Haruki Murakami

It's been a while since I've been awed by a writer. Not since Yann Martel, or Jeanette Winterson. The kind of writer that piques your curiosity and makes you wanna know who the person behind the books are. The kind of writer that makes you wanna read any imaginable book that they've written, just to get a glimpse of that person. It's kinda like dating someone new.

Haruki Murakami was an acquired taste, though. A few years back I picked up "Kafka on the shore". I ploughed through the first two or three chapters, bewildered, then returned the book to the library. One of our friends passed me "Norwegian Wood", but I didn't particularly like it either. But a month or two ago, I chanced upon another of his books on a library shelf one evening after work, when I was feeling particularly uninspired and was willing to give anything another try. Only then did I kinda get used to his style. "After Dark" was an interesting book, more for the feel of it than the ideas. I hadn't really read any proper book since I started work, and "After Dark" brought back a familiar feeling. That kinda warm, comfortable feeling you get with books.

Then a friend recommended "The Wind-up Bird Chronicle", and that book sold me out. I can't explain why I liked it. I like Murakami's matter-of-fact way of telling a story, his understated humour, and, perhaps, as one friend has said, how his works allow us to identify with the psychological isolation the protagonist feels from the rest of society. In "The Wind-up Bird Chronicle", the protagonist spends days on end by himself, and finally he finds inspiration from sitting at the bottom of a dry well. Sounds bizzare, but I really liked it cos it reminded me of how I used to spend late nights sitting in the dark by the window, or climbing out to the patio outside my room, staring at the night sky and wondering what life would be like when I grew up. Probably not as exciting as I'd imagined.

"South of the Border" and "Sputnik Sweetheart" are short novels about friendship and romantic love... the kind you could get through in a day or two. Could be that I read the stories one after the other, and alongside "The Wind-up Bird Chronicle", that I sometimes get the two stories mixed up... They're almost like stories in the same vein. And in my opinion more enjoyable than "Norwegian Wood". I kinda disagreed with Murakami's philosophy in "South of the Border", but perhaps over time I will learn to empathize with it. "Sputnik Sweetheart" was probably the most poignant love story I've read from Murakami. When I finished it I felt like the curtains had been thrown open and daylight was spilling in and despite the heartache I felt I wanted to smile.

I also picked up "Kafka on the shore" again. This time, I didn't find it difficult at all. Quite interesting how a couple of years can shape someone. I enjoyed it while I was reading it. It was just difficult to put down. And again the sense of isolation that the protagonist feels was a strong motif in the book. But when I finished it I was somehow left with a bad aftertaste in my mouth. I don't know why.

I'm now going through some of his early works. It's kinda cool to go through the early books of a beloved writer, because you get a sense of the kinda events that shape them, and the kinda themes that they're concerned about. They may be a bit more unpolished, but to me it's an inspiration, cos we all have to begin from somewhere, no matter how imperfect. Like with Yann Martel's "Self", which felt very raw and unedited, it's hard to imagine how this writer could go on to write something like "Life of Pi". But he did.

Maybe I should pick up "Norwegian Wood" again one day. Maybe by now I'd have learnt to appreciate it.

The first domino

One of our friends has quit her job. I'm excited for her :)

I was told by this friend that of all the MBTI types, INTPs and INFPs were most likely to quit their jobs. Are we a bad influence on one another?

Whatever. I'll join you soon!

A perfect acquaintance

Ran into an old acquaintance during the week, at the screening of "Burma VJ".

He asked me, "Where has life brought you?"
I considered his question for a while, then asked, "In terms of work?"
Still smiling, he said, "Anything."
I gazed into the distance, at the red, velvety walls and the movie posters, thinking his question over, before I answered, "I don't know."

Only after the movie was over, and we had finished supper and parted ways, that I realized what a socially impolite answer I'd given him. Not that he minded, I think he wasn't really expecting a conventional answer to begin with. But it's funny that it took a perfect acquaintance to draw such an honest answer out of me.

The last time we'd met I was still in school, when i was still involved in all the social activism stuff. When he asked me where life had brought me, I rewound my visual tape of the past year and I kinda felt like I'd been in limbo all this while.

After that evening I had another bizarre dream.

I was sitting on a bus headed somewhere. The bus was somewhat like the old-style SBS transit bus, or the kinda bus you get in Laos, with no airconditioning, simple cushioned bench-like seats, and metal railings. The windows had been raised halfway along the shaft, and the wind was gently cruising its way in through the opening. A girl came and sat down beside me. I hardly noticed, I was still looking out of the window and daydreaming. Then, as if we were in the middle of a conversation, she casually turned and said to me, "You will fall down, and die." I turned and stared at her in disbelief. Somewhere inside me I knew she was telling the truth, but I refused to accept it. She reiterated unflinchingly, "You're going to die. You will fall to your death." She did not say when I would die, or where, but I knew she meant that very day itself. I told her to go away. She refused, and said, "It's true." I knew it was true, but perhaps if she didn't keep reminding me it would not be so. I got really angry and told her again to go away, and when she didn't move I attempted to shove her off the seat.

