Sometimes we get through adversity only by imagining what the world might be like if our dreams should ever come true.

It's less a matter of looking the other way than of closing our eyes to what we can't stop from happening.

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.

An en is a karmic bond lasting a lifetime. Nowadays many people seem to believe their lives are entirely a matter of choice; but in my day we viewed ourselves as pieces of clay that forever show the fingerprints of everyone who has touched them.

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.

My mother once told me I was like water. Water can carve its way even through stone. And when trapped, water makes a new path.

Of course, a sign doesn't mean anything unless you know how to interpret it.