A Tangle of Thoughts in the Rain It is five thirty-six in the afternoon, on this twentieth day of October, two thousand twenty-five. Rain falls hard upon the rooftops, and the air is mild. I rejoice, for we have lived through a time of drought that this rain will partly relieve. Before me, a trilobite fossil brought back by my daughter on her return from Morocco. It feels peaceful: the drumming of the raindrops seems to scatter in a display of airy, floating sounds. I feel surrounded by the memory of blissful spirits, the departed ones for whom I pray. Their love transforms before my eyes, taking the shape of the plants that make up a miniature garden in my apartment. Those who went before us into the beyond are still working on our behalf. I spoke today with a childhood friend I have known since the age of ten — fifty-eight years of friendship. I wonder how far the Earth and the Sun have traveled through the cosmic void since our childhood days. A resin Buddha, ivory-like, turns his head toward my armchair — what a gesture of generosity. I wonder if, in autumn, along the edge of a tea plantation, the path would be strewn with unharvested leaves. Do all autumn paths, carpeted with fallen leaves, form the keystone to the nave of Amiens Cathedral? And what to say of the feeling left behind by fallen leaves in the Buddhist cemeteries of the East?
