Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World

by Haruki Murakami

A few whale skulls and there goes the neighborhood.

“Don’t blame me. That’s evolution. Evolution’s always hard. Hard and bleak. No such thing as happy evolution,”

a lot of trouble in this world has its origins in vague speech.

The advantage of two horns rests with the bilateral symmetry of the animal body. All animals, manifesting a right-left balance that parcels their strength into two ligatures, regulate their patterns of growth and movement accordingly. The nose and even the mouth bear this symmetry that essentially divides functions into two.

“All efforts of reason and analysis are, in a word, like trying to slice through a watermelon with sewing needles.

Now for a good twelve-hour sleep, I told myself. Twelve solid hours. Let birds sing, let people go to work. Somewhere out there, a volcano might blow, Israeli commandos might decimate a Palestinian village. I couldn’t stop it. I was going to sleep.

I have a thing about losers.

“There are times when the understanding does not come until later, when it no longer matters. Other times I do what I must do, not knowing my own mind, and I am led astray.”

It takes years to build up, it takes moments to destroy.

“Why do you drink so much?” she wanted to know. “It makes me feel brave,” I said.

“But how can we be absolutely right? What could their being absolutely wrong mean? And without memory to measure things against, how could I ever know?”

“Well, there’s your cognitive system for y’. You just can’t say all at once. Accordin’ t’what you’re up against, almost instantaneously, you elect some point between the extremes. That’s the precision programming you’ve got built in. You yourself don’t know a thing about the inner shenanigans of that program. ’Tisn’t any need for you t’know. Even without you knowin’, you function as yourself. That’s your black box.

I’m not talkin’ about any out-of-this-world science-fiction type parallel universe. It’s all a matter of cognition. The world as perceived.

the System is really just private enterprise that enlisted state interests. And private enterprise is always after profit.

I think about the pure hole and all it might mean.

ha

I was tired and cold and sleepy. I was coming apart at the seams and in no good condition. I couldn’t handle the vibes, but at least we got a ride. I sat back and watched the driver’s shoulders bounce to the reggae beat. The taxi pulled up in front of my apartment.

The girl behind the counter was prim, but bad at tying ribbons. Inexcusable.

I thought about the screws and their happiness. Maybe they were glad to be free of the eggbeater, to be independent screws, to luxuriate on white trays. It did feel good to see them happy.

“This is all my life. I merely go from one beach to another. Sure I remember the things that happen in between, but that’s all. I never tie them together. They’re so many things, clean but useless.”