The City and Its Uncertain Walls

by Haruki Murakami

I sat in the chair and untangled my consciousness from the cage of my physical self, so that I could run freely in a broad meadow of thoughts, like a romping dog off his leash. I lay down on the grassy field, my mind blank, and stared vacantly at the white clouds passing in the sky. (A metaphor, of course. I wasn’t actually looking up at the sky.) Time passed by as I basically did nothing. Only when necessary would I whistle to call it back (this, too, a metaphorical expression. I wasn’t really whistling).

This might be one of the issues with eternity—not knowing where you should go next. But how much value was there in a love that didn’t seek the eternal?

Just as the people of the town had no horizontal curiosity about geography, they lacked any vertical curiosity about history.

However—there isn’t just one reality. Reality is something you have to choose by yourself, out of several possible alternatives.