kind of weird

lately, it's really been bothering me that, i don't know, the way people work like this every day from morning to night is kind of weird. hasn't it ever struck you as strange? i mean, all i do here is do the work that my bosses tell me to do the way they tell me to do it. i don't have to think at all. it's like i just put my brain in a locker before i start work and pick it up on the way home. i spend seven hours a day at a workbench, planting hairs into wig bases, then i eat dinner in the cafeteria, take a bath, and of course i have to sleep, like everybody else, so out of a twenty-four-hour day, the amount of free time i have is like nothing. and because i'm so tired from work, the "free time" i have i mostly spend lying around in a fog. i don't have any time to sit and think about anything. of course, i don't have to work on weekends, but then i have to do the laundry and cleaning i've let go, and sometimes i go into town, and before i know it the weekend is over. i once made up my mind to keep a diary, but i had nothing to write, so i quit after a week. i mean, i just do the same thing over and over again, day in, day out.

but still--but still--it absolutely does not bother me that i'm now just a part of the work i do. i don't feel the least bit alienated from my life. if anything, i sometimes feel that by concentrating on my work like this, with all the mindless determination of an ant, i'm getting closer to the "real me." i don't know how to put it, but it's kind of like by not thinking about myself i can get closer to the core of myself. that's what i mean by "kind of weird."

--may kasahara

pessimistic

"can you give me a concrete example of what you mean by that--to die little by little?"

"well...i don't know. you're trapped in the dark all alone, with nothing to eat, nothing to drink, and little by little you die..."

"it must be terrible," i said. "painful. i wouldn't want to die like that if i could help it."

"but finally, mr. wind-up bird, isn't that just what life is? aren't we all trapped in the dark somewhere, and they've taken away our food and water, and we're slowly dying, little by little...?"

i laughed. "you're too young to be so...pessimistic," i said, using the english word.

"pessi-what?"

"pessimistic. it means looking only at the dark side of things."

"pessimistic...pessimistic..." she repeated the english to herself over and over, and then she looked up at me with a fierce glare. "i'm only sixteen," she said, "and i don't know much about the world, but i do know one thing for sure. if i'm pessimistic, then the adults in this world who are not pessimistic are a bunch of idiots."