We are one
What are you so eager to do?
I wonder if that is the case.
If you let your guard down, the days will just melt away.
Some days, the sake washes away the saltiness from the edamame and dissolves it, but other days, like a square of butter being rolled around in a hot frying pan, it melts away, unable to resist trying to maintain its shape.
Putting it into words sounds so simple and banal that it's almost disgusting, but the one thing that is certain about humans and life is death. Death means the disappearance of matter and will, and no matter how much you think about it, it's nothing more and nothing less. If that's the case, then what is the point of living? What on earth are we striving for every day with our bodies and cells, whose functions will decline and which are destined to disappear eventually?
I wonder where that man who had spoken such loving words to me, "I want to remember even the smallest things we did together," is now, what he's doing, and what little things about me he remembers. I wonder if the girl who had looked coldly at me and said, "I wish you would die," before throwing my bag into the sea, remembers the image of the prints that flew out of my bag like flapping wings. Even though I had no recollection of the young assistant director who had timidly approached me and said, "Hikorohee-san bought me a drink that time."
Humans start out immature, learn social skills and ethics, and grow—or rather, adapt—perhaps. But if that's the case, then why do we adapt? We can't even see who will be sad for us after we die, and we can't even do the ego-searching that we most want after we die, so what do we care about, what do we want to be, and how do we want to be thought of, and why do we adapt?
And yet, we coexist with objects that are destined to disappear. "Love," "conflict," "joy," "sorrow," or even "fate," "money," and "influence" rain down on us like various kinds of nuts on ice cream. But the ice cream itself melts. It melts no matter what. Time passes. The ice cream melts slowly and surely. All that remains are the tiny, tiny nuts that were never meant to be the subject.
The days melt away, and even if you write them down in your diary because you don't want to forget, they melt away and never go back to the way they were. And so the ice cream melts. What do you want to leave behind in your cup as you melt? What will remain of me as I melt away in my cup? Essentially, what I'm trying to say is that I just bought some ice cream at the convenience store and it was delicious, and that alone made me so happy, and even though not even a dog would eat such happiness and even I tend to forget it, I thought for a moment that I don't want to let this insignificant, meaningless day melt away.
This month's Hikorohi
