https://holyrohanempire.wordpress.com/2017/07/23/kafka-on-the-shore-an-analysis-pt-1/
i low key buy like all of this
My fifteenth birthday is the ideal time to run away from home. Any earlier and it’d be too soon. Any later and I would have missed my chance.
that chance encounters are what keep us going
i need to learn what n-chome means i kept seeing it in tokyo and never took note
“You’re right. It is a pretty good life. Nakata can keep out of the wind and rain, and I have everything I need. And sometimes, like now, people ask me to help them find cats. They give me a present when I do. But I’ve got to keep this a secret from the Governor, so don’t tell anybody. They might cut down my sub city if they find out I have some extra money coming in. It’s never a lot, but thanks to it I can eat eel every once in a while. Nakata loves eel.”
normally japanese names distinguish themselves somewhat well—at least in comparison to like russian ones—but it’s embarassing that it took me so long to realise this is the Nakata from earlier
5 bucks a day for gym is insane bro thats 1 usd a month so unfair
“You’re right. It is a pretty good life. Nakata can keep out of the wind and rain, and I have everything I need. And sometimes, like now, people ask me to help them find cats. They give me a present when I do. But I’ve got to keep this a secret from the Governor, so don’t tell anybody. They might cut down my sub city if they find out I have some extra money coming in. It’s never a lot, but thanks to it I can eat eel every once in a while. Nakata loves eel.”
When I come in he looks up, smiles, and takes my backpack from me.
“Still not going back to school, I see.”
“I’m never going back,” I confess.
“A library’s a pretty good alternative, then,” he says.
yea nice analysis buddy boy
ok natsume soseki is niche enough for me that’s ball knowledge
radiohead and gooning too omg so tuff
Walking behind this monstrous dog made Nakata feel that people were getting out of his way. Maybe they thought he was walking the dog, minus a leash. And indeed some people shot him reproachful looks. This made him sad. I’m not doing this because I want to, he wanted to explain to them. Nakata’s being led by this dog, he wanted to say. Nakata’s not a strong person, but a weak one.
Johnnie Walker twirled the walking stick. “I want you to do something for me.”
“Is it something that Nakata can do?”
“I never ask the impossible. That’s a colossal waste of time, don’t you agree?”
Mimi meowed, wagged her tail again, then scurried off and disappeared around the corner. There was no blood on her, either. Nakata decided to remember that.
based murakami agenda
“A pathetic, historical example,” Oshima repeats, obviously impressed. By his tone of voice he seems to like the sound of that phrase.
She’s got to be a ghost. First of all, she’s just too beautiful. Her features are gorgeous, but it’s not only that. She’s so perfect I know she can’t be real. She’s like a person who stepped right out of a dream. The purity of her beauty gives me a feeling close to sadness—a very natural feeling, though one that only something extraordinary could produce.
You’ve never ever in your life envied anybody else, or ever wanted to be someone else—but right now you do. You want more than anything to be that boy. Even knowing that at age twenty he was going to be smashed over the head with an iron pipe and beaten to death, you’d still trade places with him. You’d do it, to be able to love Miss Saeki for those five years. And to have her love you with all her heart. To hold her as much as you want, to make love to her over and over. To let your fingers run over every single part of her body, and let her do the same to you. And after you die, your love will become a story etched forever in her heart. Every single night she’ll love you in her memory.
It sounds strange for a boy your age to use a word like damaged, though I must say I’m intrigued. What exactly do you mean by damaged?
this is uh kinda [[When Marnie Was There]]?
She picks up the coffee cup and takes a sip. “Kafka, what can you see outside?”
I look out the window behind her. “I see trees, the sky, and some clouds. Some birds on tree branches.”
“Nothing out of the ordinary. Right?”
“That’s right.”
“But if you knew you might not be able to see it again tomorrow, everything would suddenly become special and precious, wouldn’t it?”
“I suppose so.”
“Have you ever thought about that?”
“I have.”
A surprised look comes over her. “When?”
“When I’m in love,” I tell her.
she’s a funny prostitute too isn’t she
Even did some shopping for us.
i like that us instead of you a lot here
“Of course,” he says. “It happens sometimes. When the moon turns blue, when birds fly south, when—”
“We’re all dreaming, aren’t we?” she says.
All of us are dreaming.
“Why did you have to die?”
“I couldn’t help it,” you reply.
