My Dearest Mikiko,

Thank you for your note, WRITE! No matter how much we may learn, it is always of value to be reminded of essentials. One is to work our best at something giving happiness to ourselves, and then to those nearby. The highest happiness is when we give our best to anyone who may cross our path.

You wrote, "What is your priority?" My answer : it is to write my stories as best I am able, leaving them with some truth and beauty.

A person has much to learn first, on how to perceive this truth and beauty; how to interpret them and how to portray them to others. This is the essence of art, discrimination, and what I am still trying to understand and practice.

Learning, specially art, is not usually a straight line. And we never know how well, or even what, we learn until converting our ideas to actions. Until practicing what we have come to understand. This understanding and practice is particularly difficult when applied to truth and beauty, or so it seems.

Even though slower than expected, I have learnt much in these last years of intellectual effort - while strongly missing the action side of my previous life. You have been the person remaining closest to me during these years, trying your best to help. That closeness, that trying, are the actions of love. They are, will always be, clearly felt and remembered deeply inside me.

The Buddha said, "All I can do is to speak of what I have learnt, of my enlightenment. I can not take your hand to lead you, it is for you to choose the path and follow it as best you can."

I am still learning, following the path as best I can. As with art, one's path is not without detours, not always either straight or as fast as we would like. This is specially so for someone whose first path was action, who only later seeks to join the ancient search for an understanding of truth and beauty.

Due to being gregarious at times I offer more information or lessons than some friends wish to hear. Realizing this, I have tried to avoid telling them where their path may lie, or what they should do to get there. It has long been my way merely to open a door, stand back and point to it, hoping my friend will see something of interest on the other side.

Sometimes I have strayed from that way, choosing the wrong door or pointing too strongly, opening it too quickly or too widely. Sometimes friends did not want any doors at all opened, or perhaps at least not the doors I had learned enough about to open. Or did not want to move from where they had found themselves, did not feel need to learn about the other side which I had perceived. Or, perhaps, did not want the door opened by me.

 When such occurred, occasionally I have not been fatalistic enough with some friends, or with myself. Therefore did not let go of them as quickly, or perhaps as softly, as a good friend should. If in this way, or another, I have been less the good friend or teacher you deserve, I feel sorrow for my failure to understand.

It is the responsibility of all - parents and children, teachers and students, friends and lovers - to look each for his own path and try his individual best to walk it with truth and beauty. All we can do when meeting on paths, or crossing them, whether together for a short or long time, is neither to hinder nor bump too hard the other - next, to try our best to help. The most immediate result on this path will be true friendship with those met along the way. Other results, even more rewarding, are discovered the further we travel.

Such paths are rarely straight, often passing through a difficult climate, where shadows may impose contrasting or adverse conditions, and people. It is only truth and beauty which can lead us to the other side of shadows - a truth and beauty only understood from trying, only defined for us by our own individual actions.

This is all I am presently able to understand, with my best care for you and myself, about our friendship and our paths.