#jack winter

Taking Tea I build my fire of bracken boughs, my bed of straw and twine. I boil and pour my nettle tea, not once expecting wine. Between my knees the valley lights flicker and are gone. Above my eaves the cooking fires beyond the clouds burn on. I never am invited to sup and sleep elsewhere. I'm too high up for some folk, for some not halfway there. Here beside me on this ledge where I sip and sit, The stunted tree has cracked the rock you'd think imprisoned it.

Regarding farmers The land and the army are lawful occupations. If a man's wealth is in next year's crop, he will not run with it on his back. If neighbouring states are kept always in peril of invasion, no man will run there. The land and the army are one occupation. Farmers endure and their hope is seasonal. With little alteration they can be used for war.

Reflections on reputation Reputation has no substance beyond report. Report is the whole of it, its origin, its occasion, its objective, its accomplishment, its residuum, not only its basis but its entirety. The reputation of any one of us depends upon who is reporting it, how he came by his opinion, his entitlement to it, his nature and his quality and his condition at the moment he permits it to be released, his (at the risk of wit-play) reputation. [...] The impulse to gather together the fragments of observation, the shards of gossip, the detritus of scandal, and to construct of them a reputation for another being is irresistible. [...] The attraction of it when done is unique. Who, after all, does not enjoy literature? In our natural state the least of us is an original of untamed will and contradictory impulse who, once arrested and examined, alters. He must be apprehended and scrutinized again and again. Our world with us in it moves on, and is incomprehensible. But characters wholly invented hold still.

The governing of the Empire When we named the date for our revolution, the First Emperor declared it a national holiday so that our massing in the streets appeared to be in his honour. When we looted the shops, the First Emperor declared all property common so that we would not be guilty of theft. When we decided to disband our revolution and go home, the First Emperor declared that the revolutionary army was required for the defence of the empire, and we remain conscripted.

The Festival of the Fall Immediately following any war, the restitution of a land, of its infrastructure and its chattel, is premised upon the will of the people to carry it out, something that itself requires the sort of psychic energy possessed by those whose recollection of war is merely historic. Such was not the case in the empire where everyone was pretty well convinced that any reconstruction merely would be the construction of a new target. This condition of the public temperament was not a matter of embitterment, but of practical observation and accurate short-term memory. The credulity needed for renewal would take several generations of innocence to acquire.

The Second Criterion (the vital axis) "In the mountains at the snow line, sparse in foliage, of boulders plentiful, there amid the scrub-bush, ancient rockfall, elder moss, there is born the river, born in tumult among ice-crags amid snowfields combed with blowholes, dropping sheerly down the rock face to the cauldron pool beneath. [...] Here an island temple hollow with crows, a broken bridge no more than a board, a barge half-sunk where a jetty stood. No men yet, only relics of their passing. Water-reeds, bending, paint the wind. Here antique pavilions too remote for tenants, vacant the horizon, seamless the sky. Indolent the river, loitering nearly shoreless, water by its ripples, pleats in unstained silk."

The first letter of the Imperial Historian I must complete my book. It is not that I want to write. I want to have written. The writing, that is a matter of the severest pain. How could it be otherwise?

The fifth letter of the Imperial Historian Oh, horror! In an age unenvisaged among folkways undreamt of, a passerby stoops to examine a shard, finds another to fit, lays a third as a through-band, and by such rude mechanics manages to build -- build what? A cairn in a landscape not yet evolved? A rough stone altar to gods unborn? A dyke to withstand who knows which beast from incursion upon what occult husbandry? No! No! A maimed book of my broken half-told tales bearing the name of another!

The advice of Li Ssu regarding archives Normally, conquerors destroy with zeal the archives of a conquered people. Which consideration does not apply to us. Your people, sire, have long since given up consulting their historians.

The last words of Li Ssu A man tortured for information gives the name of his friend because he is afraid to die alone. When they meet for execution, the betrayed forgives his betrayer. In whispers through the blindfold he confides that even now, if he were given the chance, he too would betray another to save himself, no, not to save himself, what is worse, he like his own betrayer would betray another only so as not to die alone. "That," he whispers, "is the advantage the authorities possess. They are not tempted into betrayal by the possibility of companionship."