On my way to work yesterday, for the first time in the ten months that I've been on this magic island, I saw one of Oahu's famous deadly centipedes, about four inches long (I understand they get several times as big), crawling right across the sidewalk before me in front of the Queen's Hospital. It was neither hurrying nor dallying, giving me time to inspect it--even to count its legs if I wanted--and to reflect on whether it was it my will, desire, or duty to step on it. Finally I let it go unharmed and unmolested. Not that close inspection had charmed me, or that I was persuaded that it represented anything other than a kind of absolute evil-in-itself; but an uneasy, superstitious presentiment that if there were a Law of Karma, I'd be asking for some really hideous consequences, and the innocence of its attitude--it was alive, just doing its thing--stayed my stomping foot.