kafka on the shore
These images serve as a visual interpretation of the novel Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami.
“You are part of a brand new world.”
“Fate is like a small sandstorm that keeps changing directions. You change direction, but the storm adjusts. Over and over you play this out like some ominous dance with death before dawn. Why? Because the storm isn’t something that blew in from far away, something that has nothing to do with you. The storm is you. Something inside you. So all you can do is give into it, step right inside the storm, closing your eyes and plugging up your ears so the sand doesn’t get in, and walk through it, step by step. There’s no sun there, no moon. No direction, no sense of time. Just fine white sand swirling up like pulverized bones. That’s the kind of sandstorm you need to imagine.”
“In everybody’s life there is a point of no return, and in a very few cases, a point where you can’t go forward anymore. And when we reach that point, all we can do is quietly accept the fact. That’s how we survive.”
“It’s like I’m here, but in a way, it’s not me.” “There’s still time. You can still get your self back.”
“Every one of us is losing something precious to us. Lost opportunities, lost possibilities, feelings we can never get back again That’s part of what it means to be alive”
“A long time ago I abandoned someone I shouldn’t have. Someone I loved more than anyone else. I was afraid someday I’d lose this person, so I had to let go myself.”
“I have no idea how well memories will stand up, how long they’ll last.”
“If you remember me, then I don’t care if everybody else forgets.”
“It’s like I told you, if you need me, I’ll be here.”
“People need a place they can belong.”
“He’d returned to this world with his mind wiped clean. The proverbial blank slate.”
“We’re so caught up in our everyday lives that events of the past, like ancient stars that have burned out, are no longer in orbit around our minds”
“They were being asked about something that couldn’t remember taking place.”
“Mr. Nakata said he’s empty. Maybe he is, for all I know. But what does that make me?”
“Living turned me into nothing.”
“‘Could you tell me what memories are like?’
‘Memories warm you up from the inside. But they also tear you apart.’”
“A bit of shape and form has disappeared from the world, increasing the amount of nothingness.”
“I don’t know why that had to happen or why it had to be me.”
You sit at the edge of the world,
I am in a crater that is no more.
Words without letters
Standing in the shadow of the door.
The moon shines down on a sleeping lizard,
Little fish rain down from the sky.
Outside the window there are soldiers,
Steeling themselves to die.
Kafka sits on a chair by the shore,
Thinking of the pendulum that moves the world, it seems.
When your heart is closed,
The shadow of the unmoving Sphinx
Becomes a knife that pierces your dreams.
The drowning girl’s fingers,
Search for the entrance stone, and more.
Lifting the hem of her azure dress,
She gazes –
At Kafka on the shore.
– Kafka on the Shore, Haruki Murakami