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February 9 - February 18, 2017
I withdrew into myself. I ate alone, took walks alone, went swimming alone, and went to concerts and movies alone.
But there’s something intimate about it, something I can feel close to. Something down-to-earth.”
Whenever I asked her a question, she blushed. I actually enjoyed our talk, which for me at the time was a real accomplishment. Sitting there in the coffee shop with her, I felt something close to nostalgia well up in me. She began to feel like someone I’d known all my life.
when I asked myself if there was something in her that would bowl me over, that would zoom straight to my heart, the answer was no. Nada. Only Shimamoto ever did that to me.
Just thinking of Shimamoto made me shiver all over, all these many years later. A slightly fevered excitement, as if I were gently pushing open a door deep within
incident whose meaning, even now, I can’t totally understand.
What should I say to her—and how should I act? She might not even remember me, for one thing. I needed time to pull myself together.
The longer I looked at her, the more I remembered Shimamoto.
I remembered how Izumi’s father, who loved tennis, had the same sort of tan.
As before, I said not a word.
Inability to talk? Lack of connection to the world
Too many questions remained.
Why was he able to grab me in that unexpected way?
Sometimes I’d think it must have all been a delusion, from start to finish a fantasy I cooked up in my head. Or maybe a very long, realistic dream that somehow I’d mixed up with reality.
when all of a sudden it started raining. I ducked into the nearest place I could find to get out of the rain,
Makes me realize how limited our possibilities ever are.
But there was something in her face that was meant for me alone.
I could feel the weight of all I had lost those past ten years, all those years down the drain, bearing down on me. Before it was too late, I had to get some of it back.
When we said goodbye, I was lost once again. Loneliness pained me, silence had me exasperated.
That’s how I came to open an upscale jazz bar in the basement of a brand-new building in Aoyama.
I loved the process of starting from scratch, creating something, seeing it through till it was absolutely perfect.
I bought a small cottage in Hakone
Still living in a crummy little apartment in Nishiogikubo,
Schubert’s Winterreise
How much of this person I called myself was really me? And how much was not? These hands clutching the steering wheel—what percentage of them could I really call my own? The scenery outside—how much of it was real?
Maybe I was testing something by sleeping with them. Trying to see what I could find in them, and what they could find in me.
Izumi never forgot what I had done, and never forgave me. She must have been living a miserable life—a
You’d have to see it with your own eyes to understand.
Another person’s life is that person’s life. You can’t take responsibility.
All that remains is a desert.”
Everyone just keeps on disappearing. Some things just vanish, like they were cut away. Others fade slowly into the mist. And all that remains is a desert.
The shadow of decay and disintegration lurked everywhere, and I was part of it. Like a shadow burned into a wall.
“Perhaps the world’s drawing closer to us.
“Corcovado,”
But when I looked closer, I could make out the Hajime I used to know. Do you realize that your movements have hardly changed since you were twelve?”
the intro to “Star-Crossed Lovers.”
But I was myself, pared down to the essentials. I could feel each single note of music, each line I read, seep down deep inside me.
Look at the rain long enough, with no thoughts in your head, and you gradually feel your body falling loose, shaking free of the world of reality. Rain has the power to hypnotize.
Echoes of music faded away, leaving me alone. In that gentle darkness, the rain continued to fall without a sound.
A history of the Sino-Vietnam border conflict after the Vietnam War.
Reading trashy novels makes me feel I’m wasting time.
The bartender was gay, so sometimes other gays gathered at the counter. They were a quiet bunch, and it didn’t bother me. I really liked the young bartender, and he trusted me and worked hard.
Why the fuck did he add this?
Constructing an imaginary place in my head and little by little adding details to it.
I felt like I was choking, like every day I was shrinking and someday I would disappear completely.”
“You have to use your imagination to survive.
Because everyone’s seeking the same thing: an imaginary place, their own castle in the air, and their very own special corner of it.”
Things that have form will all disappear. But certain feelings stay with us forever.”
some feelings cause us pain because they remain.
Maybe it was me who was far away—far from her world, at least with an unimaginable distance separating us.
There was something in her eyes that called up sadness.
Ishikawa Prefecture.
