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the self I was then,
my memory is growing ever more distant from the spot where Naoko used to stand—ever
We’re not running our lives according to some account book. If you need me, use me. Don’t you see? Why do you have to be so rigid? Relax, let your guard down. You’re all tensed up so you always expect the worst. Relax your body, and the rest of you will lighten up.”
I realize that all I can place in the imperfect vessel of writing are imperfect memories and imperfect thoughts.
I did not know why the flag had to be taken down at night. The nation continued to exist after dark, and plenty of people worked the whole night through—track
I was impressed anew by the variety of dreams and goals that life could offer.
they had told us that communal life called for a certain degree of resignation,
“Everybody feels like that to some extent,” I said. “They’re trying to express themselves and it bothers them when they can’t get it right.”
he had a rare talent for finding the interesting parts of someone’s generally uninteresting comments so that, when speaking to him, you felt that you were an exceptionally interesting person with an exceptionally interesting life.
he made it a rule never to touch a book by any author who had not been dead at least thirty years. “That’s the only kind of book I can trust,” he said. “It’s not that I don’t believe in contemporary literature,” he added, “but I don’t want to waste valuable time reading any book that has not had the baptism of time. Life is too short.”
If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking.
Nobody likes being alone. I just hate to be disappointed.’
I had been playing from the time I was four years old, but it occurred to me that I had never once played for myself. I had always been trying to pass a test or practice an assignment or impress somebody. Those are all important things, of course, if you are going to master an instrument. But after a certain age you have to start performing for yourself. That’s what music is.
Holding Naoko in my arms, I wanted to explain to her, “I am having intercourse with you now. I am inside you. But really this is nothing. It doesn’t matter. It is nothing but the joining of two bodies. All we are doing is telling each other things that can only be told by the rubbing together of two imperfect lumps of flesh. By doing this, we are sharing our imperfection.” But of course I could never have said such a thing with any hope of being understood.
Because they won’t put in the effort. Because they haven’t had the discipline pounded into them. They’ve been spoiled. They have just enough talent so they’ve been able to play things well without any effort and they’ve had people telling them how great they are from the time they’re little, so hard work looks stupid to them. They’ll take some piece another kid has to work on for three weeks and polish it off in half the time, so the teacher figures they’ve put enough into it and lets them go to the next thing. And they do that in half the time and go on to the next piece. They never find out
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I traced the outline of her body through her gown with the flat of my hand. From shoulder to back to hips, I slid my hand again and again, driving the line and the softness of her body into my brain.
It’s easy to talk big, but the important thing is whether or not you clean up the shit.
What with all the moving and fixing up and working for extra cash, I had never given her a second thought. Not even Naoko had crossed my mind the whole time. This was nothing new for me. Whenever I got involved in something, I shut out everything else. But then I started thinking how I would have felt if the tables had been turned and Midori had moved somewhere without telling me where or getting in touch with me for three weeks. I would have been hurt—hurt badly, no doubt.
I wish I had fallen in love with somebody a little more handsome, of course. But I didn’t. I fell in love with you!”
Midori sounds like a great girl. I understand just reading your letter why you would be drawn to her. And I understand, too, why you would also be drawn to Naoko. There’s nothing the least bit sinful about it. Things like that happen all the time in this great big world of ours. It’s like taking a boat out on a beautiful lake on a beautiful day and thinking both the sky and the lake are beautiful.
