shojojidais

[shojojidais]

But an eight-year-old soul does not believe the arguments of reason. It shrinks into itself, quietly trembling and whimpering. An eight-year-old soul does not believe that this is the sound of a bell. Later, in daytime, it will believe this, but now, alone, defenseless, and in anguish, it does not know that this is a bell calling people to church. Who knows what this sound might be? It is sinister. If anguish and fear could be translated into sound, this is the sound they would make. If anguish and fear could be translated into color, it would be this uncertain, murky gray.

And the impression made by this predawn anguish will remain with this little creature for many years, for her whole life. This creature will continue to be woken at dawn by a fear and anguish beyond understanding. Doctors will prescribe sedatives; they will advise her to take evening walks, or to give up smoking, or to sleep in an unheated room, or with the window open, or with a hot water bottle on her liver. They will counsel many, many things—but nothing will erase from her soul the imprint of that predawn despair.

Teffi, "Kishmish"

[shojojidais]

She had always hated morals. She rejected conclusions and the myths they create in a world that erupts suddenly like a volcano, like a landslide, like a silent shadow wandering in search of a crumbling body.

The Naked Woman, Armonía Somers

[shojojidais]

A man was murdered, but there was not a drop of blood in sight, not a moment's struggle, not even any faint moaning. It was a quiet, seductive sort of crime, carried out as gently as a lover's whisper. I felt no stirring of conscience, and found myself transfixed by the sheer beauty of what seemed to flicker like a bright and colorful painting before my eyes. When the woman said 'frightening things are always beautiful,' and 'demons are as beautiful as the gods,' the words sounded to me like they were describing not just those gemlike test tubes, but the woman herself. She is a heroine ripped from the pages of a detective novel, a devil incarnate; a demon who has long been nesting in the fantasy world inside my head. She is the fantasy I have longed for, now manifested in the real world and come to comfort me in my loneliness.

Devils in Daylight, Junichiro Tanizaki

[shojojidais]

Mourning women in Egyptian tomb-paintings

[shojojidais]

Bullfight thinks about Hornclaw's short fingernails, rough and cracked and chipped due to years of aggressive physical activity. They would become prettier if he pulled them out, one by one, causing flower petals to bloom at the tip of each finger. Showier. There's no such thing in the world as a red that is prettier than blood, even if it turns brown when oxidized. A red that is deep and cruel, precisely because it turns murky.

The Old Woman with the Knife, Gu Byeong-mo

[shojojidais]

Her stomach rumbled with emptiness but now she did not trust herself to eat: what if she choked, drunk and alone here in her house? Who would take her in his arms and supply the lifesaving squeeze, dislodge what would otherwise surely kill her?

Nobody's Girl, Antonya Nelson

[shojojidais]

Vogue Paris March 2000 - Lara Belmont by Satoshi Saikusa

[shojojidais]

That feeling of hate - which they said was a sin - gave me a burst of joy so intense that I had to clench my fists and clamp my mouth shut to keep from singing and jumping up and down. As soon as I felt calm again, I timidly whispered I hate her to see whether the effect would repeat itself or whether a lightning bolt would strike my head. It was raining outside. My voice hit me like a fresh breeze that set me free from dread and dejection. How could those forbidden words give me so much energy? I would think about it later. Now I just had to repeat them out loud, so they would never again elude me: I hate her, I hate her, I hate her, I shouted, after making sure that the door was firmly shut. The carapace of depression broke off my body in pieces as my chest expanded, jolted by the energy of that feeling. Wrapped in my smock, I can't breathe anymore. What is it that's still squeezing my chest? Tearing off my smock and shirt, my hands found those tight strips 'so your breasts won't show,' which until that moment had felt like a second skin to me. A seemingly compliant skin that bound me with its reassuring whiteness. I took the scissors and cut them to shreds. I had to breathe. And finally naked - how long had it been since I'd felt my naked body? we even had to bathe with our shirts on - I rediscover my flesh. My released breasts explode beneath my palms and I stroke myself there on the floor, taking pleasure in the caresses which those magic words had triggered.

