The City and Its Uncertain Walls

by Haruki Murakami

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.

“This is what I’m trying to say. Once you’ve tasted pure, unadulterated love, it’s like a part of your heart’s been irradiated, burned out, in a sense. Particularly when that love, for whatever reason, is suddenly severed. For the person involved, that sort of love is both the supreme happiness and a curse. Do you understand what I’m getting at?”

The world was, day by day, becoming a more convenient, and unromantic, place.

He reminded me of a butterfly drinking the last drop of nectar from a flower. A win-win for both the flower and the butterfly. The butterfly gets nutrition, the flower gets help pollinating. A mutually beneficial relationship, which harms no one. One of the wonderful things about the act of reading.

colorless water, utterly devoid of warmth, my heart was quietly immersed in that sadness.