No Visible Horizon
Surviving the World's Most Dangerous Sport
Excerpt
Chapter One
In the middle of the fifteenth century in Japan, a time when the kingdom was both at its most isolated and, to Japanese eyes, most perfect, a strange tradition emerged: composing haiku as you died, at the very moment of death. Perhaps it wasn't so surprising. Japanese culture had become obsessed with the relationship between life and art. There was an increasing belief that the two should never be separated, that a well-lived life was a work of art. Was it surprising that some Japanese poets wanted to try to weave the two together, to make a little tatami of life and art? What better time than at the moment of death? After a lifetime of study, could you be beautiful in three lines? Could you be perfect? Could you reduce it, all of it, your life, down to seventeen syllables?
Mame de iyo
mi wa narawashi no
kusa no tsuyu
Farewell...I
pass as all things do
dew on the grass.
So it all awaited you. Special inks were mixed. A brush of the rarest hair was prepared and left lying near your bed. The softest rice p ... read full excerpt from No Visible Horizon: Surviving the World's Most Dangerous Sport ebook
