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ANTI-PHILOSOPHY
1. The Precedent
“You know.”
You do know.
You know three things: lying on his knees, arms reaching out in prostration; being carried, head in the crook of his neck; that this is not real, not real for him, but real enough for you, and you’ll take it all the same.
As a Greek prostrates themself to their god. As Mary wept for Jesus and washed his feet with her hair. Yes, that is you.
Your heart has betrayed you. Cliche thing to say, silly poet. No one ever took you seriously. It beats murderously when you’re normal, like eating, or drinking, or playing the shamisen; it beats murderously when you put one foot in front of the next.
At nights when you stumble back to the boat, it’s to a group of angered punk-rockers. You arrange yourself away from them on the starboard windowsill (one leg up, one leg dangling, arm resting on your knee, kiseru in hand;) to look out at a sky you couldn’t be less interested in. Even here, your traitorous heart, beats, beats, beats.
You know.
2. Philosophy
In dreams, he comes to you. (How cliche, silly poet; an insincere grin). Perhaps better stated that you come to him. After all, that’s your eternal orientation— him first, and you follow. So you’ve hated him from the start.
You wake from these and reach for your pipe. Just the mention of his name is enough to set you on edge. The implication of anything existent needs eradicated immediately, and you are absolutely, always, serious.
Your desire from back then hasn’t died out. How much easier if it had—! a thought you never spare yourself. Instead it has taken form, it has mutilated itself.
A love that calls out for execution.
You cross this line out in one broad stroke. You’re no good at writing poetry.
3. God
In that world beyond every other, you are laying on his knees. Your cheek pressed up against the bone of his kneecap, your arms pleading over his thighs. Your eyes—eye—eyes—looking up, looking up at that unbearable light.
Of course he never makes any response: arms crossed, face forward, as good as a statue. More than any loyal retainer, you are his lover, and more than any lover, you are his worshipper. But more than any patron, you are his enemy, and you wish him violent death.
When you close that other eye of yours and slip into dreams, they always reduce down to this singular image.
The wound bays for blood.
So as much as you try to wake yourself, to say, —now’s the time, take that sword from your side and plunge it through his heart!, or, take your sword and plunge it through your heart!, or, I know you want to,— you are bad at writing poetry and your heart stays fixed. It burns, and seethes, and oozes virulently, like pus along a linear excision, for a destruction it cannot achieve.
You burn to the touch.
Zura holds you, as he always has, since you were children. And you rest your death-like head in the crook of his neck while you sleep, in a futon laid out over tatami in a city far from home: you know you will both wake to a well-known world you can no longer recognize.
You entertain a thought: you never knew him, either of him. You never picked a fight on that day, and you waited til tomorrow. You never saw his back as he jumped from the tree for the very first time. You never watched as your— as he— walked up the steps and called out to you, and you certainly never stared at him. You never followed.
You stayed home, you studied. You married a girl. Your sword was taken away. You farmed. Maybe.
You roll over in Zura’s arms to find him looking at you. Cicadas screech.
Go back to your boat next time, he says finally.
4. Why?
You ask, in that moment that seems like an instant. You ask for all of eternity.
The one you want, whose figure you chase after, does not turn to look at you. Turns to look at him.
He, who cuts, who kills, who never looked at you;
He who never turned around to look at you, he who broke even the most keepable of promises, he who above all, above anyone else, must have wanted to save him, he who
Cries.
It goes black.
5. Episode on Mimesis
“We keep getting older,” Tatsuma says, as he pours you a drink. Sits cross legged and impolitely, wide smile and wider posture. The only one of the four of you who seems to be doing better for himself than worse, but, well, the explanation’s obvious.
You take back the sake. Tastes expensive.
“Well,” you say, “time doesn’t turn back.”
The boat rocks gently on the river. For once, Tatsuma's not looking green. He looks downright contemplative.
“You can’t repeat things forever,” he says.
You look down at the bottom of your empty porcelain cup. Then you look up at him, who’s drunk off of nothing. Always a lightweight, even in memories. You set the cup aside and go to sit on the windowsill.
“Always arrange yourself so pretty?” he teases.
The moon reflects out into the water. It reminds you of your dreams— that light, that horrible, stupid light. Silly half-baked poet in you. Your fingers itch for the shamisen.
“You know,” he picks up again, “you can’t be him.”
You know.
“I know.”
6. Intention
It was never my intention.
You make up a million things for the soulless statue to say. He’s made of marble; marble, and your tears, and all the hatred you’ve carved into your traitorous heart. But it never looks at you when you return to lay your cheek against its knee. Just stares straight ahead.
