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?

I perused all sorts of books, asked all sorts of wise men, but could never find the words I was seeking. And not being able to find the right words, the appropriate wording, made my suffering deeper by the day.

“Sometimes obliterating the mind is the easiest thing to do.”

a part of me inside probably didn’t open up to others. It was like there was a line on the ground I didn’t want others to step past. And people sensed that in a subtle way when we’d been together for a long time.

He’d inherited a set of information from his parents, which he’d modified slightly, and then would pass it on to his own child—he was, in effect, nothing more than a checkpoint along the way. Just a single ring in an endless chain. But what was wrong with that? Even if he ended up doing nothing meaningful in his life, nothing worth mentioning, so what? He would be able to hand over to his child a kind of possibility, even if it was nothing more than a possibility. Wouldn’t that alone make his life until now feel meaningful?

And this soul of mine, when the proper time has passed, will also vanish, and return to nothingness. The soul is a transitory state and nothing more, but nothingness is eternal. No—it transcends the expression the eternal.”

“The real self and his shadow are essentially two sides of the same coin,” Mr. Koyasu said in a quiet voice. “Depending on the circumstances, they can change roles. That’s how people can overcome troubles and survive. And tracing something and pretending to be something are very important sometimes. It’s nothing to be concerned about. Because the person here right now is indeed you.”

“You’ve done a lot of good for him already. You’ve provided him the possibility of a new world. And I am certain that’s a good thing for him. It’s like—how should I put it?—a kind of inheritance, maybe.

As, one by one, I mentally listed the details and steps of a menu, my mind began to calm down. Being occupied with practical issues like this helped me to forget any other problems.