Gaurav Sagar > Recent Status Updates

As soon as she realized that a man was in love with her, memories of Oki were revived. Rather than mere recollections, they were her reality. When she parted from Oki she thought she would never marry. Distraught by sorrow, she could hardly plan ahead to the next day, much less to the distant future. But the thought of never marrying had crept into her mind, and in time it became an inflexible resolution.

As soon as she realized that a man was in love with her, memories of Oki were revived. Rather than mere recollections, they were her reality. When she parted from Oki she thought she would never marry. Distraught by sorrow, she could hardly plan ahead to the next day, much less to the distant future. But the thought of never marrying had crept into her mind, and in time it became an inflexible resolution.

Struck by sudden fear that Keiko might be reluctant to bathe with her, Otoko grasped the edge of the tub, pulled herself out of the water, and stepped down on the bathroom floor.
Was Kaiko hesitant to let Otoko see her body, after having spent a night with Oki ?

Oki had thought she was calling out to him, but his strength ebbed when he realized she was actually calling Otoko.

If you couldn't meet a lover for half a year, wouldn't it seem like a long time ?

Must you die early if an artist immortalized your youth? It's wrong to hunt out models like that!

Because you can't write about someone yo don't love, someone you don't even hate? All the time I'm typing I keep wondering why I didn't let you go.

Leaving that aside, who could say which was the real Otoko- the one he described, or the one she might have created in telling her own story ?

Dark shadowy figures had gathered in front of the bell tower. He closed the screen and went back to the Kotatsu. As the bell tolled on he stopped straining to listen to it, and then he heard a sound that only a magnificent old bell could produce, a sound that seemed to roar forth with all the latent power of a distant world.

The faithful battle reporter, I felt a tightening in my chest at the thought that after more than half a year the match was to finish today.

There could be little doubt that he was staking his very life on it. If his young adversary were to forfeit, the sympathies of the world would be with the Master, and Otake must be resigned to sharp criticism.

And he said that his having come so far was probably a matter of "vagueness."

Lost in the game, the Master seemed to give over custody of his physical self. He left everything to the managers, and made no demands. Even during the great debate over the effects of his illness upon the game, the Master himself had sat absently apart, as if it did not concern him.

"I haven't decided," he said finally. The expression on his face was as of having been away from reality and not being able to return quite yet.

Nothing more- and yet the retreating figures of the Master somehow brought tears to my eyes. I was profoundly moved, for reasons I do not myself understand. In that figure walking absently from the game there was still sadness of another world. The Master seemed like a relic left behind by Meiji.

The match to end the career of the old Master should have had in it the affectionate attention of hi juniors, the finesse and subtlety of the warrior's way, the mysterious elegance of an art, everything to make it a masterpiece in itself; but the Master could not stand outside the rules of equality.

Why then did he take so long? Bored with the long wait, I at first thought it merely strange, and then I began to have suspicions. Was it all a show? Was it an irritant, or perhaps a camouflage? I had reasons for these uncharitable suspicions. Play was being resumed after a three-month recess. Had Otake been studying the board all through those months.

For a lens there was neither living or dead, there was neither man or object, not sentimentality or reverence.

The pictures were a success. They were of a man asleep, and at the same time they had the quiet of death about them.

"If I hadn't gone into the hospital we would have had it over with at Hakone."

Suddenly we peaceable, easy-going passengers overcome by a wild, overweening lust for battle.

In his eyes, as I saw with concern, was the light of the uncontrolled passion that usually seizes on people only at the roulette table, when they have been constantly doubling their stakes and the right colour fails to come up for the sixth or seventh time

It was not her fault that when he went to her he was already over. How could a woman know that you meant nothing that you said; that you spoke only from habit and to be comfortable? After he no longer meant what he said, his lies were more successful with women than when he had told them the truth.

When there was no snow you gambled and when there was too much you gambled. He thought of all the time in his life he had spent gambling.

Life is too dreary to endure. The misery, loneliness, crampedness- they're heartbreaking. Whenever you can hear the gloomy sighs of woe from the four walls around you, you know that there's not a chance of happiness existing just for you. What feelings do you suppose a man has when he realizes that he will never know happiness or glory as long as he lives ?

This was the first time in my life that I had become aware of the existence of the wall of despair built of all the many things in the world before which human strength is helpless.

When I acted like an idler, rumor had it I was an idler. When I pretended I couldn't write a novel, people said I couldn't write. When I acted like a rich man, they started the rumor I was rich. When I feigned indifference, they classed me as the indifferent type. But when I inadvertently groaned because I was really in pain, they started the rumor that I was faking suffering.

The world is out of joint.

Man has, I know, language, knowledge, principles, and social order, but don't all the other animals have them too, granted the difference of degree? Perhaps the animals even have religions. Man boasts of being the lord of all creation, but it would seem as if essentially he does not differ in the least from other animals.

Ever since my disgraceful act of having started a fire, I have felt somehow as if the color of my blood has turned a little darker, as if I am becoming every day more of an uncouth country girl. When, for instance, I sit on the porch knitting with Mother, I feel strangely cramped and choked, and it comes as a relief when I go out into the fields to dig the earth.

From that day to the present, we have managed to continue our solitary lives in this cottage in the mountains. We prepare meals, knit on porch, read in the Chinese room, drink tea- in other words, lead an uneventful existence almost completely isolated from the world.