Mishima Today or Mishima's Guide to Productive Tennis

Mishima Today or Mishima's Guide to Productive Tennis

If you were here now, I would tell you the way I love you.
It is the same way a whale catches the red of the northern lights
in the gleam of a harpoon, clutched by a Japanese whaler, poised
to let it fly.
Which is to say it is difficult. I heard somewhere that
Harry S. Truman, right before he died, was asked if he had
any regrets, and he responded,"I'm dying. I regret that
I'm dying. And love. I wish I had loved as often
as I died".
I think that was Truman, I'm not sure. Love is hard,
stubborn, and rigid as a bad serve. I've been practicing.
If you were here now, we could play,
and I wouldn't have to waste time hitting against a brick wall.
Serve and return. You should have been named
after Konohana-Sakuya, translated, "Symbol of Flowers".
If you were here now, I would tell you how
in Japanese mythology, the marriage of Konohana-Sakuya
and Ninigi, the grandson of the sun goddess, led to the gods
being stripped of their immortality.
(She also set fire to her bedroom during childbirth).
Serve and return. I grip the racket tightly, and remember
how you would grab my arm, correct my form, guide my swing
like a sword.
The court is lit by one lone floodlight, and behind it, the stars
wane like fireflies. You and I are always fighting for something
and we're always failing. If you were a war, like the oh so futile
Keian Uprising of 1651, I would be that revolutionary writer
who thinks of you a century later as he barricades himself inside
the headquarters of the Japanese Self-Defense Force before committing seppuku
in shame.
Serve and return. I think you're turning Japanese. Me too. I think
that if we were to stop fighting, lay down our swords, and just fall
into a long sleep, we might disappear, the way the color spreads out
from a rising sun. We could fall asleep and never wake up again.
If you were here now, I'd tell you not to worry, that I'm not afraid
of dying or fighting or dreaming or dissolving into the sky overnight,
or however long it takes.