Does anyone feel the pain of what other people go through while others with different lives stand oblivious because they never deal with those people? Some person once dreamt that he was looking out the window; he saw the city from afar. The whole world was seen all at once; he embraced the world, good and evil, all nations; he was once with people, animals, inanimate objects, and the plant kingdom, he was connected with everything, yet he was himself as an individual; he smiled. Few achieve one with this whole world.

Pain could be the reflection of what I didn’t understand. Removing judgment of things I’ve not accustomed to opens an ecstasy of the wonder of discovering the new, to be influenced by what I write and draw.

Could places impart pain? There are photos of war like those of World War I, the trenches, mud, soldiers, and burnt-out trees representing all wars. Even a familiar landscape with no apparent destruction, nothing to indicate anything negative. I’ve been to a beach with waves coming into the shore, yet that reminds me of a memory of pain. Grasping after that time on a beach when I saw the sunset was the hue of gold; I’ve never seen other golden sunsets the same way again; it’s a yearning for what it never recovered, remaining only in memory.

In a story where the character goes through pain, that makes it interesting, yet it’s balanced with positive situations.

Robert J. Matsunaga