Michael Garriga’s volume The Book of Duels has an interesting conceit: he tells the stories—in compressed, poetic prose or, in one case, actual poetry—of 33 often infamous duels from the viewpoint of each of the duelists and a witness. Today’s WORK is the first of the triptych for Musashi v. Kojiro, April 13, 1612. The second and third pieces will follow in subsequent newsletters.

WORK

“Miyamoto Musashi, 28
Ronin & Future Author of The Book of Five Rings”

My katana cut through his kimono and armor and flesh and when he dropped his steel I turned to the boat and motioned for my team to leave—his seconds surely would have killed us all—and we’ve timed it just so, the tide pulling us out as we paddle steady with the waves, the salt in my beard and the wind in my dress, and we rise and fall with the water, we rise and fall, and the sea carries me back to my village where I am a child, the snow falling softly outside, and I sit with my legs beneath the kotatsu, the coals warming me, and I am crying in my mother’s arms—she squats next to me and strokes my back and says, Shhhh, Saru-chan, shhhh, as I try to describe the dream I’ve just had of sitting by a pond whose surface is covered with lotus leaves, in the middle of which is but one lone bloom, orange and pink and far removed, and I reach for it with tiny fingers and I am stretched long and thin and then topple and splash into the water, beneath whose surface is all darkness and dry, and though I know my father was killed in the Battle of Sekigahara, he now stands before me in a doorway, his hand reaches out to me, yet the closer I move, the tinier he becomes and so I stand still as a mountain and stare for a long long time calling to him, Tousan! Tousan! until he faces into an ultimate light and vanishes, yet I cannot find the words to tell her this, like a flower that blooms at night can never wish for a thing as miraculous and needed as the sun.

I wake on the boat, the wind blowing us to our destination, and I remember another dream in which I was a warrior who’d been slain in a duel, though perhaps that was no dream—perhaps I am truly the dead man and this voyage but my final dream.

—Michael Garriga
—from The Book of Duels

WORD(S)

ecdysiast /ek-DEE-zee-ast/. noun. A strip teaser. Coined by humorist H. L. Mencken in response to a performer who didn’t like being called a “stripper.” See also: ecdysiasm, the act or occupation of strip-teasing.

“It might be a good idea to relate strip-teasing in some way or other to the associated zoological phenomenon of molting. Thus the word moltician comes to mind, but it must be rejected because of its likeness to mortician. A resort to the scientific name for molting, which is ecdysis, produces both ecdysist and ecdysiast.” (H. L. Mencken)

“Call me an ecdysiast and nothing else or I’ll sock you in the chops.” (Robert Olen Butler)

“…the turgid screen adaptation of The Time Traveler’s Wife stars Eric Bana as Henry, the accidental ecdysiast, and Rachel McAdams as Clare, the long-suffering but patient-as-Penelope title character…” (Joanne Kaufman)

WEB

1. Well-worn ex-library books are the subject of Kerry Mansfield’s Expired and Expired Blanks photo series. There’s something about the tattered book…something lost in the digital realm.

2. Similar, in a way, read about one collector’s exhibition of 1018 copies of the White Album (so far)…

3. With Photogrammar you can organize, search and visualize more than 170,000 photographs taken by the by the United State’s Farm Security Administration and Office of War Information from 1935 to 1945.

4. Wikipedia page du jour: a list of common misconceptions…an entry that could, someday, take the idea of “infinite scroll” to Borgesian heights.

5. Today is Chrysanthemum Day in Japan (菊の節句 or Kiku no Sekku), celebrating the 9th day of the 9th month. The celebration was inaugurated in 910 AD when the Japanese Imperial Court held its first chrysanthemum show. Chrysanthemums have been raised in Japan for more than 1200 years…but for more than 3500 years in China, where their roots were used to cure headaches and is one of the four noble plants (along with bamboo, orchid and plum). The traditional origami chrysanthemum is easy to make and easily made into a kusudama or “flower ball.” Try it for yourself with these easy photo diagrams.

REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES

• Reader J. writes in: I love Tim Minchin. Everything he does. And I’m happy to see reference to the Toynbee tiles. ¶ Well done. Maybe a tip of the hat to Henry Darger (as I review the tangled contents of my own Toynbee tiles). — Perhaps unsurprisingly, Darger is on my disorganized and scattered list of people to include here someday.

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