, so my father farmed me out to an order of martial monks near Kyoto. There I entered a classic apprenticeship into the learning of secrets I had never dreamed existed, secrets of the spirit and secrets of the steel.
“It was a pleasant enough life; no bed of roses but no bed of spikes either.
“They started me first on the Way of the Stick. My father’s blade did not go with me, and I was not to touch another until I was sixteen.
“For the first year my only job was carrying wood, and I was always addressed kindly and as a child, the diminutive forms of speech being used.
“On my twelfth birthday the abbot called me in, saying without ceremony, ‘Today you receive your first blade.’ It turned out to be a hoe, and I was apprenticed to the head gardener.
“Toil and religion were my lot for the next two years, but I was not afraid of work nor devoid of interest in spiritual speculations, and I found it a good life, and upon my receiving my hoe I was spoken to as a young novice, no longer as a child.
“On my fourteenth birthday I was given a light, sword-length stick. I was thrilled. The next day, however, every monk at the monastery was carrying a like stick, and would strike me at every opportunity. Awake or asleep, I was never safe from them.
“You must understand, these were not monks of the damp and musty sort.. They were famous throughout Japan for their martial skills and attitudes.
“I was a very strong youth. I mean I was physically strong from work, not ‘strong with the sword’, as we say. As strong as I was, however, I was no match for the monks. They all worked hard at their chores, practiced the sword before and after chores, and meditated twice daily, before and after practice. Their combination of skill, speed, power, and concentration kept me black and blue for six months. I would sing sutras to pass through the pain.
“I was given no instruction, but if I warded off the blows I was praised. If I bowed to accept the praise I was struck on the head.
‘I landed my first blow on one of them after about two months of taking it. After that, more and more of those dear friends of mine bore my markers.
“My first great breakthrough into the understanding of things came when I was sixteen. I was the oldest novice. I was very strong. I was devout in my prayers.
“As sometimes happened, a wondering samurai in search of enhanced reputation stopped by to ask for the privilege of dueling one of the monks.
“I was digging yams in the garden when I received the message to go to the practice hall. I had never been invited there before. The novices were not even allowed to polish the floor.
“The first thing that struck me when I entered the cool, dark dojo was the beauty of the floor, made of wide, dark boards rubbed smooth by a hundred years of bare fencers’ feet and monks’ polishing rags.
“Then I saw the dojo was perhaps thirty yards long and twenty wide. The ceiling was high and supported by four huge pillars of wood. Shafts of light came through latticed openings near the ceiling.
“I then saw that the monks were sitting on knees and feet, backs straight, knees about a fist apart, hands on legs, elbows tucked in. They made a line of thirty robed men in order of rank, the lowest closest to the door, the highest closest to the abbot who sat facing the door on a thick, circular woven straw mat at the head of the room.
“Behind the abbot hung a calligraphic work which read, ‘Be Pure’.
“Opposite the monks, alone and unkempt, sat the samurai. His posture was perfect. His clothing was road-warn. His thick, black hair was wild and long, but tied back with a strip of red cloth.
“On the floor to his left was a wooden sword, not a toy as ‘wooden sword’ might mean in your language, but a beautifully formed hardwood bokken, shaped like a samurai sword. If used with restraint, it was not a lethal weapon.
“The abbot motioned for me to approach and sit (formally of course) on the floor in front of him for instructions.
"When I had settled into position he said in a voice just audible to the visitor, ‘This samurai has walked all the way from Osaka to measure his skill, Praying Mantis. He tells us he is very good and has killed seventeen men in duels. We feel it would be uneven if he were to duel one of the ordained…’ (I could feel the samurai bristle at what was clearly coming, a duel with a novice with garden dirt on his novice’s robe) ‘…so we have called you in to fight him. You may not kill him, but you may break his right arm. If he can defeat you he may chose any one of us to fight, thus making a reputation for himself. Are you ready?’
“’Yes, Thank you,” I answered, and from the center of my heart my first rapture expanded throughout the known me and beyond, to even the me I am today, a long-dead 1944 soldier three centuries later.
