Hopes are like hair ornaments. Girls want to wear too many of them. When they become old women they look silly wearing even one.

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.

I worried she might spend an afternoon chatting with me about the sights and then wish me best of luck.

All at once I felt so vain, like a girl posturing for the crowds as she walks along, only to discover the street is empty.

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.

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

I didn't say to act dead. I said act helpless.