finished

the wind-up bird chronicle has been an incredible read. of the books i've read so far from murakami--the wind-up bird chronicle, norwegian wood, after the quake, and south of the border, west of the sun, his protagonists tend to be pretty inert and comfortably so. external forces seem to occur as a test to see if the protagonists would sway, which they all do, just a little. but that's the way it is in reality. people rarely change. even if they do, it's bit by bit. the change happens over a long period and with immense subtlety.

i love that toru okada remains so faithful to kumiko throughout all that time. the way that malta & creta kano and nutmeg & cinnamon appear so suddenly and then disappear so quietly works in this story. people weave in and out of our lives like that some times, and there's a certain beauty to it.

also, the concept of the antithesis of a soulmate is fascinating. people talk about finding one's soulmate all the time but never mention having to face one's...soul nemesis? the idea of a soulmate and its antithesis is really about who each of us are, at our core. and murakami touching on a dismal part of japan's history makes the idea of soulmate and soul nemesis more profound by reaching back in time. it hints at the concept as an inherent element to life. it's not solely a modern day concept or something that only happened in the past. it's just there and has always been there.

i wonder what my soulmate and soul nemesis are like. i want to be ready when i meet them or come upon them again.

kind of weird

lately, it's really been bothering me that, i don't know, the way people work like this every day from morning to night is kind of weird. hasn't it ever struck you as strange? i mean, all i do here is do the work that my bosses tell me to do the way they tell me to do it. i don't have to think at all. it's like i just put my brain in a locker before i start work and pick it up on the way home. i spend seven hours a day at a workbench, planting hairs into wig bases, then i eat dinner in the cafeteria, take a bath, and of course i have to sleep, like everybody else, so out of a twenty-four-hour day, the amount of free time i have is like nothing. and because i'm so tired from work, the "free time" i have i mostly spend lying around in a fog. i don't have any time to sit and think about anything. of course, i don't have to work on weekends, but then i have to do the laundry and cleaning i've let go, and sometimes i go into town, and before i know it the weekend is over. i once made up my mind to keep a diary, but i had nothing to write, so i quit after a week. i mean, i just do the same thing over and over again, day in, day out.

but still--but still--it absolutely does not bother me that i'm now just a part of the work i do. i don't feel the least bit alienated from my life. if anything, i sometimes feel that by concentrating on my work like this, with all the mindless determination of an ant, i'm getting closer to the "real me." i don't know how to put it, but it's kind of like by not thinking about myself i can get closer to the core of myself. that's what i mean by "kind of weird."

--may kasahara