BANANA YOSHIMOTO, ‘KITCHEN’
There, the long night came in perfect peace, and morning came.
But… I just wanted to sleep under the stars.
I wanted to wake up in the morning light.
Aside from that, I just drifted, listless.
In this world there is no place for sadness. No place; not one.
Perhaps because to me a kitchen represents some distant longing engraved on my soul. As I stood there, I seemed to be making a new start; something was coming back.
What I mean by ‘their happiness’ is living a life untouched as much as possible by the knowledge that we are really, all of us, alone.
Just when one can’t take anymore, one sees the moonlight. Beauty that seems to infuse into the heart: I know about that.
I understood. I understood it from the color of the sky, the shape of the moon, the blackness of the night sky under which we passed. The building lights, the streetlights, were unforgiving.
Everyone we love is dying. still, to cease living is unacceptable.
We are constantly making choices. with the breaths we take every day, with the expression in our eyes, with the daily actions we do over and over, we decide as though by instinct.
We’ve been very lonely, but we had it easy.
There are people I have yet to meet, others I’ll never see again. People who are gone before you know it, people who are just passing through.