2021/10/28

I’ve read Toshiyuki Horie’s “Forgetting days at a riverbank” at last. This novel is a collection of very short chapters (maybe they are so-called “fragments”). This novel doesn’t have any stories and also stays quiet. It is like a ship the main character in this novel lives in. The story goes nowhere. The main character reads Chekhov and thinks deeply. But I won’t say this is “boring”. For me, the other stories that tell us orthodox stories, which remind us of some deja vu, “stop” telling stories. This novel tells me a new way of viewing the world and writing a new novel. I haven’t read it until now so it’s a kind of “stock” for me. But it wasn’t a waste.

A Japanese musician Takao Tajima says that he carries Taro Okamoto’s book and reads it at the places he goes. What is the book I am carrying in my bag? I thought about this. I don’t read kindles (just because they make my eyes tired) so I want to carry one or two thin paperback(s) in my bag and carry. How about Kenichi Yoshida’s “Time”? As the title tells us, this book is about the theory of flowing “time”. It seems philosophical thinking but also just nonsense that has been written by the pen’s automatic movement. So I can’t memorize the content. It gives me a deep pleasure while reading.

I thought about my life. About success… Maybe I had lived at a hard period too long, or probably I had had too huge pride about my writing, so I had believed that I could/would become big. I wouldn’t end this life as this kind of a tiny worker… and I had waited for the beginning of success. I got at my 46 years old but it has never come. Or I should say that I have already achieved my success in my past days. Of course, I couldn’t become a bestseller writer. But I have had many nice friends who understand me and they read my writing seriously.

Maybe because of that kind of life, I can’t believe/trust the dreams or successes which people treat as beautiful things. Of course, money and fame are basically necessary for us. I also think that I want to get victories. I even say that I want to live with a lot of money every day. But if we thought that we should become successful people, then we felt that “now” was a miserable period, and the fact that we couldn’t achieve success made some kind of pressure for us. If we couldn’t accept the current situation, then our life becomes heavy-duty, and it might become a loser’s life.