Kafka on the Shore

by Haruki Murakami

Sometimes fate is like a small sandstorm that keeps changing directions. You change direction but the sandstorm chases you. You turn again, but the storm adjusts. Over and over you play this out, like some ominous dance with death just before dawn. Why? Because this storm isn’t something that blew in from far away, something that has nothing to do with you. This storm is you. Something inside of you. So all you can do is give in to it, step right inside the storm, closing your eyes and plugging up your ears so the sand doesn’t get in, and walk through it, step by step. There’s no sun there, no moon, no direction, no sense of time. Just fine white sand swirling up into the sky like pulverized bones. That’s the kind of sandstorm you need to imagine.

The sky looks ominous one minute, inviting the next. It all depends on the angle.

It’s hard to tell the difference between sea and sky. Between voyager and sea. Between reality and the workings of the heart.

What am I always so tense about? Why this desperate struggle just to survive? I shake my head, turn from the window, clear my mind of thoughts of a hundred years away. I’ll just think about now. About books waiting to be read in the library, machines in the gym I haven’t worked out on. Thinking about anything else isn’t going to get me anywhere.

“That’s why I like to listen to Schubert while I’m driving. Like I said, it’s because all the performances are imperfect. A dense, artistic kind of imperfection stimulates your consciousness, keeps you alert. If I listen to some utterly perfect performance of an utterly perfect piece while I’m driving, I might want to close my eyes and die right then and there. But listening to the D major, I can feel the limits of what humans are capable of—that a certain type of perfection can only be realized through a limitless accumulation of the imperfect. And personally, I find that encouraging. Do you know what I’m getting at?”

Like someone excitedly relating a story only to find the words petering out, the path gets narrower the farther I go, the undergrowth taking over. Beyond a certain point it’s hard to tell if it’s really a path or something that just vaguely resembles one. Eventually it’s completely swallowed up in a sea of ferns.

There’s only one kind of happiness, but misfortune comes in all shapes and sizes. It’s like Tolstoy said. Happiness is an allegory, unhappiness a story.

“Kafka, in everybody’s life there’s a point of no return. And in a very few cases, a point where you can’t go forward anymore. And when we reach that point, all we can do is quietly accept the fact. That’s how we survive.”

But what disgusts me even more are people who have no imagination. The kind T. S. Eliot calls hollow men. People who fill up that lack of imagination with heartless bits of straw, not even aware of what they’re doing.

Narrow minds devoid of imagination. Intolerance, theories cut off from reality, empty terminology, usurped ideals, inflexible systems. Those are the things that really frighten me. What I absolutely fear and loathe. Of course it’s important to know what’s right and what’s wrong. Individual errors in judgment can usually be corrected. As long as you have the courage to admit mistakes, things can be turned around. But intolerant, narrow minds with no imagination are like parasites that transform the host, change form, and continue to thrive.

The Weather Service reported that there weren’t any atmospheric conditions present that might have led to fish raining from the sky.

And when everything’s twisted, what’s normal ends up looking weird too.

“My grandpa always said asking a question is embarrassing for a moment, but not asking is embarrassing for a lifetime.”

For a man his age Colonel Sanders was light on his feet,

“The pure present is an ungraspable advance of the past devouring the future. In truth,

“No problem. Originally I don’t have a name or a shape.” “So you’re kind of like a fart.”

“Anyone who falls in love is searching for the missing pieces of themselves. So anyone who’s in love gets sad when they think of their lover. It’s like stepping back inside a room you have fond memories of, one you haven’t seen in a long time. It’s just a natural feeling. You’re not the person who discovered that feeling, so don’t go trying to patent it, okay?”

I scoop up some sand and let it slowly spill out between my fingers. It falls to the beach and, like lost time, becomes part of what’s already there.

