Status Updates From Βίος και πολιτεία ενός ηλίθιου

He wanted to live life so intensely that he could die at any moment without regrets. But still, out of defense to his adoptive parents and his aunt, he kept himself in check. This created both light and dark sides of his life. Seeing a comic puppet in a Weatern's tailor's shop made him wonder how close he himself was to such a figure. -- R.A.

czemu rozmawiamy z duchami w sądzie XDDDD

Walking through the rain, he looked back and up once again at the trolley line. The cable was still sending sharp sparks into the air. He could think of nothing in life that he especially desired, but those purple sparks -- those wildly-blooming flowers of fire -- he would trade his life for the chance to hold them in his hands. -- R.A.

He often wondered, in that suburban second story, if people who loved each other had to cause each other pain. Even as the thought crossed his mind, he was aware of the floor's eerie tilt. -- R.A.

All the lunatics had been dressed in the same gray clothing, which seemed to give the large room an even more depressing look. One of them sat at an organ, playing a hymn over and over with great intensity. [...] Ten years earlier, his mother had been in no way different from these lunatics. In no way. And in fact in their smell he caught a whiff of his own mother's smell. -- R.A.

I am living now in the unhappiest happiness imaginable. Yes, strangely, I have no regrets. I just feel sorry for anyone unfortunate enough to have had a bad husband, a bad son, a bad father like me. So goodbye, then. I have not tried -- consciously, at least -- to vindicate myself here. [...] I invite you to strip it off and laugh at my stupidity. -- Akutagawa Ryunosuke, 20 June 1927

“The higher he flew, the farther below him sank the joys and sorrows of a life bathed in the light of intellect.”

“His dry lips felt the touch of the butterfly for the briefest instant, yet the wisp of wing dust still shone on his lips years later.”

When I was very young, my father would try to entice me back from my adoptive family by plying me with these rare treats. I remember how he once openly tempted me into running away while feeding me ice cream in the Uoei restaurant in Omori. -- R.A.

My mother was a madwoman. I never did feel close to her, as a son should feel towards his mother. Hair held in place by a comb, she would sit alone all day puffing on a long, skinny pipe in the house of my birth family in Toyko's Shiba Ward. [...] In general, though, she was a quiet lunatic. -- R.A.

"This is the end, then. Please be so good as to allow me to take your life. I will quickly follow you in death." -- R.A.

Oh come on, killing a man is not as big a thing as people like you seem to think. If you're going to take somebody's woman, a man has to die. When I kill a man, I do it with my sword, but people like you don't use swords. You gentlemen kill with your power, with your money, and sometimes just with words [...]. True, no blood flows, the man is still alive, but you've killed him all the same. -- R.A.