The more material we lose, the less we have. The less we have, the more we win.
The only time they ever throw anything away is when it's really and truly broken, and then they make a big deal about it. They save up all their bent pins and broken sewing needles and once a year they do a whole memorial service for them, chanting and then sticking them into a block of tofu so they will have a nice soft place to rest. Jiko says that everything has a spirit, even if it is old and useless, and we must console and honor the things that have served us well.
A Tale for the Time Being
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The only time they ever throw anything away is when it's really and truly broken, and then they make a big deal about it. They save up all their bent pins and broken sewing needles and once a year they do a whole memorial service for them, chanting and then sticking them into a block of tofu so they will have a nice soft place to rest. Jiko says that everything has a spirit, even if it is old and useless, and we must console and honor the things that have served us well.
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You are divine being.
Fate is a woman, I said to them. In fact, she is three women. Young, like us, so that they will have the courage to be cruel, having no weight of memory to teach temperance. Young, but so old, older than any stone. Their hair is silver, but full and long. Their eyes are black. But when they are at their work they become dogs, wolves, for they are hounds of death, and also hounds of joy. They take the strands of life in their jaws, and sometimes they are careful with their jagged teeth, and sometimes they are not. They gallop around a great monolith, the stone that pierces our Sphere where the meridians meet, that turns the Earth and pins it in place in the world. It is called the Spindle of Necessity, and all round it the wolves of fate run, and run, and run, and the patterns of their winding are the patterns of the world. Nothing can occur without them, but they take no sides. I could also say that there is such a stone, such a place, but the dogs who are women died long ago, and left the strands to fall, and we have been helpless ever since. That in a wolfless world we must find our own way. That is more comforting to me. I want my own way, I want to falter; I want to fail, and I want to be redeemed. All these things I want to spool out from the spindle that is me, not the spindle of the world. But I have heard both tales.
He turned to take one last look at the Old People__ Home that _ until a few moments ago _ he had thought would be his last residence on Earth, and then he told himself that he could die some other time, in some other place.The hundred-year-old man set off in his pee-slippers (so called because men of an advanced age rarely pee further than their shoes), first through a park and then alongside an open field where a market was occasionally held in the otherwise quiet provincial town.