Nothing Is As Bleak As The Future,

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

The Corridor Couldn't Have Smelled More Strongly Of Fish Guts If We Had Actually Been Inside A Fish.

We All Know That A Winter Scene, Though It May Be Covered Over One Day, With Even The Trees Dressed In Shawls Of Snow, Will Be Unrecognizable The Following Spring. Yet I Never Imagined Such A Thing Could Occur Within Our Very Selves.

Grief Is A Most Peculiar Thing; We’re So Helpless In The Face Of It. It’s Like A Window That Will Simply Open Of Its Own Accord. The Room Grows Cold, And We Can Do Nothing But Shiver. But It Opens A Little Less Each Time, And A Little Less; And One Day We Wonder What Has Become Of It.

As An American Man Of The 1990s Writing About A Japanese Woman Of The 1930s, I Needed To Cross Three Cultural Divides - Man To Woman, American To Japanese, And Present To Past.