Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World

by Haruki Murakami

They who had never wanted family are now lonely old men.

As the autumn deepens, the fathomless lakes of their eyes assume an ever more sorrowful hue. The leaves turn color, the grasses wither; the beasts sense the advance of a long, hungry season. And bowing to their vision, I too know a sadness.

Kindness and a caring mind are two separate qualities. Kindness is manners. It is superficial custom, an acquired practice. Not so the mind. The mind is deeper, stronger, and, I believe, it is far more inconstant.”

“Listen. I may not be much, but I’m all I’ve got.

“Wasn’t much of a life anyway. Wasn’t much of a brain.” “But didn’t you say you were satisfied with your life?” “Word games,” I dismissed. “Every army needs a flag.”

My world foreshortened, flattening into a credit card. Seen head on, things seemed merely skewed, but from the side the view was virtually meaningless—a one-dimensional wafer. Everything about me may have been crammed in there, but it was only plastic. Indecipherable except to some machine.

All of us dig at our own pure holes. We have nothing to achieve by our activities, nowhere to get to. Is there not something marvelous about this? We hurt no one and no one gets hurt. No victory, no defeat.”

Most human activities are predicated on the assumption that life goes on. If you take that premise away, what is there left?