Monday 27 December 2010

The Wind-up Bird Chronicle – Haruki Murakami

To continue a year of discovery about my new favourite author, I read The Wind-up Bird Chronicle, perhaps the most conclusive of the Murakami novels that I have read to date (The list at the moment stands at After Dark, Kafka on the Shore and The Wind-up Bird Chronicle. I have received three more for Christmas so you can expect many more reviews to come!).

Unlike Kafka on the Shore, Wind-up follows the life of just one man, Toru Okada, who begins to lose all that is dear to him. He gave up his job as a clerk in a Solicitors firm because he didn’t feel that it was the direction he wanted his career to go in. He spent his time at home, thinking about what he wanted to do. His cat went missing and so whilst his wife was out at work, he suddenly had something to do, something to focus on. But who would have thought that a missing cat could possibly lead to Mr Okada’s life unfolding as it does?

We all feel at some point, like Mr Okada, that we need to search for something, that our life as it stands isn’t quite as it should be. And I’m sure that it’s true that people can end up looking in the most unlikely of places to find what it is that they seek. A chance encounter and an intriguing conversation can plant seeds in your mind and help you uncover and unravel your own mystery. For a character such as Mr Okada, whom everyone feels at ease to speak to, it is easy for him to become the recipient to a wealth of strange tales of various people’s lives. May Kasahara, as a young girl, has many confusing thoughts and dreams which she innocently spills out to Mr Okada, her naivety is juxtaposed when she almost leaves him to die and this creates one of many intriguing characters. Malta Kano seems to be a riddle from start to end but her sister Creta is a little less elusive, we discover elements of her life that she has kept from so many and wonder why she feels she can offload it to Mr Okada. As a reader I feel like I am let into a true secret when she reveals her moving story to him.

Lieutenant Mamiya is one of the most important characters, integral to the story yet a peripheral character in many ways, he is the one with the most dangerous story to tell and he influences Mr Okada the most when he tells him about where he was thrown by Boris the Manskinner after a map-making mission to Mongolia.

I don’t usually like stories about wars, however this one is intertwined amongst so many other stories that it didn’t distress me too much, apart from one incredibly horrific incident which I honestly had to skim through. This one moment of the book was so spine-chillingly cold-blooded and evil that it makes me sick to the stomach to think of it. However, I can see how the story needed it and how as a writer it must have been an incredible journey for Murakami to write about it.

As with any Murakami book there are elements of the tale that are left dangling with no conclusion or explanation, however I did feel that this book ended in quite a satisfactory way. The themes of the story were incredibly relevant, despite the often other-worldly elements that he uses to portray them.

The main theme of the book, as I see it, was about how events in a life can inexplicably change a person’s core being. How a person can feel completely altered after one encounter. How through dreams one can explore another world, travel through a journey and come to find peace with the change. How some people are more able to adapt to the change than others. Some people need to leave all that they know of their lives to be able to move on after a change and become someone else. Others may need to just sit, quietly, in the damp dark bottom of a well. Others may need to move far away to a land of distraction. However it’s achieved, people need to cope with their own adaption to the world around them and need to see how it affects and changes them as an individual.

Of course I haven’t even mentioned the Wind-up Bird itself or what it means. My interpretation of this bird can only be conjecture as it is never explained in the book, but the way I see it, the bird is there for those who notice it, always there, always winding up the world on its spring and always in the background. Those people who notice it do so because there is something a little special about them, they are not joining the rat race whole-heartedly, they are always taking a step back to assess what things are really like and to admire the view. They have a wide-screen view of the world and don’t keep everything zoomed in. The big picture thinkers, they notice the wind-up bird and they hear it winding its spring.

Another moment of note in the story is the explanation of how Cinnamon lost his ability to speak, so short and almost skimmed over this tiny story within the story is beautifully told and creates the most wonderful imagery so that I can still picture the dark night, the tree and the shovel as clearly as if I saw it with my own eyes. And that is one of the wonderful things about this author, as you read his book you really live every moment, you smell the perfume, you taste the Cutty Sark and you feel the fear when you reach out to grip the baseball bat that isn’t there. Though I feel I have lived this story along with Mr Okada, there is one thing that it explained with all its might that I still feel I need to experience firsthand to really be able to get the book.

I want to go and sit in the bottom of a dried out well and just mull life over, I want to feel the heat of the sun on my face for that moment when its position in the sky allows it to cascade down onto me. I want to reach that state of meditation where I leave the place I am in and travel afar. And I want to then feel that change as I emerge from the well, my skin tingling with the freshness of the air as I leave the dampness behind.

Wednesday 1 December 2010

Some rather more poetic thoughts than usual...

