‘Did you ever wonder if a sheepdog is afraid of her own flock?’ Snakes of smoke slithered through the incensed air, now humid and warmed by limp sticks dangling from onyx pots. Sand pressed to the floor, perfect symmetry. ‘Are they actualised from birth?’ Sounds of steel, not physical but mental. Gorze planned his strike, and even in his head his opponent countered. They sat and smelt the sweet scent. ‘Is a writer afraid of his pen? Or what he might create? Are you afraid of your sword? Or who you might hurt?’ China on the floor below them, resting peacefully on a tray. Paper light dimly glows, a gallows light for one, a guide for the other. No one survives where disputes of the blade arise. Outside moonlight. Rain. Scenery duly missed, steaming on the trees. Hot, molten droplets against the leaf.
‘Finish your tea. I can’t fight you until you’re done, so hurry up and finish.’
‘Fight? Do you mean to fight?’
‘Kill.’
‘Better.’
The teacup falls. Gorze draws from the sheath across the table to a kneel. Sliding fabric across the floor. Steel to steel, edge to edge. The teacup spills, Gorze kneels beside the man. The man sits with blade covering forearm. Nothing moves but the sliced smoke reformed and rising.
‘I wasn’t finished.’
‘You were taking too long.’
‘You wish to fight, but you can’t kill.’
‘I can. I have’
‘Killing for your passion is only one step. Sometimes the best way to kill is to let go.’ In a twirl, Gorze fell back through a paper wall. The drifting steam and the sweating blades. The taste of iron in the air, like mineral rich water left to stew. Drink from the earth, feel the heat of combat. The streams, the violence, the clash. Gorze lunged forward, the man stepped aside and tore through his shirt, grazing the skin. Blood spray like the pink of sunset over clouds. Red roses melting onto white, strawberries in snow. The man let the blade drink and drool, satisfied with a little cut.
‘If you aren’t going to fight back. I won’t fight.’ Gorze demanded, his thigh blooming with dripping rose buds.
‘If I had fought back, you’d be dead, perhaps. But I might be too. What’s best is not to attack, but to defend. Not to show, but to tell. To paint, not to capture.’
Gorze stood. The door folded. Hiding in the wafting incense and riding the drifting leaves. Steel striking steel, clashing with wood. Another miss. Another near miss. An explosion of fury and deflation of planning. The impact reverberated through his hand and up his arm to his shoulder. He landed on his own hilt, and its tassels swayed with the momentum in chaotic arcs.
‘Not bad. But obvious. Nothing obvious from here on. Your own strikes or nothing. Your own style or death. Learn from yourself as much as your opponent. Learn how to form stances, how to strike, how to weave.’ Both leapt to the roof of the slanted house in the rain. The water fell down the tiles like an overflowing river. Gorze held the tiles with one hand to steady himself. White moonlight, white water, white outlines painting a world black and blue.
Down there, a man happy, a wife too, a child and a life. No one lives on the mountain. Lives in service of the climb, of the bitter clash. Gorze rain forward up the watery tiles, but the speed took him off his feet. I hate it. Allow yourself room to move, room to grow.
‘Do you believe you have a chance? Then you have none. It cannot be a belief. It must come from a knowing, deeper inside you than your own stomach. Trusted more than rumblings of both stomach and mind.’
Can’t you see them there locked together? A rich oil canvas unfurling before you. Gorze, with sword in one hand and pride in the other, fingers buried deep into the water soaked palets, kissed by settling moonlight. The stranger, high poised, firm grim, two hands. And the rain pauses in streaks around them and runs over the contours of their faces. Notice too, how although Gorze raises his sword to defend, he meets the strike with his chest out, not shrinking from it, but embracing every blade with an open heart. In the other corner, down to the right there, notice the swallows watching from under the lily. Notice the frog also, what do they represent? Now cast your eye to the large swathes of open pigment in the centre of the page. How does this nothingness emphasise the piece? Why is the fight religated to the bottom left? See the town below? Look closely and see how each building is the tiniest scratching of paint with a hard tool of some kind. The rain, the pouring rain. So fast and yet so still. So calm and yet so deadly.
Now turn your attention to the moon. Notice the emptiness of it? The growing colour towards the sky culminating in an empty moon of purest pigment. We see the land from the mountain, a glimpse of the world from the eyes of those who climb. We are those people under the pigment moon, down there with the town of scratching oil-paint.
Their eyes meet, the strike is quick, the splatter of blood pronounces the muted colours of the piece and draws our eye back to the men, so small to the world yet so central to the art. How crazed are his eyes who drew their blade in desperation? How wild is his style to fight on his back? How can he lose? He is no longer human. See his shadow? It is the shadow of a faraway monster, playing coy with his life.
Bright blood settles and,
the cool water trickles down.
Men made still in ink,
life captured at the apex.
A flower falls from the moon.
What I really love is how thick the paint there is, almost bleeding through the page.

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Pub: 22 Jul 2025 09:02 UTC

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