And he could take a walk on a hill somewhere, and find a swivel chair that someone had thrown away in the bushes for some reason, intact but for one missing wheel, and go there from time to time and sit on it, turning himself lightly, and think about the many things that had happened to him in his life, or think about his life in which nearly nothing, you could say, had happened, and pass many pleasant afternoon hours, and remember that once, while he was on an island in the Philippines and sitting in a metal chair on the beach — the chair looked as if it were in use by someone, not abandoned — he saw a fisherman setting out in the evening on his boat with a net, and saw the cross etched on his bare back, thanks to which he was able to wash away the memory of a bad dream he’d had the night before, in which his dead father appeared carrying in one hand his other hand, amputated from the wrist, like a fish, and saying that he had fished it out of some pond — as if he had caught a carp or something — made the strange demand that he decide which of the single hand he was holding in his hand he would have, at which moment he felt an urge to write something solely about a chair, and lie on the grass and feel the world unfolding beneath him, an enormous underground world in which his father, too, lay, and imagine being slowly sucked into the world.
And if there were some sunflowers on the hill that someone had planted, he could fall asleep for a little while under the sunflowers, having gone to see them on purpose in order to sleep under them when they were in blossom, and wake up and for a moment in a dazed state, and, not knowing where he was, recall how once he felt that my existence was unreal, so unreal that he felt as if his brain were in a drawer somewhere in his house, and the rest of his body in the wardrobe, or as if his entire body were hanging on the upper branches of a tall tree nearby, or he could see a yellow sunflower with a short stem right above his head and be overwhelmed with a certain kind of pure joy.
And days would continue, days on which he could see that the gloom that brought him pleasure at times, but not this time, was expanding its range within himself, and feel nearly overwhelmed because of the gloom, and feel so gloomy that he couldn’t face myself, and couldn’t look at his own face that looked so sullen that it embarrassed him, and thus could stand against the gloom as if making a stand against an oppressive and brutal system but to no avail, and so, instead of standing against the gloom, he could try harder to be gloomy, or think that he could meet someone and spend some time in a natural way in order to dispel the gloom, but then think that he couldn’t stand to have my feelings of uneasiness beneath his façade of naturalness pass on in their entirety to the other person, and that he’d have a hard time putting up with the unpleasantness he inevitably felt when he was with people, and think that perhaps he had no friends at all but could be satisfied with the fact, and, one day, he could get up the courage to go out and go to a street crowed with people, and be startled by someone suddenly shouting in a loud voice behind him and flee from the spot, and with a Christian fundamentalist standing with a large cross saying naïve and nasty and foolish things that screech in his ears but don’t touch his heart, vividly demonstrating how terrifying blind faith is, saying that you’ll fall into hellfire if you don’t receive Jesus, that you should repent before it’s too late, he could feel awkward and uncomfortable even though the Christian wasn’t yelling at him, and feel sufficiently rebuked even though he had no reason at all to be rebuked, and feel somewhat grateful to him, even, but because there was nothing he could do about it, he could punish him by glaring at him, and come home feeling repentant, at any rate, and deeply regret his first day out in a while and stay cooped up at home.
And he could see a strange scene on television in which goats on a farm somewhere in the U.S. pass out at the slightest provocation, for instance, the sound of clapping or the sight of an open umbrella, and think that he could perhaps see why they did so but couldn’t in the end, and think of the animals he’d seen doing incredible things, thus recalling the time he went to a volcanic island, where he saw a roe deer lying face down near a little crater surrounded by a thick forest, which had collected water and turned into a swamp, and a crow sitting on its rump pecking and plucking its hair, and smile, thinking that the act looked quite erotic. And the crow was plucking the roe deer’s hair to use it in building its nest — the roe deer’s hair probably came in handy in building the crow’s nest — and the roe deer stayed still for a moment, not wanting to budge at that moment, it seemed, even while having its hair plucked, but in the end it got to its feet, as if to say that although it was all right for the crow to take a few strands of its hair without giving anything in return, it couldn’t let all its hair be plucked by the crow, and looking more dejected than offended, went off someplace else, after which he could recall how happy he’d felt to have had the good fortune to witness the little drama in the forest next to the crater, which perhaps took place between the roe deer and the crow on a daily basis.
And on occasion, he could think of animals that do astonishing things humans can’t understand, of which he knew quite a few, such as a cow that chewed and swallowed chickens whole, a water buffalo whose hobby it was to blow gusts of air into plastic bags, a badger that was found lying unconscious in the middle of a road, dead drunk after eating cherries that were ripe to the point of fermentation, and a parrot with a wounded heart that stayed with its head stuck between watermelons in a fruit shop, and think that perhaps by doing such things, they were, with joy and fury and despair, expressing in a difficult way the difficulty, and the joy and fury and despair, of living their daily lives as animals.
Or he could recall how, when he came outside after having lunch in a restaurant on a tropical island he visited, a cheeky and pathetic looking male monkey, which was tied to a tree in a corner of the shabby garden, suddenly lifted its colorful skirt and shyly, but at the same time brazenly, exposed its erect red penis as if to flaunt it. Thus he could detect something nasty, cheap, sly, and mean, almost to the point of evil, in the monkey, and although he wasn’t sure if such traits were something inherent in the monkey or gained through experience while living with people, and didn’t know why it did what it did, though perhaps for sexual reasons, he could think that it didn’t seem like sexual harassment that could take place between humans and animals, or think that the monkey was perhaps openly showing its pleasure, which it couldn’t bear not to show, or again, openly showing its displeasure, and if so, the act could have been an expression of good or ill feeling toward female monkeys, but of contempt or hostility toward humans. Or he could wonder if the monkey had been trained by its master to startle, offend, or please a stranger by doing so, or to do so whether the person was a stranger or not — in that case, it was up to the person to be startled, offended, or pleased, and not something for the monkey to be concerned about — or if the monkey wanted to show off its penis to someone, thinking it had nothing but its penis to show off, and so it couldn’t help but show off its penis, if nothing else, and he could think about the reason why the monkey had, as if it were something it did all the time, or at least without showing any signs of surprise, and without showing any signs of wanting to surprise the person, so nonchalantly taken out its penis, the size of which couldn’t be determined as immoderately small or large, or moderately large or small, or just right in proportion to its small body.