But I can’t blame my parents for poverty because my mother and father are twin suns around which I orbit and my world would explode without them

The stranger from the hotel whom she had loved- and loved now, and always- held the stolen snake with the carbuncle stone in his hand, she would have given it to him if he had asked for it, free as a gift or for nothing to keep- the bitter water from the bitter spring flowed over his feet.

But she was a woman living on earth who had loved her child living on earth- perhaps it was his silence which she could not bear.

The professor shook his head ‘but you have young friend, you have, all of us, always, when we’re young, have to hold something for those who are old and we drop it and want to get away and draw a ship in the sand to reach a new country, and we always forget the ballast- there is not ballast but the earth of the old country- and the new country’s- and for that, then, we have left and crossed the seas and might even have drowned on the way in deep water, or grown old and in our turn let someone hold a basin up for us.’

How efficient you are, ready to handle anything: what are the facts? do this or that; no fussing, somebody to count upon. That’s how you are, I’m not like that; mother am I a weakling? Everything is so relative in my mind. Of course, I see good and bad, and try to stick to the good in my own way, but I think that making judgements is very difficult. And what befalls us, life itself, I’d say, everything long or short, nice or miserable, shouldn’t we accept it as it falls without too much examination?