Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World

by Haruki Murakami

Nobody’s got the keys t’the elephant factory inside us. Freud and Jung and all the rest of them published their theories, but all they did was t’invent a lot of jargon t’get people talkin’. Gave mental phenomena a little scholastic color.”

“The best musicians transpose consciousness into sound; painters do the same for color and shape. Mental phenomena are the stuff writers make into novels.

It’s the world in your mind that’s going to end.”

The vision displayed in your consciousness is the End of the World.

In that world of yours, people’s selves are externalized into beasts.” “Beasts?” “Unicorns,” said the Professor. “You’ve got unicorns, herded in a town, surrounded by a wall.”

Wooooaaahhhh

You’ll be livin’ in the End of the World.

My mind is blown...

snowy contours hollowed into the land, birds with beaks full of red berries, plantings thick with winter vegetables, small crystal-clear pools in the river course, the distant snowcapped ridges. Each sight bursts upon us.

massive oaks that tap the unfrozen depths of the earth to reach toward the cloud-dark sky.

my voice coming back from an impossible direction.

Indecipherable except to some machine.

My first circuit must have been wearing thin. My real memories were receding into planar projection, the screen of consciousness losing all identity.

The INKlings’ power extends all the way into the stations.

Power station ...

with the outside world dangling before our eyes.

“I seem to remember this happening to me before,” I said. “Waiting in a subway tunnel?” “No, the light, the glare, my eyes tearing up.” “That happens to everyone.” “No, this was special light, special vision. My eyes had been altered. They couldn’t tolerate light.”

Woah it's really coming together!

the sky hangs unbearably low with snow-laden clouds.

Perhaps it is the sound of the shovelling outdoors that keeps the notes from forming into a melody. I cannot concentrate for the noise. A rasping, uneven rhythm, the shovels plunging into the soil, how clear it reaches inside here! The sound grows so sharp, the men are digging in my head. They are hollowing out my skull.

It has no special meaning, does not transport them anywhere. All of us dig at our own pure holes. We have nothing to achieve by our activities, nowhere to get to. Is there not something marvelous about this? We hurt no one and no one gets hurt. No victory, no defeat.”

Who’s going to argue over subway tickets when the world’s about to end. And we hadn’t even taken the subway.

So it was that part of my last precious hours were spent sitting on a folding chair in a laundromat.

So simple

But the absence of fighting or hatred or desire also means the opposites do not exist either. No joy, no communion, no love. Only where there is disillusionment and depression and sorrow does happiness arise; without the despair of loss, there is no hope.

Thinking about time was torment. Time is too conceptual. Not that it stops us from filling it in.

Electrical cables dangled from the ceiling, a thick growth of vines running to the presses and irons.

Yet, none of the Professor’s words had the ring of reality. They were abstractions, vague shadows of contingency. I mean, I already was myself, wasn’t I? And how would someone who’s immortal perceive his immortality?

Most human activities are predicated on the assumption that life goes on. If you take that premise away, what is there left?

The sunless city sky was edging toward dusk as I headed home, crawling through the congested streets.

I SEE birds flying. They strafe the white frozen slope of the Western Hill and vanish from my field of vision.

Then I slip the folded accordion into my pocket. I refuse to be without it.

The accordian must be significant

Very likely, I will regret leaving this Town for the rest of my life. Yet I cannot stay.

Great concept but also makes me really curious about how the two narratives are moving towards each other quickly.

“Losing you is most difficult for me, but the nature of my love for you is what matters. If it distorts into half-truth, then perhaps it is better not to love you. I must keep my mind but lose you.”

The mind is not like raindrops. It does not fall from the skies, it does not lose itself among other things.

He had sorted screws of different sizes into clean white trays. They looked so happy.

“Who knows?” she answered. “It was a pitiful way to die.”

These tangents and strange moments make the story even more disorienting.

Your mind has been here all along, but I have not known where to seek it. And yet the way must have already been shown to me.”

Also true of the book itself

No melody comes, but it is enough to bring the wind in the sounds to her. I have only to give myself to the wind as the birds do.

After a time, I am able, as if by will, to locate the first four notes. They drift down from inward skies, softly, as early morning sunlight. They find me; these are the notes I have been seeking.

It is a melody. Not a complete song, but the first phrase of one. I play the three chords and twelve notes, also, over and over again. It is a song, I realize, that I know. Danny Boy.

Ahhhh...finally. All the pieces are floating, tumbling towards each other like two rivers about to converge.

Music brings a warm glow to my vision, thawing mind and muscle from their endless wintering.

It is a wondrous sight. Quietude itself. Countless flecks of light fill the space.

Here, I sense a glimmer, a remembrance of mind, an indication of her mind. Tiny sparks drift up into my fingertips, touching me, each particle bearing the faintest light, the merest warmth.

Lights were playing over the skull. Perishing points of microscopic brilliance. Like a glimmering sky, soft and white. Hazy, as if each glowing dot were layered in a fluid electric film, which made the lights seem to hover above the surface. We sat and watched the minuscule constellations drift and whirl.

I sensed the slightest ember of heat, as my fingers were enveloped in that pale membrane of light. I closed my eyes, letting the warmth penetrate my fingers, and images drifted into view like clouds on a distant horizon.

The stories are becoming so entangled that they are harder to tell apart

Death leaves cans of shaving cream half-used.

Everything holds its breath, all the sounds of the Town are lost under the snow. The spikes of my snow boots crunch into the newfallen powder with a disproportionately large sound.

The autumn sky was as clear as if it had been made that very morning. Perfect Duke Ellington weather.

humanity doesn’t lend itself to generalizations. But as I see it, there are two types of people: the comprehensive-vision type and the limited-perspective type.

Having the violins on the left and the bass on the right doesn’t make the music more profound. It’s just a more complex way of stimulating a bored imagination.”

The sky was deep and brilliant, a fixed idea beyond human doubt. From my position on the ground, the sky seemed the logical culmination of all existence. The same with the sea. If you look at the sea for days, the sea is all there is.

Then I took out my credit cards and lit them with a match. I watched the plastic curl, sputter, and turn black.

But what if it is all a lie?

I felt a ripple run through my mind. The wave went beyond sadness or solitude; it was a great, deep moan that resonated in my bones.

My head was empty of everything but a drifting dust of silence. Neither rising nor sinking, motion without dimension.