Joe Speedboat by Tommy Wieringa Read Free Book Online

something about you that struck me, if you had weird ears or a pretty nose, I’d write that down too, and what you came here to do and how you did it. But other things as well, about how the autumn rain, for example, rinses the blond from our hair, letting the dark winter hair appear beneath, and about the river that runs through our lives the way the bloodstream runs through our bodies.
    When I write I often think about the great samurai Miyamoto Musashi, who said that the samurai walks a twofold path: the way of the sword and that of the brush – the pen, in other words. The Way of the Sword is a little tough for me, so all that leaves me is the pen. I got that from
The Book of Five Rings
,
Go Rin No Sho
, which I found in the library and read to a tatter. I never brought it back.
    Musashi is Kensei, the Sword Saint, who never lost a single fight in his life. His full name was Shinmen Musashi No Kami Fujiwara No Genshin, just plain Musashi to his friends. He was born in Japan in 1584 and slew his first opponent at the age of thirteen. Many fights followed, and he never lost a one of them. He was a legend in his own time, but said that he only began to grasp the tenets of strategy around the age of fifty.
The Book of Five Rings
is about how to fight like him, but it’s also full of good advice, even if you’re not much of a swordsman.
    With the force of strategy I practiced many arts and skills – all of them without a teacher. In writing this book I did not make use of the teachings of Buddha or of Confucius, nor did I consult the old chronicles of war or books of martial arts. I took my brush in hand to explain the true spirit of this Ichi School, as reflected in the Way of Heaven and Kwannon. It is now the middle of the night, on the tenth day of the tenth month: the hour of the tiger.

    A few weeks after Musashi had committed his lessons to paper, he died.
    Particularly useful to me has been the Strategic View, which teaches you to see things better. Musashi writes: ‘Your view must be both broad and open. This is the twofold view that is called “Perceiving and Seeing”. Perceiving is strong, seeing is weak. In Strategy, it is important to see things that are far away as though they were near, and to look at the things that are near from a distance.’
    Isn’t that something!?
    I started on my diaries as a sort of retirement fund. I figured: if I write down exactly what happens, people will come to me later and ask, ‘Frankie, what happened on 27 October in the year such-and-such? Would you look if you can find anything about me on that day?’ And because I’d always kept track of everything and filed it away neatly, I’d be able to fetch the book they needed and find it right away. Here, 27 October, a couple of years ago, a howling southwest storm that caused a lot of damage. Trees were felled, car alarms were blaring all over the place. With spaniel-like fidelity, the club treasurer went out to rechalk the lines on the football field and was almost lifted off the ground. A white cloud came blowing from the chalk cart and mussed the lines. I admired the treasurer’s dogged determination. One hour later, all outdoor sporting events all over the country were cancelled.
    The hard wind turned the people out on the street into children, all wild and excited, with glistening eyes and not a worry in the world. That’s what struck me most, that they didn’t seem to worry about a thing, even when tiles came whipping off the roofs and their cars were damaged by flying branches. That day the ferry stuck to its moorings. The river writhed and tossed up wild, gray waves.

    On 28 October, the storm was over. Then came the chainsaws.
    And after I showed you that particular entry, I would take my notepad and write:
Cash please
.
    But people don’t care about things like that. They’re not interested in what really happened. They’d rather stick to their own