Flowers That Grow Where Old Ones Have

I Will Think Of You Every Time I Need To Be Reminded That There Is Beauty And Goodness In The World.

From This Experience, I Understood The Danger Of Focusing Only On What Isn't There. What If I Came To The End Of My Life And Realized That I'd Spent Every Day Watching For A Man Who Would Never Come To Me? What An Unbearable Sorrow It Would Be, To Realize I'd Never Really Tasted The Things I'd Eaten, Or Seen The Places I'd Been, Because I'd Thought Of Nothing But The Chairman Even While My Life Was Drifting Away From Me. And Yet If I Drew My Thoughts Back From Him, What Life Would I Have? I Would Be Like A Dancer Who Had Practiced Since Childhood For A Performance She Would Never Give.

I Fell Into A Sound Sleep And Dreamed That I Was At A Banquet Back In Gion, Talking With An Elderly Man Who Was Explaining To Me That His Wife, Whom He'd Cared For Deeply, Wasn't Really Dead Because The Pleasure Of Their Time Together Lived On Inside Him.

The Heart Dies A Slow Death, Shedding Each Hope Like Leaves Until One Day There Are None. No Hopes. Nothing Remains.

No One Knows The Author Of Memoir So Well Like Himself.