— It hit you, said the journalist. Like you’d been wondering about ancient Japanese gardens for years?
— Never.
— But ‘it hit you.’ As in seeing it for the first time? Or not exactly?
— Not exactly, I said. And then I knew this gal knew her stuff. — It didn’t feel like a new fact. It felt like I must have been... born knowing it. Because I couldn’t recall ever learning it – what TV show, whose book, what year.
— But you’d never integrated it with other stuff you knew.
— Right. Which immediately started happening. It integrated itself, burrowing in there. I mean, why would northwest be bad? Something to do with wealth. Because I already had some fragments of old Japanese cosmology in there somewhere… you know… ?
She waved away the impending discourse: — And how did that feel?
— Wonderful beyond description, I said, slowly. Like little pieces of the universe coming together, and I was helping them do it.
She shook her head and smiled: — You guys all talk the same.
