Dressing, Watermelon, Chaos*

Having noticed that my last post is only two days shy of being one month old, I'm freshly determined to write more than once per week. Maybe even twice. Definitely more than once a month! And if I don't have anything to say, I will find somebody who does.

I've been reading again, which makes me extremely happy. It dawned on me about six weeks ago that I hadn't had a good book in my life for over two months, maybe even three; I have no sense of time. That's unheard of in my world. Not that I have no sense of time--that's well documented--the not reading thing. What's more, I realized that this caused me an unexpected amount of grief. It is absolutely no exaggeration to say it approached a physical longing; I felt a real, tangible hunger to read in almost the exact same way you feel hungry for good food. It hurt.

I fixed it immediately by buying another Haruki Murakami novel with the gift card I had gotten for my birthday. It was so good that I had re-read the entire thing at least twice by the time I got to the last page. It was bleak and beautiful and rich and absurd and otherworldly. The kind of book that fills you with joy even if the subject is stark and melancholy. The kind of book that makes you feel orphaned and inconsolable when it ends. It's called Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, and it's full of solemn mystical beasts, mafia-type thugs, evil-minded subterranean creatures, librarians, information thieves, and four main characters whose names you never learn.

Try some:

Every last thing about this elevator was worlds apart from the cheap die-cut job in my apartment building, scarcely one notch up the evolutionary scale from a well bucket. You'd never believe the two pieces of machinery had the same name and the same purpose. The two were pushing the outer limits conceivable as elevators. ...

... I stood in that hermetically sealed vault for what seemed an eternity. The doors showed no sign of ever opening. Stationary in unending silence, a still life: Man in Elevator.

this is the main character singing a Russian folksong he learned as a child:

I didn't know any more of the lyrics, so I made some up: Everyone's gathered around the fire--the pechka--when a knock comes at the door and Father goes to inquire, and there's a reindeer standing on wounded feet, saying, "I'm hungry, give me something to eat"; so they feed it canned peaches. In the end, everyone's sitting around the stove, singing along.

and one more setting:

After three days of snow appears a sudden sky of clarity. Rays of sun spill a blinding glare upon the frozen white Town. I hear snow falling from branches everywhere. I stay indoors and draw the curtains against the light, but I cannot escape. The ice-encrusted Town refracts like a huge, many-faceted jewel, sending knives of light to stab my eyes.

There is so much more, and of course I can't possibly convey the soul and beauty of the book in a few short excerpts. But it is difficult to choose even this much to share --there is so little I can quote without giving away integral elements of the story. What I can do for you is suggest that you hie yourself to a library or bookstore and read some Murakami yourself. The Elephant Vanishes is a good place to start--a collection of short stories to test the waters and see if they please you.

*The title of chapter 11
••all photos © David J. Nightingale 2003-09••