Like the Flowing River: Thoughts and Reflections Read Free Page B

wife, without having to put up with harsh winters and failed harvests.’
    ‘My farm is not for sale. I was born here and grew up here, and I’m too old to move.’
    He suggests that we get an expert from town to come and assess the situation and make a decision – that way, neither of us need get angry with the other. We are, after all, neighbours.
    When he leaves, my first reaction is to label him as insensitive and lacking in respect for Mother Earth. Then I feel intrigued: why would he not agree to sell his land? And before the day is over, I realize that it is because his life has only one story, and my neighbour does not want to change that story. Going to live in the town would mean plunging into an unknown world with different values, and maybe he thinks he’s too old to learn.
    Is this something peculiar to my neighbour? No. I think it happens to everyone. Sometimes, we are so attached to our way of life that we turn down a wonderful opportunity simply because we don’t know what to do with it. In his case, his farm and his village are the only places he knows, and there is no point in taking any risks. In the case of people who live in the town, they all believe that they must have a university degree, get married, have children, make sure that their children get a degree too, and so on and so on. No one asks themselves: ‘Could I do something different?’
    I remember that my barber worked day and night so that his daughter could finish her sociology degree. Shefinally graduated and, after knocking on many doors, found work as a secretary at a cement works. Yet my barber still used to say very proudly: ‘My daughter’s got a degree.’
    Most of my friends, and most of my friends’ children, also have degrees. That doesn’t mean that they’ve managed to find the kind of work they wanted. Not at all. They went to university because someone, at a time when universities were important, said that, in order to rise in the world, you had to have a degree. And thus the world was deprived of some excellent gardeners, bakers, antique dealers, sculptors, and writers. Perhaps this is the moment to review the situation. Doctors, engineers, scientists, and lawyers need to go to university, but does everyone? I’ll let these lines by Robert Frost provide the answer:
     
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I –
    I took the one less traveled by,
    And that has made all the difference.
     
    Just to conclude the story about my neighbour. The expert came and, to my surprise, showed us a French law which states that any tree has to be at least three metres from another property. Mine are only two metres away, and so I will have to cut them down.

In a Bar in Tokyo
    T he Japanese journalist asks the usual question: ‘Who are your favourite writers?’
    And I give my usual answer: ‘Jorge Amado, Jorge Luis Borges, William Blake and Henry Miller.’
    The interpreter looks at me in amazement:
    ‘Henry Miller?’
    Then she realizes that it is not her role to ask questions, and she carries on interpreting. At the end of the interview, I ask her why she was so surprised by my response. Was it perhaps because Henry Miller is not considered to be ‘politically correct’? He was someone who opened up a vast world for me, and his books have an energy and a vitality rarely found in contemporary literature.
    ‘No, I’m not criticizing Henry Miller. I’m a fan of his too,’ she said. ‘Did you know that he was married to a Japanese woman?’
    Of course I knew. I’m not ashamed to be enough of a fan to want to find out everything about a writer and his life. I went to a book fair once just to meet Jorge Amado; I travelled forty-eight hours in a bus to meet Borges (and it was my fault that I didn’t, because when I saw him, I froze and couldn’t say a word); I rang the bell of John Lennon’sapartment in New York (the doorman asked me to leave a letter explaining the reason for my visit and said that John Lennon would phone me,