RKS Literature: Wine the Path to Hell (Yoshida Kenkō)

“Wine has been called the ‘greatest of medicines’, but in fact all sickness springs from it. It is claimed you forget your sorrows in drink, but from what I can see, men in their cups will in fact weep to recall their past unhappiness. As for the next world-having lost the wisdom you were born with, reduced all your good karma to ashes, built up a store of wickedness and broken all the Buddhist precepts you are destined for hell. Remember that Buddha teaches those that lift the wine glass either to their own lips or others’ will spend five hundred lifetimes without hands.”

Yoshida Kenkō, “A Cup of Sake Beneath the Cherry Trees”, 1329-1331?

RKS Literature: The Evil Side of Sake (Yoshida Kenkō)

“I cannot understand why people will seize any occasion to immediately bring out the sake, delighting in forcing someone else to drink. The other will frown and grimace in painful protest, attempt to throw it away when no one’s looking or do his best to escape, but this man will seize him, pin him down and make him swallow cup after cup. A genteel man will be quickly transformed into a madman and start acting the fool; a vigorous, healthy fellow will before your very eyes become shockingly afflicted and fall senseless to the floor. What a thing to do, on a day of celebration. Right into the next day his head hurts, he can’t eat, and he lies there groaning with all memory of the previous day gone as if it were a former life.”

Yoshida Kenkō, “A Cup of Sake Beneath the Cherry Trees”, 1329-1331?

RKS Poetry Anthology (All We Get Are The Coffee Grinds):”EVENING MANAGEMENT CLASSES”

EVENING MANAGEMENT CLASSES

Upper middle class and more suburban sniffers

Assemble after work

Haunted by prospects of lower-class blues

Fired by ambitious dreams

Ontological drama forgotten

In the dance of dollars

The future manager shines like the Star of Bethlehem steel

Clamouring to understand the techniques of worker manipulation

And win that Delta 88

Respect, dignity

Wholesome men of the community

Not even the imported Italian cologne masks the smell of their

Robert K. Stephen

“Lost in Puppydom: Rory Dylan Stephen’s Puppydom”: ONE SMALL STEP FOR RORY A HUGE LEAP FOR MANKIND: HEALING POST TRAUMATIC WESTIE STRESS DISORDER (PTWSD)

ONE SMALL STEP FOR RORY A HUGE LEAP FOR MANKIND: HEALING POST TRAUMATIC WESTIE STRESS DISORDER (PTWSD)

I might have revised the title of this chapter to read “ONE SMALL STEP FOR MANKIND A HUGE LEAP FOR RORY”.

You may recall in an early chapter I told you readers about being chased around the garden close to midnight in minus 18-degree weather. Bob was wearing a coat over his pyjamas with the snow outside up to his knees. I was having the time of my life. Bob was calling “Rory come!” As I was having so much fun playing chase I decided to hide behind a bush to make the game more exciting! The gentle “Come” became a bit more intense and angrier so I decided make a break for it but was nabbed by Bob by the scruff of my neck and blasted with a few “BAD DOG” exhortations. The game continued for the next few days in the cold winter freeze and Bob put a leash on me prior to placing me outside. He could grab the leash easily and haul me in like a fish on the line. The chase lost its excitement. With a hundred practices with the Come Command I did it! I came! I slink like a cheetah on the hunt and when proximate to Bob I jump in the air towards him. Not as much fun as the chase but preferable to angry exhortations!

Bob says his stressful and traumatic midnight romps in frigidity caused him PTWSD substantially raising his blood pressure, whatever that means. Bottom line I receive much praise and some warm hugs and a treat for following the Come Command. I am not perfect as to Come Command adherence, but I sense Bob, Mankind and Rory are all the better for it. Puppyhood is so easy…..sometimes.

