Chapter 21 The three exits of the world

One of the protagonists, "Mouse", told the bartender Jie from China at the bar at the end of the story that he was leaving this place. "Where did you say you were going to leave?" "I don't have a specific goal. I think of places I haven't been to, preferably places that are not too big. I have thought about it a lot, and I have thought about where to go. The result is the same. But I still have to go. Even if it is the same." Before the mouse said these words, he had just ended a not so fruitful interaction with a woman.He left the bar and opened a map of Japan.Flipping through the pages one by one, I made a sound and read the names of several small places.Suddenly, drowsiness struck.The mouse was thinking, as long as he fell asleep, he would not need to explain anything to anyone, and he would enter the ocean of dreams, peaceful and peaceful, and he would never have to think about anything again.

What needs to be emphasized here is not just that the mouse chose to leave when faced with irresolvable loneliness and loss, and then headed for a place without a specific goal.In fact, even before he set out, his way of facing nothingness is sometimes drowsy, sometimes lucid ronin form, his feet have not started, and Cun Xin has long been exiled, which makes him often go to bars and have trysts with women in instability and ups and downs The place. The rat's wandering is not an attempt to exit, but a performance of wandering between the entrance and the exit. There is no guarantee or control over whether there will be an exit in the end.

The mouse longed for a good night's sleep at last, and was tired before he started wandering.It's the tiredness of the mind, the longing to be in a dream-like state where you don't have to think anymore.Just like the ending of "The End of the World and Grim Wonderland", the protagonist will bid farewell to the world through deep sleep, and travel from here to "over there". Later, in the movie, the mouse turned into a sheep man, and he has entered another world. He really went to "there" and got entangled with "that". He would rather die than let "that" sheep use him to change the world. into a kingdom of complete anarchism.

Does this count as an exit for rats?Can he guarantee that this is the exit?The mouse felt that the problem was his cowardice, and all the loss and mutation started from there. "Weakness is something that gradually rots in the human body, like gangrene. I have felt it since I was a teenager, so I am often irritable." Weakness is his entrance, through which he comes into contact with nothingness and his own heart The dark side of it, and almost swallowed it, almost gone forever. The mouse eventually disappeared.Although it is not a meaningless disappearance, although on the surface he prevented the further expansion of the tragedy, for the actor, his friend still disappeared, and the incident made him cry for two hours by the river.After finally standing up, I slapped off the sand particles attached to my pants, but I didn't know where to go.When he took a step, there was a gentle sound of waves behind him.The narrative also ends here.

This is a typical hanging ending of Murakami's novels.Suspension means the delay of meaning and feeling, which will not be exhausted, and is also conducive to the elongation of the feeling of spiritual journey.The mouse's longing for dreamland is the normal state of drowsiness in the face of nothingness. If we want, we can even sort out a philosophy from it. Haruki Murakami specifically proposes that thinking (not logical thinking, but thinking through storytelling and literary writing) is to balance people's lives.Lack of this balance for a long time, the elephant will disappear, the cat and the wife will disappear, and the TV people will come to you!The way to stop thinking without losing your balance is to:

Into a dream, never to come out again. This happens to be the hope of the mouse before the trip.German film director Wim Wenders's other work "Until the End of the World" besides "Paris, Texas" describes a scientist who invented a dream reader, which can be used by awake people Seeing their own dreams, the result is that dream readers are all intoxicated in dreams, self-enclosed, and sleepy even though they are awake.In the dream, they seem to regain their lost memories, feelings, and feelings in the past, and they seem to be restored to their integrity.However, for their relatives and loved ones, they are even more lost. They are not much different from the dead, or people who have become completely blank due to the complete transition of good things from one side to "there".It doesn't matter if you have a dream, it may be a pity to use the theory of "sleep" as a way to balance your body and mind.However, if they never return and never return to reality, they will just enter themselves and stay "over there".

Wandering between the exit and the entrance, I found a new entrance instead, and it was an entrance that would never come out again.Looking for the lost thing, but in the end even I become the lost thing. Drowsiness makes people frown and look sad rather than feel that they have found a way out. Between the beauty of dreams and the cruelty of reality, the author seems to have chosen the latter. "Where there is an entrance, there is an exit. Most things are born this way. Post office boxes, electric vacuum cleaners, zoos, soy sauce pots. Of course, some are not like this" ().Like Dreamland.

People who have read it will probably feel a little moved by the characters in the book who are so preoccupied with asking the other party not to forget themselves and always remember themselves. Boyfriend Muyue committed suicide, she was terminally ill, Naoko who hanged herself later, never loved the hero Watanabe, but she wanted him to remember her forever; Reiko, who took care of her, also hoped that the hero would not forget her , she herself will not forget Naoko and him. The most direct way for mortals to fight against nothingness and absolute loneliness is memory.Keep in mind what has happened and what you think is meaningful, and hold it firmly in your hands.When the loneliness is unbearable and the body is cold, it is also possible to warm the body by recalling good things.