It was never my intention. It was always my intention. I hated you, so I broke our promise. I fell in love with you without you realizing it so I did it for my own selfish end. Yes, I wanted to fuck you, no, I won’t fuck you now. What, you love me? Yeah, I knew that, and I hate you, so I killed him. Yes, I knew that you loved him more than me. Yes, I knew that me killing him would make him into me. Yes, I knew that you would love me.
None of it makes sense.
You wake up disgusted with yourself, covered in sweat. An endless pursuit of words that only began in the after of your death. This is why you’re not a proper poet. You never listened when Shouyou told you to study the classics. You memorized a couple death poems and called it good. So now, when you need it most, the words escape you. You will never be able to fit words into his mouth and know what he said.
You hate yourself for three things: for your weakness to save that which you love, for your disgustingness in wondering amidst your revenge about intention, and for that you hate him and love him still. If you go by technicalities these are all the same thing. That’s what Zura told you, and you know that it’s true. It’s why he sent you, the widow, away. You’re the dead one in the relationship, he said, and besides, it was never reciprocated in the first place.
You waste away, you waste away. You burn more fiercely than you’ve ever burned before. You’re so alive. You’re so alive it can’t be real.
Decapitation, decapitation, hit!
You blow things up together, sometimes. You lean against Zura like a bad caricature of an American comic femme fatale. He always rolls his eyes but lets you act out the charade. Puts his hand on your hip and pulls you away from the police.
I like to comfort the living , he emphasizes. In the present , not the dead.
Honey, I’m alive, you smile back.
Stop baring your fangs at me.
Sorry.
Don’t make a fool of me.
I’m not.
Zura turns, and you watch his long hair catch in the wind. You can tell he’s also thinking about him.
Back to the statue.
What was the reason?
“It was not my intention…”
Hah! Silly little poet.
Like he’d ever say that.
7. Redemption, Reduction
In this reality, not the other one, where he doesn’t exist, yes, this one,
You drive your fist into his cheekbone and drive the next into his nose. He takes it, and you hate him more. You want him; he kicks you off himself and stabs you through.
You need to kill him first.
8. Origin
You loved Shouyou, more than anything, from the moment he called out to you. You love him because he faced you, and you wanted to beat him, and you wanted to be him; you love him because you wanted his love and acknowledgement. And you love him because whenever he scolded you he would scold you smiling, and also because he would pick you up and carry you home on his back when you got too tired, and also because he would hold you, too, when you cried, because even though you talked big about it, getting disowned still hurt.
Because when you got sick, instead of blaming you or hitting you like your parents would, he picked you up and gently carried you to his room. He sat with you and held your hand while you sulked about throwing up. He fell asleep next to you, still holding your hand, Gintoki dozing on his leg with his own legs thrown across yours, Zura sleeping on Gintoki’s stomach holding Shouyou’s other hand. In the spaces that your fever subsided you had the lucidity to feel warm.
And you got jealous when you saw him call to Gintoki and hold his hand as they walked, and you got jealous when Shouyou ruffled his hair and smiled and picked him up. And you got especially jealous when Gintoki walked around with his sword, so carefree, while you knew that Gintoki had known him that much longer, to him, was that much more,
special,
So you did what every child does: you punched him, square on the nose. This was the first time you’d hit him outside of kendo. Gintoki looked at you, stricken. “What the hell was that for?”
The ensuing scuffle got both of you grounded for weeks. But it was you who came away worse for wear, and it was your futon that Shouyou sat by while he clucked his tongue and hid his smile behind that thin facade of disapproval. Now, my little boys, he said. Looked knowingly at you, and winked. Why can’t you be more like Kotarou?
From the opposite side of the room, where Zura was trying to comfort Gintoki who sulked, Gintoki yelled “who the hell would want to be like him?” at the same time as Zura yelled “there can only be one of me!”, before they both dissolved into arguing. At this, Shouyou laughed, and you, embraced in that blinding laugh, could not help but smile.
9. Dark
In the dark of night, you lie, hand over your eye, repeating the same thing, over and over again.
Never thought you’d be afraid of the dark, Zura murmurs into the nape of your neck.
Gintoki cuts off the head again. You roll over. Never thought you still liked widows.
10. The Dream
He picks you up and holds you to his chest. Your head falls into the crook of his neck, cheek pressed against his collarbone. He nestles his nose into your hair and kisses your crown.
Your eyes are closed, because you cannot see anymore; body mangled, barely held together with your bandages and muscles and sinew. At this point, you can’t bring yourself to care. It’s been so long.
He smells like blood and smoke. Ear pressed against his breast, listening to the assured beating of his heart. Your brow smoothes. He holds you so gently.
You fall asleep.
