murakami, haruki - Norwegian wood

that, in a sense, what I was feeling was right, that we are in here not to
correct the deformation but to accustom ourselves to it: that one of our
problems was our inability to recognize and accept our own
deformities. Just as each person has certain idiosyncrasies in the way
he or she walks, people have idiosyncrasies in the way they think and
feel and see things, and though you might want to correct them, it
doesn't happen overnight, and if you try to force the issue in one case,
something else might go funny. He gave me a very simplified
explanation, of course, and it's just one small part of the problems we
have, but I think I understand what he was trying to say. It may well
be that we can never fully adapt to our own deformities. Unable to
find a place inside ourselves for the very real pain and suffering that
these deformities cause, we come here to get away from such things.
As long as we are here, we can get by without hurting others or being
hurt by them because we know that we are "deformed". That's what
distinguishes us from the outside world: most people go about their
lives unconscious of their deformities, while in this little world of ours
the deformities themselves are a precondition. Just as Indians wear
feathers on their heads to show what tribe they belong to, we wear our
deformities in the open. And we live quietly so as not to hurt one
another.
In addition to playing sports, we all participate in growing vegetables:
tomatoes, aubergines, cucumbers, watermelons, strawberries, spring
onions, cabbage, daikon radishes, and so on and on. We grow just
about everything. We use greenhouses, too. The people here know a
lot about vegetable farming, and they put a lot of energy into it. They
read books on the subject and call in experts and talk from morning to
night about which fertilizer to use and the condition of the soil and
stuff like that. I have come to love growing vegetables. It's great to
watch different fruits and vegetables getting bigger and bigger each
day. Have you ever grown watermelons? They swell up, just like
some kind of little animals.
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