Robbie Bruens’s Reviews > The Woman in the Dunes > Status Update

"The cries of the onlookers were like compressed reverberations, filing the sky over his head with great black wings. He felt as if the wings were his own. He could feel the breathless villagers looking down from the top of the cliff, so clearly they could have been himself. They were a part of him, their viscid, drooling saliva was his own desire."

"He recalled that someone had said that there was nothing that tasted so good as one's own ear wax, that it was better than real cheese. Even if it weren't that bad, there were all kinds of fascinating things one never tired of smelling...like the stink of a decaying tooth."

"Supposing they were sound waves, what kind of music would they give? Maybe even a human being could sing such a song...if tongs were driven into his nose and slimy blood stopped up his ears...if his teeth were broken one by one with hammer blows, and splinters jammed into his urethra...if a vulva were cut away and sewn onto his eyelids. It might resemble cruelty, then again it might be a little different."

"They say the level of civilization is proportionate to the degree of cleanliness of the skin. Assuming that man has a soul, it must, in all likelihood, be housed in the skin. These musing on water led him to realize that dirty skin had thousands and thousands of suction cups. Skin was cooly transparent, like ice...a soft, downlike bandage for the soul."

His memory had completely stopped functioning. Then it had gotten confused with a long, oppressive dream. In the dream he was astride an old, used chopstick, floating down some unknown street. It was not bad on the chopstick...but when he relaxed his attention he suddenly lost his buoyancy. The street was a dull red near at hand, and in the distance a hazy green. Something in the combination of colors disturbed him.