When you see the
ridgepoles of the impressive houses in Heian-kyo competing to rise above one
another--dwellings of people of high status or of low--they look like they
might stand for generations, but when you inquire you discover there are very
few still standing from ages past. Some
may have burned down just last year, and been rebuilt since. Or a mansion may have disappeared, to be
replaced by smaller houses. Things
change in the lives of the people living in those houses, too. There may be just as many people, but in
places where I might have known twenty or thirty people in my youth, I may only
recognize one or two now. Some die in
the morning; others are born in the evening.
That's the way it is with the people of this world--they are like those
bubbles floating on the water. KAMO NO CHOMEI
