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THE BUSHIDO FACTOR

You know how it is when after a few days adrift on the Sea of Delirium you wake up one morning back in Japan and sit bolt upright in bed kind of pale, lost quite a bit of weight, your eyes have that kind of manic glow to them like a shallow believer, and they stick out a little too far for you to close your eyelids comfortably and maybe your IQ is somewhere just above the sea floor because you believe you're all better, but even more to the point, if there's a point within a thousand miles of here, is the Bushido Factor that kicks in when you've been working in Japan for so long, the Factor that sends you out to work in hurricanes even from your deathbed it's an ancient way of life in Japan nothing can stop the intrepid whoever you are, and so you're going to work today.

Yes you're going to work today: and not just because you can breathe, or walk, or because you like it, or because you have a name, or a share in the company, but because according to the Bushido Factor you just have to, and so zomboidily you don your pants and socks and shirt and go downstairs to shave, snapping back a bit at sight of yourself in the mirror looking like some wild mountain man you don't remember being but once you're shaven and your hair is brushed out of kuzu mode you look rather presentable in a prehistoric sort of way since you're not dressed in animal skins, and so it is that you walk out the door into the brisk mountain blizzard of the January morning and on down the mountain to the train station where as you stand on the platform waiting for the late train you gaze stoically undaunted into the jagged fangs of the incoming blizzard, like a samurai on the ramparts of some wintry castle of yore, there's a lot of yore around here you recall dimly, until the train comes and so you take a seat and spend the entire journey with your nose in the air not out of Bushido hauteur but out of consideration for human life, so that the mucus it is producing does not drown everyone else on the train.

And when at long last the train reaches your stop, you deboard as of old and Bushido on, with your nose still in the air, no trouble finding your office because you know the tips of all the nearby buildings and when you arrive at that place the people there call you by what must be your name and say Are you ok? Feeling better now? etc. And so it is that you seat yourself at your desk and proceed to function as though you have a measurable IQ, until around 330 pm when your general existence shuts down since you haven't slept or eaten for three days and you've been running pretty much on empty and that little bit of fat didn't get you very far after all did it, you are now approaching the limits of Bushido.

Still you Bushido on empty, just sitting there until someone says Aren't you going home, when you stand and put your coat on, somehow remembering these strange old rituals, and the elevator is easy all you have to do is press 1, then you're out on the street and like the drunken wagon drivers of old you just fall asleep and let the horse take you home and so your body does, amazing how it just steps along like that, and you regain consciousness just as you arrive inside your front door once more, when there's a loud knock, you open the door and there stands an eight-foot version of your nose that says You R. Brady? Out of deeply ingrained habit you acknowledge the name and the nose takes over your entire life for a couple days, reminding you a lot of Victoria Falls as you lie there beneath it, so I haven't been blogging, you can imagine what that would do to my keyboard...

The riverbed should dry up any day now.