Haruki Murakami - A Wild Sheep Chase

"Through the kitchen window I could see the neighbor's oleander. Far off, someone was practicing piano. It sounded like tripping down an up escalator. On a telephone pole, three plump pigeons burbled mindlessly away. Something had to be on their mind to be going on like that, maybe the pain from the corns on their feet, who knows? From the pigeons' point of view, probably it was I who looked mindless.

As I stuffed the second piece of toast down my gullet, the pigeons disappeared, leaving only the telephone pole and the oleander.

It was Sunday morning. The newspaper's weekend section included a color photo of a horse jumping a hedge. Astride the horse, an ill-complexioned rider in a black cap casting a baleful gaze at the next page, which featured a lengthy description of hundreds of varieties of orchids, each with a history of its own. Royalty had been known to die for the sake of orchids. Orchids had an ineffable odor of fatalism. And on the article went. To all things, philosophy and fate."

New York: Vintage, 1989 P161-162.