Nine
OCTOBER 1, 2006 • MURAKAMI CITY, NIIGATA PREFECTURE
At Least He Never Walked
Once when I was around sixteen and nobody else was home, I stripped naked, stood in front of a
large mirror in our house, and checked out my body from top to bottom. As I did this I made a mental
list of all the deficiencies—or what, to me at least, appeared to be deficiencies. For instance (and these
are just instances), my eyebrows were too thick, or my fingernails were shaped funny—that sort of
thing. As I recall, when I got to twenty-seven items, I got sick of it and gave up. And this is what I
thought: If there are this many visible parts of my body that are worse than normal people’s, then if I
start considering other aspects — personality, brains, athleticism, things of this sort — the list will be
endless.
Sixteen is an intensely troublesome age. You worry about little things, can’t pinpoint where you are
in any objective way, become really proficient at strange, pointless skills, and are held in thrall by
inexplicable complexes. As you get older, though, through trial and error you learn to get what you
need, and throw out what should be discarded. And you start to recognize (or be resigned to the fact)
that since your faults and deficiencies are well nigh infinite, you’d best figure out your good points
and learn to get by with what you have.
But this wretched sort of feeling I had as I stood in front of the mirror at sixteen, listing all my
physical shortcomings, is still a sort of touchstone for me even now. The sad spreadsheet of my life
that reveals how much my debts far outweigh my assets.
Now, some forty years later, as I stand at the seashore in a black swimsuit, goggles on top of my head,
waiting for the start of the triathlon, this memory of so long ago suddenly comes back to me. And
once more I’m struck by how pitiful and pointless this little container called me is, what a lame,
shabby being I am. I feel like everything I’ve ever done in life has been a total waste. In a few minutes
I’m going to swim .93 miles, ride a bike 24.8 miles, then run a final 6.2 miles. And what’s all that
supposed to prove? How is this any different from pouring water in an old pan with a tiny hole in the
bottom?
Well, at least it’s a beautiful, perfect day—perfect weather for a triathlon. No wind, not a wave in
the sea. The sun’s bathing the ground in warmth, the temperature at about 73 degrees. The water is
ideal. This is the fourth time I’ve taken part in the triathlon in Murakami City in Niigata Prefecture,
and all the previous years the conditions have been atrocious. Once the sea was too rough, as the Japan