Every trader loses money and makes money as they trade, but successful traders will make more money than they lose.
Successful traders spend no time worrying or thinking about their losses; they stay focused on the next opportunity that is knocking. Holding onto past losses or failures creates a bitter mindset. If you come to the trading table with a bitter mindset or victim mentality, you will bring with you all your past emotional baggage that has stood in the way of you becoming successful at anything you attempted in the past.
If you want to be successful at trading, you must focus on what you have gained versus what you have lost. Are you a goal setter or a goal quitter? When you set out to do something, do you persist until you succeed or do you get discour- aged and quit along the way? One of the most important habits to develop is the habit of finishing what you started. My son recently graduated from high school.
At his graduation ceremony, the princi- pal stood up and congratulated everyone for completing 12 years of education. He also pointed out that during the last year of school, 48 percent of the students in the graduating class had dropped out. They came so close, but they did not persist until the very end. Most people in life are rainbow chasers; they set new goals almost daily. As a result, they never move forward in any one direction.
Setting goals helps you create a road map in life, outlining where you are going. Without that road map you can easily get off track without even knowing it and not know how to get back on. If you do not create goals as you learn to trade, you will not have any recog- nizable milestones of achievement. Any great achievement will be accompanied by setbacks, but beginning with a clear goal in mind will keep you on track to reach your goals even after you hit a detour.
Traders who set goals and persist until they succeed reach their pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. That does not mean you will make money percent of the time, rather, that you consistently make more money than you lose.
Persisting to achieve your realistic goals is nothing more than discipline in action. They are what I call constitution-based versus feeling-based. Successful people have strong convictions.
They are very clear about their personal constitution and their purpose in life. They have their priorities in check and have the right perspective and attitude when it comes to facing the internal battle between the two wolves that exists in all of us.
Your personal constitution will mirror your trading results. You have an obligation to your personal future, happiness, health, family, and income to establish a solid personal constitution. Developing a solid personal and trading constitution is the first step of your journey toward successful trading on Forex.
I started this book on trading by pointing out the importance of creating an emotional and psychological constitution before teaching you any technical skills. What good does it do to teach you technical skills if you do not have the courage to execute them? Why teach you trading rules if you are a rule breaker? There is no point to teaching you how to take advantage of new trading opportunities if you cannot let go of your past mistakes and failures. Developing a solid personal and trading constitution will be the first step of your journey toward finding your rightful pot of gold in trading.
I look forward to accompanying you on your journey to the end of your trading rainbow. Let our journey begin…. I was working out of our office in Sydney, preparing for a class, when I was e-mailed the list of attendees.
The registrar told me there were 26 Australians signed up for the class and one Scotsman, named Ian, who had a very strong Scottish accent. The next morning I started class the way I always do, asking everyone their names, their current occupations, why they want to learn trading on the Forex, and, more importantly, why they chose to get involved with my company, Market Traders Institute, versus another.
We started going around the room introducing ourselves and eventually came to Ian. Ian was an older fellow, perhaps in his late fifties, and in great physical shape.
I just happened to be here in Australia for a bit when your advertisements caught my interest. I called your office and they told me all about you, so I came here because I was told you could teach me how to trade on the Forex and make money. Is that true?
Now pay attention to the question. Can you teach me how to trade on the Forex and make money? Do you know what that is? I will kill you. The best way to learn something and remember it is to teach it to some- one else, so after I teach a concept for about 45 minutes, I instruct the class to teach each other. I have the person on the right teach the concept to the person on their left, and after they are done I have the person on the left teach the concept to the person on their right.
Little did I realize this teaching technique would potentially save my life. When I divided the class into pairs that day, I believe God protected me by having an odd number of students.
Looking back, I must say that was one of the most detailed, and perhaps one of the best, classes I have ever given. I am happy to report that both Ian and I are still alive.
In fact, Ian is now an active client of ours and has taught me a lot in return. Two of the greatest things he taught me were how to perform under pressure and, more importantly, how to keep things simple with respect to teaching Forex trading. For example, at one point, Ian could only recognize and understand uptrends. They have to move in opposite directions to keep the world economy in balance.
