Kitchen

by Banana Yoshimoto

I was tied by blood to no creature in this world. I could go anywhere, do anything. It was dizzying.

Suddenly, to see that the world was so large, the cosmos so black. The unbounded fascination of it, the unbounded loneliness. . . For the first time, these days, I was touching it with these hands, these eyes. I’ve been looking at the world half-blind, I thought.

Maybe all I had been hoping for was a bed in which to be able to stop thinking, just for a little while, about what happened before and what would happen in the future.

When was it I realized that, on this truly dark and solitary path we all walk, the only way we can light is our own? Although I was raised with love, I was always lonely.

someone you really feel at home with.

If a person wants to stand on her own two feet, I recommend undertaking the care and feeding of something. It could be children, or it could be house plants, you know? By doing that you come to understand your own limitations.

Truly great people emit a light that warms the hearts of those around them. When that light has been put out, a heavy shadow of despair descends.

To the extent that I had come to understand that despair does not necessarily result in annihilation, that one can go on as usual in spite of it, I had become hardened. Was that what it means to be an adult, to live with ugly ambiguities? I didn’t like it, but it made it easier to go on.

my impatience would lead me to the brink of despair,

No matter what, I want to continue living with the awareness that I will die. Without that, I am not alive. That is what makes the life I have now possible.

Inching one’s way along a steep cliff in the dark: on reaching the highway, one breathes a sigh of relief. Just when one can’t take any more, one sees the moonlight. Beauty that seems to infuse itself, into the heart: I know about that.

imagination is sometimes worse than reality.”

If I did let myself hope for that, and you became angry with me, I’d be pushed even further toward the depth of despair.

No matter how forlorn we are, we each insist on standing on our own two feet.

Words, too explicit, always cast a shadow over that faint glow.

I realized that the world did not exist for my benefit. It followed that the ratio of pleasant and unpleasant things around me would not change. It wasn’t up to me. It was clear that the best thing to do was to adopt a sort of muddled cheerfulness. So I became a woman, and here I am.”

the human heart is something very precious.

The times of great happiness and great sorrow were too intense; it was impossible to reconcile them with the routine of daily life.

I wished that I might spend the rest of my life traveling from place to place.

Now I felt really alone, at the bottom of a deep loneliness that no one could touch.

we can choose our own path from among the many alternatives. But perhaps it’s more accurate to say that we make the choice unconsciously.

“Why is it that everything I eat when I’m with you is so delicious?”

“Overall, I’ve been pretty cold, haven’t I? It’s just that I wanted you to see me when I’m feeling more manly, when I’m feeling strong.”

I got dressed to begin another day. Over and over, we begin again.

In the biting air I told myself, there will be so much pleasure, so much suffering. With or without Yuichi.

A lover should die after a long lifetime.

ironically, that beginners always over-equip

Sports gears- she meant

In places where a loved one has died, time stops for eternity.

fate was a ladder on which, at the time, I could not afford to miss a single rung. To skip out on even one scene would have meant never making it to the top, although it would have been by far the easier choice.

I was feeling what people fear the most; I touched the deepest despair a person can know. I was lonely. Hideously lonely. This was the worst. If I could get through this, morning would come, and I knew without a doubt that I would have fun again, laugh out loud. If only the sun would rise. If only morning would come.

“now is the hardest time. Maybe even harder than dying. But this is probably as bad as it can get. You might come to fear the next time you get a cold; it will be as bad as this, but if you just hold steady, it won’t be. For the rest of your life. That’s how it works. You could take the negative view and live in fear: Will it happen again? But it won’t hurt so much if you just accept it as a part of life.”

“Parting and death are both terribly painful. But to keep nursing the memory of a love so great you can’t believe you’ll ever love again is a useless drain on a woman’s energies.”

“So I think it’s for the best that we were able to say a proper, final good-bye today.”

Proper goodbyes needed not only after deaths but also ending the relationships

Let me become stronger.

Hitoshi: I’ll never be able to be here again. As the minutes slide by, I move on. The flow of time is something I cannot stop. I haven’t a choice. I go. One caravan has stopped, another starts up. There are people I have yet to meet, others I’ll never see again. People who are gone before you know it, people who are just passing through. Even as we exchange hellos, they seem to grow transparent. I must keep living with the flowing river before my eyes. I earnestly pray that a trace of my girl-child self will always be with you. For waving good-bye, I thank you.