“The samurai I was to duel was known as Sakaide No Yoshimori. He was six years my senior. He was a veteran of one clan war. He was of good martial spirit. He was upon The Way, seeking enlightenment. He stood a head above me.
“I knew I would defeat him, and therein lay the novice’s dilemma; for to break his arm might wrench him from his path, and I so loved that path it seemed somehow damning of me to so damage him; yet it was perhaps better that I break his arm now rather than some other fellow cut it off later; but there was little time to ponder.
“’Begin!’, the abbot called out, and Yoshimuri brought his bokken two-handed up over his head in what was called the Jodan position. It took no insight to understand that his plan was to take advantage of his height, for the better shot for the shorter man is the taller man’s right wrist, which was now safely above his head.
“I looked for intent in his eyes, and I found at least intent to maim me, possibly to kill me; for he was deeply angered at having a teen to fight, and he was determined to ruin me.
“I found it amusing, this jodan-posed samurai coming at me with the most blood-curdling noise one is ever likely to hear, and a jodan-jodan play on words popped into my mind, jodan in the second sense meaning something like ‘joke’. His jodan is a jokan, the thought went.
“I held my bokken in the style I received my name from, and stances such as the jodan were impractical for me; but I had become lightning fast over the torso area, and as I had grown in size and strength the bokken had become faster and lighter; so the bokken I now held in my hand was like a hard, terrible feather, and its movements were almost invisible to the eye.
“The classic response to the jodan attack is to cut off the fingers of the attacker’s left hand as it holds the low end of the grip, (his right hand being high on the grip, the Japanese sword almost always wielded with two hands), thus disabling him as a swordsman; then, if things were serious, take his head.
“I had, however, been instructed to break his arm, not his fingers.
“There was but an instant left. His weapon was speeding toward the crushing of my skull. I did what one would expect. I stepped aside. His bokken brushed along the fabric of my right sleeve.
“Of course, before he could recover, his weapon pointed down like an axe in a stump, I broke his right arm just above the wrist.
“As Yoshimori was led out of the hall for medical treatment the abbot motioned to me to sit down in front of him again. One by one the monks passed behind me, each striking me most viciously with a stick. I rang with pain and shame, wondering what I had done wrong. I knew I had made some great mistake. There was true anger in the blows. I looked straight ahead as best I could, though blood soon covered my eyes, and tears filled them.
“When the monks had left and only the abbot remained he waited a few long moments before he spoke. I was ashamed; and I was afraid I was going to vomit onto the beautiful floor. ‘You may remain among us,’ the abbot said quietly, 'but never again think such a poor joke in our company'.
“That is how I learned that all the monks in the order were mental telepaths.
“Years later, when I died,” Praying Mantis told Tea at the closing of his story, “the abbot met me in the Land of the Dead and was kind enough to recommend me to the Bushi Bushi Kai.”
Tea had never heard of the Bushi Bushi Kai, though he had anticipated its existence. It was the parent group of the Not Forgetting Society (which he had not yet been introduced to) and was apparently old enough to be considered ancient, a thousand years at least. Roughly translated, Bushi Bushi meant “No death on the path of the Warrior”.
As if to let Tea absorb this new information, to contemplate the scope of the Japanese Land of the Dead, Praying Mantis did not visit Tea again until the occasion of Tea’s going to Vietnam to cover combat for UPI; or, as Tea later stated it, “When the whore called war crooked her finger at me I went to her like a horny john”.
The visit came on Tea’s last night in Tokyo. Tea'd been told three days before he would be going as an emergency replacement for another UPI man who had been wounded, and was now fighting for his life on the hospital ship Hope off the coast of Vietnam, his distraught wife waiting for word in their apartment in Saigon.
Praying Mantis, for that visit, was again the soldier who had died fighting Americans under the sickle moon. He said only this: “If you live, or if you die, please return to Japan.”
Meanwhile, the USA, unaware it was about to eat the fire, passed through the 60th day of its last year.
posted by Virgil Kret at 6:53 PM
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