He keeps his trading simple. But the Bretton- Woods Accord of , which was established to stabilize the global econ- omy after World War II, is generally accepted as the original beginning of the foreign exchange market.
Currencies from around the world were fixed to the U. All currencies were allowed to fluctuate around that value but only within a narrow trading range. In , the accord finally failed, however, it did manage to stabi- lize major economies of the world, including those of America, Europe, and Asia.
All other weaker economic currencies are then fixed against the USD and allowed to fluctuate, or float, no more than 1 percent on either side of the fixed rate. If the fixed rate moved more than 1 percent, the central bank of that country was required to intervene in the market until the exchange rate was brought back to within the 1 percent band.
The Smithsonian Agreement and the European Joint Float agreement were similar to the Bretton-Woods Accord but allowed a greater range of fluctuation in the currency values and widened the band in which curren- cies were allowed to trade. The Smithsonian Agreement was just a modification of the Bretton- Woods Accord, with allowances for greater fluctuation, whereas the European Agreement aimed to reduce the dependence of European currencies on the U.
The free-floating system managed to continue for several years after the mandate, yet many countries with weaker currency values incurred major economic devaluation against certain countries that had stronger currency values. But by , it was clear that this European Monetary System had failed. Shortly thereafter, retail currency trading opportunities as we know them today started to be enjoyed by smaller investors willing to take similar risks as that of banks and large financial institutions.
The devaluation of currencies continued in the Asian currency markets, and confidence in trading the open Asian Forex markets began to fail. However, countries with stable currencies, and the concept of trading currencies, remained unchanged.
The establishment of the European Union in gave birth to the euro seven years later in The euro was the first single currency used as legal tender for the member states of the European Union and became the first currency to rival the historical leaders—the United States, Great Britain, and Japan—in the foreign exchange market by providing financial stability that Europe and the Forex market had long desired. Forex is an acronym for foreign exchange, a market where people exchange the currency of one country for the currency of another in order to do busi- ness internationally.
Typical situations in which such currency exchange is necessary include payments of import and export purchases and the sale of goods or services between countries.
Forex is also called the cash market or spot interbank market. The spot market means trading on-the-spot, at what- ever the price is at that moment. Prior to , the Forex retail interbank market for small individual speculative investors or traders was not available. A speculative investor, or speculative trader, is one who looks to make a profit on price movement in the market and is not looking to hold onto any currency long-term.
Then in the late s, retail market maker brokers companies that facilitate the trades for speculative traders were allowed to break up the large interbank units and offered individual traders the opportunity to participate in the Forex market as we know it today. The term market refers to a place where buyers and sellers are brought together to execute trading transactions. Forex trades nearly four times that volume daily, exceeding the daily combined activity of all the other financial markets.
Forex has no physical location—transactions are placed via the Inter- net or telephone—but is composed of approximately 4, international world banks and retail brokers. Individual traders wanting to profit by speculating on price changes can only access this market through a Forex broker, such as I-TradeFX.
It is a good practice of a speculative trader to only deal with Forex brokers that are regulated by the governmental bodies in their respective countries. That is the main difference between trading currencies and stock trading—you always have to deal with two instruments, or currency pairs, whereas in stock trading you only deal with one instrument.
The definition of a currency pair, or currency cross, is trading one currency for another currency, and you need a currency pair to execute a trade on the Forex. Speculative currency trading, just like speculative stock trading, involves exchanging one currency for another in anticipation of a price change in your favor. There are two types of traders on the Forex: consumer traders and spec- ulative traders. A consumer trader wants long-term ownership and is not as concerned with daily price movements, whereas a speculative trader is only concerned with daily price movement, as that is where the profit potential is.
Speculative traders are also called scalpers—they are trying to scalp a profit in a small price movement. Long-term position traders enter the mar- ket and stay in for a week, a month, or years. Short-term, or day traders, will enter the market for 5 minutes, 30 minutes, or even 4 hours, and then exit, but they are usually in and out within a hour period.
