Wind/Pinball: Two Novels

by Haruki Murakami

I was young and in my prime, could listen to my favorite music all day long, and was the lord of my own little domain. I didn’t have to squeeze onto packed commuter trains, or attend mind-numbing meetings, or suck up to a boss I disliked. Instead, I had the chance to meet all kinds of interesting people.

What free time I did have, though, I spent reading. Along with music, books were my great joy. No matter how busy, or how broke, or how exhausted I was, no one could take those pleasures away from me.

After the game (Yakult won, as I recall), I took the train to Shinjuku and bought a sheaf of writing paper and a fountain pen. Word processors and computers weren’t around back then, which meant we had to write everything by hand, one character at a time. The sensation of writing felt very fresh. I remember how thrilled I was. It had been such a long time since I had put fountain pen to paper.

Each night after that, when I got home late from work, I sat at my kitchen table and wrote. Those few hours before dawn were practically the only time I had free.

Forget all those prescriptive ideas about “the novel” and “literature” and set down your feelings and thoughts as they come to you, freely, in a way that you like.

“There’s no such thing as a perfect piece of writing. Just as there’s no such thing as perfect despair.”

If one operates on the principle that everything can be a learning experience, then of course aging needn’t be so painful. That’s what they tell us, anyway.

In the end, writing is not a full step toward self-healing, just a tiny, very tentative move in that direction. All the same, writing honestly is very difficult. The more I try to be honest, the farther my words sink into darkness.

Yet he was a fighter as few are, a man who used words as weapons.

I can go a whole month without managing a single line, or write three days and nights straight, only to find the whole thing has missed the mark.

Ascribing meaning to life is a piece of cake compared to actually living it.

to be blunt,

to be honest

flat-out wasted.

completely drunk

for the life of me,

however hard i try

smashed,

very drunk

have a blast.”

exciting experience

We bought a half-dozen cans from a nearby vending machine and carried them down to the ocean, lay on the beach, and drank. When we’d drained them all we just looked at the water. The weather was perfect.

‘Why lug that useless watch around everywhere?’ he asked the goat. ‘It doesn’t work, and it looks very heavy.’ ‘You’re right, it is heavy,’ answered the goat. ‘But I’ve grown used to it. To its weight, and the fact that its hands don’t move.’ ”

“Civilization is communication,” the doctor said. “That which is not expressed doesn’t exist. Understand? A big fat zero.

Looking at the ocean makes me miss people, and hanging out with people makes me miss the ocean.

“To cold wine and warm hearts,”

“Sometimes, I imagine how great it would be if we could live our lives without bothering other people. Think it’s possible?”

At which point I discovered that I had turned into a person incapable of expressing more than half of what he felt.

For me, it was a game of musical chairs—there was no place I could call my own.”

I doubt I have any special talent for writing, but if I stick with it at least I can become more enlightened. Otherwise, what’s the point, right?”

But no one’s superman—in that way, we’re all weak. If we own things, we’re terrified we’ll lose them; if we’ve got nothing we worry it’ll be that way forever. We’re all the same.

There are no truly strong people. Only people who pretend to be strong.”

“What would be the point of writing a novel about things everyone already knows?”

Lies are terrible things. One could say that the greatest sins afflicting modern society are the proliferation of lies and silence. We lie through our teeth, then swallow our tongues.

“I guess a hundred years after my death no one will remember I ever existed.” “Probably not,” I said.

“I think I’ll miss you when you’re gone.” “We’ll meet again for sure.”

We sat there for a very long time, just looking at the ocean, the evening sky, and the ship while the sea breeze blew through the trembling grass. As the dusk softened to night, a handful of stars began to twinkle above the dock.

“I hate everybody.”

“When I’m sitting alone, all these voices start speaking to me,” she said. “All sorts of people—ones I know, ones I don’t know, my father, my mother, my teachers.”

“Most of what they say is awful. They tell me to drop dead, or say really filthy things.”

however miserable your situation, there is always something to learn, and that helps me go on living one day at a time.

“He who gives freely shall receive in kind.”

All things pass. None of us can manage to hold on to anything. In that way, we live our lives.

Sometimes I want to cry, but the tears don’t come. It’s that kind of a thing.

How can those who live in the light of day possibly comprehend the depths of night?

When I get that way my solution is to drink whiskey and go to bed. The next morning, though, I feel even worse. The same old thing.

Where there is an entrance, there is usually an exit. That’s the way things are made.

I hadn’t looked at the sky for some time. In fact, it had been a long while since my eyes had rested on anything.

We know very little about eternity, although we can infer its existence.

But the rope led him nowhere. He was as powerless and lonely as a winter fly stripped of its wings, or a river confronting the sea.

No one knew what might be waiting around the corner.

Everything was so vivid, the smell of the ocean, the color of the wind. Taking his time, the Rat drank in the scene that lay before him, then turned around. Now he was looking at his own world, so separate from the deep sea.

When the waves were high, the spray washed his feet, the wind howled, and he slipped time and again on the mossy flagstones. Yet the path to the beacon was dearer to him than anywhere else. He would sit there at the end of the pier listening to the waves, gazing at the clouds, the sky, and the schools of small fish, and tossing the pebbles he carried in his pocket into the water.

When the sky darkened he would take the same path back to his own world. This return, though, was always accompanied by an ineffable sadness. The world awaiting him out there was just too big, too powerful; there seemed to be no place where he could burrow into it.

It was a lonely season for me as well. When I returned to my room and undressed at the end of the day, my bones threatened to burst through my skin and fly away. As if some mysterious internal force were propelling me in the wrong direction, leading me toward another world.