“Yeah, but if you look at it like that we’re all pretty much empty, don’t you think? You eat, take a dump, do your crummy job for your lousy pay, and get laid occasionally, if you’re lucky. What else is there? Still, you know, interesting things do happen in life—like with us now. I’m not sure why. My grandpa used to say that things never work out like you think they will, but that’s what makes life interesting, and that makes sense. If the Chunichi Dragons won every single game, who’d ever watch baseball?”

So I want you to be careful. The people who build high, strong fences are the ones who survive the best. You deny that reality only at the risk of being driven into the wilderness yourself.”

But the more he thought about himself, the less reality his existence seemed to have. He began to feel like some meaningless appendage sitting there.

When I was little, Grandpa told me stories about Buddha’s disciples. One of them was named Myoga. The guy was a complete moron and couldn’t memorize even the simplest sutra. The other disciples always teased him. One day the Buddha said to him, “Myoga, you’re not very bright, so you don’t have to learn any sutras. Instead, I’d like you to sit at the entrance and polish everybody’s shoes.” Myoga was an obedient guy, so he didn’t tell his master to go screw himself. So for ten years, twenty years, he diligently polished everybody’s shoes. Then one day he achieved enlightenment and became one of the greatest of all the Buddha’s followers. That’s a story Hoshino always remembered, because he’d thought that had to be the crappiest kind of life, polishing shoes for decades. You gotta be kidding, he thought. But when he considered it now, the story started to take on a different undertone. Life’s crappy, no matter how you cut it. He just hadn’t understood that when he was little.

Listening to Fournier’s flowing, dignified cello, Hoshino was drawn back to his childhood. He used to go to the river every day to catch fish. Nothing to worry about back then, he reminisced. Just live each day as it came. As long as I was alive, I was something. That was just how it was. But somewhere along the line it all changed. Living turned me into nothing. Weird . . . People are born in order to live, right? But the longer I’ve lived, the more I’ve lost what’s inside me—and ended up empty. And I bet the longer I live, the emptier, the more worthless, I’ll become. Something’s wrong with this picture. Life isn’t supposed to turn out like this! Isn’t it possible to shift direction, to change where I’m headed?

I had a kind of revelation last night. Taking crazy things seriously is—a serious waste of time.”

Better not to try to make sense, he decided, of what basically doesn’t make any.

“If you’re gonna take poison, you might as well eat the plate it came on.” “But if you eat a plate, you’ll die. It’s not good for your teeth, either. And it’ll hurt your throat.”

Dust swirls around where he was, but the wind soon carries it away.

“You have to overcome the fear and anger inside you,” the boy named Crow says. “Let a bright light shine in and melt the coldness in your heart. That’s what being tough is all about. Do that and you really will be the toughest fifteen-year-old on the planet. You following me? There’s still time. You can still get your self back. Use your head. Think about what you’ve got to do. You’re no dunce. You should be able to figure it out.”

“Memories warm you up from the inside. But they also tear you apart.”

I’m walking by the shores of consciousness. Waves of consciousness roll in, roll out, leave some writing, and just as quickly new waves roll in and erase it. I try to quickly read what’s written there, between one wave and the next, but it’s hard. Before I can read it the next wave’s washed it away. All that’s left are puzzling fragments.

“Nobody’s gonna read it now,” Hoshino said. “I don’t know what was written in it, but it’s all gone. A bit of shape and form has disappeared from the world, increasing the amount of nothingness.”

When he looked outside at two, a fat black cat was sitting on the railing on the veranda, gazing in at the apartment. Bored, Hoshino opened the window and called out, “Hey there, kitty. Nice day, isn’t it?” “Yes, indeed, it is a fine day, Mr. Hoshino,” the cat replied. “Gimme a break,” Hoshino said, shaking his head.

Heading back to catch some big waves, to his own world, his own issues.

Time weighs down on you like an old, ambiguous dream. You keep on moving, trying to slip through it. But even if you go to the ends of the earth, you won’t be able to escape it. Still, you have to go there—to the edge of the world. There’s something you can’t do unless you get there.