Never Lost

"Is there anything in this world that is never lost?

I believe there is, and you better believe it too."

― Haruki Murakami

**********

Dear Kate,

I was ransacking the library this weekend, literally from A to Z, and Chinese too, for fiction that speaks truth, the deepest truth that no fact could twist or untwist, words that do not bluff or puff.

I am not here to negotiate.

My friend has been sharing with me about his new relationship, one that is, from my perspective, damaging.  Damaged people damage.  He said he knows.

I know he knows.

He has opinion about many things.  Big things that would allow him to eschew intimacy, usually for the sake of the pragmatic, which we often take as necessary and hence beneficial.  Sometimes we need to kill a brother or two to hug a tree, keep saving the world to run away from salvation.

Intimacy.  Heart matter, you know?  I tried to help.  He appreciated the help but stayed helpless.

The heart doesn't matter, we go on lying to ourselves.  We need what needs be.  To see to our longing dying with our quest puts the matter to rest.

I took the above picture for my friend, sent it off right there in the library, using their free WiFi that I didn't need.  Pragmatic, necessary, beneficial, a few kilobytes of truth.

Are these the words I was looking for?  For my friend, maybe.  Haruki Murakami is for everybody.  (Is this his year to win the Nobel?)  The English translation is mine, from Chinese.  I don't pretend to know the original in Japanese.

Does the speaker mean there's something in this world that we cannot afford to lose?  He didn't answer.  Like Murakami's writing, my question wasn't hard.  It's the heart that was hardened, brittle.

If you could see through the picture and read Chinese, you can tell the book is "Pinball, 1973," Murakami's second novel.  He doesn't like the book, called it "immature and flimsy."

There are heart matters we can't get rid off.

Yours, Alex