Is this what it means to be free? I don’t know, and I give up thinking about it. All alone in an unfamiliar place, like some solitary explorer who’s lost his compass and his map.
Chords compass forever in your mind free#
I shut my eyes and think hard and deep about how free I am, but I can’t really understand what it means. My house back in Tokyo has one just like that in the garden, and ever since I was little I loved that bright little spot.
Chords compass forever in your mind Patch#
It reminds me of a small, sunny spot, the special patch of sunlight you find only in some remote, secluded place. Her long hair is loosely tied back, her face very refined and intelligent looking, with beautiful eyes and a shadowy smile playing over her lips, a smile whose sense of completeness is indescribable. I close my eyes and take a breath, and like a gentle cloud the wonder of it all settles over me. I’d always thought of it as a secret, imaginary place, and can barely believe that it actually exists. A little hideaway in some sinkhole somewhere.
Breathing it in, I glance through a few pages before returning each book to its shelf.Īs I relax on the sofa and gaze around the room a thought hits me: This is exactly the place I’ve been looking for forever.
When I open them, most of the books have the smell of an earlier time leaking out between the pages-a special odor of the knowledge and emotions that for ages have been calmly resting between the covers. Like the clouds floating across the sky, I’m all by myself, totally free. Between reality and the workings of the heart.Īfterward I plop myself down on a bench in the plaza next to the station and gaze up at the sunny sky. It’s hard to tell the difference between sea and sky. The sky is a blanket of gray, merging with the gray sea off on the horizon. I’m the lonely voyager standing on deck, and she’s the sea. As she breathes, the rounded peaks move up and down like the swell of waves, somehow reminding me of rain falling softly on a broad stretch of sea. Her earrings jiggle back and forth like two precarious pieces of ripe fruit ready to fall.
She cranes her neck and sweeps the place with her eyes. Her smile steps offstage for a moment, then does an encore, all while I’m dealing with my blushing face. No sooner do I settle down than my consciousness, like a battery that’s lost its charge, starts to fade away, and I fall asleep. Every time you see a flood like that on the news you tell yourself: That’s it. And still the rain beats down on the surface of the river. All signposts that once stood on the ground are gone, inundated and carried away by that rush of water. Your heart is like a great river after a long spell of rain, spilling over its banks. And sometimes this prophetic voice pushes a secret switch hidden deep inside your brain. You look for silence, but guess what? All you hear over and over and over is the voice of this omen. At times like that I always feel an omen calling out to me, like a dark, omnipresent pool of water. It doesn’t happen very often, but sometimes, before I even realize what’s going on, there I am-naked and defenseless and totally confused. Sometimes the wall I’ve erected around me comes crumbling down. It’s like one of those Greek tragedy masks in a textbook that’s half one idea and half the opposite.
My sister’s looking off to the side so half her face is in shadow and her smile is neatly cut in half. When you come out of the storm you won’t be the same person who walked in. You won’t even be sure, in fact, whether the storm is really over. And once the storm is over you won’t remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You’ll catch that blood in your hands, your own blood and the blood of others. People will bleed there, and you will bleed too. No matter how metaphysical or symbolic it might be, make no mistake about it: it will cut through flesh like a thousand razor blades. So all you can do is give in to it, step right inside the storm, closing your eyes and plugging up your ears so the sand doesn’t get in, and walk through it, step by step.Īnd you really will have to make it through that violent, metaphysical, symbolic storm. Why? Because this storm isn’t something that blew in from far away, something that has nothing to do with you. Over and over you play this out, like some ominous dance with death just before dawn. You change direction but the sandstorm chases you. Sometimes fate is like a small sandstorm that keeps changing directions. After re-reading Kafka on the Shore I decided to compile a list of all the metaphors from the book for your convenience below. A reason for this is because of Murakami’s lucid world-transporting metaphors. Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami is one of my favorite books.
0 kommentar(er)
