The City and Its Uncertain Walls

This might be one of the issues with eternity—not knowing where you should go next. But how much value was there in a love that didn’t seek the eternal?

Maybe I've lost sight of me. I don't have a sense that I'm living this life as myself, as the real me. Sometimes I think I'm merely a shadow. When I feel that way, I get this restless feeling, like I'm simply tracing an outline of myself, cleverly pretending to be me.

Can you possibly imagine how painful it is to suddenly have the one you love leave for no reason, how much it hurt your heart, how deeply it ripped you apart, how much you bled inside?

Standing there alone, I always felt sad, a deep sadness I'd felt before, long, long ago. I remembered that sadness very well. A sadness that can't be explained, that doesn't melt away over time, that quietly leaves invisible wounds, in a place you cannot see. And how can you deal with something you can't see?

But she must have been a wonderful person, right?” “Was she? Who was it who said loving someone is like having a mental illness that’s not covered by health insurance?

Truth is not found in fixed stillness, but in ceaseless change and movement. Isn’t this the quintessential core of what stories are all about? At least that’s how I see it.

Once you’ve tasted pure, unadulterated love, it’s like a part of your heart’s been irradiated, burned out, in a sense. Particularly when that love, for whatever reason, is suddenly severed. For the person involved, that sort of love is both the supreme happiness and a curse.

Believe in the existence of your other self.

However—there isn’t just one reality. Reality is something you have to choose by yourself, out of several possible alternatives.

We never ran out of things to say, and when we said good-bye at the station, I always felt there was something else, something vital, that we’d forgotten to discuss.

From my own experience, I’d say the important things in life usually happen unexpectedly.

Just as the people of the town had no horizontal curiosity about geography, they lacked any vertical curiosity about history.

Which is why most of us live our lives with eyes closed.

Indeed. Loneliness is extremely hard. Whether you're alive or dead, the wasting away, the pain is exactly the same. But even so I still have the strong, vivid memories of having loved someone with all my heart. A feeling that seeped into the palms of my hands and still remains. Whether you have that warmth or not makes all the difference in the way your soul remains after death.

In the Psalms there are these words: ‘People are like a breath; their days are like a fleeting shadow.

Time passes ever so slowly, yet it doesn’t rewind.

Sometimes obliterating the mind is the easiest thing to do.

And we went on to create and share a special, secret world of our own—a strange town surrounded by a high wall.

At that time neither you nor I had names. The radiant feelings of a seventeen-year-old and a sixteen-year-old on the grass of a riverbank, in the summer twilight, were the only things that mattered. Stars would soon be twinkling above us, and they had no names either. The two of us sat there, side by side, on the riverbank of a nameless world.

Many things in life are like that, though, if you think about it—moving ahead on their own without regard for the intentions or plans of the person involved.

Maybe the person most puzzled about me was…me.

You search for a reasonable, convincing explanation. You need that more than anything. But nobody has one. Nobody tells you where to go now. No one consoles you or encourages you. (It wouldn’t help even if they did.) You’re left utterly alone in a desolate land. Not a single tree or blade of grass to be seen. A strong wind is already blowing in one direction there—a wind that stings the skin like tiny needles. You’ve been mercilessly excluded from a world of warmth. Isolated. With thoughts that have no outlet, lying heavy, like a lump of lead, inside you.

In my eyes the world out there is the real world. People struggle there, grow old, grow weak, and die. Not so wonderful maybe, but isn’t that what the world’s really like? You’re supposed to accept that. And, as best I can, I join you in that. You can’t stop time, and when you die, you’re dead forever. Things that disappear are gone for good. You have to accept that that’s the way things are.

Left alone, I stared for a long time at the traces of her she'd left behind. That graceful image faded, disappeared completely, filled in by a blank space left by nothingness.

Obviously, my daily life and the events in my dreams are far apart—as different as a subway and a balloon. And just like everybody else, I’m captive to everyday life, clinging to the humble surface of the earth. Even the most powerful person, or the richest, can’t escape that gravity.

Tears, like blood, were wrung from the same warm body.

It’s like something’s stuck inside me. Because of that, nothing works out.

A faint sadness came over me as the thought arose. Like colorless water, utterly devoid of warmth, my heart was quietly immersed in that sadness.