It is hard to be an individual in Japan.

On any given day, something claims our attention. Anything at all, inconsequential things. A rosebud, a misplaced hat, that sweater we liked as a child, an old Gene Pitney record. A parade of trivia with no place to go. Things that bump around in our consciousness for two or three days then go back to wherever they came from... to darkness. We've got all these wells dug in our hearts. While above the wells, birds flit back and forth.

Things pass us by. Nobody can catch them. That's the way we live our lives.

There are ways of dying that don't end in funerals. Types of death you can't smell.

What makes us the most normal," said Reiko, "is knowing that we're not normal.

As long as I stared at the clock, at least the world remained in motion. Not a very consequential world, but in motion nonetheless. And as long as I knew the world was still in motion, I knew I existed. Not a very consequential existence, but an existence nonetheless. It struck me as wanting that someone should confirm his own existence only by the hands of an electric wall clock. There had to be a more cognitive means of confirmation. But try as I might, nothing less facile came to mind.

Maybe working on the little things as dutifully and honestly as we can is how we stay sane when the world is falling apart.