"I said, don't you get it?" Literature tossed the paper towel into the trash can next to the table, "You're making it worse for yourself."
"You know what, it's not 1970, there's no free time to play any anti-power games with you here." The fisherman said, as if he couldn't take it anymore, "Those
times are long gone. I or you or anyone else has been placed in society one by one, there is no room for you to talk about power or anti-power, and no one thinks that way anymore. The society is so big that you can't make much money by stirring up a little storm. The whole system has been formed, there is no gap to exploit. If you don't like this society, just wait for a big earthquake, dig a hole and wait! There's no advantage to be gained from any kind of bullshit here right now, whether it's you or us, it's purely a matter of consumption. Intellectuals should understand this reasoning, right?"
From there down, along the wall cracks seeped out many spots, as if the kiln burned out. The moldy patches I think are about to be permeated with the body odor and sweat of the countless people who have entered and exited this room. It is these things that have evolved over the decades to become such dark spots. In that case, it seems like a long time since I've seen the outside and heard the music. A cold and desperate place! Here they attempt to mobilize all means to stifle human ego human feelings human dignity human convictions. In order not to leave visible trauma, they play on psychological tactics, cleverly laying down bureaucratic labyrinths in the form of macho ants, maximizing people's insecurities, making them avoid sunlight, making them eat low-nutrient food, making them sweat, and thus contributing to the moldy patches.
Sometimes I envy Snow, who is 13 years old. In her eyes, everything is so new, including music, landscape and the world. Must be very different from the impression I got. I was like that in the past. When I was 13, the world was a much simpler place. Efforts were rewarded, promises were kept, and beauty was preserved. But I wasn't a particularly happy teenager at 13. I liked to be left alone, to trust myself when I was alone, but in most cases there was no room for just me. I was confined to the two impenetrable cages of home and school, and I felt a sense of restlessness. An agitated teenager. I fell in love with a girl, which of course was impossible. Because I didn't even know what a relationship was, I hadn't even spoken to her, and I was introverted and slow to respond. I was introverted and slow to react. I wanted to speak out against the values imposed on me by my teachers and parents, but I couldn't get the words out. I couldn't do anything right. This is in contrast to Gotanda, who was always on top of his game. However, I could catch the freshness of things, and that was a very comforting moment. A girl who is dreamy with her scent wafting around and tears dripping down her face. Rock and roll will always be rock and roll. The darkness in the movie theater is so gentle and intimate, the summer nights deep and endless and teasing. It was the music, the movies and the books that got me through these restless days and nights, and I memorized the lyrics of Kirk and Nelson's records. I built my own little world and lived in it.
I held Snow's hand. "It's all right," I said, "forget about that nonsense, school is not a place you have to go to if you don't want to
Yes. I know all too well that places like that are a complete mess, with repugnant guys acting up and cheesy teachers showing off their skills. To put it bluntly, 80% of the teachers are either incompetent or sadistic. If you are full of anger and have no place to vent it, you will take it out on your students by any means necessary. The school rules are so burdensome and boring, and the system of stifling individuality is so strong that it is impenetrable. Dumbasses with zero imagination get top grades, and so it was, and so it must be, and so it will always be."
"System of thought?" He fiddled with his fingers again with his earwheel, "That thing isn't much fun, it's the same as a handmade vacuum tube amplifier. Instead of spending
time on that hassle, why don't you go to a stereo equipment store and buy a new transistorized amp that's cheap and has good sound quality. If it breaks down, they'll come to your door and fix it right away, and you can even get a discount on the old one when you update it. This is not the time to talk about systems of thought. There was a time when that stuff had value, but today is different. Everything can be bought with money, and so can thinking. Just buy the right one, put it together and connect the dots, and save yourself a lot of trouble. You can use it the same day, just plug A into B. It's a snap. If it's old, just get a new one. It's easier to get a new one. If you are stuck in any system of thinking, you are bound to be left behind by the times. Right and wrong can't be manipulated, it can only make people upset."
"A highly developed capitalist society." I summarized.
"It's nostalgic!" He said, "Used to hear it all the time, back in junior high. 'The Beach Boys' - how can I put it, a unique sound
A kind of kissy-sweet sound. It always reminded me of the bright sunshine and the cool ocean, and there was a beautiful girl lying next to me. The song made one feel that the world was indeed real. It was a world of myths, of eternal youth, of fairy tales of innocence. There on the edge people were forever young and everything shone forever."
"I completely understand what you are saying." I said, "Though I am 34 years old, I regret that there are too many uncertainties, too many reserved matters, very disproportionate to my age
. Right now I am working it out little by little and I am doing my best. So in a little time I shall be able to explain various things to you accurately, and I think we shall be able to understand each other further."
"Nothing but talk of waiting." I explained, "The water comes to you. You must not strive to achieve anything, but take advantage of the situation, and try to look at
things with a fair eye. Then the solution will come naturally. Everyone is too busy and too talented and has too much to do to be more interested in themselves than in serious consideration of fairness."
"Hey, is a man's desire to get a woman that strong?" Yuki suddenly asked me one day while lying on the beach.
"It is stronger. The degree certainly varies from person to person, but instinctively from the flesh, men want women. You know about sex in general
right?"
