a model world

i've been reading michael chabon's a model world and other short stories. i was first drawn to it because i loved the amazing adventures of kavalier & clay, and the collection begins with a quote from elizabeth bishop, my favorite poet: "more delicate than the historians' are the map makers' colors." it's one of the few new books that i've ever bought, being generally a used-books gal.

it's divided into two halves: the first being a small collection of stories, "the model world," pretty much unrelated to each other; and the second being a collection that almost works as a novella, "the lost world." i liked "the model world" okay, didn't love it, didn't hate it. "the lost world," however, i loved. it's about a little boy, nathan, and his view of the world as his parents are going through a divorce and beginning to date others. he ages a few years or so between each short. what i loved about this series was that even though it was about a child and told in large parts through his eyes, it was sophisticated and treated the child as a human being with feelings and thoughts of his own. it wasn't condescending just because he was young.

children's stories written for adults is actually the genre where i found my voice when i wrote in college. i guess what struck me about reading this is that it has, in a small way, inspired me to write again. after reading some of it last night, i'm sitting here blogging, not just this entry but another on my other blog. yes, it's informal writing, but it's writing nonetheless. it's more writing that i normally do nowadays. and actually, since i've embarked on a relationship with someone love deeply, i haven't really been reading as much as i used to. i was able to find time to read last night because i slept alone, neither of us able to make it to the other's because of my cold and his exhaustion from a long day at work. before dating, i always read in bed before falling asleep. i have to work harder on finding time to read, something i miss dearly even though the reason i miss it has made me happier.

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

killing

strange as it may seem--or perhaps it does not seem so strange--[the soldiers] all had the same thought: it was so much easier to kill humans on the battlefield than animals in cages, even if, on the battlefield, one might end up being killed oneself.

core

everybody's born with some different thing at the core of their existence. and that thing, whatever it is, becomes like a heat source that runs each person from the inside. i have one too, of course. like everybody else. but sometimes it gets out of hand. it swells or shrinks inside me, and it shakes me up. what i'd really like to do is find a way to communicate that feeling to another person. but i can't seem to do it. they just don't get it. of course, the problem could be that i'm not explaining it very well, but i think it's because they're not listening very well. they pretend to be listening, but they're not, really..."

--may kasahara

hatred

hatred is like a long, dark shadow. not even the person it falls upon knows where it comes from, in most cases. it is like a two-edged sword. when you cut the other person, you cut yourself. the more violently you hack at the other person, the more violently you hack at yourself. it can often be fatal. but it is not easy to dispose of. please be careful, mr. okada. it is very dangerous. once it has taken root in your heart, hatred is the most difficult thing in the world to shake off.

--creta kano


the way hatred is self-distructive completely makes sense to me, but i don't think i fully understand it. i understand it in a logical sense, in my head, but in my heart, it's very difficult to not feel it. hatred is a very difficult thing to talk myself out of.

i

i needed time to get used to my new self. what kind of a being was this self of mine? how did it function? what did it feel--and how? i had to grasp each of these things through experience, to memorize and stockpile them. do you see what i am saying? virtually everything inside me had spilled out and been lost. at the same time that i was entirely new, i was almost entirely empty. i had to fill in that blank, little by little. one by one, with my own hands, i had to make this thing i called "i"--or, rather, make the things that constituted me.

--creta kano


not as drastic but i ask myself similar questions now that i've accepted that i'm an adult. there's no use to deny this phase in life anymore. i want to discover and understand what kind of a person, a grown person, i am, how would kids think of me and possibly look up to me.