[quoth] haruki murakami: the new york mining disaster

“You look a little glum these days,” he said. “Really?” I said. “You must be thinking about things too much in the middle of the night,” he said. “I’ve stopped thinking about things at night.” “How’d you manage that?” “When I get depressed, I start to clean. Even if it’s two or three in the morning. I wash the dishes, wipe off the stove, mop the floor, bleach the dish towels, organize my desk drawers, iron every shirt in sight,” he said, stirring his drink with his finger. “I do that till I’m exhausted, then I have a drink and go to sleep. In the morning I get up and by the time I’m putting on my socks I can’t even remember what it was I was thinking about.” I looked around again. As always, the room was clean and orderly. “People think of all kinds of things at three in the morning. We all do. That’s why we each have to figure out our own way of fighting it off.”