Although brokers will assure you that Forex trading is commission- free, it is important that you understand there still are costs involved. The spread is the difference between the buy price and the sell price of a specific currency. Envision attending an auction where there are several buyers for a partic- ular item. As bidding gets closer to the asking price, the spread tightens up. There are spreads between all currency pairs that are traded, and they average 3 to 6 price interest points, or pips, on the major world currencies which are considered to be the U.
Currencies from small countries are called off-brand currencies and can have spreads as much as to 1, pips. The broker retains the spread, which is the difference between the buy and the sell price. To break even, the market would need to move up 4 pips in your direction. To make a profit, the market would need to move more than 4 pips in your direction.
Price interest points, commonly known as pips, are usually expressed in decimals. Depending on the pair of currencies being traded, pips are usu- ally the last numbers of the decimal. Most traders on the Forex trade with what is called leverage. When a trader executes a trade on the Forex, the trader is buying or selling currency in units referred to as lots which is a set quantity of money.
There are typically two types of lots that traders will trade. You will see that the currency moved in our favor to 1. Trading can be a worthy full-time profession or a great way to earn sec- ondary income.
Either way, you will need to learn the three basic skills of trading as you watch price movement against time. How to determine the current trend on any time frame 2. How to develop an entry strategy that works consistently 3. How to develop an exit strategy that works consistently Once you master these three skills, you will be in a position to take advantage of the significant profit potential in this market.
After you open a trading account, the broker gives a trader the right to execute transactions, which includes certain rights and privileges, including the right to be a bull or a bear. The terms bull and bear were created by traders in the stock market in the early s to identify the direction someone was trading in the market.
The term bull was derived from the way in which bulls attack or charge, moving upward. In contrast, bears move downward when they attack or charge. Bulls, therefore, resemble a buying market, because they believe prices will continue to move upward, or rise, whereas bears resemble a selling market, because they believe prices are going move downward, or fall.
Every trader has to make a decision to be either a bull or a bear before entering the market. Bulls enter the market buying first and exit selling second. Bears do the opposite: they enter selling first and exit buying second. To make a profit in the market, you must always buy low and sell high.
Both bulls and bears are trying to do that; bears just reverse the transactions see Figure Remember, there is a bid price and an ask price with a 3- to 6-pip spread on the major currencies the U. Traders buy on the ask price and sell on the bid price. If you want to enter buying, you would pay the ask price of 1. You can enter and exit the market using a limit order, which are orders placed ahead of time to enter the market buying below where current prices are or selling above where the current prices are.
They are placed like a limit order at a predetermined price; however, they turn into market orders when the market reaches the predetermined price and may be subjected to slippage. The rule is, when you place a buy order above the current market price it is called a stop order, and when you place a sell order below where the current price is it is also called a stop order.
Every trade should have an entry point, a predetermined exit point for profit, and a well-thought-out exit point for minimal loss should the market not go your way. The rule is, every buy order should have two sells: a sell limit order for profit and a sell stop order for loss protection.
Conversely, every sell order should have two buy orders: a buy limit order for profit and a buy stop order for loss protection. Some trading software programs allow the trader the ability to place an OCO one cancels the other order. This means the moment the market hits either the stop order or the sell order, it cancels the opposite order.
By trading with an OCO order, you are not left exposed with a working order after either your stop or limit has been filled and you have been taken out of the market. An OCO order offers you the opportunity to set a trade and forget about it. You can literally walk away from your computer and not be concerned with catastrophic results if you have properly quantified your potential losses before you placed the trade.
No one knows where the next pip will go, so the best you can do is plan your trade and trade your plan. One of the most important and productive habits you can adopt is properly educating yourself about the Forex before you begin trading.
If you move forward without the proper education, be prepared to lose your money, much like in a casino. Just like the casino, the market will be there to take all your money. I have learned that to achieve success in trading requires learning to understand the three critical facets of trading: 1.