11. The Crux of It
“Why?” you howl, against this rotting, oppressive world. “Why, why, why?”
You can’t even see him. But you can always see him. The horror, when you realize he’s come; how he never turns to look at you.
Gintoki!
A million thoughts are running through your head, at the same time as there are none at all. Stomach on the ground, facing the back of the person you love more than anything, your other self— your stronger self— betrays you, to make the measured walk forward.
Sensei, you think, weakly. Sensei, Sensei, Sensei.
You scream: Gintoki !
You hate him. You hate you.
He cuts.
Swords gone now, only fists. He kicks you off of himself. Your skull hits the earth with a crack you ignore.
He cuts off the head, again and again.
He kills—you scream—he cries.
You cannot accept your weakness, but you know you could not have been stronger. You cannot accept these circumstances, but you know you could not have changed them. You cannot accept Shouyou’s death, but you know you could not have saved him. You cannot accept Gintoki killing him, but you know you have no remedy. You cannot accept Gintoki’s tears, but you know you cannot comfort him.
And yet.
His back that never turned to you, Shouyou’s back that never turned to you. A smile, a word, a continuity— for him, and not for you.
Shouyou turns to Gintoki and smiles. Gintoki goes to him, cuts, and cries.
You cannot wipe his tears.
Lying there, miserably, on this ground far from home, your body mangled and death-like and ten years older, you watch forever as the past repeats itself into its very own eternity. It’s the memory seared into your eternally closed eye— as with the very stroke of his sword, he who kills your love becomes it.
Why? How could he kill him?
How could he do that to himself, for you?
How could he kill who you loved, who he loved, more than anything else in the world?
You have spent, poured out, your mistaken life, into this unending work. You can’t accept him, but it’s your weakness who created him. You choose to avenge him with a pain far worse than death. If you kill yourself, you will kill him; but if you kill him, you will kill your self—his absence a pain far greater than any in the world. You will kill him to apologize to him.
Kill yourself by killing him.
You want to cry.
12. In That Place Beyond All Else…
He cries.
He’s crying forever, stuck in your open eye socket. He cries in the shitty poetry and in the traitorous beating of your heart; or else he cries in your devotion to his death, through which you hope to achieve yours. He cries in this twisted howling thing that keeps you alive even though you already died back then, and he cries when you die, that is, back in the singular moment, that is, the flash of silver steel, the continuity that pierced from Shouyou, who you love, through to him, when he cried and became your love, and you could not wipe away his tears.
You understand it and you do not want to. He betrayed you and he did something that is far beyond words. If you try to express it you tear up the paper and throw it into the river below. A bunch of useless, inexpressible meaning.
You already know it and you cannot accept it.
In that place beyond time, you are lying on his stone-cold lap. Your arms can’t reach him. Instead it’s your cheek pressed against his kneecap, it’s you holding onto him like he’s the last thing on earth. Your hair musses out over the folds of his kimono. Your tears (the ones you never shed) wet his marble legs. You stay like that, clinging to him, pathetically, helplessly, longingly, almost religious.
He looks out, straight, arms folded, sword holstered in his waistband, looking not at you. You know what he’s looking at, and you cannot accept it. But you don’t have it in you to particularly mind.
In your dreams, that is, the softer, the sweeter ones, he is no longer crying, he is younger, and you have not crucified him to kill his own self.
He clings to Shouyou’s arm when he thinks you’re not looking. He blushes, very slightly, when Zura praises his kanji. He laughs, so loudly, and punches back when you punch him first. He teases and belittles and grins a little deviously and makes fun of your poetry and pours ink on your notes.
In your dreams, that is, the very rarest ones, when the statue gives way to something else, it’s because you’ve killed him to wipe his tears, and there is nothing but emptiness there. Your cheek does not press against stone, or knee; your arms do not grasp at an unreachable heart. You sit, knees bent under you, kimono trailing, in nothingness, and know that the emptiness is worse than anything.
It’s your fault.
But in the final dream, that is, the very rarest one, you are lying on his knees, cheek pressed against his patella. You embrace his stone cold legs—yes, there, where you used to kick him as quarreling children, yes, there, where you used to rest your head and fall asleep—and gaze up at him, hair falling into your eye (into your eyes). You realize you are weeping.
There’s a hand on your head.
“You know,” he says.
And he rises, and he picks you up so gently— that is, your mangled body and all— and lets your head fall into the crook where his neck meets his shoulder, and holds you like a newborn baby, crying at the world. One hand comes up to cradle your face and run his fingers through your hair.
You find that your tears run wet. He kisses your crown, and you close your eye. Too impossible to be real, but you’ll take it all the same.
You know three things.