Wind/ Pinball: Two Novels

by Haruki Murakami

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

“Know why I hate the rich so much?” the Rat continued. This was the first time he’d gotten past the puking part. I shook my head no. “To be blunt, ’cause they don’t have a goddamn clue. They can’t scratch their own asses without a flashlight and a measuring tape.” “To be blunt” was one of the Rat’s signature phrases. “Oh yeah?” “Yeah. They’re totally in the dark, the whole lot of them. They only pretend to think about important stuff … Know why?” “No, why?” “’Cause they don’t need to, that’s why. Sure, they have to use their brains a little to get rich in the first place, but once they make it, it’s a piece of cake—they don’t need to think anymore. Like an orbiting satellite doesn’t need gas. They just keep going round and round, always over the same damn place. But I’m not like that, and neither are you. We have to use our brains to survive. We think about everything, from tomorrow’s weather to the size of the bathtub plug. Right?”

“Yeah. We all die. But it’ll take another fifty years. And, to be blunt, fifty years spent thinking is a helluva lot more exhausting than five thousand years of living without using your brain, right?”

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

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

Toward the end of high school, I decided to express only half of what I was really feeling. I can’t recall the initial reason, but for the next several years this was how I behaved. At which point I discovered that I had turned into a person incapable of expressing more than half of what he felt.

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

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

Each of us had, to a greater or lesser degree, resolved to live according to his or her own system. If another person’s way of thinking was too different from mine, it made me mad; too close, and I got sad. That’s all there was to it.

Twenty-five … a time to crack down and do some serious thinking. Add two twelve-year-old kids together and you get the same age. Are you worth as much as they are? Hell, one of them counts more than you. A pickle jar full of ants counts more than you …

“People are awkward creatures. A lot more awkward than you seem to realize.”