The technical education and trading knowledge 2. The fundamental understanding of what determines market movement 3. All successful traders learn that working through frustration is the path to success. Knowing what to do when you get frustrated is critical. Strong people make as many mistakes as weak people. The difference is that strong people admit their mistakes, laugh at them, and learn from them, and that is how they become strong.
Mistakes are part of being human. We need to appreciate our mistakes for what they are. Before you begin trading, you need to create your own mission state- ment to help you focus on becoming an educated, financially successful, long-term Forex trader.
I want you to think of your journey toward becom- ing a successful trader as a transformation of thought, a new process of knowledge build-up, followed by: 1. Disciplined thought 2. Disciplined rules 3. Practice first on a demo account to become comfortable with the trading platform before trading with real money.
You begin to trade with real money, work through your emotions, and learn to trade within the equity manage- ment rules to achieve a consistent financial return.
You mechanically execute profitable trades with no emotion. More than 90 percent of all traders who attempt to become successful on the Forex fail. Our professional international team at Market Traders Institute adamantly believes in proper education first. Knowledge is the key that can make a big difference in the success of a trader, providing a necessary edge. I cannot stress this enough: the majority of the world is locked into managing its poverty or mediocrity.
Very few people learn how to manage any kind of success because they are not given any sort of manual or instruction guide to success. Growing up, we learn how to survive finan- cially from our caregivers and circles of influence. But not all mentors are successful, leaving many to learn through trial and error. Thousands of books have been written on how to achieve some sort of success. I believe that success comes from acquiring the right education about the opportunity; possessing the right work ethic; implementing the right productive daily habits; and believing with focus, concentration, action, and a positive attitude that your dream will come true.
Successful people keep things simple. They find beauty in simplicity. The average per- son, for some reason, tries very hard to complicate things, even the simplest processes or procedures. I, on the other hand, have worked hard to take a very complicated issue, Forex, and simplify it, enabling just about anyone to understand how the markets work and how to trade them.
During the next 18 days, it continues the loss of information until it settles at 3 percent retention of the new information. Our focus at MTI is to provide you with productive practical, continued education, enabling you to be trading with percent-plus recall. You must practice them over and over again until they become an unconscious habit.
Doctors prac- tice on cadavers first. Pilots fly with instructors long before they go solo. I personally believe that self-empowerment is learning how to fish and that dependency is all about being handed a fish to stay alive.
Make no mistake, there is no holy grail! You cannot buy any indicator or trading system that works percent of the time any more than the airlines can buy an autopilot system that eliminates the need for pilots. I would think not, because if you could create such a trading system, all you would need to do is walk into any major financial institution like the Bank of America or the Royal Bank of Scotland and show proof that your auto- mated system works.
Just as there is no perfect trading system, there is no autopilot sys- tem that works without a pilot. I very much doubt that human beings will ever put their lives on the line with a computer or autopilot system in an airplane without a pilot. We all have bought enough electronic equip- ment in our lives—TVs, VCRs, cameras, and so forth—to know they all fail eventually.
Pilots are educated and trained to fly proficiently before they are even shown where the autopilot system button is. The first time I got into the cockpit with my instructor I asked him where the autopilot button was. I did eventually learn how to engage the autopilot function and will have to say, the autopilot system is not a fail-safe function without the close moni- toring of a pilot. Where dreams come to life! Don't be held back in the Old You were designed for more.
Choose Your New Furniture. Live in The Home you Deserve. Choose Your Furniture. Furniture Categories. Walking the reader through a dozen stunning homes—light-filled lake retreats, contemporary houses, and historic mansions—Westbrook shares her accessible, appealing ideas. From the judicious use of symmetry to the importance of including natural elements in a room, utilizing color to unify spaces within a house, and setting a mood with materials, Gracious Rooms is rich with advice and inspiration.
The site receives , pageviews every day and has , RSS subscribers and , followers on Twitter. Indeed, our contemporary kitchens are showplaces with islands, hidden appliances, and cold stone surfaces. They resemble laboratories more than the heart of the home, and they are neither cook friendly nor family friendly.
