The moment I lost consciousness, I felt as if I were clutching the hem of a woman’s long skirt, that I was grasping it with more strength in my hand than was necessary, but I thought that in reality, the strength in my hand that was grasping it was leaving, and when I woke up after being unconscious for I don’t know how long, I was, in fact, loosely clutching the hem of the curtain on my kitchen window, made of thick velvet.
But what I couldn’t understand, above all, was how I’d woken up by the window, which was several steps away from the living room, when it seemed that I was in the living room when I collapsed. Perhaps I walked slowly toward the window the moment I collapsed, losing consciousness, or crawled quickly, when it wasn’t necessary, like some animal that crawls quickly.
The sudden swooning brought me a peculiar sort of pleasure, but I couldn’t tell if it was because I could think that I was clutching a woman’s skirt hem, even as I lost consciousness and collapsed — I wasn’t sure, however, if this very Kafkaesque experience was an experience of Kafka’s, penned in one of his works, or my own — or if there was an inherent pleasure that could be found in the loss of consciousness, a pleasure that could be found if you sought to find it. The moment I lost consciousness, I actually thought that I was pulling and taking off a woman’s skirt, a daring yet rude thing to do, but one that was delightful in a way, and also thought that I couldn’t help laughing, though it wasn’t something to laugh about, but I don’t think I actually laughed.
The swooning also brought a peculiar sort of satisfaction, for there seemed to be an infinite space within the dizziness of swooning through which I could spread out infinitely, after being sucked up into the whirlpool of dizziness because of dizziness. And the incident gave me a sense of anticipation, a great sense of anticipation, for more to come in the future (anticipation is a very strange thing, making you anticipate such things, and making you, at times, anticipate your own fall and decline above all).
Having woken up by the window, I felt as if I could lose consciousness again at any moment, and everything seemed like a lie, and I thought somewhat clearly that everything seemed like a lie, in a way that was different from the way in which life itself seemed like a lie, but that there was nothing strange about it. In the end, I felt an acute pain in my knee joint, which had been bad for some time, and while trying to focus on it, wondered, This pain, where’s its origin, and when was its origin? but it occurred to me that these expressions weren’t correct, so I wondered again, What is the origin of this pain? and wondered if this expression was correct as I lost consciousness again, and this time I woke up in the bathroom. I couldn’t remember how I’d made my way from the window to the bathroom and why there of all places either.
Sitting crumpled on the bathroom floor, and feeling great sorrow this time, I thought that I’d never be able to regain my consciousness if I lost it again and agonized over whether I should stay where I was, hoping to get better, or go to the emergency room, and if I were to go to the emergency room how I’d get there, and thought that I’d never gone to the emergency room in an ambulance and felt an urge to do so, but in the end, I called a taxi, and while being taken away in a taxi, I clenched my hand tightly, as if I holding onto a string of consciousness which I’d lose forever if I let go, and thought that it wouldn’t matter that much even if I did lose consciousness, as if falling asleep, on my way to the hospital, and again thought, somewhat playfully, that if I swooned again, I should make sure to grab the hem of a woman’s skirt.
I got to the emergency room and lay on a bed without being able to properly explain my symptoms to the doctor, and as he took certain measures, I wondered whether or not I should let go of the string of consciousness, and felt a strong desire to do so, even while fighting against it, and saw the curtains flapping in the open window, and remembered that it was while I was staying cooped up in a hotel in New York that I thought, looking at the curtains that were flapping in the same way, that I wouldn’t go outside unless a gigantic sailboat, with a full load and the sails taut with wind, entered through the window, and the memory brought me a strange, almost unbearable, pleasure.
But death, which someone said wasn’t a part of life since you can’t experience it when you’re alive, passed me by. Or should I say that I passed by death? But even after I recovered somewhat and left the hospital, I had to stay lying down most of the time. On some days I had difficulty just going from my bedroom to the bathroom, and barely managed to do so, holding onto the wall that led from my bedroom to the bathroom and feeling as if I were walking in a desert, utterly exhausted from dehydration and the blazing sun. But my disease, which caused dizziness, didn’t develop in a certain direction as I’d expected, or in other words, it didn’t just grow worse. In a way, it wasn’t progressive, and even seemed to be progressing unfavorably. In a way, that was quite natural. Like all diseases, the disease I was suffering from went through a cycle of relapse, temporary improvement, and sudden relapse again.
But through the disease, I began to change in many, no, perhaps not so many, ways. More than anything, I had great difficulty reading, and had a very hard time understanding sentences. It took several times more effort than before for me to etch a sentence in my mind, and in fact, I had to think as if I were etching words onto a metal plate, using a chisel or hammering a cleat.
