But what I could see out of the corner of my eye made me think of two lovely bundles of silk floating along a stream. In a moment they were hovering on the walkway in front of me, where they sank down and smoothed their kimono across their knees.

I was thanking him for...well, for something I'm not sure I can explain even now. For showing me that something besides cruelty could be found in the world, I suppose.

He was like a song I'd heard once in fragments but had been singing in my mind ever since.

The heart dies a slow death, shedding each hope like leaves until one day there are none. No hopes. Nothing remains.

In the instant before the door opened, I could almost sense my life expanding just like a river whose waters have begun to swell; for I had never before taken such a drastic step to change the course of my own future. I was like a child tiptoeing along a precipice overlooking the sea. And yet somehow I hadn't imagined a great wave might come and strike me there, and wash everything away.

Here's the thing: this eel spends its entire life trying to find a home, and what do you think women have inside them? Caves, where the eels like to live...when they find a cave they like, the wriggle around inside it for a while to be sure that...well, to be sure it's a nice cave, I suppose. And when they've made up their minds that it's comfortable, they mark the cave as their territory...by spitting.

Occasionally in life we come upon things we can't understand, because we have never seen anything similar.