THE mailman scooted up on a red Supercub and distributed the mail to the boxes at the entrance of the building. Some boxes received tons of mail, others hardly anything at all. The mailman didn’t touch my box. He didn’t even look at it.

Beside the mailboxes was a potted rubber plant, the ceramic container littered with popsicle sticks and cigarette butts. The rubber plant looked as worn out as I felt. Seemed like every passerby had heaped abuse on the poor thing. I didn’t know how long it’d been sitting there. I must have walked by it every day, but until I got knifed in the gut, I never noticed it was there.

-Haruki Murakami, Hard-boiled Wonderland and the End of the World-