FETTUCINI BOLOGNESE a la ROBERTO

Now and then, one can use a break from even the finest Japanese cuisine, a fact even truer if one is a Westerner.

To enjoy this particular recipe to its fullest after a day of hard work the way I did, you must go out into the garden on an autumn evening when the light of a half moon or more is sufficient to see, feel among the shadowy pepper plants and find a big fresh green pepper, then on your way back to the house get some fresh basil tips.

When you get inside, chop up the pepper, tear up the basil, then from the fridge get some of the fettucini left over from the large batch you prepared a couple days ago. Also get out the leftover Sauce Bolognese a la Roberto you made on the same day. The sauce should be even better now. Don't forget the parmesan. Saute the pepper in fine olive oil, add the sauce and some hot water over high heat, add the basil and an appropriate quantity of fettucine, tossing as you cook fast to reduce the sauce and thoroughly heat the pasta, then put all on a plate, grate the parmesan on top and eat everything like you were on a hillside in Italy looking out over the Bay of Napoli. Feel free to lick the plate.

Then you look up and you're back to a mountainside Shiga, above a Lake made silver by moonight. Fast, intense and frugal world travel.

EARLY DAWN DREAM

In the night, the August night, I barely awoke from a dream about deer and the world was still of the dream; I heard the sound of deer taking careful steps through the high grass in my garden, then there was a soft crunching as of deer browsing on my prospering verbena or my surviving basil, their chewing so intent that I arose and peered out the window in the first hint of dawn and was able to see a morning's dream: a summer dawn rain falling in soft waves, with a rhythmic, tender sound like the slow chewing of lush, new-grown leaves, as from the house eaves came a slow regular dripping, like the soft steps of deer though high grass in a dream to which I returned at once, awakening later to find the basil and verbena not only intact, but fresh from dreams of rain...