I’m loving that book…

We can, if we choose, wander aimlessly over the continent of the arbitrary. Rootless as some winged seed blown about on a serendipitous spring breeze.
Nonetheless, we can in the same breath deny that there is any such thing as coincidence. What’s done is done, what’s yet to be is clearly set to be, and so on. In other words, sandwiched as we are between the “everything” that is behind us and the “zero” beyond us, ours is an ephemeral existence in which there is neither coincidence nor possibility.

In actual practice, however, distinctions between the two interpretations amount to precious little. A state of affairs (as with most face-offs between interpretations) not unlike calling the same food by two different names.

So much for metaphors.

“One morning I awoke and the sheep was gone. It was then that I understood what it meant to be ’sheepless’. Sheer hell. The seep goes away leaving only an idea. But without the sheep there is no expelling that idea. That is what it is to be ’sheepless’.”

Murakami - A wild sheep chase