Haruki Murakami: A Wild Sheep Chase
06.08.2003
[39-40]
"What's sex like for you without your ears showing?"
"A duty. Dry and tasteless, like chewing newsprint. But
that's okay. Nothing bad about fulfilling a duty, you know."
"But with your ears out it's a thousand times better, isn't it?"
"Sure."
"Then you ought to show them," I said. "No need to go out
of your way to put up with such dull times."
Dead serious, she stared me and said, "You don't understand anything."
[60] We can, if we so choose, wander aimlessly over the continent of the arbitrary. Rootless as some winged seed blown about on a serendipitous spring breeze.
Nonetheless, we can in the same breath deny that there is any such thing as coincidence. What's done is done, what's yet to be is clearly yet to be, and so on. In other words, sandwiched as we are between the "everything" that is behind us and the "zero" beyond us, ours is a ephemeral existence in which there es neither coincidence nor possibility.
[67] There are symbolic dreams - dreams that symbolize some reality. Then there are symbolic realities - realities that symbolize a dream. Symbols are what you might call the honorary town councillors of the worm universe. In the worm universe, there is nothing unusual about a dairy cow seeking a pair of pliers. A cow is bound to get her pliers sometime. It has nothing to do with me.
Yet the fact that the cow chose me to obtain her pliers changes everything. This plunges me into a whole universe of alternative considerations. And in this universe of alternative considerations, the major problem is that everything becomes protracted and complex. I ask the cow, "Why do you want pliers?" And the cow answers, "I'm really hungry." So I ask, "Why do you need pliers if you're hungry?" The cow answers, "To attach them to branches of the peach tree." I ask, "Why a peach tree?" To which the cow replies, "Well, that's why I traded away my fan, isn't it?" And so on and so forth. The thing is never resolved, I began to resent the cow, and the cow begins to resent me. That's a worm's eye view of its universe. The only way to get out of that worm universe is to dream another symbolic dream.
[82] But this time I can be grateful (really, I am) that I don't have anything to throw overboard. A great feeling. The only thing I could possibly throw overboard would be myself. Not such a bad idea, throwing myself overboard. No, this is getting to sound pathetic. The idea itself, though, isn't pathetic in the least. I'm not feeling sorry for myself. It only sounds that way when I write it down.
[106-107] "You're probably wondering why I called you all this way here. It was to set the ship in forward motion. You and I shall move it forward. By discussing matters in all honesty, we shall proceed one step at a time closer to the truth."
[119] "I wouldn't know," I said. "I don't even know if the question itself makes sense."
[126] "Fair enough, but
doesn't it get on your nerves?"
"Certainly. I get irritated, I get upset. Especially when
I'm in a hurry. But I see it all as part of our training. To get irritated
is to lose our way in life."
[149] With the job out of the picture, I felt a surge of relief. Slowly but surely I was making things simpler. I'd lost my hometown, lost my teens, lost my wife, in another three months I'd lose my twenties. What'd be left of me when I got to be sixty, I couldn't imagine. There's no thinking about these things. There's no telling even what's going to happen a month from now.
[167] Why she'd up and choose him after me, I couldn't figure. Granted, you can pick out certain characteristics among individuals. Yet the only thing he had over me was that he could play guitar, and the only thing I had over him was that I could wash dishes. Most guitarists can't wash dishes. Ruin their fingers and there goes everything.
***
Accurate figures give things a sense of reality.
[167-168] "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."
The woman - save for the month or so prior to our divorce - was singularly methodical in her thinking. She had an absolutely realistic grasp on her life. Which is to say that no door once closed ever opened again, nor as a rule was any door left wide open.
Now all I know about her is my memories of her. And these memories fade further and further into the distance like displaced cells. Was it all biology?
[172] We returned to the hotel and had intercourse. I like that word intercourse. It poses only a limited range of possibilities.
[228] "Don't they get
bored?"
"Do you get so bored with your own life?"
"I can't really say."
[238] For a brief instant, I felt a sense of vertigo. There in the darkness, time turned on its head. Moments overlapped. Memories crumbled. Then it was over. I opened my eyes and everything fell back into place. Before my eyes was a plain gray space, nothing more.
[244] I could not accept the fact of her disappearance. I was barely awake, but even if I were totally lucid, this - and everything that was happening to me - was far beyond my realm of comprehension. There was almost nothing one could do except let things take their course.
[247] The morning sun felt wonderful, and sitting on the sofa, which molded itself to my body, was pure luxury. Before I knew it, a whole hour had passed. The clock struck a lazy nine o'clock.
I began to understand why the Rat had put the house in such order, scrubbed between the tiles, ironed his shirts, and shaved, though surely he had no one to meet. Unless you kept moving up here, you'd lose all sense of time.
[268] I dug my hands into my pockets and stood by the window, gazing out. There things unfolded entirely apart from me. Unrelated to my existence - unrelated to anybody's existence - everything came to pass. The snow fell, the snow melted.
[269] The mirror reflected my image from head to toe, without warping, almost pristinely. I stood there and looked at myself. Nothing new. I was me, with my usual nothing-special expression. My image was unnecessarily sharp, however. I wasn't seeing my mirror-flat mirror-image. It wasn't myself I was seeing; on the contrary, it was as if I were the reflection of the mirror and this flat-me-of-an-image were seeing the real me. I brought my right hand up in front of my face and wiper my mouth. The me through the looking glass went through the same motions. But maybe it was only me copying what the me in the mirror had done. I couldn't be certain I'd wiped my mouth out of my own free will.
I filed the word "free will" away in my head and pinched my ear with my left hand. The me in the mirror did exactly the same. Apparently he had filed the word "free will" away in his head the same as I had.
I gave up and left the mirror. He also left the mirror.
[276] Even in the absolute lacquer-black darkness, seated back-to-back, I could tell he was smiling. You can tell a lot just by the tiniest change in the air.
[295] "It's
all over," said the Sheep Professor, "all
over."
"Over and done."
"I suppose I should thank you."
"Now that I've lost practically everything."
"No, you haven't," the Sheep Professor shook
his head. "You've got your life."
"As you say," I said.
[299] I walked along
the river to its mouth. I sat down on the last fifty yards of beach, and
I cried. I never cried so much in my life.
I brushed the sand from my trousers and got up, as if I had somewhere
to go.
The day had all but ended. I could hear the sound of waves as I started
to walk.