American culinary icon Julia Child embraced the significance of the family meal and was devoted to sharing delicious food with friends and family at the comfortable dining table in her kitchen, a place where conversation was as important as cuisine.
I know my apology comes ridiculously late. And I don't really expect you to understand. But I came here to say it anyway. After all this time, I was still hoping to make a good impression.
Shortly after we fell in with the Active frigate , and sent her also to watch the motions of the enemy , and dispatched the Boadicea directly to Admiral Cornwallis. By these precautions that we have taken , we have not only saved all By these precautions that we have taken , we have not only saved.
At the end of the After Ever Happy, Landon got married, but readers everywhere have been wondering who will get to call the nicest boy in the After series their forever love? Read it and find out!
Skip to content. Book 3 of the After series—newly revised and expanded, Anna Todd's After fanfiction racked up 1 billion reads online and captivated readers across the globe. Nothing is what she thought it was. Not her friends. Not her family. And rather than being understanding, he turns to sabotage. This cycle of jealousy, unpredictable anger, and forgiveness is exhausting.
Love used to be enough to hold them together. But if Tessa follows her heart now, will it be I removed my coat and put it in the same spot. We entered the water together. She died. I was saved. My father's name also had some news value. I was confined in a hospital on the coast. A relative came from h o m e to see me and take care of necessary arrangements. Before he left he informed me that my father and all the rest of my family were so enraged that I might easily be disowned once and for all.
Such matters did not concern m e ; I thought instead of the dead Tsuneko, and, longing for her, I wept. Of all the people I had ever known, that miserable Tsuneko really was the only one I loved. A long letter which consisted of a string of fifty stanzas came from the girl at my lodging house. Fifty stanzas, each o n e beginning with the incredible words, "Please live on for me.
They discovered at the hospital that my left lung was affected. This was most fortunate for m e : when, not long afterwards, I was taken from the hospital to the police station, charged with having been the accomplice to a suicide, I was treated as a sick man by the police, and quartered not with the criminals but in a special custody room. Late that night the old policeman standing night duty in the room next to mine softly opened the door.
Come here, next to the fire. I feigned an air of utter dejection. My jailor, despising me as a mere child w h o wouldn't know the difference, acted exactly as if he were charged with the investigation. No doubt he was secretly hoping to while away the long autumn evening by extracting from me a con- fession in the nature of a pornographic story.
I guessed his intent at once, and it was all I could do to re- strain the impulse to burst out laughing in his face. I made u p a confession absurd enough to satisfy— more or less—his prurient curiosity. I've got a pretty good idea now. We always take it into consideration when a prisoner answers everything honestly. I hope y o u will do what you can to help me. In t h e morning I was called before the police chief.
T h i s time it was the real examination. As soon as I opened the door and entered his office, t h e police chief said, "There's a handsome lad for you! It wasn't your fault, I can see. Your mother's to blame for having brought such a handsome boy into the world. His words caught me off-guard, and made me as wretched as if I had been born de- formed, with a red macula covering half my face. After he finished his questioning, he filled out a form to send to the district attorney's office.
He commented as he wrote, "You mustn't neglect your health that way. You've been coughing blood, haven't you? The handkerchief was spattered with blood, but it was not blood from my throat. The night before I had been picking at a pimple under my ear, and the blood was from that pimple.
Realiz- ing at once that it would be to my advantage not to reveal the truth, I lowered my eyes and sanctimoni- ously murmured, "Yea. There must be someone, isn't there, who will guarantee you or offer bail? He was a short-set man of forty, a bachelor and a henchman of my father's. I had also always thought of him as "Flatfish. I found it and called him. I asked if he would mind coming to Yokohama. Flatfish's tone when he answered was unrecognizably officious, but he agreed in the end to be my guarantor.
I went back to the custody room. The police chief's loud voice reached m e as he barked out to the policeman, "Hey, somebody disinfect the tele- phone receiver. He's been coughing blood, yon know. I was allowed to hide the rope under my coat when we went outside, but the young policeman gripped the end of the rope firmly.
