she slammed the door andwas gone.I looked at the closed doorand at the doorknoband strangelyI didn't feelalone.

The practice of love offers no place of safety. We risk loss, hurt, pain. We risk being acted upon by forces outside our control.

We might not know we are seeking people who best enrich our lives, but somehow on a deep subconscious level we absolutely are. Whether the bond is temporary or permanent, whether it succeeds or fails, fate is simply a configuration of choices that combine with others to shape the relationships that surround us. We cannot choose our family, but we can choose our friends, and we sometimes, before we even meet them.

If there is no fate and our interactions depend on such a complex system of chance encounters, what potentially important connections do we fail to make? What life changing relationships or passionate and lasting love affairs are lost to chance?

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.

I think about my mother singing after lunch on a Summer afternoon, twirling in blue dress across the floor of her dressing room