Aflutter with Excitement

I love fossils—they let me open the door to the past and hand me the key to the future. In them there is romance; my everyday worries and troubles come to feel small, and my heart is healed.

These days I rarely go fossil-hunting, but until a few years ago I often carried myself off to places like Otsuki in Yamanashi or Togakushi in Nagano. Beyond the pleasure of admiring them, the pleasure of collecting them is like a treasure hunt—an “aflutter, heart-pounding” swell of feeling much like the night before a school excursion.

Come to think of it, just when I was thinking there had been none of this delightful excitement of late, I discovered an ammonite fossil in the marble wall of a high-rise in Shinjuku. I was moved, moved. Why, I needn’t have gone far at all—there were places to hold onto romance close by, too. Ever since, whenever I see the high-rises of the city, “aflutter, heart-pounding”—my chest quickens.