August 2013, at one of Tokyo's 200 Denny's

re-imagining this scene from several years ago, makes me smile. I was at a Denny's in Tokyo, open all night, I spent a lot of time there because I needed to study and there wasn't enough space in our tiny apartment. (Murakami portrayed the night-time Denny's in his novel After Dark + no doubt it influenced me). (Very different from the Denny's in the US, at the Japanese Denny's the food portions are very small, no fried food smell, the floor is linoleum instead of carpet...)
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the adults who come into this sparkling clean restaurant at midnight, or 1 or 2 or 3am

when most people are in bed
most come in individually, slowly, dressed nicely. occassionally a young couple comes in
with the exception of the young couples, everyone disperses themselves out over the large restaurant ("personal space")
they sit in the floral-patterned plastic-covered booths that are divided by sheets of glass. (huge booths that seem out of place in such a condensed city)
shortly after they sit down they look at the very large illustrated menu and press the plastic brown buzzer-bell
ding-dong
a sleepy-faced waiter/waitress, wearing a brown apron, quickly shuffles over and bows
they all order something similar: something small and inexpensive--an orange juice, a lemonade, a green tea, a red-bean sundae. (This purchase allows them to sit at the booth for as long as they want.)
they consume their drink/ice cream very slowly;
most of them stay sitting there for hours after they've finished eating/drinking, there's no hurry
some quietly get up to use the bathroom
some cross their arms on the table and fall asleep
others stare ahead at their cell phone
the couples, sitting in front of one another with good posture, talk quietly, almost whispering
a middle-aged woman sitting alone with a long face. I wonder if she had an argument with a special person...
and there are a few like me who are typing on their laptop, waiting for the sleepy feeling, in order to walk home

"likeaswitchboard"

“Don’tworry. Youreallyarepartofhere, really. Alwayshavebeen, always willbe. Itallstartshere, itallendshere. Thisisyourplace. It’stheknot. It’stiedtoeverything.”

     “Everything?”

      “Everything. Thingsyoulost. Thingsyou’regonnalose. Everything. Here’swhereitalltiestogether.”

— Dance Dance Dance, Haruki Murakami, p.83

the lives of lambs

High up in the clouds, J tries to catch a lost lamb.

Eventually, somehow, the owners got news of their lost lamb, they appeared in their truck, caught it by hand, lifted it up (it looked heavy) and dropped in on the other side of the fence. Very Haruki Murakami! And considering what happened the following day, I would like to write a short story later when I have time, of the grotesque genre (but maybe by the time I have time-- the visceral feeling and hence creativity will have died down).

The following day, we headed towards Mount Cook. It was sunny, blue sky, fluffy clouds (looked like lambs?) big brownish-yellow snow-capped mountains all around us. At one point we came across a large flock of lambs that recently had their coats shaved. There must have been about 120 of them. They were running along the highway towards Mount Cook. It was fun to stop the car for a flock of lambs (there´s very little traffic on this highway). When I slowly approached in the car I was able to get a close look at them; and what I saw was so repugnant and stomach-churning that I won´t ruin your day by writing it here or posting the photos. (At least not for now!) Lambs don´t live such a cute pastoral life as many many imagine. I will never be able to think "cute" when i think of lambs anymore. I´ll hint, though, that it wasn´t death, and that the color and texture of the lambs´recently-shaved coats--snow-white, thick and wavy--emitted a tremendous emotional effect, created a sharp color-affective contrast with...the grotesque aspect.

There were two other times when I experienced this feeling. Fictional textual experiences. One was in Michael Haneke´s excellent film Caché, and the other was in one of the best novels ever: Haruki Murakami´s Chronicle of a Wind-Up Bird when a soldier is skinned alive. (...)

May be on my way to becoming a vegetarian.

Murakami's Void and the American Suburb

Fluffy was not an indoor cat. Since she traveled to Madrid when she was a mid-sized teen she learned that the world has a lot to offer, and so the domestic realm doesn’t suit her. The American suburbs, for Fluffy, are the domestic indoors exteriorized—privatized, predictable, philistine, repressive, lazyboy'd, apathetic, eco-wasteful. The white short-haired apolitical, patriarchal cat families seem to feel most comfortable there. In the suburbs animal injustice and diversity are masked by multinational strip-malls, neutered nature, and the lack of any public space (where one could resist or get away from its void). A lot like a bad dream. A long time indoors, or in the suburbs, and she feels limited and drained of her physical and mental energy. But clearly aware that she must leave, and grateful that she can. Haruki Murakami’s Norwegian Wood reminded her of this and motivated her to write something. (H. Murakami is adept to writing about the metaphysical depths of the feline specie.)

Fluffy couldn’t continue with Norwegian Wood. One quarter of the way through and she put it aside, curled up, and fell asleep in her temporary suburban accomodation. She didn’t want to read another story about elite undergraduate relationship-explorations with a 1970s Americana soundtrack. (Murakami's other novels were much more original!) But a couple hours later the novel revisted her, in her dream, or nightmare. Fluffy was taken back to the loneliness of her years in East Quad at U of Cheshire, where mid-size cats “became of age,” and she was excluded. As usual her hearing apparatuses and glasses didn’t exist; she could only see red-orangeness, and sounds were muffled. But somehow she managed to look out her dorm window and see that--they were moving! The entire dorm was on train tracks! They were taking her somewhere! Fluffy managed to escape through a flimsy hollow-core door. Later she discovered Kitkat in a classroom. Kitkat was crying like never before. Fluffy licked Kitkat on the ear, and Kitkat sobbed that her thesis adviser had decided to transfer to a different university. Fluffy woke up upset and decided that she would not take Norwegian Wood back with her to Tokyo. Today, while packing, she placed the novel on a shelf. (If for some reason she really wants to read it later she has it in pdf file.)

Is Fluffy too hard on the suburb? Should she give Norwegian Wood another try?

Suburb-Eating Robot by Andrew Maynard

I wonder if Murakami knows how far his story has traveled, how it has been read through the eyes of suburban homes, farm houses, flourescent-lighted Walmarts on the other side of the world, how much his story has twisted and turned into other stories, incorporating, leaving behind, branching out into other experiences along the way. What difference does it make if he knows or not. Well, the difference would be if a majority within a democracy could recognize intertextuality, if so, it would improve the quality of everyday life, and save some lives. Yesterday, in her script reading on the Tucson shooting, automaton S. Palin (stomach cringes), on national television, denied collective influence. In other words, ideology and intertextuality... If this is true, why does she even bother speaking? (Speaking entails responding to something in the past.) As long as the public continues to be misinformed, literature will continue to be a vital antagonism.