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My grandpa used to say that things never work out like you think they will, but that’s what makes life interesting, and that makes sense.
There’s no way you can leave here. You aren’t free. But is that what you really want? To be free?
“Perhaps most people in the world aren’t trying to be free, Kafka. They just think they are. It’s all an illusion. If they really were set free, most people would be in a real pickle. You’d better remember that. People actually prefer not being free.”
That’s what Kafka means in Czech, you know – crow
Life’s crappy, no matter how you cut it. He just hadn’t understood that when he was little.
“The world would be a real mess if everybody was a genius. Somebody’s got to keep watch, take care of business.”
“Haydn’s first cello concerto. Pierre Fournier’s playing the solo,”
Listen to it.
Hoshino was drawn back to his childhood. He used to go to the river every day to catch fish. Nothing to worry about back then, he reminisced. Just live each day as it came. As long as I was alive, I was something. That was just how it was. But somewhere along the way it all changed. Living turned me into nothing. Weird … People are born in order to live, right? But the longer I’ve lived, the more I’ve lost what’s inside me – and ended up empty. And I bet the longer I live, the emptier, the more worthless, I’ll become. Something’s wrong with this picture. Life isn’t supposed to turn out like
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We all die and disappear, but that’s because the mechanism of the world itself is built on destruction and loss. Our lives are just shadows of that guiding principle. Say the wind blows. It can be a strong, violent wind or a gentle breeze. But eventually every kind of wind dies out and disappears. Wind doesn’t have form. It’s just a movement of air.
Taking crazy things seriously is – a serious waste of time.”
‘Pointless thinking is worse than no thinking at all.’
‘Take the poison, take the plate.’” “What does that mean?” “If you’re going to take poison, you might as well eat the plate it came on.”
That’s what love’s all about, Kafka. You’re the one having those wonderful feelings, but you have to go it alone as you wander through the dark. Your mind and body have to bear it all. All by yourself.”
“There’s another world that parallels our own, and to a certain degree you’re able to step into that other world and come back safely. As long as you’re careful. But go past a certain point and you’ll lose the path out. It’s a labyrinth.
The longer people live, the more they learn to distinguish what’s important from what’s not.
‘A life without once reading Hamlet is like a life spent in a coal mine.’
The more you think about illusions, the more they’ll swell up and take on form. And no longer be an illusion.
what I think is, no matter how much suffering you went through, you never wanted to let go of those memories.”
“It hurt more and more to hold on to them, but I never wanted to let them go, as long as I was alive. It was the only reason I had to go on living, the only thing that proved I was alive.”
But if something did happen, it happened. Whether it’s right or wrong, I accept everything that happens, and that’s how I became the person I am now.”
The process of writing was important. Even though the finished product is meaningless.”
But things in the past are like a plate that’s shattered to pieces. You can never put it back as it was, right?”
The main thing is this: you have to forgive her. That’s not going to be easy, I know, but you have to do it. That’s the only way you can be saved. There’s no other way!”
I just don’t get it. Why does loving somebody mean you have to hurt them as much? I mean, if that’s the way it goes, what’s the point of loving someone? Why the hell does it have to be like that?”
But what his life had really meant, Hoshino had no idea. Not that anybody’s life had more clear-cut meaning to it. What’s really important for people, what really has dignity, is how they die. Compared to that, he thought, how you lived doesn’t amount to much. Still, how you live determines how you die.
The police, Hoshino concluded, not for the first time in his life, are just gangsters who get paid by the state.
To be with her is to feel a pain, like a frozen knife in my chest. An awful pain, but the funny thing is that I’m thankful for it. It’s as though that frozen pain and my very existence are one. The pain is an anchor, mooring me here
‘It’s OK, Hoshino, don’t worry about it. That’s life. I’ve done some pretty awful things in my life too. Not much you can do about it. Things happen. You just have to hang in there.’
“It’s as if when you’re in the forest, you become a seamless part of it. When you’re in the rain, you’re a part of the rain. When you’re in the morning, you’re a seamless part of the morning. When you’re with me, you become a part of me.”
The cup looks like a metaphor. A metaphor of memories that, before long, will be lost.
I’ll never see them again. I know that. And they know that. And knowing this, we bid each other farewell.
“People that don’t get it never will.”
“Exactly. If you can’t get it across in words then it’s better not to try.”
“I don’t know, I don’t feel right unless I’ve got the sea and mountains nearby. People are by and large a product of where they were born and raised. How you think and feel’s always linked to the lie of the land, the temperature. The prevailing winds, even.
“You can run but you can’t hide?”
“Every one of us is losing something precious to us,” he says after the phone stops ringing. “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
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People need a place they can belong.”
“If you remember me, then I don’t care if everybody else forgets.”
Time weighs down on you like an old, ambiguous dream. You keep on moving, trying to slip through it. But even if you go to the ends of the earth, you won’t be able to escape it. Still, you have to go there – to the edge of the world. There’s something you can’t do unless you get there.