Milan Kundera's (1929-) The Book of Laughter and Forgetting begins by emphasizing that remembering and forgetting are the very things that play a key role in power struggles.But where does keeping in mind what takes us?Like Tamina in the novel, she was exiled from the Czech Republic to open a coffee shop in Western Europe.Her beloved husband died, and in order to retrieve the love letter between them, she did everything she could to ask someone to go back to Prague, but the result was in vain. Forgetting is also a way of remembering.When you think you remember, you may often remember wrongly; but even if you remember wrongly, or everyone forgets, things are often preserved in another way at the edge of memory.Like the Clementis hat on Gottvar's head on the balcony in Prague. (According to "Laughing and Forgetting", the leader of the Czech Communist Party, Gottwa, once waved to the crowd with the revolutionary comrade Clementis on the balcony of Prague. Mendes was executed for treason, and Clementis's image has been scratched out of photographs of the event, leaving only the hat he gave Gottwa to put on his head. The narrative Found at the beginning of "Laughing and Forgetting".)

In fact, with the passage of time, the image of Naoko in Watanabe's heart has gradually become blurred.Too many things are forgotten, but forgetting makes Watanabe understand Naoko better. (Because of the distance.) In the novel, the narrator is Watanabe; through the way of writing novels, incomplete memories can be put into incomplete containers, and by forgetting many things, the things that have not been forgotten can be preserved. Save it somehow. Writing is just one way of dealing with memory.Memory is not enough, we can only write it down.Writing it down will inevitably include the part of remembering and reorganizing. What happened has passed and will never come back.Writing is not to record what has happened, nor is it to allow us to re-read the written words, so that it is easier to recall the events of the year.Writing is a kind of transformation, a process of turning something that can no longer be returned into another way of being.It becomes a dynamic way that no longer needs to think about whether to remember or not.

