Somewhere Else to Be

From then on I had her in my memory with so much clarity that I could do what I wanted with her. I changed the color of her eyes according to my state of mind: the color of water when she woke, the color of syrup when she laughed, the color of light when she was annoyed. I dressed her according to the age and condition that suited my changes of mood: a novice in love at twenty, a parlor whore at forty, the queen of Babylon at seventy, a saint at one hundred.

awake

I’ve been awake through the wrong decisions
I’ve held my ground now I’m gaining soul
I bit my tongue through the cold realizations
I’ve been accused, but I’ve only begun

Everything changed the day he figured out there was exactly enough time for the important things in his life.

Come away with me, he said, we will live on a desert island. I said, I am a desert island. It was not what he had in mind.

“I stare at this ceaseless, rushing crowd and imagine a time a hundred years from now. In a hundred years everybody here - me included - will have disappeared from the face of the earth and turned into ashes or dust. A weird thought, but everything in front of me starts to seem unreal, like a gust of wind could blow it all away.”

Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore