It might not be impossible to put a life together out of perfect days. You would have a mountain with some weather for a backdrop, and then pile up earth in delicately-moulded lesser mountains between lodge and tea house, easier to conquer on your way. A stream would count its beads off mossy boulders as it wandered nowhere among ponds, with clouds of irises and bridges sailing off to see which took the longer, path or water; tonsured pines paint shadow stepping-stones on needles; and you could dress your daughter like a bird of paradise and have her stroll there with her parasol. But it only takes a single carp to come up and uncoil a spool of rainbows on the surface, for the rest of life to be the pool.