Together you walk along the beach back to the library. You turn off the light in your room, draw the curtains, and without another word climb into bed and make love. Pretty much the same sort of lovemaking as the night before. But with two differences. After sex, she starts to cry. That’s one. She buries her face in the pillow and silently weeps. You don’t know what to do. You gently lay a hand on her bare shoulder. You know you should say something, but don’t have any idea what. Words have all died in the hollow of time, piling up soundlessly at the dark bottom of a volcanic lake. And this time as she leaves you can hear the engine of her car. That’s number two. She starts the engine, turns it off for a time, like she’s thinking about something, then turns the key again and drives out of the parking lot. That blank, silent interval between leaves you sad, so terribly sad. Like fog from the sea, that blankness wends its way into your heart and remains there for a long, long time. Finally it’s a part of you.
She leaves behind a damp pillow, wet with her tears. You touch the warmth with your hand and watch the sky outside gradually lighten. Far away a crow caws. The Earth slowly keeps on turning. But beyond any of those details of the real, there are dreams. And everyone’s living in them.
The child’s the father of the man, like they say.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau defined civilization as when people build fences. A very perceptive observation. And it’s true—all civilization is the product of a fenced-in lack of freedom. The Australian Aborigines are the exception, though. They managed to maintain a fenceless civilization until the seventeenth century. They’re dyed-in-the-wool free. They go where they want, when they want, doing what they want. Their lives are a literal journey. Walkabout is a perfect metaphor for their lives. When the English came and built fences to pen in their cattle, the Aborigines couldn’t fathom it. And, ignorant to the end of the principle at work, they were classified as dangerous and antisocial and were driven away, to the outback. 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.
“What happened between us in your room last night is probably part of that flow. I don’t know if what we did last night was right or not. But at the time I decided not to force myself to judge anything. If the flow is there, I figured I’d just let it carry me along where it wanted.”
If I had to kill my father, I wouldn’t ask anybody to do it.
sanders in my mind is very much like devil from m and m
Right before I fall asleep I have a massive erection, harder than any I’ve ever had, but I don’t jack off. I’ve made up my mind to hold the memory of making love with Miss Saeki untouched, at least for now. Hands clenched tight, I fall asleep, hoping to dream of her.
there is something very nice about the idea of an illiterate person going to a library
ok murakami a perv and allat but notice how from this perspective chapter we use good-looking instead of something like pretty or gorgeous yk
“Even if it’s in a dream, you shouldn’t have done that,” the boy named Crow calls out. He’s right behind me, walking in the forest. “I tried my best to stop you. I wanted you to understand. You heard, but you didn’t listen. You just forged on ahead.”
“I haven’t had any friends either, for quite some time,” Miss Saeki said. “Other than in memories.”
“My life ended at age twenty. Since then it’s been merely a series of endless reminiscences, a dark, winding corridor leading nowhere. Nevertheless, I had to live it, surviving each empty day, seeing each day off still empty. During those days I made a lot of mistakes. No, that’s not correct—sometimes I feel that all I did was make mistakes. I felt like I was living at the bottom of a deep well, completely shut up inside myself, cursing my fate, hating everything outside. Occasionally I ventured outside myself, putting on a good show of being alive. Accepting whatever came along, numbly slipping through life. I slept around a lot, at one point even living in a sort of marriage, but it was all pointless. Everything passed away in an instant, with nothing left behind except the scars of things I injured and despised.”
Finally he heard an ambulance siren that seemed to be getting closer. In a few moments people will be rushing upstairs to take her away—forever. He raised his left arm and glanced at his watch. It was 4:35. 4:35 on a Tuesday afternoon. I have to remember this time, he thought. I have to remember this day, this afternoon, forever.
But what his life had really meant, Hoshino had no idea. Not that anybody’s life had more clear-cut meaning to it. What’s really important for people, what really has dignity, is how they die. Compared to that, he thought, how you lived doesn’t amount to much. Still, how you live determines how you die.
“What do you want from me if I do go back?”
“Just one thing,” she says, raising her head and looking me straight in the eye. “I want you to remember me. If you remember me, then I don’t care if everybody else forgets.”
“I don’t know what it means to live.”
She lets me go and looks up at me. She reaches out and touches my lips. “Look at the painting,” she says quietly. “Keep looking at the painting, just like I did.”
"Every one of us is losing something precious to us. Lost opportunities, lost possibilities, feelings we can never get back again. That’s part of what it means to be alive. But inside our heads — at least that’s where I imagine it — there’s a little room where we store those memories. A room like the stacks in this library. And to understand the workings of our own heart we have to keep on making new reference cards. We have to dust things off every once in a while, let fresh air in, change the water in the flower vases."
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.