Serious Oleg

Diary

Oleg does not stumble. Oleg does not trip. So when his sandal caught the lip of a woven basket left carelessly in the dirt outside the dojo and the earth rose up to meet his face, he did not laugh it off the way the others would have, cackling over sake and a half-rolled joint. He lay there a long moment, dirt on his cheek, and declared to no one that this was a sign, a rude awakening, proof that discipline had rotted out of him like a floor that finally gets rugged from under an unsuspecting degen. Now he marches toward the jungle with his blade wrapped in cloth and his jaw set like stone, vowing to rebuild the iron will of the old samurai code among the vines and the mosquitoes, though anyone watching him pack three bags of chips and a rolled sleeping mat knows this vow will not survive the first humid night. He will meditate under the canopy, he insists, gravely, sincerely, while somewhere behind him the dojo still snickers about the basket.