iQuote

"Well I think there has to be something like reincarnation. Or maybe I should say I'm scared to think there isn't. I can't understand nothingness. I can't understand it and I can't imagine it."

"Nothingness means there is absolutely nothing, so maybe there's no need to understand or imagine it."

"Yeah, but what if nothingness is not like that? What if it's the kind of thing that demands that you understand it or imagine it? I mean, you don't know what it's like to die, Mari. Maybe a person really has to die to understand what it's like."

"Well, yeah . . . ," says Mari.

"I get so scared when I start thinking about this stuff," Korogi says. "I can hardly breathe, and my whole body wants to just believe in reincarnation. You might be reborn as something awful, but at least you can imagine what you'd look like--a horse, say, or a snail. And even if it was something bad, you might be luckier next time."

"Uh-huh . . but it still seems more natural to me to think that once you're dead, there's nothing."

"I wonder if that's 'cause you've got such a strong personality."

"Me?!"

Korogi nods. "You seem to have a good, strong grip on yourself."

Mari shakes her head. "Not me," she says. "When I was little, I had no self-confidence at all. Everything scared me. Which is why I used to get bullied a lot. I was such an easy mark. The feelings I had back then are still here inside me. I have dreams like that all the time."

"Yeah, but I bet you worked hard over the years and overcame those feelings little by little--those bad memories."

"Little by little," Mari says, nodding. "I'm like that. A hard worker."

"You just keep at it all by yourself--like the village smithy?"

"Right."

"I think it's great that you can do that."

"Work hard?"

"That you're able to work hard."

"Even if I've got nothing else going for me?"

Korogi smiles without speaking.

Mari thinks about what Korogi said. "I do feel that I've managed to make something I could maybe call my own world . . . over time . . . little by little. And when I'm inside it, to some extent, I feel kind of relieved. But the very fact I felt I had to make such a world probably means that I'm a weak person, that I bruise easily, don't you think? And in the eyes of society at large, that world of mine is a puny little thing. It's like a cardboard house: a puff of wind might carry it off somewhere."

"I think about the old days a lot. Especially after I started running all over the country like this. If I try hard to remember, all kinds of stuff comes back--really vivid memories. All of a sudden out of nowhere I can bring back things I haven't thought about for years. It's pretty interesting. Memory is so crazy! It's like we've got these drawers crammed with tons of useless stuff. Meanwhile, all the really important things we just keep forgetting, one after the other."

"People's memories are maybe the fuel they burn to stay alive. Whether those memories have any actual importance or not, it doesn't matter as far as the maintenance of life is concerned. They're all just fuel. Advertising fillers in the newspaper, philosophy books, dirty pictures in a magazine, a bundle of ten-thousand-yen bills: when you feed 'em to the fire, they're all just paper. The fire isn't thinking, 'Oh, this is Kant,' or 'Oh, this is the Yomiuri evening edition,' or 'Nice tits,' while it burns. To the fire, they're nothing but scraps of paper: It's the exact same thing. Important memories, not-so-important memories, totally useless memories: there's no distinction--they're all just fuel."

~ Haruki Murakami, "After Dark"