We went to Yoko- hama on the streetcar. The experience hadn't upset me in the least. I missed the custody room in the police station and even the old policeman. What, I wonder, makes me that way? When they tied me up as a criminal I actually felt relieved—a calm, relaxed feeling. Even now as I write down my recollections of those days I feel a really expansive, agreeable sensation. But among m y otherwise nostalgic memories there is one harrowing disaster which I shall never be able to forget and which even now causes m e to break out into a cold sweat.
He was a man of about forty, with an intelligent calm about h i m which I am tempted to call "honest good looks" in contrast to m y own alleged good looks which, even if true, certainly are tainted w i t h lewdness. H e seemed so simple and straightforward that I let down my guard completely. I was listlessly recounting my story when suddenly I was seized with another fit of coughing.
I took out my handkerchief. The blood stains caught my eye, and with ignoble opportunism I thought that this cough might also prove useful. I added a couple of extra, exaggerated coughs for good measure and, m y mouth still covered by the handkerchief, I glanced at the district at- torney's face.
The next instant h e asked with his quiet smile, "Was that real? It was worse, I am sure, even than when in high school I was plummeted into hell by that stupid Takeichi tapping me on the back and saying, "You did it on purpose. Some- times I have even thought that I should have pre- ferred to be sentenced to ten years imprisonment rather than meet with such gentle contempt from the district attorney.
I felt utterly wretched as I sat on a bench in the corridor outside the district attorney's office waiting for the arrival of my guarantor, Flat- fish. I could see through the tall windows behind my bench the evening sky glowing in the sunset. Seagulls were flying by in a line which somehow suggested the curve of a woman's body.
The inglorious prophecy that women would fall for me turned out just as he said, but the happy one, that I should certainly become a great artist, failed to materialize. I never managed to become anything more im- pressive than an unknown, second-rate cartoonist employed by the cheapest magazines. I gathered that minute sums of money were remitted from home every month for my support, never directly to me, but secretly, to Flatfish. They apparently were sent by my brothers without my father's knowledge.
That was all—every other connection with home was severed. Flatfish was invariably in a bad humor; even if I smiled to make myself agreeable, he would never return the smile. The change in him was so extraordinary as to inspire me with thoughts of how contemptible—or rather, how comic—human beings are who can metamorphize themselves as simply and effortlessly as they turn over their hands. Flatfish seemed to be keeping an eye on me, as if I were very likely to commit suicide—he must have thought there was some danger I might throw myself into the sea after the woman—and he sternly forbade me to leave the house.
Unable to drink or to smoke, I spent my whole days from the moment I got up until I went to bed trapped in my cubicle of a room, with nothing but old magazines to read. I was lead- ing the life of a half-wit, and I had quite lost even the energy to think of suicide. Flatfish's house was near the Okubo Medical School. The shop itself was a long, narrow affair, the dusty interior of which contained nothing but shelf after shelf of useless junk.
Needless to say, Flatfish did not depend for a living on the sale of this rubbish; he apparently made his money by performing such services as transferring possession of the secret property of one client to another—to avoid taxes. Flatfish almost never waited in the shop. Usually he set out early in the morning in a great hurry, his face set in a scowl, leaving a boy of seventeen to look after the shop in his absence. Whenever this boy had noth- ing better to do, he used to play catch in the street with the children of the neighborhood.
He seemed to consider the parasite living on the second floor a simpleton if not an outright lunatic. He used even to address me lectures in the manner of an older and wiser head.
Never having been able to argue with anybody, I submissively listened to his words, a weary though admiring expression on my face. However, there was undoubtedly some- thing strangely fish-like about the boy's eyes, leading me to wonder if the gossip might not be true. But if this were the case, this father and son led a re- markably cheerless existence. Sometimes, late at night, they would order noodles from a neighborhood shop—just for the two of them, without inviting m e —and they ate in silence, not exchanging so much as a word.
The hoy almost always prepared the food in Flatfish's house, and three times a day he would carry on a separate tray meals for the parasite on the second floor. Flatfish and the boy ate their meals in the dank little room under the stairs, so hurriedly that I could hear the clatter of plates.
