Haruki Murakami: Dance Dance Dance
06.01.2003
[1] I wake up, but where? I don't just think this, I actually voice the question to myself: "Where am I?" As if I didn't know: I'm here. In my life.
[14] The problem was that I hadn't wanted her, really wanted her. I'd liked her, liked being with her. She brought me back to gentle feelings. But what it came down to was, I never felt a need for her. Not three days after she got out of my life, the realization hit home. That ultimately, all the time I'd been next to her, I might as well have been on the moon. The whole while I'd felt her breasts against me, I'd reallly wanted something else.
[25] She held her breath a second, thinking it over. The smile vanished. It's exceedingly difficult to hold your breath and keep smiling. Just try if you don't believe me.
[31] You live by yourself for a stretch of time and you get to staring at different objects. Sometimes you talk to yourself. You take meals in crowded joints. You develop an intimate relationship with your used Subaru. You slowly but surely become a has-been.
[44] She paused for twenty or thirty seconds. And once again, she gave her ring a few more turns, almost as if she were tuning a radio.
[92] "You won't try
anything funny?"
"I won't try anything funny."
"Everyone says they won't, but they all do."
"Maybe everyone does, but I don't," I said.
[95] But then what? Where would I go from here? Nowhere, probably. Just another thing to lose. I don't know what I want. And, if that's the case, as my ex-wife said, I'd only hurt people.
[113] "Some people say that's escapism. But that's fine by me. I live my life, you live yours. If you're clear about what you want, then you can live any way you please. I don't give a damn what people say. They can be reptile food for all I care. That's how I looked at things when I was your age and I guess that's how I look at things now. Does that mean I have arrested development? Or have I been right all these years? I'm still waiting on the answer to that one."
[120] I shook my head. "No, not like humans. With machines, the feeling is, well, more finite. It doesn't go any further. With humans, it's different. The feeling is always changing. Like if you love somebody, the love is always shifting or wavering. It's always questioning or inflating or disappearing or denying or hurting. And the thing is, you can't do anything about it, you can't control it. With my Subaru, it's not so complicated."
[186] Refreshed, I boiled some cauliflower, which I ate along with a beer. I put on Arthur Prysock backed by Count Basie Orchestra. An unabashedly gorgeous record. Bought sixteen years before. Once upon a time.
[209] Humans achieve their peak in different ways. But whoever you are, once you're over the summit, it's downhill all the way. Nothing anyone can do about it. And the worst of it is, you never know where the peak is. You think you're still going strong, when suddenly you've crossed the great divide. No one can tell.
[238] Hold it right there. This gig with the family is strictly temporary. Understand? A short R&R before I go back to showeling. At which point I won't have time for the likes of this craziness. At which point I go my own way. I like things less involved.
[248] What was I supposed to think? We weren't kids. You choose who you sleep with, and whirlpool or tornado or sandstorm, you make a go of what you choose.
[249] But what was I supposed
to have said?
Was I cold? Of course I could appreciate his feelings. One arm or two,
poet or not, it's a tough world. We all have to live with our problems.
But weren't we adults? Hadn't we come this far already? At the very least,
you don't go asking impossible questions of someone you've just met. That
wasn't courteous.
[252-253] "You're not
such a bad cook," Yuki said.
"No, not true. I just put my heart into it. That's the difference.
It's a question of attitude. If you really work at something,
you can do it, up to a point. If you really work at being happy, you can
do it, up to a point."
"But anything more than that, you can't."
"Anything more than that is luck," I said.
"You really know how to depress people, don't you? Is that what you
call being adult?"
[253] "I'm waiting for hints to take shape, then I'll know what action to take."
[311] "That's just stupid, that kind of thinking," I said, nailing her with my eyes. "Instead of regretting what you did, you could have treated him decently from the beginning. You could've tried to be fair. But you didn't. You don't even have the right to be sorry."
[311-312] "So what can
I do now?" she spoke up a minute later.
"Nothing," I said. "Just think about what
comes before words. You owe that to the dead. As time goes on, you'll
understand. What lasts, lasts; what doesn't, doesn't. Time solves most
things. And what time can't solve, you have to solve yourself. Is that
too much to ask?"
"A little," she said, trying to smile.
"Well, of course it is," I said, trying to smile too.
[369] I had a dream about Kiki. I guess it was a dream. Either that or some act akin to dreaming. What, you may ask, is an "act akin to dreaming"? I don't know either. But it seems it does exist. Like so many other things we have no name for, existing in that limbo beyond the fringes of consciousness.
[371] "Everyone's crying
for you," says Kiki, ever so softly, in a voice to soothe worn nerves.
"After all, that whole place is for you. Everyone there cries for
you."
-
"But why would everyone cry for me?"
-
"We're crying for all the things you can't cry for," whispers
Kiki. Slowly, as if to spell it out. We shed tears for all the things
you never let yourself shed tears, we weep for all the things you did
not weep."
[371] "It wasn't me. It was you who called yourself. I'm merely a projection. You guided yourself, through me. I'm your phantom dance partner. I'm your shadow. I'm not anything more."
[372] She stands back up and into a vertical shaft of illumination from above. She stays there, her body almost decomposing amid the specks of strong light.
[392] "I told you people
don't just disappear," she said.
Oh really? I thought as I embraced her. No, anything
can happen. This world is more fragile, more tenuous than we could ever
know.