The way out of Murakami's situation is exactly what he himself has been practicing-writing.Isn’t the way to fight against nothingness, one of the great ways to fight against loneliness, to seek balance through writing, reading and thinking at the same time? If there is no balance, the beautiful things and meanings will gradually disappear, and nothingness will continue to swallow us and life. How to maintain balance is really a great question.In the most difficult days (when he was tossed by Naoko's love), Naka Watanabe also relied on writing letters to keep his life that had already been torn apart. However, writing is, after all, a matter of the second order.Therefore, the balance is spiritual. No matter how rich the achievements are, there is a distance between the spiritual achievements and the body.When this distance is expressed in time, it requires waiting. Between the time we start thinking (that is, writing) and when thinking comes into play, we need time, we need to wait. Haruki Murakami arranged waiting opportunities for his characters, and arranged opportunities after waiting, so that they have a reference point that can at least temporarily continue when they are at a loss, perhaps based on the same starting point. Just like the protagonist Okada Hiroshi, his wife suddenly ran away from home, revealing that he has been unable to deal with nothingness in his life well, and after he was about to suffer the consequences, the psychic Kanama told him how to deal with it: Wait .When everything seems to be stuck together and I don't know what to do, I can only wait.When it's time to wait, wait.What are you waiting for?Some special signs, some critical moments that can become turning points, when these moments come, grasp it, and the situation will improve. Rather than saying that the first exit of Murakami's situation is writing/thinking, it is better to say that waiting is the real means.You can say that waiting enables writing and thinking to take place, or you can say that waiting is done in the way that writing and thinking take place.Waiting makes the spiritual wayfinding process of the second order have achievable expectations—writing down, transforming, and thinking about something.Even if it's only a temporary result, even if it's just a thought, the physical pain and loneliness cannot be eliminated immediately, and the cold air of nothingness cannot be dispelled, but as long as you wait, there will be a future, a future that can be waited for. At the end, Watanabe, who bids farewell (at least temporarily) "over there" with Naoko's death and a free talk with Reiko, comes to the phone booth and shakes the phone. He has always loved him, but because he can't get rid of Naoko's shadow, he has a good time with him. Kobayashi Green (Midori) who communicates.On the phone, he told her to talk to her anyway.He said he had a lot to say and had to say it to her.In this world, there is nothing but her.He wants to meet her and start everything from scratch. Midori was silent on the other end of the phone for a long time. "It is as silent as the drizzle of the world's rain on the green grass of the world."Watanabe rested her head against the glass of the phone booth until she spoke.In a calm voice she asked where he was. Where are you now? where am i now "I continued to hold the receiver and raised my face to look around the phone booth. Where am I now? I don't know what it is. I can't guess. Where is this place? All I see is nowhere The crowd hurried past me. And I could only stand in that unknown place, calling Midori’s name non-stop.” Is Midori Watanabe's exit?Watanabe had better believe it, and the reader hoped so, with his head resting against the glass of the phone booth, waiting, waiting for Midori's answer, for the exit that might open up in front of him.All the thoughts and memories he had done before were poured into the shouts at that moment, and the shouts were like spells, turning decay into magical expectations, surging into the hearts of readers. The same telephone booth scene reappears at the end of "Sputnik Lover", but the actual meaning of the two is quite different.The person who shook the phone changed, and it was Xiao Jin who had just returned from "over there".Midori didn't make a specific response to Watanabe, and his call would turn into words that disappeared into the void at any time.However, Xiao Jin got an exact response from the male lead. Although she hasn't been able to meet her above, the two have already connected in real life, and the rest only needs to be drawn closer.In contrast, the hanging ending of the movie can better reflect the meaning of waiting. The difference between the two can also be seen that Murakami's expression of the exit has changed considerably. If writing, thinking, and waiting are imaginary and static, then the second outlet - dancing, should be said to be real and dynamic. Dancing is a metaphor.We immediately imagine that in order to insist on staying "this side", the hero is relentlessly walking his own dance steps. The beginning is a root-seeking story.The hero is trying his best to maintain the life of a so-called normal person.However, in fact, he has nowhere to go, and spends his time year after year, unable to love someone seriously.My heart is no longer shocked, I don't know what I am after, I want to seek a good result, but nothing seems to work.The body keeps aging, and the mind keeps rigid; the only thing he knows is that he has a wonderful connection with a place called the Dolphin Hotel.It's a pity that the hotel has been demolished, and he moved into the new Dolphin Hotel, waiting for the contact (the connection between "here" and "over there") to find him, until the sheep man met him in the alien space that was said to belong to him, and suggested He danced against the invasion of nothingness. An alien space belonging to individuals, as long as a specific individual is willing, he can find it and enter it.People who have a relationship with this body must also enter this space. This space is like the country entered through the bottom of the well in "The Clockwork Bird Chronicle". side".When the balance is maintained, the two sides are closely connected, and the person concerned goes deep into the depths of his heart to understand his own journey; but when the balance is unbalanced, he (she) may stay there and cannot return to this side, the body on this side, It will become empty, and people will live like walking dead. To use the analogy of Taoism, although a person keeps losing precious things in his life, there is no question of who is right and who is wrong.Life is inevitable.However, if all the things that can be picked up at the same time as the loss are kept, the individual will be gradually harmed.If there is loss but no gain, the balance is lost.Over time, the situation cannot be recovered, and people (life) are no longer complete.Good things stay "over there" and won't come back. Here, regarding the contingency and suddenness of loss, Murakami tries to provide an answer—if you like it, you can call it "the sheep man's answer".The key is: put down what should be picked up!It turned out that it was not all accidental to come to this field, but we still don't understand why we can't pick it up, when it started, and why it started at that "time" that we don't know when.The key point is also: it is not enough to be connected, it is not enough for a person to just think and wait, he (she) has to do something! To do something is to dance, and to dance