Kafka on the Shore

by Haruki Murakami

Sometimes fate is like a small sandstorm that keeps changing direction. You change direction, but the sandstorm chases you. You turn again, but the storm adjusts. Over and over you play this out, like some ominous dance with death just before dawn. Why? Because this storm isn’t something that blew in from far away, something that has nothing to do with you. This storm is you. Something inside you. So all you can do is give in to it, step right inside the storm, closing your eyes and plugging up your ears so the sand doesn’t get in, and walk through it, step by step. There’s no sun there, no moon, no direction, no sense of time. Just fine white sand swirling up into the sky like pulverised bones. That’s the kind of sandstorm you need to imagine.

And you really will have to make it through that violent, metaphysical, symbolic storm. No matter how metaphysical or symbolic it might be, make no mistake about it: it will cut through flesh like a thousand razor blades. People will bleed there, and you will bleed too. Hot, red blood. You’ll catch that blood in your hands, your own blood and the blood of others. And once the storm is over you won’t remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You won’t even be sure, in fact, whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm you won’t be the same person who walked in. That’s what this storm’s all about.

We’re so caught up in our everyday lives that events of the past, like ancient stars that have burned out, are no longer in orbit about our minds.

All these millions of stars looking down on me, and I’ve never given them more than a passing thought before. Not only the stars – how many other things haven’t I noticed in the world, things I know nothing about?

“Now that you’ve said hello, I’m afraid we move right into farewells. Hello, goodbye. Like flowers scattered in a storm, man’s life is one long farewell, as they say.”

Because reality’s just the accumulation of ominous prophecies come to life.

There’s only one kind of happiness, but misfortune comes in all shapes and sizes. It’s as Tolstoy said: happiness is an allegory, unhappiness a story.

“Kafka, in everybody’s life there’s a point of no return. And in a very few cases, a point where you can’t go forward any more. And when we reach that point, all we can do is quietly accept the fact. That’s how we survive.”

“‘The pure present is an ungraspable advance of the past devouring the future. In truth, all sensation is already memory.’”

“I don’t think I’d want Mickey Mouse pimping for me anyway.”

The longer people live, the more they learn to distinguish what’s important from what’s not.

“Memories warm you up from the inside. But they also tear you apart.”

“Lost opportunities, lost possibilities, feelings we can never get back again. That’s part of what it means to be alive. But inside our heads – at least that’s where I imagine it – there’s a little room where we store those memories. A room like the stacks in this library. And to understand the workings of our own heart we have to keep on making new reference cards. We have to dust things off every once in a while, let in fresh air, change the water in the flower vases. In other words, you’ll live for ever in your own private library.”