All At Once I Felt So Vain,

How Many Times Already Had I Encountered The Painful Lesson That Although We May Wish For The Barb To Be Pulled From Our Flesh, It Leaves A Welt That Doesn't Heal?

Geisha Because When I Was Living In Japan, I Met A Fellow Whose Mother Was A Geisha, And I Thought That Was Kind Of Fascinating And Ended Up Reading About The Subject Just About The Same Time I Was Getting Interested In Writing Fiction.

I Began To Feel That All The People I'd Ever Known Who Had Died Or Left Me Had Not In Fact Gone Away, But Continued To Live On Inside Me Just As This Man's Wife Lived On Inside Him.

I Fell Into A Sound Sleep And Dreamed That I Was At A Banquet Back In Gion, Talking With An Elderly Man Who Was Explaining To Me That His Wife, Whom He'd Cared For Deeply, Wasn't Really Dead Because The Pleasure Of Their Time Together Lived On Inside Him.

We Don't Become Geisha Because We Want Our Lives To Be Happy; We Become Geisha Because We Have No Choice.