What really gripped me when she prophesied my death, was this overwhelming sense that I had something to do, and I had not done it yet. I don't know what the something was. It could have been a cause, or it could have been just a vague sense of unfulfillment that Ben Okri described when he wrote: "They had returned inconsolable for all the love they had left behind, all they suffering they hadn't redeemed, all that they hadn't understood, and for all that they had barely begun to learn before they were drawn back to the land of origins."

Thanks to this perfect acquaintance. But I'm glad I ran into him again. It's not often that someone draws such an honest answer of out me. If I had asked myself that question I may not have been as honest. Most of us would probably like to think that the paths we've chosen in life have amounted to something, no?

An empty shell

Had quite an unnerving dream last week. I was walking out to the bus stop after attending a course one afternoon. I was rather relieved that I did not have to return to the office, as I was beginning to feel quite claustrophobic at the very idea of it. I waited at the traffic junction, waiting for the pedestrian sign to switch to green. As the cars whizzed by I suddenly felt everything that was "me" exit from my physical body like a puff of smoke. Just a moment ago I was staring blankly at the traffic indicator, and the next moment I was no longer inhabiting my physical self. I was in the puff of smoke hovering above the person who was waiting to cross the road. I looked down at my physical self, horrified. Even if I wanted to capture the very essence of me back into that physical body, I didn't know how to. Soon the "me" that realized all this was back in that empty shell, and my real self was evaporating into the air as the puff of smoke diffused. All that was left in the "me" that was waiting at the pedestrian crossing was an empty shell, someone who walked and talked and breathed but did not have a self. I cannot put into words how debilitating it was to have lost all sense of who I was.

When I woke up my room was dark but faintly illuminated by the street lights. The dream was so damn real it felt like my life was a dream. Everything was still and quiet, as if I had gone traversing to another world and returned and yet everything remained unchanged.

For the past two or three weeks I've been getting more and more frustrated with my work, but my physical self probably can't deal with being in this prolonged state of upheaval and by last week all I felt was this sense of being kinda detached from what I was doing. This probably explained the unnerving dream. I remember thinking in my dream as I was transiting between that puff of smoke into that empty shell, that if I didn't quit my job, this was what I was going to be for the remaining years of my life - this empty shell.

Maybe I really need to quit my job soon. Or maybe I've been reading too many of Haruki Murakami's books.

Writing about it now, I remember how I would have similar dreams as a young child. I would be standing on the grass at the park outside my house on a sunny afternoon, and before I knew it it was as if someone had released some stopper in me and the air was escaping from my body and I was getting lighter and lighter. I would drift upwards, past the first and second storeys of aunties in HDB flats going about their daily routines, higher and higher, past the rooftops of HDB flats with their spinning aircon ventilators, till I was heading towards the clouds. I would try to hold myself downwards, but it didn't do anything. There wasn't anything in my will or physical strength that could bring me back down.

Maybe my dreams just got more complicated as the years went by.

An inextinguishable sense of exile

"In the land of beginnings spirits mingled with the unborn. We could assume numerous forms. Many of us were birds. We knew no boundaries. There was much feasting, playing, and sorrowing. We feasted much because of the beautiful terrors of eternity. We played much because we were free. And we sorrowed much because there were always those amongst us who had just returned from the world of the Living. They had returned inconsolable for all the love they had left behind, all they suffering they hadn't redeemed, all that they hadn't understood, and for all that they had barely begun to learn before they were drawn back to the land of origins.

There was not one amongst us who looked forward to being born. We disliked the rigours of existence, the unfulfilled longings, the enshrined injustices of the world, the labyrinths of love, the ignorance of parents, the fact of dying, and the amazing indifference of the Living in the midst of the simple beauties of the universe. We feared the heartlessness of human beings, all of whom are born blind, few of whom ever learn to see."

"To be born is to come into the world weighed down with strange gifts of the soul, with enigmas and an inextinguishable sense of exile. So it was with me."

- Ben Okri, The Famished Road

Around the World in 365 Days

In the summer of 2009, this dude decided to take a break from his Art Director job at The Associated Press to have a year of waking up in unfamiliar places.

http://transworldexpedition.com

Maybe one day :)

South of the Border, West of the Sun

I never realized this - that if I sat down by my window, with the lights in my room switched off, I could still see the bright lights of cars whizzing by along Upper East Coast Road, and hear the droning buzz of the evening traffic. Feels like one can never really be away from the city in Singapore.

Have been reading books by Haruki Murakami. "South of the Border, West of the Sun" was recommended to me by a colleague. In the novel, Hajime, the protagonist, mentions one of his favourite songs, "Star-Crossed Lovers", which the pianist in his bar would often play for him. Hajime explains the affinity he feels with the song:

"Whenever I heard that languid, beautiful melody, those days (when he was in his twenties) came back to me. It wasn't what I'd characterize as a happy part of my life, living as I was, a balled-up mass of unfulfilled desires. I was much younger, much hungrier, much more alone. But I was myself, pared down to the essentials."

It reminded me of the time when I spent days on end by myself, just before I committed myself to a real job, and that was exactly how I felt - despite the unanswered questions, the unfulfilled ideals, I was myself.