page 53
Moronic cynicis, is a form of naivete. It's naivete tunred inside out, it's naivete with a sneer.I suppose Keiko's parents paid your rent? Kerr asks the idiot Henry.
As a matter of fact they went further, replies the idiot Henry. They bought us the house. They're some of the most generous...
Kerr cuts him off. It figures, he snarls. Japenese banks are so low interest you'd have to be a douche to keep your money there. Return on investment? You might as well piss in a river and expect it to turn yellow. They probably expect a higher yield from the property market. But they're retarded. Japanese property has been on a death fart to desolation row for decades now.
page 83
From the way the idiot Dionysus Ralph tells it, you would think his voyage a ride to Hesperia in the plush velvet carriages of some starry railroad, rather than a visit to Japan in a cow. Strange astrological motifs were visible in a field of stars, he says. From high in the sky tiny villas with terracotta tiles could be seen, and ancient arenas, and poplar trees. A plume of steam streaked behind, and the music of the spheres chimed with the bell voices of a Kurzweil K250.
At last Japan came into view, and then Tokyo, that enormous Labyrinth, its ziggurat apartment blocks stirring in the blue dawn as it stretched and rewound the thin, taut thread of quotidian consciousness.
simulacrum?
page 108
The next part is hard to explain, says the idiot Gabriel Lewis. Have you ever felt a 'glow of meaning' around a thing, an object? No? You don't believe that objects have souls, or at least auras?
The experts look dubious.
All right, says the idiot Gabriel Lewis, what is I just say 'context'? An object has an original context, from which it draws its original meaning. I won't say that this is anything hifalutin or metaphysical; it's just meaning. But what I will tell you is that when I saw the objects coming out of their boxes they had this something, and when they disappeared down into the puckered metal hole they had it no longer.
Perhaps, somewhere else in the building, the objects were fitted with new, Japanese souls. Or perhaps it was sufficient simply to remove the souls they had on arrival, and put them directly and harmlessly into circulation in Japan.
page 186
Seen from a plane, the Milky Way is beautiful. Each of those pinpricks of light, you think to yourself is a star. You strain to the vastness of the cosmic cloud, and to notice strange geometric symbols crowding the night sky, as if an obsidian map were being projected there.
The vague shapes you see int he darkness through the porthole begin to wave like rushes or rice. There is a galactic paddy field up here! It's so eerie, with gentle distant thunderclaps panning across the Haruomi Hosono soundtrack.
The glows seems to coming from the galaxy itself. Tiny vector diamonds begin to tinkle and trip through the rice in waves of energy. I never realsied we were signing up for such beauty on this excursion.! This must be Elysian fields!
The gentian flowers are blooming. It's autumn at last. A warm chord from Hosono on the soundtrack- for this ia s scene from Night on the Galactic Railroad, 1985 animation feature based on a story by Kenji Miyazawa- herlads more and more gentians, lavender blue against the eerie green of the heavenly fields. Miyazawa's tale fills you with a deep sense of wonder, connectedness, and well-being. How could this writer, who felt so deeply, have died so young?
The gentians are so blue and so beautiful!
I'm going to jump out and pick some of them! exclaims one of the child-cats in the galactic railway train to the other, whose name is Campanella. I promise I'll be right back, okay?
It's too late, says Campanella. Look, Giovanni, we've already passed them! They're far behind.
Another green vector diamond zooms by, and you see the gentian fields receding rapidly into the distance.
Now the carriage is suffused with oddness, silence and stillness, taken in by the wide staring eyes of the cat children Giovanni and Campanella.
Itried my best, Campanella is saying. I hope my Mother forgives me for this.
Ah, our Mothers! They must be so far away by now! Everyone we've ever knownis so far away. We hope they're happy, but people are trulyhappiest when they do something good. If people really do try their best, everyone could be happy.
A gigantic polar bear is swimming in the bubbles. His paws are bigger than planets. Everyone we've ever known is suddenly present in the carriage with us. The dear faces of the ones we thought we had lost! Are they cats, or Japanes people? Idiots, or experts?
People are truly happiest when they do something good. If people really do try their best, everyone could be happy.
No sound at all is coming from the motors of the plane. There is an elephant in the room. Outside something is brightly illuminated. The sun is rising over Mount Fuji.
The sight moves us deeply. We have seen it only in the Shochiku Pictures logo- the old one fom the thirties, not the 1980s wavy-lined diagram. Yes, the old one with the vast snow-capped volcano towering above slow moving clouds, and calm horn music playing. And so Fuji looms. And so silently we are coming into land. And so soon we will be in Japan.