Goliarda Sapienza, The Art of Joy

[shojojidais]

That's the power of ingrained moralism, which is also foolish pride, narcissism: it even makes you run from happiness.

Goliarda Sapienza, Meeting in Positano

[shojojidais]

Time either froze or passed quickly; Jia Jia thought that it could have been either. As the tears gushed out of her, she felt herself shrinking down like a bar of soap, losing her original form. She had become a shapeless and authentic version of herself. This change, she knew, was going to be irrevocable.

And then, all of a sudden, like a speeding car that had crashed into a large tree, it stopped. For a while, neither of them spoke. In that apartment, there was no tension any more, no surging of emotions; neither was there any sense of solace. What was there, under a warm light, was a meal shared between father and daughter.

Braised Pork, An Yu

[shojojidais]

More often he reviewed the day just completed, seeking to convince himself that it had carried him a bit further away from his childhood. Often for months at a time the strangeness of his dreams persuaded him that at last he had turned the corner, that the dark place had finally been left behind, that he was out of hearing. Then, one evening as he fell asleep, before he had time to refuse, he would be staring closely at a long-forgotten object—a plate, a chair, a pin-cushion—and the accustomed feeling of infinite futility and sadness would recur.

Paul Bowles, "Call at Corazón"

[shojojidais]

Call Me by No-Name Episode 2

[shojojidais]

You and I are accomplices, aren't we, in a dreadful crime—a crime that only women could commit. Having a part to play in this scheme of yours, Mother, means more to me than the love of any man.

Masks, Fumiko Enchi

[shojojidais]

Each time Seojin encountered difficulty in his life, he longed to return to his origins. Back to the place he'd left, what people usually called "the hometown." Back to where everyone knew who he was. But no matter how much he thought about it, he wasn't sure where that was. He had lived a drifter's life. When he was young he had moved repeatedly across the country with his parents, and when he was older he hadn't managed to stay in one place. It was the same with people; he had no relationships that had deepened with time. Long ago, he'd watched a film in which the main character shouted, "I want to go back!" But Seojin had felt jealous of him, not sympathetic. To have somewhere to return to resembled a valuable achievement that would never be his. Such achievements came easily to some. That someone like him could never possess it, no matter how hard they tried, felt truly unfair.

"The Origin of Life," Youngha Kim

[shojojidais]

It was a meaningless squabble that went round and round in circles. Yet, because it was an honest anger, their heartbeats quickened. And then the anger quietly lost direction and gave way to a sense of common purpose... Koji later wondered why, despite this confrontation, the quiet serenity of the surrounding scenery had remained etched in his memory.

The Frolic of the Beasts, Yukio Mishima

[shojojidais]

Whenever she began talking about Ippei, she appeared to Koji like a woman who was rapidly sinking in a swamp right in front of him. Before he even had time to reach out his hand, she had slipped between the open lotus flowers, feet, thighs, stomach, and then chest, instantly drowned in the mire, until even her thickly adorned thin lips disappeared, still wearing that smile, and afterward, all that remained on the surface of the swamp was a faint ripple of water.

The Frolic of the Beasts, Yukio Mishima

[shojojidais]

Much later while in prison, Koji repeatedly reflected on the discovery he made at that moment. That wrench was not merely something that had been dropped there; rather it was the manifestation of a material phenomenon making its sudden entry into this world. To all appearances, the wrench, which lay on its side half-buried in the overgrown lawn exactly on the border with the concrete driveway, looked all the more natural in its present position—as though it ought to be there. However, this was merely a splendid deception, for it was undoubtedly some other indescribable substance that had provisionally assumed the form of a wrench. Some form of substance that originally ought not to have been here at all; a substance that, having been excluded from this world's order, at times suddenly manifests itself in order to upset the very foundations of that order—the purest of pure substances. It was that substance that must have taken the shape of the wrench.

The Frolic of the Beasts, Yukio Mishima