Anyway, something else that filled up my mind, which was full of thoughts on death, while I was in such poor condition, was thoughts on everyday life, which became routine for me after I passed out and could do nearly nothing because of my dizziness, which became part of my everyday life, which led me to think about everyday life, perhaps in a completely new way. I thought about the various aspects and dimensions of everyday life, and the everyday life of which I thought encompassed everyday moments or period of time in which I thought about things, including facts that bothered me on a daily basis, such as the fact that humans don’t even know their origin, let alone anything else, or rather, that they’ve never even found a clue as to their origin, let alone their origin, and wondered if they would learn their origin someday, and looked at a sofa that needed to be replaced and had a hard time deciding on the shape and size of the sofa that would replace it, because although it could be easily replaced, depending on circumstances, the replacement would be not so easy when I considered that the new sofa would be with me for several years, and looked at a cat I knew, having seen it many times before, walking drenched in the rain on a heavily rainy day when I also took a walk, drenched in the rain even though I was carrying an umbrella, and looked at the leaves of a tree gently folding themselves, probably to protect themselves in the heavy rain, and wondered if it was true that certain leaves did so to relieve the shock from the streaks of rain, and thought that those two things were the most memorable of the things that happened to me that day or week, or month, and thought about the thoughts I had even in my sleep, and was amused by the thought that Jains and Zoroastrians existed in the world, and decided that I should put off doing the laundry for a few days, which I’d been putting off for a long time, and had the banal thought that nothing really mattered, and thought about how I’d give my goldfish a proper funeral if it died, and drank some tomato juice, and wiping the red liquid on my mouth, thought about the Battle of Stalingrad, perhaps the most gruesome of all the battles fought in human history, in which soldiers, having run out of vodka, drank antifreeze filtered through the carbon filters on their gas masks and sang in chorus a song that was at times called “Four Steps to Death,” and thought about Stalin, whom I’d caught a glimpse of in a black and white documentary film looking somewhat sulky, as if left out by the two Western leaders next to him who had gathered at the Yalta Conference to discuss issues related to the Second World War after it came to an end and were smoking and laughing somewhat facetiously, and as if feeling uncomfortable at the facetiousness of the two leaders (he looks as if he’s trying somehow to show the two Western leaders who are rubbing him the wrong way that he’s not happy), and wondered what he must’ve been like as a boy full of dreams, and thought that perhaps at that moment, he felt deeply offended by the two Western leaders and thought, As soon as I return to Moscow, the hub of the world, I’m going to come up with a way to teach these offensive people a lesson, and make sure they understand that socialism is a far more superior system than corrupt capitalism, and I thought that perhaps that was the moment when he came up with the seed of an idea that subsequently led to the tragic Korean War, and thought that if nothing in the world was permanent, the current capitalistic world, which seemed as if it would last permanently, wouldn’t last permanently, either, and wondered what kind of a world would follow a capitalistic world, and wondered skeptically if any kind of an ideal world could indeed be ideal, and thought about certain facts regarding Hitler, who, along with Stalin, was one of the greatest dictators in history, such as the fact that he had severe mysophobia and took nine baths every day, and being fastidious about his hygiene, he always took a shower if he sweated while presiding over a meeting or giving a speech — being passionate and often using large gestures, he sweated quite a bit, and it’s assumed that he took a lot of showers to rid himself of the sweaty odor — and that he received nine injections a day of a hormone extracted from bull testicles in order to show off his stamina and maintain a passionate state of mind — Why did it have to be nine baths, and nine injections of a hormone extracted from bull testicles, a day? Could such trivia serve as clues to understanding Hitler, who drove countless people to pain? — and that he didn’t like smoking or drinking and issued a special order to all German officers to eat chocolate instead of smoking (did he think that eating chocolate would help them endure the hardships of war?), and didn’t like cats in particular, and grew nervous and looked afraid when he happened to see a cat, and thought about all the dictators in the world, who in themselves seemed quite fascinating, and about something that could be observed in all dictators, and wondered what that was, and also thought about something that all dictators could have thought about as they fell asleep, such as what they would have for dinner the next night, and thought that they must’ve thought about how to eliminate those who were absolutely intolerable even by their standards, although they found almost everything intolerable, and thought that all these thoughts occurred to me while I was drinking tomato juice, and thought about how much I hated all sounds that came through a loudspeaker, and wondered why Germans had no knack for humor, and saw a spot on my bedroom wallpaper that looked like a little boat at first when the wallpaper got wet in the rain, and began to look more and more like a battleship, and wondered how the spot would change in shape, and thought about the things I could mock in my heart as much as I pleased, and thought about my native language that still seemed immature as a language, and thought about how indecisive I was, and how difficult it was for me to decide on something, and how often, as a result, I went without eating all day because I couldn’t decide what to eat, and thought about how much I enjoyed doing things that were meaningless in themselves and in light of something else, and wondered if I’d ever done anything with all my heart and soul, and seeing my boy do something strange, recalled that I, too, did strange things as a boy, such as hide in a forest of owls where there was no else around, spending my time looking quietly at something or not looking at anything, and hoped that my child would do such strange things as well, and thought about people who spent their lives doing something I knew in advance that I’d never be able to lose myself in, and about their lives, and thought that remembering the past didn’t bring it to the present, but was like crossing an invisible, labyrinthine bridge between a certain point in the past and the present, groping the handrail, and thought about how Kafka laughed repeatedly while reading his own work and wondered if I had ever laughed while reading my own work, and thought about the authors whose works made me laugh as I read them, and thought about how most of the authors I liked were already dead, and thought that when I read their works, I sometimes thought that I was talking to the ghosts who wrote those books, and thought about the works of authors and artists I used to like but now felt were quite banal, and could no longer read or look at, and thought about something that could be called the evolution of a human mind, and thought about the banality I saw in everything, which grew beyond control, which I couldn’t do anything about, and wondered what kind of a work I could be captivated by in the future, and thought about certain facts, such as the fact that T.S. Eliot’s first wife was in a mental hospital for nine years before she died, that James Joyce’s daughter was in a mental hospital for forty-six years before she died, that Paul Verlaine once hurled his three month old son against the wall during a fight with his wife, and that he wrote long novels about wars but he himself handed out cigarettes and chocolate at a facility run by the Red Cross before getting injured by shell fragments, and thought about Hemingway, who served less than a week at the battlefront during the First World War, and about Hokusai, the Japanese artist, who said at age seventy-three that when he was eighty his paintings would finally make sense, and when he was ninety they would truly be the works of a master, and thought about how Balzac felt his death approaching and said that only Bianchon, the doctor in