Dharmabum’s Reviews > A Bridge for Passing > Status Update

Should one spank children? ...It was an old one in our American family, never settled. He said he believed in spanking children at certain ages because they were not open to reason and functioned entirely on instinct and emotion. I said I hated all physical punishment and believed it did no good.

Does floating lead to adjustment? I pondered upon the question as I sought one of the many corners in the dark old lobby. If so, then I must be adjusting. I was not living, not even existing, only floating upon the surface of time. To rise in the morning and work, to walk alone at night, to sleep briefly and get up at dawn, not thinking of past or of future, but only of this one day, this one night and pondering ...

I do not know whether it is easier to have the end come suddenly or gradually over the years. I think, if I had been given the choice, I would have preferred a sudden end, shock and all. Then memory would not be entangled with the slow and agonising fading of perception and speech and at last recognition even of those loved dear.

I asked, "Please, has your younger sister never married? It is so unusual."
There was an instant's hesitation on that calm older sister's face. Then she answered. "She did marry once, twenty years ago. ...Four days after the wedding she came home."
I waited & hoped that I would not ask another question. But no, it came rushing to my lips,"Why did she come home?"...
"We don't know. We have never liked to ask."

Mounting into the sky, I was reminded of death itself. The hours of anxiety preceding, the final instant of departure, the inescapable separation from earth and all we had known, the ascent into unknown spaces – is this not the experience of death? There is one difference. From the final flight there is no return. For us there was the hope of return to beautiful Japan.