Little Infinities

I don't have a particularly good reason for not updating recently, but I do have a short list of flimsy excuses, including but not limited to being busy, being tired, and not feeling inspired. Of course, there's no shortage of things on which I could write and in fact I've been maintaining an informal list of topics to discuss. I feel these things fading from my memory even as I type this, unfortunately. I don't generally like to write blog entries that summarize the things I've been doing recently because I feel it really squanders a lot of the potential of some of the subjects about which I choose to write. I may be left with no other choice, however, since very few of these subjects are still fresh in my mind.

Some weeks ago, I attended a showing of The Martian, a science fiction film starring Matt Damon. I don't go to a lot of movies, but it's a fun thing to do if you have a special person to accompany you. The film seems to have received a lot of critical acclaim so I assumed I would enjoy it--and I did, to a point. I feel it really only explored the idea of being isolated on an uninhabitable planet on a very shallow level. The whole movie was a bit saccharine and overly feelgood in a Hollywood way, which  is not what I was expecting after reading reviews of the film. Maybe I'm cynical about this kind of thing, but I was really craving something a tad grittier--which is not to say that humor is entirely out of place, but it felt a little forced and unnecessary in the case of The Martian. I'll have to read the book sometime to see if the tone is similar. Even if that's the case, it still might be an interesting read, and after all, I have been reading a lot more recently.

Speaking of investigating a film's source material--I watched both the film version of The Fault in Our Stars and the book of the same name recently. Of course, I did this in what would probably be considered backwards order since I read the book after watching the movie, but it was interesting to note the differences between the two. It's definitely a book targeted towards young adults, but the material had more than enough depth to appeal to me. Although I enjoyed the film, I did feel it was a tad sentimental in tone--and this is a trait from which the book itself does not suffer. The Fault in Our Stars is a refreshingly straightforward glimpse into the life of a teenage girl by the name of Hazel Lancaster with terminal cancer and her relationship with Augustus Waters, a boy she meets in a support group who has recovered from a milder case of the life-threatening disease. Cancer did succeed in taking his leg, but not his life. For Hazel, her days are perpetually numbered, a fact that gives her a substantially different outlook on life than her former peers.

In my previous entry, I wrote about Norwegian Wood, a book I very much enjoyed. Before moving on to The Fault in Our Stars, I read a French children's story from the 1940s by the name of The Little Prince. Although short and relatively simplistic, it's a wonderful book packed to the brim with allusions and symbolism. The titular prince himself lives on an asteroid floating in space beyond the earth, tending to his best friend--a rose encased in glass. He maintains his miniature volcanoes--he rakes the coals--and wonders what lies beyond his home. On his journeys he meets other asteroid residents and eventually makes his way to the earth itself, where he meets an airplane pilot who has crashed his plane. Technically, it is through this pilot's eyes that the story is told. Antoine de Saint-Exupery, the author of Le Petit Prince, was a pilot himself and in fact lost his life flying shortly after the book was released. He left behind an impressive final work.

On Sundays I don't wind my spring.

Life has been pretty interesting lately; I've broken from a lot of my normal routines in some important ways. I've frequently lamented the fact that I never read anymore over the past couple of years even as I contributed volumes upon volumes of text to this blog. I felt myself improving as a writer just by turning it into a routine, but it's an accepted fact that reading the work of others is one of the best ways to improve. I'm not sure why I neglected that for so long or why I've had a number of false starts. My last honest attempt was Haruki Murakami's The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, a book I very much enjoyed--until stopping about 3/4ths of the way through it for reasons I cannot articulate.

I think one of the more wonderful things about relationships is that they tend to encourage you to try new things and to broaden your horizons in order to make yourself into a better person. There is something beautiful about sharing those things that you're most passionate about with someone for whom you care for. I'm now more comfortable driving an hour away to the marginally bigger town neighboring mine, for instance--and I'm more comfortable doing it on a regular basis. I've spent a lot of time cleaning my house and scrubbing away the dust of neglect that has settled over my home like some implacable cloud. I've spent more time watching movies, of course, and as I hinted, I've started to more seriously make an effort to read, starting with another Murakami classic, Norwegian Wood, a book I happened to come across as Barnes & Noble. I remembered it being recommended to me sometime ago--and I already knew I enjoyed Murakami's writing, so I decided to give it a shot.

Norwegian Wood is evidently more straightforward and simply told than other books in Murakami's catalogue. What I read of The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle certainly bordered on surreal, whereas Norwegian Wood strikes me more as a memoir of sorts, a tale of the protagonist's experiences throughout college, told through the voice of his older self, who remembers the events of those days with startling clarity. It is a story of love, of loss, of a stoic loner who has difficulty opening up to others but will listen intently to what they have to say. I was stunned by the effortless beauty and tragedy of many of these stories, particularly when it came to the stories of Naoko and Reiko, two principal characters with which the protagonist, Toru Watanabe, interacts.

Watanabe recounts his experiences with an anal roommate nicknamed Storm Trooper, whose rigid adherence to routine and cleanliness earned him the moniker. He is a source of laughter (and not a small amount of ridicule) for Watanabe and others with which he converses throughout the story, but he finds himself struggling with a dull emptiness when he disappears without a trace. Nagasawa is a charismatic womanizer who nonetheless finds himself drawn to classic literature like Watanabe himself and thus strikes up a friendship and drags him into his various hijinks. Norwegian Wood features several colorful characters like these that all have their own unique perspectives and connect with Watanabe in their own ways. I found myself identifying with him as an introvert, as he so frequently found himself in situations where he spent times with others in intimate one-on-one situations. It seemed clear that this is with what he found himself most comfortable--and always he is more content to listen and consider the words of others before contributing his own.

There is a tragic beauty to Norwegian Wood and how it handles issues of love and loss, and the depths it plumbs in discussing the sickness with which one's heart finds itself stricken when those one loves and cares for are taken from them. Murakami is frequently startlingly frank with his approach toward intimacy and sexuality--refreshingly so. I found myself affected with a not insignificant level of melancholy upon finishing the book, although not out of dissatisfaction. I found myself drawn to the struggles of Watanabe and Naoko, of their shared love and their conflicts, and how in some way they were never resolved. Just like real life, there is frequently never a solid and final answer for some problems--and even when things seem to be getting better, it is never certain things are going to work out. Watanabe and Naoko are connected by their love for a fallen friend, Kizuki, whose death reverberated through their lives in unpredictable ways. For Naoko, who loved Kizuki, it caused a wound that might never fully heal.