A sword will always be a sword. It will be hard, sharp, and demanding upon purchase. Bury it underground, toss it into the sea, or simply leave in it’s scabbard, it will remain an unyielding merchant of death, razor and reckless from tip to tail. It is static and, appropriately, dead.
But unarmed, if you would strike another, you must first create the fist. The hardening of the muscles of the hands and arm, the tension applied to the knuckles, skin pulled tight and bones aligned, the taught pull on the chest as the punch is thrown - these are the once-and-again deaths of the soul, the sacrifice of patience and self.
This is why my hands remain soft, open and relaxed.
Try to remember that the beauty of the weapon lies in it’s disuse, it’s potent restraint. Like fine art, it should be loaded, sharpened, revealed plainly… and promptly fastened upon a wall to serve it’s best purpose: to delicately remind us of our one natural predator.
Some weapons are so powerful that no target honorably justifies their bringing to bear. This is the spiritual beauty of man - much as you do not use a missile to kill a mosquito, you must not use a man to kill a man.
Our finest quality is not always so plainly seen, us creatures of chaos, at once both ultimate and ultimately inconsequential / our hands of art and artifice and phenomenal destruction. Lifegivers and couriers of violence all. I thought it worth a mention tonight.