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Having discovered the curious effect of composing in a foreign language, thereby acquiring a creative rhythm distinctly my own, I returned my Olivetti to the closet and once more pulled out my sheaf of manuscript paper and my fountain pen. Then I sat down and “translated” the chapter or so that I had written in English into Japanese. Well, “transplanted” might be more accurate, since it wasn’t a direct verbatim translation. In the process, inevitably, a new style of Japanese emerged. The style that would be mine. A style I myself had discovered. Now I get it, I thought. This is how I should be
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I can still remember, with complete clarity, the way I felt when whatever it was came fluttering down into my hands that day thirty years ago on the grass behind the outfield fence at Jingu Stadium; and I recall just as clearly the warmth of the wounded pigeon I picked up in those same hands that spring afternoon a year later, near Sendagaya Elementary School. I always call up those sensations when I think about what it means to write a novel. Such tactile memories teach me to believe in that something I carry within me, and to dream of the possibilities it offers. How wonderful it is that
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“There’s no such thing as a perfect piece of writing. Just as there’s no such thing as perfect despair.”
Hartfield says this about good writing: “Writing is, in effect, the act of verifying the distance between us and the things surrounding us. What we need is not sensitivity but a measuring stick”
“People with dark hearts have dark dreams. Those whose hearts are even darker can’t dream at all.”
Ascribing meaning to life is a piece of cake compared to actually living it.
A gulf separates what we attempt to perceive from what we are actually able to perceive.
If you’re the sort of guy who raids the refrigerators of silent kitchens at three o’clock in the morning, you can only write accordingly. That’s who I am.
Civilization is communication. When that which should be expressed and transmitted is lost, civilization comes to an end.
“I got my little finger caught in a vacuum cleaner when I was eight. It popped off just like that.” “Where is it now?” “Where is what now?” “Your little finger.” “I forget,” she said, laughing. “You know, you’re the first person to ever ask that.” “Does it bother you to be missing your little finger?” “It does when I’m wearing gloves.” “Any other times?” She shook her head. “I’d be lying if I said never. But it’s no worse than girls who worry about fat necks or hairy legs.”
There are no truly strong people. Only people who pretend to be strong.”
human existence is a hollow sham. And that, yes, salvation is possible. In the very beginning our hollowness was incomplete. It is we who completed it through unstinting effort, piling one struggle on top of another until every last shred of meaning was worn away.
“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.
All things pass. None of us can manage to hold on to anything. In that way, we live our lives.
How can those who live in the light of day possibly comprehend the depths of night?
Almost nothing can be gained from pinball. The only payoff is a numerical substitution for pride. The losses, however, are considerable. You could probably erect bronze statues of every American president (assuming you are willing to include Richard Nixon) with the coins you will lose, while your lost time is irreplaceable.
No, pinball leads nowhere. The only result is a glowing replay light. Replay, replay, replay—it makes you think the whole aim of the game is to achieve a form of eternity. We know very little about eternity, although we can infer its existence. The goal of pinball is self-transformation, not self-expression. It involves not the expansion of the ego but its diminution. Not analysis but all-embracing acceptance. If it’s self-expression, ego expansion, or analysis you’re after, the tilt light will exact its unsparing revenge.
I took a long look at my reflection in the window. My eyes were a bit hollow with fever. I could live with that. And my jaw was dark with five o’clock (five thirty, actually) shadow. I could live with that too. The problem was that the face I saw wasn’t my face at all. It was the face of the twenty-four-year-old guy you sometimes sit across from on the train. My face and my soul were lifeless shells, of no significance to anyone. My soul passes someone else’s on the street. Hey, it says. Hey, the other responds. Nothing more. Neither waves. Neither looks back.
Each day was a carbon copy of the last. You needed a bookmark to tell one from the other.
“No point smashing a cat’s paw like that. She’s a sweet cat, too, no trouble to anyone. So what’s to be gained from mangling her paw? It was a senseless, evil thing to do. Still, evil like that is everywhere in this world, mountains of it. I can’t understand it, you can’t understand it. But it’s there, no question. You could say we’re surrounded by it.”
“Were you happy?” “Looking back, I guess I was,” I said, swallowing another mouthful. “Just about anything looks better from a distance.”
On any given day, something can come along and steal our hearts. It may be any old thing: a rosebud, a lost cap, a favorite sweater from childhood, an old Gene Pitney record. A miscellany of trivia with no home to call their own. Lingering for two or three days, that something soon disappears, returning to the darkness. There are wells, deep wells, dug in our hearts. Birds fly over them.
“You know, J. Everyone’s rotting, correct?” “True enough.” “And there are many ways to rot,” the Rat went on, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “But I think each individual’s choices are really limited. We can choose between only a couple of ways—two or three at the most.” “You could be right.” What was left of the Rat’s beer sat in the bottom of his glass like a puddle of water, the bubbles gone. He pulled a crumpled pack from his pocket, drew out a cigarette, and put it to his lips. “But I’ve come to believe it doesn’t really make a damn bit of difference. One way or the other,
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“Where are you going?” “To play pinball. I’m not sure where.” “Pinball?” “Yeah. You know, hitting balls with flippers.” “Of course I know. But why pinball?” “Why? This world is rife with matters philosophy cannot explain.”
“There can be no meaning in what will someday be lost. Passing glory is not true glory at all.”
The seventy-eight pinball machines were a graveyard of old dreams, old beyond recall.
We fell silent again. What we shared was no more than a fragment of a time long dead. Yet memories remained, warm memories that remained with me like lights from the past. And I would carry those lights in the brief interval before death grabbed me and tossed me back into the crucible of nothingness.
The Rat laughed and clicked his tongue. “See, J, it doesn’t work,” he said. “The way everyone pretends to be on the same wavelength without questioning or talking about things—it doesn’t get anyone anywhere. I hate to say it, but … I feel like I’ve been hanging around that kind of world too damn long.”
When he closed his eyes he could hear the winter surf striking the seawall and threading its way between the concrete blocks of the breakwater back to the open sea. At least I don’t have to explain myself to anyone anymore, thought the Rat. How much more warm and peaceful and quiet the bottom of the sea might be than any of those towns. But enough thinking. Enough.
Tennessee Williams once wrote: “So much for the past and present. The future is called ‘perhaps,’ which is the only possible thing to call the future.”
