Was it possible to feel nostalgic about something that had never happened to him, possible for nostalgia to be taken in by the body as a free pathogen to infect the consciousness with stray sentiments? Perhaps, in his dreams, he had traveled back in time, or even drifted into another dimension of space-time and inhabited the body, experiences, and nostalgia of another. To even envisage so allowed the trauma of those lost moments, though not his own, to draw from him a certain envy for the entity in whose memories he had basked vicariously. . .Perhaps, nostalgia was a microorganism. . .the bacterium that infected. . . Yes. . .maybe he was sick.

I guess everybody thinks about old times, even the happiest people.

Nos-tal-gic,_ Akira said, as though it were a word he had been struggling to find. Then he said a word in Japanese, perhaps the Japanese for __ostalgic._ __os-tal-gic. It is good to be nos-tal-gic. Very important.___eally, old fellow?___mportant. Very important. Nostalgic. When we nostalgic, we remember. A world better than this world we discover when we grow. We remember and wish good world come back again. So very important. Just now, I had dream. I was boy. Mother, Father, close to me. in our house.__e fell silent and continued to gaze across the rubble.__kira,_ I said, sensing that the longer this talk went on, the greater was some danger I did not wish fully to articulate. __e should move on. We have much to do.

For a long time, I felt like I was destined to inherit a certain kind of life and so I wouldn__ let myself think of it for fear of being even cognitively associated with it. But writing about those same people and places changed that, and I could suddenly face them and understand them and forgive them. It was really then that I was able to understand that I wasn__ my past. Nobody is. One thing I have always loved about writing is how it can transform you and allow you to reinvent yourself. You could spend your whole life as a teacher, a doctor, a mother, a convict, whatever it may be; but the day you start writing, you start over. You__e a writer now.

He couldn__ believe that sleep had robbed him of this spectacle night after night. Such are the writer__ privileges, he thought, nostalgic already for the present.

If you are a dreamer, come in,If you are a dreamer, a wisher, a liar,A hope-er, a pray-er, a magic bean buyer...If you're a pretender, come sit by my fireFor we have some flax-golden tales to spin. Come in!Come in!