海辺のカフカ
As the clump of pages remaining thins, I grow sad and nostalgic. I don’t want to leave this precious world behind. Miss Saeki, Komura Library, the painting of the beach, Oshima, his cabin in the woods, the boy named crow (my shadow), Nakata, Hoshino, Sakura … Murakami has somehow played this world into my life. The End means they become a memory in me too. It was my confusion. My heart thumping. It was my loving arm around her void.
As Oshima locks up the cabin, I turn to look one last time. Up till a minute ago it felt so real, but now it seems imaginary. Just a few steps is all it takes for everything associated with it to lose all sense of reality. And me – the person who was there until a moment ago – now I seem imaginary too.
Kafka on the Shore, Haruki Murakami (140)
Murakami is not satisfied to have my attention. He wants me to peer so deeply through his writing that I see myself. Sometimes his world is consistent with our perceived reality, other times his unapologetic hand (of course you, Colonel Sanders!) descends to move the story toward his point. And what is his point? It is the situation. Real or surreal, they are never absurd, beyond my sphere of intuitive understanding. The situation draws out latent mysteries from the characters’ inner darkness. It unfolds the metaphor until I see it is not one metaphor at work, but a whole system of metaphors moving in layered dimensions, red, orange, yellow leaves joined at a twig, branch, root, waving in the breeze.
I feel a certain slowness to this world. I am reading slowly, chewing slowly, thirty-two times before swallowing. The food is not truth, it is life. It transforms a little with each bite, and soon I am somewhere else. Tamina on the island of children. The way back may be open, or it may not. Why do I trust him enough to follow down this path? Anything could happen. But no, that’s not true, not anything. Murakami does not paint for money. If it happens, it will be a test of my ability to think and feel.
So much has been said about the emptiness we carry within ourselves. When I think about it too much, I discover the hole, the hollowness. When I busy myself with work, it is hidden under the shade. When I am meditative, it shrivels a little. When I lose my center, it grows. If I can share my awareness of it, it nearly disappears. If I am surrounded by others who cannot even acknowledge the emptiness, I am lonely and alone.
I will remember you.