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The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle
Haruki Murakami

Chapter 12,
Lieutenant Mamiya's Long Story: Part I

On knowing your fate: Imagine someone told you where and/or when you would die. Do you think this would chance how you life your life? Definitely I would avoid the place mentioned, though fiction has convinced me that trying to avoid fate is a fool's game! I watched a movie a while ago, Paycheck (which I was personally not fond of to say the least), and at one point they discuss the idea that knowing the future removes hope. For some reason this idea really caught my attention and I thought about it for some time. I think I would agree... even if you learn something great, knowing what will happen, and believing it for certain, takes something away from an individual. You can't hope for anything more. I imagine it must feel very binding.

His knowing (at least, having been told) that he would not die there, was comforting to him when he was lying in the well. I tended to identify with this.

I remember visiting a fortune teller back in the mid-seventies. I normally have no real faith in card readers, but this one in particular had a good reputation as being a for real witch. Everything, btw, did play out, that she told me at that session.

She gave me the details of my life for the next year.

Shortly after, I was on the road late at night. I'd been staying at my parents' house in Toronto, but had been up in Orangeville where we were winding down a photography business.

I was driving the Mini Minor alone - it was about 1 am. There was hardly anybody on the highway. I was shaken up when my car began to spin; the steering was out of control! I was very frightened.

The car veered across the highway and was heading for the guardrails. My thought, just before I was able to bring the car to a full stop was that THIS COULD NOT HAPPEN - I'd just had my fortune read for a full year, so I couldn't possibly die before then.

And there'd been nothing in my reading that told of being laid up from an accident.

So I tended to identify with his thinking that he'd be alright, simply because someone with psychic powers had told him, he wouldn't die 'abroad'. He'd live longer than any of his comrades.

OK - I was getting ahead of myself. Thought this was about the captain's story, how he'd been made to jump into the well.

Now, I'm at the part where Toru went into the well.