Introduction

To josh, quint and kara

I have been ten days in this temple and my heart is restless.

The scarlet thread of lust at my feet has reached up long.

If someday you come looking for me,

I will be in a shop that sells fine seafood, a good drinking place, or a brothel.

—Ikkyu, fifteenth-century Zen Buddhist high priest

Despite a lack of natural ability, I did have the one element necessary to all early creativity: naïveté, that fabulous quality that keeps you from knowing just how unsuited you are for what you are about to do.