South of the border, west of the sun

I was convinced everyone in the whole world lived in a single family home with a garden and a pet and

commuted to work decked out in a suit. I couldn’t for the life of me imagine a different lifestyle. (4)

I detested the term only child. Every time I heard it, I felt something was missing from me—like I wasn’t quite a complete human being. The phrase only child stood there, pointing an accusatory finger at me. (5)

But what really depressed and hurt me was something else: the fact that everything they thought about me was true. (5)

But I detected something else—something warm and fragile just below the surface. Something very much like a child playing hideandseek, hidden deep within her, yet hoping to be found. (6)

Something about her was unbalanced, and not many people felt she was much to look at. There was an adult part of her and a part that was still a child—and they were out of sync. And this out of sync quality made people uneasy. (7)

But there was one major difference between us—more than I did, Shimamoto consciously wrapped herself inside a protective shell. (8)

This was music from another world, which had its appeal, but more than that I loved it because she was a part of that world. (10)

But that was it. Finally I stopped going. We were both at a delicate age, when the mere fact that we were

attending different schools and living two train stops away was all it took for me to feel our worlds had changed completely. (17)

But I had almost no desire to talk with anyone about the experience I gained through books and music. I felt happy just being me and no one else. (20)

It was a strange feeling. I was no longer alone, yet at the same time I felt a deep loneliness I’d never known before. (23)

That a person can, just by living, damage another human being beyond repair. (28)

She was basically an honest, pleasant girl, someone people liked. But our interests were worlds apart. She couldn’t understand the books I read or the music I listened to, so we couldn’t talk as equals on these topics. In this sense, my relationship with her differed dramatically from that with Shimamoto. (30)

What confused and disappointed me, though, was that I could never discover within her something special that existed just for me. (31)

Naked, we had nothing to hide. I felt I knew more about her than ever before, and she must have felt the same. What we needed were not words and promises but the steady accumulation of small realities. (33)

I wasn’t used to opening up to others. She was opening up to me, but I couldn’t do the same. I really did like her, yet still something held me back. (38)

I was always attracted not by some quantifiable, external beauty, but by something deep down, something

absolute. (42)

But there also are scents that only one or two people will find wildly exciting. And I have the ability, from far away, to sniff out those special scents. When I do, I want to go up to the girl who radiates this aura and say, Hey, I picked it up, you know. No one else gets it, but I do. (42)

At first I thought: Okay, I’ll do my best, try to find something worthwhile in it; and for half a year I worked my butt off. Give it your best shot, and something good’s bound to happen, right? But I gave up. No matter how you sliced it this wasn’t the job for me. (50)

“The way you move your hands, your eyes, the way you’re always tapping something with your fingertips, the way you knit your eyebrows like you’re displeased about something—these haven’t changed a bit. Underneath the Armani suit it’s the same old Hajime.” (91)

“I’m not angry. I don’t get angry at things like that. This is a bar, after all. People come when they want to, leave when they feel like it. My job’s just to wait for them.” (101)

At long last I could understand Izumi’s loneliness when we were going out. Shimamoto had her own little world within her. A world that was for her alone, one I could not enter. Once, the door to that world had begun to open a crack. But now it was closed. (143)

“Hajime, you can’t tell anything from photographs. They’re just shadow. The real me is far away. That won’t show up in a picture.” (145)

“Hajime,” she began, “the sad truth is that certain types of things can’t go backward. Once they start going forward, no matter what you do, they can’t go back the way they were. If even one little thing goes awry, then that’s how it will stay forever.” (147)

“Lovers born under an unlucky star,” she said. “Sounds like it was written for the two of us.” “You mean we’re lovers?” “You think we’re not?” (169)

But something’s missing. I have a family, a job, and no complaints about either. You could say I’m happy. Yet I’ve known ever since I met you again that something is missing. The important question is what is missing. Something’s lacking. In me and my life. And that part of me is always hungry, always thirsting. Neither my wife nor my children can fill that gap. In the whole world, there’s only one person who can do that. You. (179)

I took a deep breath, trying to pull myself back to reality. But that reality was like nothing I’d ever seen before: a reality that didn’t seem to fit. (187)

There is no middle ground. Probably is a word you may find south of the border. But never, ever west of the sun. (196)

Because memory and sensations are so uncertain, so biased, we always rely on a certain reality—call it an

alternate reality—to prove the reality of events.(200)

Therefore, in order to pin down reality as reality, we need another reality to relativize the first. Yet that other reality requires a third reality to serve as its grounding. An endless chain is created within our consciousness, and it is the very maintenance of this chain that produces the sensation that we are actually here, that we ourselves exist. But something can happen to sever that chain, and we are at a loss. What is real? Is reality on this side of the break in the chain? Or over there, on the other side? (201)