In other words, if you have managed to live a ‘clean’ life so far, you owe that purely to the privilege of your own happiness.
*******
All life born into this world, regardless of its circumstances, is equally precious. I want to see a world in which everyone is allotted an equal share of moments in which they can say to themselves, in all honesty, that they are glad to have been born. That is my one real wish.
*******
Hadid was known in some circles as the Queen of the Unbuilt – of projects that for whatever reason never made it off the drawing board, buildings destined to remain purely in the realm of the conceptual. Hadid was blessed with extraordinary talents, but her designs were so revolutionary that sometimes it was as though reality itself did not have the capacity to accommodate them.
*******
Once, I looked up the etymology of the word ‘trash’ on my phone and learned that one of its original meanings was ‘fallen leaves’. Ever since, that’s what my father’s been to me. I find it funny to imagine the guy budding from a branch, rustling in the wind, turning red and falling to the ground.
This I liked less – his tendency to mansplain things I hadn’t actually asked about. Was his smooth, polite facade really just an attempt to mask his greatest flaw – that he was, at heart, illiterate? For all his computational might, it seemed AI-built didn’t have the strength to face up to his own weakness. He’d become so used to stealing the words of others without repercussion that he felt no shame, had no awareness even, of his own ignorance.
*******
A lifestyle in which money and time were converted into physical and mental wellbeing rather than external validation.
*******
I had laughed at the absurdity of denigrating a building of the future for being too futuristic. As someone commented, weren’t Japanese people supposed to have a particularly keen appreciation for the passing of time?
[…]
There was no question in my mind that Zaha Hadid’s National Stadium had to exist, that it had to become reality, and that its legacy could only ever be positive. Why? Because it was astonishingly beautiful. Hadid’s design had been chosen because only her stadium could supply Tokyo with the beauty it desperately needed. If it went unbuilt, the city would never be content. The stadium would be built because it had to be built; it would exist because it had to exist.
*******
Must. Should. The words, as firm as concrete, clanked and jolted within me. They were the sturdy columns and crossbeams I had erected to keep myself upright. I often spoke like this, using the language of will and obligation to put pressure on myself and those around me. I wanted to remove any unstable elements that had a chance, however remote, of causing the house I inhabited to collapse. If I used weaker materials – words like ‘maybe’ or ‘could’, as fragile as sand before it met cement – how could I expect to keep myself in one piece for the several decades I had left to live? It didn’t matter that they were just words, with no physical form of their own: if I didn’t strip them from my interior, they would render my foundations unstable. The whole structure would collapse in a second.
*******
cu cat citesc mai mult, cu atat cred mai intemeiat ca a meritat pe deplin premiul akutagawa, si imi imaginez membrii juriului zambind si minunandu-se “eeeh”tot mai mult, cu fiecare pagina…
And yet the moment the Tower became ‘Sympathy Tower Tokyo’ it achieved a texture, a sort of sticky mucosity that I could feel adhering to the furrows of my brain.
*******
I felt a sudden, overwhelming desire for equations, for the rush of energy they’d supply. With equations, there was only one right answer. You didn’t have to put yourself in the shoes of each of the numbers and adjust the solution accordingly. I longed for the equality of numbers, the soothing universality of their language.
*******
I wouldn’t want to share a drink with whoever invented katakana. It wasn’t just the stark, straight lines of the characters, entirely devoid of beauty or pride; it was the audacity of their claim to be able to represent any language in the world while looking like they would fracture the instant you removed a single stroke.
*******
Still, there was something absurd about this insistence on ascribing imaginary sensations to words – on perceiving them as hard or soft, heavy or light – and then actually allowing them to hurt my feelings.
*******
un monolog delicious privind limba japoneza, kanji si katakana, in care sunt inserate subtilitati – unele cu gust amar – privind societatea, diferentele intre generatii si perceptia limbajului, si politicul…
si ulima bucata, cu iz de sinestezie – fascinatia, febletea si tanjirea mea…
‘The scariest thing,’ he went on, ‘is when you can’t prove it. Are there anomalies . . . or no anomalies . . . is there an Exit 8 . . . or is there not . . .’
*******
Was it a memory from the distant past? A glimpse of a faraway future? It felt like both. A nostalgic future.
‘Maybe we’re stuck here ’cause we did something bad. We were learning about it in school – Dante’s Divine Comedy? Purgatory’s like this place between heaven and hell, where sinners wait for judgement while suffering.’
Purgatory? What is she even talking about? Sounds like one of those swirling spiral tower drawings I’ve seen before. But in a Japanese underground passage? Come on. That’s too surreal even for this place.
I leaned in and read aloud: ‘Do not overlook any anomalies . . . If you find an anomaly, turn back immediately . . . If you do not find any anomalies, do not turn back . . . Go out through Exit 8.’
This novel is an adaptation of the film based on the original game by KOTAKE CREATE
*******
With every flick of my thumb, all kinds of images spilled out in a never-ending stream, appearing and disappearing in an instant. It all seemed random, but apparently this was content selected by AI, based on my viewing and search history. If that’s true, then maybe this endless feed of images is just a mirror of my soul.
It was a small tablet made of sakura wood, inlaid with the aoi crest carved in silver: the three hollyhock leaves enclosed in a circle, which was the primary symbol of the Tokugawa Shogun and the shogunate.
Certain high officials of the shogunate called this tablet the ‘unquestionable token’. The holder of this token was allowed to enter the castle without naming themselves, even through the main gate.
It was also said that this ‘unquestionable token’ was managed by only two or three members of the council of roju. Which meant that only those who assumed the most extraordinary duties for the shogunate were allowed to carry it.
The sky was a clear deep blue. When Kohei had crossed the bridge to the foot of the Matsuchiyama Shoden temple, a single swallow grazed his cheek and flew like an arrow towards the River Ohkawa. Gazing after it, Kohei murmured, ‘It’ll be summer soon …’
*******
‘Iori and Oteru are happy with it, so why not? The line between truth and falsehood is paper-thin. Wrap yourself in a layer of untruth and live an honest life – there’s nothing wrong in that.’
*******
ma relaxeaza aceasta – nu comuniune, as spune comuniunea sfarseste la un moment dat in acceptare si obisnuinta – sarbatorire a anotimpurilor – in mentalitate, traditii, vesminte, gastronomie, produse, stil de viata, existenta insasi…
When he turned the corner of Hisamatsu, his attention was caught by the scent of the new leaves sprouting from the trees inside the walls of the mansion which drifted over the street. It was, without a doubt, the fragrance of a spring evening.
‘There’s nothing better than staying in bed on a morning of spring showers. Somehow, I feel as if fresh bamboo shoots might start sprouting up from this old body of mine.’