for nothing, that is, without any purpose. "Keep dancing as long as there is music. Don't think about why you dance, don't ask for its meaning. The connection will disappear, forever. In this way, you will gradually be attracted by this side (the sheep man's side, which is ours) So you can't stop dancing. No matter how absurd and boring you feel, you don't mind, just keep dancing. Then the stiff things will gradually loosen, and there should be room for redemption. Use what you can, do your best, and don’t be afraid.” Dancing without a specific goal is almost reminiscent of Sisyphus who is constantly trying to push the stone up the mountain without asking for success.Even if you think it's ridiculous, even if you think what you're doing is useless, keep going—isn't it just a copy of Sisyphus? However, if you think about it carefully, there is still a difference.Sisyphus loves life and loves the world. In Camus's pen, he is a hero who overcomes the absurd life dilemma with strong will.He's a superhero without hesitation. Haruki Murakami's life dancers are just powerless elements struggling to survive on the edge of loss and chaos.Dancing is to prevent the situation from deteriorating, not to turn punishment into experience and test like pushing a stone up a mountain. In other words, the former is only a negative action, while the latter is an active overcoming. Dancing, don't let nothingness seize you, the parties don't stop acting, as long as there is vitality (music), you can't give up.Specifically, what do you do without giving up?Don't give up and hold on to the real thing, don't let go, hold it tightly, confirm its authenticity, and let yourself stay in this world with real feelings. In the final analysis, maybe the non-stop dancing, the pursuit of real love, and the twin-style getting in and out of bed are always on the same road.For the threat of devouring nothingness, we can only delay as much as possible, and try to postpone things as much as possible.It doesn't matter if we cling to the real body, what we do may be to temporarily shelter from the wind and rain.Love still trembles in the dark. What is even more ironic is that in another Murakami story "The Dancing Dwarf", dancing has become a temptation to sell one's soul.The dwarf who is good at dancing came to find the male protagonist in his dream. In addition to showing his breath-taking and jaw-dropping dancing skills, he also helped him possess the girl he likes.However, the condition is that the dwarf enters the body, wins the heart with a wonderful dance, and does not make a sound until the girl is obtained.Otherwise, his body is taken over by the dwarf. The hero finally defeated the dwarf by will, but the other party said to him, you won, but I will come again; you can win many times, but you can only lose once, and then you have nothing.How many times can the male lead turn him down? The metaphor of dancing as an exit is not flat and one-way. In "The Dancing Dwarf", dancing is the hero's exit from the ordinary and dull life, but it is also the entrance of eternal doom. The situation is like the above mentioned, staying in the dream forever. "Children of God All Dance" does not directly talk about loss, emptiness and death.But it clearly shows Murakami's new thinking about the way out. Yoshiya’s mother gave birth to him at the age of 18 with the doctor who performed an abortion for her, but later she believed in God, thinking that it was God who made her pregnant, and that Yoshiya is also the son of God.There was a major earthquake in Kobe and Osaka. When Yoshiya's mother and other believers went to the disaster relief, he met a man who might be the doctor on the Tokyo subway.Shan followed him without hesitation until he reached an uninhabited baseball field on the outskirts of the city.The man disappeared as if evaporated.Shin, too, was dancing on that baseball pitcher's pitch near midnight. For Yoshiya, following the man to the current "dance hall" can probably be regarded as a manifestation.But this manifestation was not a miracle.It just shows what Yoshiya has been chasing, "Maybe it's something like the dark tail that I hold myself." He happened to meet "that", and then tracked it down. In the middle of the night, it is also the darkness of human nature. The deep lost trace of that. The story's stalking reminded me almost immediately of Totoshi Nakaokada's stalking of the man whose palms were burned in a bar in Sapporo, and then discovering "that".Okada Hiroshi followed his uncle's advice and looked at people's faces on the street, waiting for any information to appear, allowing him to find clues to find his missing wife.One day, he finally saw a man who performed burning palms in a Sapporo bar a year ago.Since his wife was undergoing an abortion in Tokyo when he watched the performance, he intuitively felt that meeting the man was a turning point in his relationship with his wife.He follows the man, but is ambushed.The anger in his heart made him beat that person back, and afterwards he felt that "that" found him in the violence. Yoshiya's dance is not the dance against being swallowed by nothingness; nor is Yoshiya's dance the charming, blissful, sinful dance of "The Dancing Dwarf."Yoshiya's dance is a dance of peace performed by the dark heart in front of the dark underground power.He is not struggling in front of nothingness, he is building his own rhythm in nothingness.As he danced, he felt that something was watching him, but what did that matter?Looking at the shadow that accompanied him, it also came from the beast inside him.The evil is so close and real, he dares to confront his desire for his mother even after the dance, for which he also had a sexual desire!But what does that matter?The important thing is: "Maybe we will never see that again"; The important thing is: "Our hearts are not stones. Stones may crumble one day, and they may lose their form. But hearts will not crumble. We, invisible things, no matter Whether good or bad, they can be endlessly communicated to each other." Goodness is also dancing, and children of other gods are dancing; each of them works hard, and each conveys information and intentions to the other. Clearly admit darkness and evil, dance with it, admit that it comes from within yourself, there is nothing to resist, the important thing is how to transform the dark power in the crisis and restriction; the key seems to be the communication between people , People help each other; others are not a tool to be used to express selfish desires.Shunzi meets Miyake; Satsuki meets Nimit; Yoshiya meets Mr. Tabata, who also has a desire for his mother. It may not be accurate to say that they are in love with each other, but their communication and exchanges with each other, and the mutual understanding of the soul, make people feel happy. There is a possibility of comfort in a situation where life is worse than death. Before the end of the narration, Yoshiya’s “Where is God” is not a call to the supernatural or ultimate power, and of course it is not gratitude to God, but a sigh of relief at last, surrounded by darkness and still under the appearance of “that”. You can stretch your arms and legs, the shadow of collapse gradually recedes, and there is a place to breathe in hell. The transition from the mid-to-high anxiety and anxious dance steps to the moderate dance of "God's Children Are All Dancing" is really like "the apes on both sides of the strait can't hold back, and the light boat has passed ten thousand mountains".