One evening towards the end of March Flatfish— had he enjoyed some unexpected financial success? The host him- self was impressed b y the unwonted delicacy of sliced tuna, and in his admiring delight h e expansively offered a little sake even to his listless hanger-on.
I suddenly became nostalgic for the days when I used to go from bar to bar drinking, and even for Horiki. I yearned with such desperation for "free- dom" that I became weak and tearful.
Ever since coming to this house I h a d lacked all incentive even to play the clown; I had merely lain prostrate under the contemptuous glances of Flat- fish and the boy. Flatfish himself seemed disinclined to indulge in long, heart-to-heart talks, and for m y part no desire stirred within me to run after him with complaints.
Flatfish pursued his discourse. So, you see, your rehabilitation depends entirely on yourself. If you mend your ways and bring m e your problems—seriously, I mean—I will cer- tainly see what I can do to h e l p you.
In the end I have felt past caring; I have laughed them away with my clowning, or surrendered to them abjectly with a silent nod of the head, in the attitude of defeat. In later years I came to realize that if Flatfish had at the time presented me with a simple statement of the facts, there would have been no untoward consequences. But as a result of his unnecessary pre- cautions, or rather, of the incomprehensible vanity and love of appearances of the people of the world, I was subjected to a most dismal set of experiences.
How much better things would have been if only Flatfish had said something like this, "I'd like you to enter a school beginning in the April term. Your family has decided to send you a more adequate allowance once you have entered school.
If I had been told that, I should probably have done what Flatfish asked. But thanks to hia intolerably prudent, circumlocutions manner of speech, I only felt irritable, and this caused the whole course of my life to be altered. What do you yourself want to do n o w? Tell m e what you would really like. But the question is not the money. It's what you feel. That o n e fact would probably have settled my feelings, but I was left in a fog. Have you anything which might be described as aspirations for t h e future?
I suppose one can't expect people one helps to understand how difficult it is to help another person. I'm responsible for you now, and I don't like you to have such half- hearted feelings. I wish you would show me that you're resolved to make a real efifort to turn over a new leaf. But of course you can't expect t o lead your former life of luxury on the help that poor old Flatfish can give—don't give yourself any illusions on that score.
No—but if you are resolute in your determination to begin again afresh, and you make definite plans for building your future, I think I might actually be willing to help y o u to rehabilitate yourself if you came to m e for help, though Heaven knows I haven't much to spare. D o you understand my feelings? What are your plans? Do you realize that nowadays even graduates of Tokyo Imperial University.
Your feelings are still all up in the air. Think vu it over. Please devote this evening to thinking it over seriously. The next morning at dawn I ran away from Flatfish's house. I left behind a note, scrawled in pencil in big letters on my writing pad.
I am going to discuss my plans for the future with a friend w h o lives at the address below. Please don't worry about me.
I'm telling the truth. I did not run away because I was mortified at having been lectured by Flatfish. I was, exactly as Flatfish described, a man whose feelings were up in the air, and I had absolutely no idea about future plans or anything else.
W h e n I left Flatfish's house, however, I was certainly not seriously entertaining any idea of con- sulting the likes of Horiki about my future plans. I left the note hoping thereby to pacify Flatfish for a little while, if only for a split-second. I didn't write the note so much out of a detective-story strategem to gain a little more time for my escape—though, I must admit that the desire was at least faintly present —as to avoid causing Flatfish a sudden shock which would send him into a state of wild alarm and con- fusion.
I think that might be a somewhat more accurate presentation of my motives. I knew that the facts were certain to be discovered, but I was afraid to state them as they were. One of my tragic flaws is the compulsion to add some sort of embellishment to every situation—a quality which has made people call me at times a liar—but I have almost never embellished in order to bring myself any advantage; it was rather that I had a strangulating fear of that cataclysmic change in the atmosphere the instant the flow of a conversation flagged, and even when I knew that it would later turn to my disadvantage, I fre- quently felt obliged to add, almost inadvertently, my word of embellishment, out of a desire to please born of my usual desperate mania for service.
