matcha

Oh, he so wanted to look at her, even just a glance, from far away! “She’s with him now,” he thought. “I want to see what she looks like with him, her [first] love, that’s all I need.” Never before had he felt such love in his heart for this woman who’d sealed his fate, so much new feeling, never experienced before, unexpected even to him, a feeling a bit like adoration, like dissolving into nothingness before her. “So I will disappear!”

And one might wonder what there is in a love that has to be guarded so closely, and what is a love that requires such forceful protection worth? But a genuinely jealous man will never understand that…

Young man, do not forget to say your prayers. Every time you pray, if your prayer is sincere, a new feeling will shine forth, and in it, a new idea, which you haven’t had before and which will hearten you; and you will understand that prayer is an education.

My young brother asked the birds to forgive him: that sounds foolish, but it is right, because everything is like an ocean, flowing and mixing; you touch it in one place and it shifts at the other end of the earth. It may be foolish to beg forgiveness of the birds, but birds would be better off, as would a child, and all animals around you, if you yourself were even a little more righteous than you are now.

Paper, they say, will not blush; but I can assure you this isn’t true, and that it’s blushing now, just the way I am. Here I’ve written you a love letter; my God, what have I done? Don’t despise me… Now the secret of my reputation, perhaps ruined forever, is in your hands. I shall certainly weep today. Good-bye, until our awful meeting.