"Roughly." Snow used Baba's voice to say.
"There's a thing called libido," I explained, "which means wanting to sleep with girls - it's the natural order of things, and in order to keep the race -"
"There's a thing called libido," I explained. -"
"I don't want to hear about keeping up the race, spare me the clichés from physical hygiene class. I'm asking about libido, about what's going on with that stuff."
"Suppose you're a bird," I said, "and suppose you like to fly in the sky and get a great deal of pleasure out of it, but for some reason you can only do it once in a
while. That's right, like sometimes you can and sometimes you can't because of the weather or the wind or the seasons. If you can't fly for a number of days in a row, your energy builds up and you get irritated, feeling unduly demeaned and annoyed at yourself for not being able to fly. Do you understand this feeling?"
"Understand." She said, "It's often felt that way."
"Well then, in a word, that's libido."
Self-contained, easy, sophisticated, impeccable, and hallowed. No matter what the name of the mess, if it crosses a certain threshold, it is difficult to measure it on the scale of mere good and evil. This is because a peculiar, independent fantasy has arisen therein. Once fantasies are created, they inevitably begin to function as pure commodities. The highly developed capitalist society is all about uncovering commodities from all the gaps. Fantasy is the key. Selling sex, selling your body, class differences, personal attacks, perverted sexual desires, whatever, as long as it comes in a nice package with a nice label, it's a commodity in its own right. In a short while, it might be possible to order a call girl from a Seibu department store through the catalog.
"This is the world I live in, thinking that it's first class just to get your hands on a Hong Kong district, a European car, or a Rolex watch. It's boring as hell, it's not interesting! All in all, I would say that the plaything of necessity does not arise naturally, but is so artificially created and fabricated. It's really nothing more than taking something that no one needs and painting it with very needy fanciful colors. It's easy enough, just mass-produce the information. Live in the harbor, ride in a European car, wear a Rolex - so on and so forth. So people are convinced - live in Hong Kong, ride in a BMW, wear a Rolex. There is a kind of people who think that if they get these things, they are superior and different, but they do not realize that this is the only way to end up being the same as everyone else. Lack of imagination. That stuff is just propaganda and fantasy. I am tired of this trick, tired of my own life. I really want to live a decent life.
"Vulgar and boring guys are all over the place." Gotanda said dismissively, "All of them are assholes and
vampires who speculate in the materialistic city! Of course not all of them are like that, there are a few decent people, but more of them are scum, crooks with flowery words and honeyed tongues, and scoundrels who use their position to get money and women. These guys in the dark and in the dark rely on sucking the oil and water of this ugly world, see more and more fat, ugly and bloated, but also flaunt. This is the world we live in. Maybe you don't know, but there are a lot of these assholes out there. Sometimes I have to drink with these guys, and I always have to remind myself, "Hey, even if you're pissed off, you can't strangle them, because strangling these guys is an energy drain."
I leaned my back against the wall and listened to the rain for a while. "In a certain part it is, zingy maybe, but definitely not blissful. As you lack something, I lack something. So, it's not possible to live a proper decent life either, but it's just simply stepping on the dance steps and jumping around continuously. My body is familiar with the dance steps, and I can dance more than once, and I have been praised by some people for dancing well, but socially I am a complete zero. 34 years old, still not married, and without a career, I am just going through the motions. Not even a plan to buy a house in installments, let alone a sleepyhead. What's going to happen in the next 30 years, you think?"
That's basically what Gotanda and I talk about when we meet. Our tone is light, but the content is serious, so serious that we even need to add to it with jokes from time to time. The jokes are mostly not clever enough, but that doesn't matter, as long as they are jokes, jokes for the sake of jokes. All we need is the ****ing knowledge of jokes. As for how serious we are, only we know. We are both 34, which is just as tricky an age as 13, but of course in a different sense. Both have more or less begun to realize the true meaning of the phenomenon of getting older. And they have entered a period when they must prepare for it, when they need to get warm enough for the coming winter.
"Women sleep too much, get tired of it, enough! Sleep with as many as you can, and do the same thing." Gotanda then said. "Need love, hey,
To confess something major to you: the only person I want to sleep with is my wife."
"What to do and what not to do," I said, "is simply to treasure what cannot be put into words. It's a courtesy to the dead. Many things will naturally become clear with
time. What is left is left, what is not left is not left, time can solve most of the problems, what can not be solved you come back to solve.
It seems simple and not simple. The root is the same. Even if the part exposed to the ground is just a little bit, but with a hand pull will come out a lot one after another. Something like human consciousness is rooted and grows in the depths of darkness. The roots are intertwined and interwoven? The parts that cannot be parsed are too numerous. The true reason is understood only by the person, and even I am ignorant of it."
"We are crying for what you cannot cry for." Joy said in a low voice, speaking word for word as if she were commanding me, "We are weeping for what you
cannot weep for, and letting go of what you cannot let go of what you cannot let go of."
Hey, Yumekichi, don't leave me so alone again. Without you, it's like I've been thrown to the end of the universe by centrifugal force. Please, let me see you, connect me to something, hold me together with the real world. I don't want to be immortal, I'm a perfectly ordinary 34 year old man. I need you.