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About the Ability for Pleasure by Irme Oravecz Ryokan, the 18th century Japanese poet spent decades in the woods as a hermit, suffered from cold, from loneliness, from human deficiency, from mortality, but all along he enjoyed the pleasures of life: the purl of the brooks, the song of the birds, rice wine, dusk, the touch of a chestnut unfolding from its shell, the rolling of raindrops on the leaves. I wish I could maintain such an ability for decades.