That was how I happened to jot down Horiki's name and address as they floated u p from the distant recesses of my memory. After leaving Flatfish's house I walked as far as Shinjuku, where I sold the books I had in my pockets. Then I stood there uncertainly, utterly at a loss what to do. Though I have always made it my practice to be pleasant to everybody, I have not once actually experienced friendship.
I have only the most painful recollections of my various acquaintances with the exception of such companions in pleasure as Horiki. I have frantically played the clown in order to disentangle myself from these painful re- lationships, only to wear myself out as a result. Even now it comes as a shock if by chance I notice in the street a face resembling someone I know however slightly, and I am at once seized by a shivering violent enough to make me dizzy.
I know that I am liked by other people, but I seem to be deficient in the faculty to love others. I should add that I have very strong doubts as to whether even human beings really possess this faculty. The front door of another per- son's house terrified me more than the gate of Inferno in the Divine Comedy, and I am not exaggerating when I say that I really felt I could detect within the door the presence of a horrible dragon-like monster writhing there w i t h a dank, raw smell.
I had no friends. I had nowhere to go. Here was a real case of a true word having been said in jest: I decided to visit Horiki, exactly as I had stated in my farewell note to Flatfish. I had never before gone myself to Horiki's house. Usually I would invite h i m to my place by telegram when I wanted to see him. Now, however, I doubted whether I could manage the telegraph fee.
I also wondered, with the jaundiced intelligence of a man in disgrace, whether Horiki might not refuse to come even if I telegraphed him. I decided o n a visit, t h e most difficult thing in the world for me.
Giving vent to a sigh, I boarded the streetcar. The thought that the only hope left me in the world was Horiki filled me with a fore- boding dreadful enough to send chills up and down my spine. Horiki was at home. H e lived in a two-storied house at the end of a dirty alley. Horiki showed me that day a new aspect of his city-dweller personality.
H e was not a simple, endlessly passive t type like myself. What a surprise. It's no laughing matter. Let me give you a word of advice—stop your foolishness here and now.
I've got business today anyway. I'm awfully busy these days. What kind of business? What are you doing there? Don't tear the thread off the cushion! When I think of it, Horiki's acquaintanceship with m e had cost h i m nothing. Horiki's aged mother brought in a tray with two dishes of jelly.
Have you made jelly? That's terrific. You shouldn't have bothered. I was just going out on some business. But it would be wicked not to eat your wonderful jelly after you've gone to all the trouble. Thank you so much. Mother made it specially. Really terrific. I also spooned my bowl of jelly. I by no means despised their poverty.
At the time I didn't think that the jelly tasted bad, and I was really grateful for the old woman's kindness. It is true that I dread poverty, but I do not believe I ever have despised it. I was filled with dismay at these signs that I, a fool rendered incapable by my perpetual flight from human society from dis- tinguishing between "at home" and "on the outside," was the only one completely left out, that I had been deserted even by Horiki.
I should like to record that as I manipulated the peeling lacquer chopsticks to eat my jelly, I felt unbearably lonely. My fortunes thereby took a sudden turn. Horiki at once became quite animated. I was just on my way to your place when this fellow dropped in without warning.
No, you're not in the way at all. Please come in. I took the cushion from under me and turned it over before handing it to Horiki, but snatching it from my hands, he turned it over once more as he offered it to the woman. There was only that one cushion for guests, besides the cushion Horiki sat on. She declined the cushion and sat demurely in a corner by the door. I listened absent-mindedly to their conversation. The woman, evidently an employee of a magazine publisher, had commissioned an illustration from Horiki, and had come now to collect it.
It's been ready for some time. Here you are. As Horiki read it I could see the good spirits on his face turn ugly. I ought to take you there myself, I suppose, but I haven't got the time now. Imagine—a runaway, and looking so smug! She lived in an apartment in Kocnji with her five- year-old girl.
She told me that her husband had died three years before.
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