Rouse Up O Young Men of the New Age! by Kenzaburō Ōe Page A

been a pair of brains? I sat vacantly, unable to resolve my feelings, and Eeyore's cheerful surprise at learning the truth, his exultation, provided me with a hint. What reason did I have not to be as encouraged as he was by this new knowledge? My son had come into the world burdened with two brains, but he had survived surgery and the aftereffects—doing his best though it was extremely painful—and he was standing on his own two feet.
    “Eeyore, you're alive because that other brain died. You need to take good care of the brain you have and do your best to live to a ripe old age!”
    “ Exactly! Let's do our best and live to a ripe old age! Sibelius was ninety-two, Scarlatti was ninety-nine, Eduardo Di Capua lived until he was one hundred and twelve! Oh boy, that was really something! ”
    “Does the young gentleman like music?” the cabbie asked in an attempt to recover lost ground, his eyes on the road ahead. “What kind of a musician was that Mr. Eduardo?”
    “He wrote ‘O Sole Mio'!”
    “You don't say! Isn't that something! You take good care of yourself!”
    “ Thank you very kindly, I'm going to do my best! ”
    I was picturing a desert landscape. A cold babe—a babe who was only a small-sized brain with a single eye opened in it—stands in the furious air. It screams, the kind of scream a babe who is only brain matter can scream:… the children of six thousand years / Who died in infancy rage furious a mighty multitude rage furious / Naked & pale standing on the expecting air to be delivered.

3 : Down, Down thro' the Immense, with Outcry
    A bout two years ago, when my son was still in the special class at middle school, there was a period when I was trying to teach him to swim. For several months in the autumn and winter of that year, I took him with me to my swimming club at least once and sometimes three times a week. I was prompted by a remark the physical education teacher made to my wife at Parents’ Day, about how difficult Eeyore was to handle during swimming drills. Apparently, the teacher had expressed his view that my son lacked the will to float, even the body's instinctive will to float—“It was a little like training a cup.” These thoughts were disturbing to my wife, but when she reported them to me I knew immediately what the teacher was talking about. And when I took my son to the pool, the nature of the poor fellow's distress became so clear to me that I had to laugh out loud. There was no question that this was going to be harder than teaching a cup to swim.
    If you put a cup down on the water's surface, it will fill and sink. But if a cup had ears you might at least say, “C'mon! Let's try to stay afloat!” In my son's case, while it was clear that he did not float, it wasn't so easy to say with any finality that he sank. Standing in the pool I would give him instructions, and it appeared that he was doing his best to follow them obediently; at the same time he also appeared oblivious. Gradually, I stopped imagining the part-time phys ed teacher's irritation and began feeling my own.
    “Again, Eeyore! Head in the water, arms out in front, and let's kick those feet as hard as we can!”
    My son wasn't afraid of the water. He didn't hesitate for an instant. And he moved just as I told him to. It was just that he moved at a pace that had nothing to do with the standard I was vaguely expecting. Slowly. Like a viscous liquid sinking into a blotter, or a bivalve burrowing into the sand.
    Lowering his head peacefully to the water and extending both arms in front of him, he lifts his feet from the bottom. He moves his arms in a manner that suggests he is picturing himself not only floating but swimming the crawl, but the motion is so thoroughgoingly gentle that his arms seem to encounter no resistance from the water. Meanwhile, his body gradually descends toward the depths. And at a certain point in the process, in an entirely natural move, Eeyore stands on the bottom again. He