...don't pointless things have a place, too, in this far-from-perfect world? Remove everything pointless from an imperfect life, and it'd lose even its imperfection.
...
"Sexual desire's not something you understand," I said, giving my usual middle-of-the-road opinion. "It's just there."
She scrutinized me for a while, like I was some machine run by a heretofore unheard-of power source.
...
I find it hard to talk about myself. I'm always tripped up by the eternal who am I? paradox. Sure, no one knows as much pure data about me as me. But when I talk about myself, all sorts of other factors -- values, standards, my own limitations as an observer -- make me, the narrator, select and eliminate things about me, the narratee.... It's enough to make me ask the question: How well do we really know ourselves?
...
Newspapers are all the same. They never tell you what you really want to know.
...
I've been that way since I was little. When I didn't understand something, I gathered up the words scattered at my feet, and lined them up into sentences. If that didn't help, I'd scatter them again, rearrange them into a different order. Repeat that a number of times, and I was able to think about things like most people. Writing for me was never difficult. Other children gathered pretty stones or acorns, and I wrote. As naturally as breathing, I'd scribble down one sentence after another. And I'd think....
My provisional theme here: On a day-to-day basis I use writing to figure out who I am.
Right?
Right you are!
...
I see now that my basic rule of thumb in writing has always been to write about things as if I didn't know them -- and this would include things that I did know or thought I knew about. If I said from the beginning, Oh, I know that, no need to spend my precious time writing about it, my writing never would have gotten off the ground. For example, if I think about somebody, I know that guy, no need to spend time thinking about him, I've got him down, I run the risk of being betrayed (and this would apply to you as well). On the flip side of everything we think we absolutely have pegged lurks an equal amount of the unknown.
Understanding is but the sum of our misunderstandings.
Just between us, that's my way of comprehending the world.
In the world we live in, what we know and what we don't know are like Siamese twins, inseparable, existing in a state of confusion.
...
That's gotta be one of the principles behind reality. Accepting things that are hard to comprehend, and leaving them that way. And bleeding, Shooting and bleeding.
Did you ever see anyone shot by a gun without bleeding?
...
Every story has a time to be told, I convinced her. Otherwise you'll forever be a prisoner to the secret inside you.
...
Being tough isn't in and of itself a bad thing. Looking back on it, though, I can see I was too used to being strong, and never tried to understand those who were weak. I was too used to being fortunate, and didn't try to understand those less fortunate. Too used to being healthy, and didn't try to understand the pain of those who weren't. Whenever I saw a person in trouble, somebody paralyzed by events, I decided it was entirely his fault -- he just wasn't trying hard enough. People who complained were just plain lazy. My outlook on life was unshakeable, and practical, but lacked any human worth. And not a single person around me pointed this out.... Something was missing in me, but by the time I noticed that gap, it was too late.
...
But tomorrow I'll be a different person, never again the person I was. Not that anyone will notice after I'm back in Japan. On the outside nothing will be different. But something inside has burned up and vanished. Blood has been shed, and something inside me is gone. Head down, without a word, that something makes its exit. The door opens; the door shuts. The light goes out. This is the last day for the person I am right now. The very last twilight. When dawn comes, the person I am won't be here anymore. Someone else will occupy this body.
Why do people have to be this lonely? What's the point of it all? Millions of people in this world, all of them yearning, looking for others to satisfy them, yet isolating themselves. Why? Was the earth put here just to nourish human loneliness?
I turned faceup on the slab of stone, gazed at the sky, and thought about all the man-made satellites spinning around the earth. The horizon was still etched in a faint glow, and stars began to blink on in the deep, wine-colored sky. I gazed among them for the light of a satellite, but it was still too bright out to spot one with the naked eye. The sprinkling of stars looked nailed to the spot, unmoving. I closed my eyes and listened carefully for the descendants of Sputnik, even now circling the earth, gravity their only tie to the planet. Lonely metal souls in the unimpeded darkness of space, they meet, pass each other, and part, never to meet again. No words passing between them. No promises to keep.
...
So that's how we live our lives. No matter how deep and fatal the loss, no matter how important the thing that's stolen from us -- that's snatched right out of our hands -- even if we are left completely changed, with only the outer layer of skin from before, we continue to play out our lives this way, in silence. We draw ever nearer to the end of our allotted span of time, bidding it farewell as it trails off behind. Repeating, often adroitly, the endless deeds of the everyday. Leaving behind a feeling of immeasurable emptiness.
...
I sit up in bed and wait for the phone to ring again. I lean back against the wall, my focus fixed on a single point in the space before me, and I breathe slowly, soundlessly. Making sure the joints bridging one moment of time and the next. The phone doesn't ring. An unconditional silence hangs in the air. But I'm in no hurry. There's no need to rush. I'm ready. I can go anywhere.
Right?
Right you are!
-- Haruki Murakami, Sputnik Sweetheart
-- Haruki Murakami, Sputnik Sweetheart
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