Combat Over Tragedy

Copyright © by Hideo Asano 2010


This book is a pure fiction and ’I’ is a fictional character in this book. Readers, I warn you. This book is not for leisure but for passion to read. You may need an extinguisher while reading. Your hands might be burnt unless you have sacred hands to hold this book.
-- Hideo Asano



The discipline of suffering, of great suffering…it is this discipline alone that has created every elevation of mankind hitherto… In man, creature and creator are united: in man there is matter, fragment, excess, clay, mud, madness, chaos; but in man there is also creator, sculptor, the hardness of the hammer…do you understand this antithesis? And that your pity is for the “creature in man,” for that which has to be formed, broken, forged, torn, burned, annealed, refined—that which has to suffer and should suffer?

It will come, one day, that hour that will envelope you in a golden cloud where there is no pain: where the soul has the enjoyment of its own weariness and, happy in a patient game with its own patience, is like the waves of a lake which, reflecting the colors of an evening sky on a quiet summer’s day, lap and lap against the bank and then are still again—without end, without aim, without satiation, without desire.
-- F. Nietzsche


1

I am a depraved man. I am a spiteful man. I am not worthy to live. I am unpleasantly residing in underground as a dejected being. Once in a while, I instinctively tried to cheer myself but in vain. I gave up for doing it for a long time and let myself gloomier to harm my stomach, which I didn’t care.
For a sure thing is that I don’t desire anything on earth. I don’t put any value on worldly things but in antitheses. I am taking punishment of delightful solitude rebelliously but I have forty untouchable brains which only my treasures on earth. They are like old dry wine and bitter tea. They are the true enemies of wisdom demolishers. Tasteless food is real food for those who care. Sweet tea could ruin my day. Too many brains spoil broth. I take flights more or less eternally to the same brains, which faithfully guard my soul. Untouchable brains and tunes could change the color of my blood. Can you live without food? I eat to live, not live to eat, but to live well. I know how to choose my food. Oh, before to go further, I have to mention this that I have never been fight for happiness. I rather live tragically. I scare to sleep in a feather bed and well fed up to serve someone else that is unthinkable. I rather sleep on straw to feel the freedom to laugh alone unable to make successful jokes with other people. You have to have joyful belly laughter unable to survive without it and therefore alone for it in the world of heterodoxy.
I am eating well to keep up my strength. I am enjoying sophisticated cuisine. I am eating and drinking melodically while enjoying the air of symphonic atmosphere, which orchestrated from deep down earth. I am very choosy eater. I carefully choose food what I like to eat. If I don’t have food what I like to eat I am willing to go for hunger even beyond forty days. With empty stomach you have to act as if you have just enjoyed a New York steak since you know that people wouldn’t believe that you have gone through hunger, which is worth to live with. The glorious thing on earth is we must go hunger all the time.
Hunger can’t kill you. Poverty can’t kill you. Poverty of wits makes you melancholic. But boredom is silent killer. Monstrous tediousness can silently kill you. In poverty, man still can live with dignity for the sake of his dazzling soul.
You might want to know the situation of the underground where I am occupying. Of course, the room is small and always pitch-dark and melancholy so you had to turn the light on even during the day but economical. Actually my room is very bright. Forty lights shine my room constantly. In fact, I rather like a murky place to focus on things to think about or to read than a bright place. The room was sheer empty. There was no table and no chair. I consider such a room is a spiritually dead room, which is opposite of van Gogh’s room, which was even decorated with his own paintings. But recently I had picked them up, one at a time from a garbage heap, at night. All what I needed was a small table and a chair to sit down and to burn the night oil after everybody sold out---food, gold and soul---in the market.
Underground is where you could at least find tranquility. I even hardly found serenity in a park usually packed with party people where I used take a philosophical walk. The air of the park was usually dominated by the excessively loud music during the weekend. I used to lodging in the open air of the park for many nights in winter in my sleeping bag as peacefully as on a bed of roses. I had many delightful bright winter mornings in this park when I heard cheerful musical screams of artless preschool kids playing about me. The bright smiles of innocent kids were allowed me to feel hope of our future. The astonishing moment was when I opened my eyes the white world with snow was waited for me before my eyes and the world was deadly calm with no souls about but only birds on the canopy of a pine tree greeted me with its songs. But normally as the sun rose high, the air of the park invaded again with unpleasant loud music. Where could you find a serene place if there was not a tranquil spot in a park where you suppose to sit to think or to read or to have a philosophical walk? Fly to underground. Untouchable coconut water that makes the sun powerless blocks all sorts of impurity. When you go down deeper you would feel more profitable. Laughable miserable one must hide in underground to live well and hide well all for his independent mind--his stubborn willpower--running against all the glorious and superior things such as prosperity, honor, fame, health…and so on and so forth. Praise monotonous tediousness! People are not talking, but mimicking. I raise my glass mixed with a drop of my tear for their welfare for all the gorgeous and superior. How can anyone attack me? I am speaking in a civilized manner as a bad citizen.
I am defending for my own benefit. I am willing to pay any high price or wherever it might lead me to defend my sovereignty what I only want to maintain. There is no higher price to pay for than that. Hide so well so neither one can smell of me nor bombs can reach me. I am not saying that underground is the most pleasant place to be residing but not bad at all for a particular person who is…

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