19 - Preparatory First, Reactionary Second

TO THE READER A man can appear to grow several inches overnight. Not because anything was added to him, but because something was finally set down. For years he had carried his body one way, and everyone who saw him assumed the prison had bent him. They were wrong. He had been bending himself, on purpose, every waking hour. The way you stand is never an accident. It is an answer to the world ar...

TO THE READER A root that stops drawing water does not simply rest. It begins to kill the tree it was meant to feed. We tend to think of loyalty to a tradition as a matter of guarding it, walling it off, keeping it pure. Mitose taught almost the reverse. The surest way to destroy something you love is to close it. There is a difference between the root of a thing and the fruit of it, and confus...

TO THE READER The most valuable thing a man owns is sometimes the thing he did not reach for. And the surest way to fail a test is to know you are being tested. There was a document that changed the course of an entire art, and it spent part of its first afternoon in a waste basket. This was not disrespect. It was, in a strange way, the very reason it had been given. Pay attention to what a per...