yahari memorandums

1st Memorandum: Possibly, it’s no one’s monologue.

Mine has been a life of much shame.

My eyes abruptly focused on that sentence.

I was in the middle of a lot of cleaning with the upcoming New Year. As I organized my book collection, I found myself reaching out to a book.

The reason why I ended up picking out this book amongst the many was because I felt some kind of link with the three worded title.

No Longer Human.

I think it was about the time I got into middle school that I read this book.

When I made it halfway through the second memorandum, I closed the book in a hurry and never managed to read much of it beyond that. Back then, the difficulty was a little out of my league and as a middle school student, it was fairly tedious as well. I had plenty of other fun things to read too, so it wasn’t like I was starving for entertainment that I needed to go through the trouble of reading a fastidious and offensive book like this.

That’s exactly why I closed the book.

In that book, it felt as if I was getting dragged to the surface, as if my true nature that I was still continuing to hide to this day was getting exposed.

I felt it was possible that even the reason why I attempted to read this book when I was in middle school was written in that book as well.

Despite that, the reason I was reading this book this late now was because I thought it was just something to be thrown out. I took it with my hands in astonishment.

But thinking about it even more, there was no way I could throw out this book.

They say that bookshelves are a reflection of a person’s personality.

In that case, I’m sure this book was a reflection of my true nature. That’s why, the only thing I could do in the end was just put it away without tossing it and pretend as if I had never seen it.

Yet here I am, reaching out to it again.

Could it have been a divine oracle, or possibly fate?

I wasn’t one to take those words seriously, but it wasn’t very pleasant knowing how it seemed like I was reinforcing the notion instead by being up in arms and denying it.

I wiped off the collected dust on the book and dropped onto the couch.

Let’s continue the book; continue on from where I couldn’t back then.

Because it’s likely that I needed to see what will happen from there on.

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2nd Memorandum: Or, it can be anyone’s monologue.

There was something I came to notice as I continued reading.

To be more specific, it was that I had gone back to the beginning.

These novels certainly did feel similar to me. They even made me think that they were close to my true nature, or perhaps, my disposition that could very well be called malignant.

However, that wasn’t it.

A different book after the other, I continued searching, without growing weary, unable to give in. Over and over again, I went through “No Longer Human” and “Run, Melos!”

However, even so, there was something decisively different.

No matter the literary master, no matter the masterpiece, they weren’t close at all.

For the other party to have addressed you, to have sympathized with you, be something entirely different was nothing more than despair itself.

Similarities and commonalities were exactly why discrepancies became apparent. They became distinct. Being so identical meant those differences wouldn’t be forgiven.

I couldn’t forgive myself for having expectations, for thinking I had understood, for thinking I was understood.

Compared to the existence as described in “No Longer Human”, I was much more diminutive, cowardly, and vulgar. Dazai didn’t realize that he was plagued with a much paltrier problem.

Then, didn’t that make me less than something human? Didn’t that make me far more lonely and apprehensive than the tyrant king?

Further. To think I utilized influential literature for the sake of attaining answers to my own problems and for the sake of something so extremely selfish and personal made me disgusted with myself. Just how shallow, just how foolish, and just how unsightly I was. The reason why I picked out these books weren’t for purification or for my own growth.

All I wanted was to blame myself by way of the truth. I wanted the farce of altruistic self-interest to be seen through.

With the eyes that looked this way from outside.

That’s why I had expectations.

That maybe if it was this book or that maybe if it was that person who was unusually more sensitive to the evils of people, I thought, perhaps, they might find me. Perhaps they might see right through me.

Yet, despite looking at the things that were so close to me, despite seeing right through everything else, I was the only one who wasn’t looked at.

It was so much more painful than being admonished and being looked down on.

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3rd Memorandum: If so, just whose monologue was it?

I don’t know how many times I’ve read through it.

Long ago, I felt I had a connection with the shepherd of the village.

Justice, sincerity, and love. But when I think about them, they’re worthless. Everything about them was absolutely laughable.

Every time I had that feeling, there were sudden echoes.

I’m being relied on. I’m being relied on.

Lending my ears to those words that I thought to be the sweet whispers of a devil brought my gradual transformation into a monster of reliance.

It’s when you came to realize your own evil that you become desperate to suppress it. In masking it away, others saw it as the truth, and eventually, it became something natural to you that it turned into the truth itself.

I was thrown into an endless loop of doubt as to whether if that’s really all. I could no longer make the distinction on my own.

That’s why, perhaps, I had been waiting for that person who could surely see right through me.

Along the way, I began to sympathize with the evil tyrant king.

“He cannot trust people”, or so.

But anyone knew how the conclusion of the story went.

However.

Just how exactly did the actual end turn out?

The king said, “The heart of man is not to be relied on.”

Did the evil tyrant king, even to this day, still not trust in the existence of that truth and that sincerity?

Was it because he had lost all his trust after trying them and he became unable to rely on them despite their obvious transparency that he thought he wanted to try again by being a part of them, that he wanted to try destroying them?

If your cheeks must be struck as atonement for holding doubt, then who was the person that needed to be struck the most?

I shut the book and looked outside the window.

The sun had already sunk far past the horizon, the final fragment of the afterglow disappearing in succession.

Sincerity. Or perhaps, the truth.

If you couldn’t call those empty delusions, then what else could you call them?



Do genuine things really exist?