And If These Incidents Now Seem Full

The World Is Crawling With Authors Touring Now. They're Like Performance Artists.

I Think Of My Pile Of Old Paperbacks, Their Pages Gone Wobbly, Like They'd Once Belonged To The Sea.

Our Family Arrived In England In 1960. At That Time I Thought The War Was Ancient History. But If I Think Of 15 Years Ago From Now, Thats 1990, And That Seems Like Yesterday To Me.

I Loved Cowboy Films And Tv Series, And I Learned Bits Of English From Them. My Favorite Was 'laramie', With Robert Fuller And John Smith. I Used To Watch 'the Lone Ranger', Which Had Been Famous In Japan As Well. I Idolized These Cowboys.

And What Made These Heart-to-hearts Possible--you Might Even Say What Made The Whole Friendship Possible During That Time--was This Understanding We Had That Anything We Told Each Other During These Moments Would Be Treated With Careful Respect: That We'd Honor Confidences, And That No Matter How Much We Rowed, We Wouldn't Use Against Each Other Anything We'd Talked About During Those Sessions.