Kafka On The Shore

This is probably the last time Ill be posting to my blog from Japan. Im heading out to go drinking in the Nakano Ward, figured Id leave you with my favorite excerpts from the book of the same title as this post.(Written by Haruki Murakami)

"According to Aristophanes in Plato's "Symposium" in ancient times people weren't just male or female, but one of three types: male/male, male/female, or female/female. In other words, each person was made out of the components of two people. Everyone was happy with this arrangement and never really gave it much thought. But then God took a knife and cut everbody in half, right down the middle. So after that the world was divided just into male and female, the upshot being that people spend their time running around trying to locate their missing other half."

"That person's shadow, too, looked like half of it had gotten seperated from him. It was as faint as yours."

"The pure present is an ungraspable advance of the past devouring the future. In truth, all sensation is already memory."
Mame mo memelay/Matter and memory- Henri Bergson

"God only exists in people's minds. Especially in Japan. Gods always been kid of a flexible concept. Look a what happened after the war. Douglas MacArthur ordered the divine emperor to quit being God, and he did, making a speech saying he was just an ordinary person. So after 1946 he wasn't God anymore. That's what Japanese gods are like-they can be tweaked and adjusted. Some American chomping on a cheap pipe gives the order and presto change-o-- God's no longer God. A very postmodern kind of thing. If you think God's there, He is. If you don't, He isn't. And if that's what God's like, I wouldn't worry about it."

"Anyone who falls in love is searching for the missing pieces of themselves. So anyone who's in love gets sad when they think of their lover. It's like stepping back inside a room you have fond memories of, one you haven't seen in a long time. It's just a natural feeling. You're not the person who discovered that feeling, so don't go trying to patent it, okay?"

"The white Familia parked in the lot was, as avertised, totally unobtrusive. Turn away from it for a moment and every memory of what it looked like vanished. A notable achievement in the field of anonymity."

"People are mostly a product of where they were born and raised. How you think and feel's always linked to the lay of the land, the temperature. The prevailing winds, even."