Some words about being stuck in an unknown world, trying to decide between two directions. The imagery is mainly about natural constants and how, despite their existence, an unnatural event can cause a strong pull in one direction or another. To choose to be in a state of unknowingness, in an unknown world or purgatory, just to avoid making the wrong decision, that is to choose Hades before regret.

Hades

The tide, will rise and fall

The sun will cast a glow

The sky will become overcast

Faith knows that it won’t last

In one direction the moon pulls

The current argues till it’s blue

Searching for serenity

Leads me right into Hades

With one great force the gale blows strong

The breeze gives wind of change

Searching for serenity

Leads me right into Hades

I’ll wait for you, I’ll wait for you

The dependency repeats for you

To survive this quest for truth

I choose Hades before regret

Certainty comes to an end

Outside the realm of nature’s whim

Wise mind seems a distant hope

A choice unable to make itself

I’ll wait for you, I’ll wait for you

To survive this quest for truth

I choose Hades before regret

The moon can brighten a deep well

But only for a moment

The clarity you seek is gone

The dry well fills with tears

The ladder lost to a whimsical mind

The tears are the only hope you’ll find

To survive this quest for truth

I choose Hades before regret.



Wednesday 29 September 2010

Unemployment

A typical day begins when my alarm clock’s snooze facility has tired itself out and all the good intentions of waking up early have dropped down through the hole in my bedroom floor. If it’s a good day I might start with a run or an exercise video, so I can feel some sense of achievement. If not, it starts with a fry up, because I have all the time in the world to cook bacon and eggs and toast.

I try to organise my time efficiently, to plan lots of things to do each day, but I quickly realise that I need to space these things out to fill up the time. One job each day, surrounded by humming, breathing, walking, tv, radio, chats, snacks, it’s surprising how the days can fill up and I almost begin to wonder how I managed to fit a full time job into my life.

I spend a few hours updating my CV, before sending it out to the three recruitment agencies that are working hard to find me a job. Two emails come back with an out-of-office reply as my consultants are on holiday and the third has no reply at all. It no longer surprises me that I have been out of work for a month now.

I email one company to check that they received my online application. They did not. I apply again.

I need to do three job-seeking activities each week to qualify for my job-seekers allowance. I worry that if I do many more than this I might run out of activities within a couple of weeks. I wonder if the government will allow me to roll-over my activities should I run out of routes to take to find work. Sorry Mr Cameron-Clegg but I applied for 100 jobs within the last two weeks and now there are no more jobs for me to apply for, can I still have my allowance next week?

Every other Friday I have my sign-in meeting at the Job Centre. I chat with a consultant about what I have been doing to find work. It turns out that he is only working under a temporary contract and is actually competing with me for the same jobs that I am applying for. He says that he thinks the interview he had that morning went really well. I feel quiet outrage.

Today, however, I received my first payment from the Department for Work and Pensions. £66.67. I’m not entirely sure what this means, I have not yet received the letter informing me of my entitlement, nor have I been told at any of my meetings. I don’t know how long this is supposed to last me. I book myself a hair cut for the next morning and order a couple of new dresses online. There, that was a fun way to fill up some time.



Friday 3 September 2010

The Mastery of Murakami

Haruki Murakami: Kafka on the Shore

As captivated as I was by the gripping storyline, I forced myself to read slowly and savour the words of this book. Each phrase was considered and constructed in the most delightful prose that it needed to be fully appreciated. I could not just grab any spare five minutes at the bus stop to allow this story to unfold, I needed to make a pot of coffee, pick a sunny spot and allow myself time to pause and ponder every idea and event that the book gave me.

The book follows the lives of two very different men, different from each other and different from the rest of the world, each special in their own ways.

Kafka is 15 years old and unhappy. He runs away to try to escape a prophecy that his father once told him, unaware that he actually begins to run towards fulfilling it. His journey is one of self-discovery and coming-of-age; it charters his growing maturity whilst marvelling the preservation of those characteristics that he maintains, not a naivety, but a child-like inquisitiveness. He is also wonderfully insightful and literate.

Nakata is an old man with an unusual gift, his age and complete naivety contrast neatly against Kafka, stirring up all stereotypes. His ability to so calmly allow his life to be lead by external events requires great patience which can only be admired. His presence in the novel is a calming one, his life simple and enviable, at least until the turn of events take hold.

The presence of the library in the book also highlights the contrast between the two protagonists, one who adores the books and reads constantly and the other who cannot read at all. Both, however, feel a certain affinity with the building and its contents and both are deeply affected by it.

