Mishima Passage
I already finished the two books I brought, so we went to Good Day Books in Ebisu and I got two more, one of which is Kokoro by Natsume Soseki, and the other of which is Forbidden Colors by Mishima, from which this strange, proud and self-loathing passage is taken:
What we call thought is not born before the face but after the fact. It enters as the defense attorney of an action born of accident and impulse. As defense attorney it gives meaning and theory to that action; necessity is substituted for chance, will for impulse. Thinking cannot heal the wounds of a blind man who has walked into a lamppost, but it can show that the lamppost and not the blindness was at fault. To one action after another theory after the fact is applied until theory becomes the system. The agent of actions becomes nothing more than the probabilities within all actions. That's wat threw the scrap of paper in the street. It thought and threw the scrap of paper in the street. In this way he who possesses the power of thinking, seeking to extend that power beyond all limits, becomes himself the prisoner of thought.
We wandered around Shibuya today and took lots of pictures (of stuffed animals, neon and ourselves dancing on a karaoke booth), which I'll post here as soon as I get them uploaded to Flickr.
LINK | 11:49 PM | TB
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I love how your being in Tokyo (you are?) just slips into the blog post as an afterthought, a coincidence.
Enjoy.
Jill | April 4, 2004 4:31 AM