A Poetic Excerpt from "Kafka on the Shore," by Haruki Murakami; a novel the New Yorker calls, "An insistently metaphysical mind-bender." A book that should be required reading for all living spirits.
"Oshima stays behind and helps me close up for the night.
"By any chance have you fallen in love with somebody?" he asks. "You seem kind of out of it."
I don't have any idea how I should respond. "Oshima," I finally say. "this is a pretty weird thing to ask, but do you think it's possible for someone to become a ghost while they're still alive?"
He stops straightening up the counter and looks at me. "A very interesting question, actually. Are you asking about the human spirit in a literary sense-metaphorically, in other words? Or do you mean in actual fact?"
"More in actual fact, I guess," I say.
"The assumption that ghosts literally exist?"
"Right."
Oshima removes his glasses, wipes them with his handkerchief, and puts them back on. "That's what's called a "living spirit.".....
Kafka on the Shore
You sit at the edge of the world,
I am in a crater that's 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.
(Refrain)
Kafka sits in 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.
More zap on Haruki Murakami here.
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