The Rice Bowl Hill incident is introduced to the story early on and is the first hint of something other-worldly in the book. Not usually one for science-fiction or fantasy, I found the inexplicable events in this book puzzling and exciting. I was tied to the book with my need for these events to be explained and was not disappointed with the perfect balance of explanation and silence, allowing me to draw my own conclusions in a partially-informed manner.

The storyline itself is extremely imaginative and original. It weaves and creates a complex web of details and events that never once bores. But it is the writing that got me, the mastery of Murakami. Simple meals sound delicious, basic tasks become extraordinary, yet fish falling from the sky almost seems normal. Philip Gabriel’s translation keeps all the beauty and ingenuity of the original Japanese text and Murakami’s western influences make the book extremely accessible for a Japanese culture novice.

The newspapers quoted on the front of the book sum up the book in the three most appropriate words: Spellbinding, Addictive and Wonderful.

Kafka on the Shore is published by Vintage Books and is out in paperback now.

Sunday 8 August 2010

Escapism


Escapism is something that has been on my mind a lot lately.

Drugs. Alcohol. Cigarettes. No, dancing. Dancing is the most effective escape plan. To go to a club night full of Motown classics and to dance like no-one is watching is the most effective and brilliant way to escape from everything that you know to be your normal boring life.

It’s like riding on a zip-wire. For that moment, the wind is in your face, you grip tightly to the rope and all that matters is making sure that you don’t fall off. It doesn’t matter that you might be falling off your course in life. It doesn’t matter that your love life may be falling apart. As long as you hold on tight to that zip wire and enjoy that ride, everything will be fine.

Like dancing to that music, as long as you keep in time to the beat and keep your mind focused on the melody, nothing else matters.

Nothing else matters. That is the best feeling isn’t it? Your work means nothing, your day to day chores around the house have no meaning or consequence. Your partner? They don’t care about you. All that matters is that you lose yourself in the moment, that moment of frivolity and unnecessary fun. That’s what counts. That’s what your whole life has climaxed to in that moment and for those one or two seconds you feel free. Free from financial concern, free from responsibility. Free from anyone or anything that has ever made you feel inadequate. That doesn’t matter. You are a sole being, in charge of your life and your happiness. Does it matter that it’s so transcendent that it only lasts a few mere seconds? Perhaps, perhaps not. What matters is that it happens and that you notice it. Not only notice is but take stock, take a photograph in your mind to capture that moment that life escaped you and you felt only pure bliss.

If only more moments would feel like that.

Tuesday 20 July 2010

And now for something a little different...


A crossroad.

When you are at a point in your life where self-esteem is at an all time low, it can be incredibly difficult to make certain decisions. It is hard to know when to trust yourself to make the right one and how to be certain that that path you choose to take will get you to where you want to go, especially when you are not entirely sure where you want that path to lead.

Sometimes you can let others make the decision for you. If you get offered a certain opportunity, then you take it, end of, they make the choice and you live with it. If that advert comes on one more time during the course of the film, you will buy that product. If you see two magpies, you will have a good day. Putting decisions into other hands can make you feel better for a time, but how do you know that their hands are more capable than your own?

In some circumstances, you put the choice into someone else’s hands and then they pick the route that you know you don’t want to take. Then what? Sometimes you can’t get that decision making power back and you are stuck going down a road you never ever wished to travel, just because you couldn’t summon up the courage to say what you really wanted.

But the worst situation is when you know exactly what you want and you simply don’t have the power to make it happen. You can let indecision rule the rest of your life and you can spend every day unable to decide between coffee and tea but when you know what you want and someone else takes that option away from you, you can crumble.

A wise woman once taught me a great technique for decision making. She said that you have emotional reasons and practical reasons for giving two options pros and cons between them. She told me to list all of these in a kind of Venn diagram. Once you have done this, exhausting all possibilities, thoughts and arguments, you just sit back, close your eyes and mull it over. After time, your emotional mind and your practical mind will give way to the part of you which just knows what the right choice is. This is the knowing mind or wise mind. You can then make your decision.

Ultimately, when it comes down to it, we all have the ability to make a choice whether we feel confident enough to or not. You weigh up your emotional reasons and you weigh up the practical reasons but something has to give, something has to carry more weight. For me, it has always been happiness, always striving to make the choices that won’t make me wealthy or give me the best career, but the choice that will simply make me happy.

The more I strive sometimes I think the more I push happiness away. It needs to be thought out in simple terms. What would I like to do every day? Be with someone who loves me. This doesn’t seem to be an option at the moment. What’s the second best option? To love myself. How do I do that? By doing something that I love every day.

This is why I have today handed in my notice at work. This is why I am giving up a job during the recession to follow my dream and go to drama school. This is one decision where, as long as it has taken me to get my head around, I didn’t need a Venn diagram to know my path.

SM.