She holds up a finger. "I'm getting to it. Don't rush a girl in the middle of her exposition.

In them, she saw the sham of her life laid out like a book, the foolish belief that she, that anyone, could escape the consequences of this world, could flee from death. That was the deceit. The true serpent in the garden.

Reality is a state of mind. To the banker, the money in his ledger book is all very real, though he doesn't actually see it or touch it. But to the Brahma, it simply doesn't exist the way the air and the earth, pain and loss do. To him, the banker's reality is folly. To the banker, the Brahma's ideas are as inconsequential as dust.

Goodbye," I whisper at last, when it no longer matters and there is no one to hear it but the window.

Mawah meenon ne le plus poohlala," I say with an affected bow.

He wanted to hit something or someone. He wanted to burn up the whole world, heal it, and burn it down again.

But aren't many gardens beautiful because they are imperfect?...aren't the strange, new flowers that arise by mistake or misadventure as pleasing as the well-tended and planned?