Wednesday, October 24, 2007 @ 19:09
number three hundred and six
"Have you heard of the illness
hysteria siberiana?"
"No,"
"I read this somewhere a long time ago. Maybe in junior high. I can't for the life of me recall what book I read it in. Anyway, it affects farmers living in Siberia. Try to imagine this. You're a farmer, living all alone in the Siberian tundra. Day after day you plough your fields. As far as the eye can see, nothing. To the north, the horizon, to the east, the horizon, to the south, to the west, more of the same. Every morning, when the sun rises in the east, you go out to work in your fields. When it's directly overhead, you take a break for lunch. When it sinks in the west, you go home to sleep."
...
"OK," I said.
"And then one day something inside you dies."
"What do you mean?"
She shook her head. "I don't know. Something. Day after day you watch the sun rise in the east, past across the sky, then sink in the west and something breaks inside you and dies. You throw your plough aside and, your head completely empty of thought, you begin walking toward the west. Heading towards a land that lies west of the sun. Like someone possessed, you walk on, day after day, not eating or drinking, until you collapse on the ground and die. That's
hysteria siberiana."
Haruki Murakami - South of the Border, West of the Sun
so come on, tell me.