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“I still love you. But I guess that’s not the point now, is it? I know that well enough myself.”
From the photo albums, every single print of her had been peeled away. Shots of the both of us together had been cut, the parts with her neatly trimmed away, leaving my image behind. Photos of me alone or of mountains and rivers and deer and cats were left intact. Three albums rendered into a revised past. It was as if I’d been alone at birth, alone all my days, and would continue alone. A slip! She could have at least left a slip!
Shes funny af for this
“If you want to know the truth, I don’t want to leave you,” she said after a moment. “All right, then don’t leave me,” I said. “But I’m going nowhere staying with you.”
Mrs. X expressed a dislike for politicians, old men, perverts, and the poor.
He showed me the wine label, all smiles as if showing me a photo of his only son.
“Tell me straight, because that’s my favorite angle.”
I said, taking a sip of wine. Then I forgot what I was about to say.
Meeeee
“First, I want to know more about you,” she started. “What about me?” “Everything. How you were brought up, how old you are, what you do for a living, stuff like that.” “It’s your ordinary story. So utterly ordinary, you’d probably doze off in the middle of it.” “I like ordinary stories.”
Had somebody else been living my life all this time?
I think you think too much.”
“If you should fail to comply with our wishes,” said the man, “you will have no occupation in this or any other field, and henceforth, the world will hold no place for you, ever.”
Time really is one big continuous cloth, no?
We habitually cut out pieces of time to fit us, so we tend to fool ourselves into thinking that time is our size, but it really goes on and on.
At least sunlight is always free.
“they bulldoze the hills to put up houses, haul the dirt to the sea for landfill, then go and build there too. And they think it’s all fine and proper.”
What I mean is, I don’t really know if it’s the right thing to do, making new life. Kids grow up, generations take their place. What does it all come to? More hills bulldozed and more oceanfront filled in? Faster cars and more cats run over? Who needs it?”
I showed this photograph to a sheep specialist, and he concluded that this sheep did not exist in Japan. Nor probably anywhere else in the world. So what you are looking at now is a sheep that by all rights should not exist.”
On close examination, there, in the middle of its back, appeared to be a light coffee stain of a mark. Hazy and indistinct, it could have been a scratch on the film.
There’re many things we don’t really know. It’s an illusion that we know anything at all.
Smack in the middle of a city with a million people out roaming the streets, and no one to talk
“There has been a small change in plans,” said the voice I knew from somewhere.
“You know everything, don’t you?” “Not really. There’s lot more that I don’t know.”
The wall directly in front of the counter was mirrored, giving me an unobstructed view of myself. I sat there looking at my face, half-eaten doughnut still in hand. It made me wonder how other people saw me.
There’s that kind of money in the world. It aggravates you to have it, makes you miserable to spend it, and you hate yourself when it’s gone. And when you hate yourself, you feel like spending money. Except there’s no money left. And no hope.
I brushed her hair aside with my fingers and kissed her ear. The earth trembled.
I looked into her face a while, then I gazed at both her ears. A soft afternoon glow enveloped her body as in an old still life.
“There are messages already in all things. In the flowers, in the rocks, in the clouds …”
I had spoken, but why didn’t it sound like my voice? I coughed and drank my coffee.
The entire flight, she sat by the window and looked down at the scenery.
We felt closer than ever before. The commotion of passersby was comforting; faint stars were shining through in the sky.
A real success story, the Dolphin Hotel.
“Body cells replace themselves every month. Even at this very moment,” she said, thrusting a skinny back of her hand before my eyes. “Most everything you think you know about me is nothing more than memories.”
“Mountains are living things,” wrote the author in his preface to the book. “Mountains, according to the angle of view, the season, the time of day, the beholder’s frame of mind, or any one thing, can effectively change their appearance. Thus, it is essential to recognize that we can never know more than one side, one small aspect of a mountain.”
The reason, sir, is that there is a sheep inside me.
“The basic stupidity of modern Japan is that we’ve learned absolutely nothing from our contact with other Asian peoples. The same goes for our dealings with sheep. Sheep raising in Japan has failed precisely because we’ve viewed sheep merely as a source of wool and meat. The daily-life level is missing from our thinking. We minimize the time factor to maximize the results. It’s like that with everything. In other words, we don’t have our feet on solid ground.
“One morning I awoke and the sheep was gone. It was then that I understood what it meant to be ‘sheepless.’ Sheer hell. The sheep goes away leaving only an idea. But without the sheep there is no expelling that idea. That is what it is to be ‘sheepless.’”
People have their limits, and the sheep has no use for people who’ve reached their limit.
They did everything in their power, but everything was not enough.
And even if such a today soon ceases to be today, no one can deny that it is in fact a today. For if a today ceased to be today, history could not exist as history.
Where the street of shops cut off abruptly, there was a large parking lot, again overgrown with weeds. In it were a cream-colored Honda Fairlady and a sports car, a red Toyota Celica.
Celica <\3
Negotiations with the caretaker went smoothly with supplementary monetary lubrication.
All the works of man faded into nothingness, yet still the sheep remained.
We were totally alone. As if we’d been dropped off at the edge of the world.
This was it, what we’d been searching for. And whatever meaning that search might have had, we’d found it.
The smell of rain was suddenly everywhere.
Immediately, instinctively, I knew she was gone.
Youdon’tknowathing.Allyou thinkaboutisyourself.”
“If you can read, then you can bake bread.” It was no exaggeration.
More and more, this had turned into one grotesque comedy of mishaps, and I didn’t think it was funny.
I went into the kitchen and got the bottle of whiskey. I could think of nothing to do but drink.