RKS Literature: A Friend of Marlon Brando Comments on His Choice of Friends (Truman Capote)

“….the kind of people he didn’t like-and the kind he did, both-stemmed from his insecurities. His inferiority feelings. Very few of his friends were his equals- anybody he’d have to compete with if you know what I mean. Mostly they were strays, idolizers, characters who were dependent on him one way or another. The same with the girls he took out. Plain sort of somebody’s secretary type girls-nice enough but nothing that’s going to start a stampede of competitors”.

Truman Capote, “The Duke in His Domain”, 1957.

“Lost in Puppydom: Rory Dylan Stephen’s Puppydom”: PERFECTING BEGGING SKILLS

PERFECTING BEGGING SKILLS

If you truly believed in Canine Lives Matter you would not demean our “persuasive food transference” skills by referring to them as begging.

Don’t you ever stop to wonder we beg to make you feel benevolent! You are exercising kindness and compassion towards a “dumb animal”. Who is the dumb animal in this case!!!!

Many of us puppies are new to the food persuasion game. I used to bark obnoxiously with limited success. Sort of like a human accosting passerby’s with hands out moaning some phrase attempting to invoke pity.

No, I have found sitting quietly close to my mark with wide open eyes maintain total silence is highly effective. Like being part of the senior management team of a corporation. Success is blending in with humans not barking for a raise like middle management. Play the game and your profit sharing might include tasty morsels of bacon, chicken (watch out for those bones) or steak. Meat is king for dogs but we’ll settle for just about anything.

Look at this way I am not a poor street urchin and you are not Mother Tereza. I am on “your team” so treat me as such and toss me a morsel! And for God’s sake don’t make me resort to obnoxious and crude begging techniques.

RKS Literature: The Flamboyant Pleasure of a Country Bumpkin (Yoshida Kenkō)

“The man of quality never appears entranced by anything; he savours things with a casual air. Country bumpkins, however, take flamboyant pleasure in everything. They will wiggle their way in through the crowd and stand there aimlessly gaping up at the blossoms, sit under the trees drinking sake and indulging in linked verse making together and, finally, oafishly break off branches of a blossom to carry away. They will dip their hands and feet into clear spring water, get down to stand in unsullied snow and leave their footprints everywhere, and in short throw themselves into everything with uninhibited glee.”

Yoshida Kenkō, “A Cup of Sake Beneath the Cherry Trees”, 1329-1331?

RKS Literature: Truman Capote Defines a “Movie Star” (Truman Capote)

“Defined practically, a movie star is any performer who can account for a box office profit regardless of the quality of the enterprise in which he appears; the breed is so scarce that there are fewer than ten actors today who qualify for the title. Brando is one of them; as a box office draw, male division, he is perhaps outranked only by Willam Holden.”

Truman Capote, “The Duke in His Domain”, 1957.

RKS Literature: Marlon Brando on Analysis (Truman Capote)

“Have you ever been analyzed. I was afraid of it at first. Afraid it might destroy the impulses that make me creative, an artist. A sensitive person receives fifty impressions where somebody else may only get seven. Sensitive people are so vulnerable; they’re so easily brutalized and hurt just because they are sensitive. The more sensitive you are, the more certain you are to be brutalized, develop scabs. Never evolve. Never allow yourself to feel anything, because you always feel too much. Analysis helps. It helped me. But still, the last eight, nine years I’ve been pretty mixed up, a mess pretty much….”

Truman Capote, “The Duke in His Domain”, 1957.

RKS Literature: What Types of People Should Not Be Your Friends? (Yoshida Kenkō)

“There are seven types of people one should not have as a friend. The first is an exalted and high-ranking person. The second, somebody young. The third, anyone strong and in perfect health. The fourth a man who loves to drink. The fifth, a brave and daring warrior. The sixth a liar. The seventh, an avaricious man.

The three to choose as friends are-one who gives gifts, a doctor and a wise man.”

Yoshida Kenkō, “A Cup of Sake Beneath the Cherry Trees”, 1329-1331?