Books Note: Norwegian Wood (Murakami Haruki, 1987)

The moment i finished reading Norwegian Wood, i felt like i was slapped by reality. It hurts, yet i have to keep going. This is why i like Murakami works, its honest, bitter, and also he has an unique way to write, to express abstract feeling in exact words. Not everyone could enjoy reading his works though, sometimes its a bit confusing, and the slow pace sometimes make me impatient, He also rarely write a clear ending. However, those weaknesses are also the part which i like about his works. I have never been so in love with books but his works.

I never have a power to finish this book, however a good friend of mine from Beijing said that he is going to read the book and want to have a discussion about it. Thus, i read the book and was really grateful i did read it. Anyway i want to write back some parts that i really like in the book. 

    At Hamburg airport, though, the kicks were longer and harder than usual. Which is why I am writing this book. To think. To understand. It just happens to be the way I'm made. I have to write things down to feel I fully comprehend them.

     "Don't you see? It's just not possible for one person to watch over another person forever and ever. I mean, suppose we got married.
You'd have to work during the day. Who's going to watch over me while you're away? Or if you go on a business trip, who's going to watch over me then? Can I be glued to you every minute of our lives?
What kind of equality would there be in that? What kind of relationship would that be? Sooner or later you'd get sick of me. You'd wonder what you were doing with your life, why you were spending all your time babysitting this woman. I couldn't stand that. It wouldn't solve any of my problems."
    "But your problems are not going to continue for the rest of your life,"

(in which i relate Naoko when someone tell me that he would be by my side; and in which i want to thanks Watanabe for bringing little light for my dark soul)

   "... We're not running our lives according to some account book. If you need me, use me. Don't you see? Why do you have to be so rigid? Relax, let down your guard. You're all tensed up so you always expect the worst. Relax your body, and the rest of you will lighten up."
   "How can you say that?" she asked in a voice drained of feeling.
    Naoko's voice alerted me to the possibility that I had said something I shouldn't have.
   "Tell me how you could say such a thing," she said, staring at the ground beneath her feet. "You're not telling me anything I don't know already. "Relax your body, and the rest of you will lighten up.' What's the point of saying that to me? If I relaxed my body now, I'd fall apart. I've always lived like this, and it's the only way I know how to go on living. If I relaxed for a second, I'd never find my way back. I'd go to pieces, and the pieces would be blown away. Why can't you see that? How can you talk about watching over me if you can't see that?"

(In which i thought Watanabe hadn't understand enough at what Naoko was struggling about, Naoko was savage. People like to tell us to calm down and not think too much, but seriously, how could that possible for me?)

"I can never say what I want to say," continued Naoko. "It's been like this for a while now. I try to say something, but all I get are the wrong words - the wrong words or the exact opposite words from what I mean. I try to correct myself, and that only makes it worse. I lose track of what I was trying to say to begin with. It's like I'm split in two and playing tag with myself. One half is chasing the other half around this big, fat post. The other me has the right words, but this me can't catch her." She raised her face and looked into my eyes. "Does this make any sense to you?"

Death exists, not as the opposite but as a part of life.

Death was not the opposite of life. It was already here, within my being, it had always been here, and no struggle would permit me to forget that.

"... but finally, she didn't move me. I don't know, sometimes I think I've got this hard kernel in my heart, and nothing much can get inside it. I doubt if I can really love anybody."

My arm was not the one she needed, but the arm of someone else. My warmth was not what she needed, but the warmth of someone else. I felt almost guilty being me.

"It's not that I don't believe in contemporary literature," he added, "but I don't want to waste valuable time reading any book that has not had the baptism of time. Life is too short."

"That's why I read them. If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking. That's the world of hicks and slobs. Real people would be ashamed of themselves doing that. Haven't you noticed, Watanabe? You and I are the only real ones in this dorm. The other guys are crap."

(In which i realize that nagasawa is a truthful jerk.he made it a rule never to touch a book by any author who had not been dead at least 30 years. thats the only book that he can trust, he said.) 

"Hard to say. Hey, you know that thing Dostoevsky wrote on gambling? It's like that. When you're surrounded by endless possibilities, one of the hardest things you can do is pass them up. See what I mean?"

"Sort of."

".... That's what I mean by possibility. It's all around you. How can you ignore it? You have a certain ability and the opportunity to use it: can you keep your mouth shut and let it pass?"

"I don't know, I've never been in a situation like that," I said with a smile. "I can't imagine what it's like."

"Count your blessings," Nagasawa said.

  Hey, Kizuki, I thought, you're not missing a damn thing. This world is a piece of shit. The arseholes are getting good marks and helping to create a society in their own disgusting image.

"... What's this thing that guys have for girls with long hair? Fascists, the whole bunch of them! Why do guys all think girls with long hair are the classiest, the sweetest, the most feminine? I mean, I myself know at least 250 unclassy girls with long hair. Really."

  "Nobody likes being alone that much. I don't go out of my way to make friends, that's all. It just leads to disappointment."

   "And you have no use for "ideals', I suppose?"

"None. Life doesn't require ideals. It requires standards of action."

"A gentleman is someone who does not what he wants to do but what he should do."

" ... And you know, I've got certificates of merit for never having been late or missed a day of school. That's how much I hated the place. Get it?"

"No, I don't get it."

"It's because I hated the place so much. I wasn't going to let it beat me.

If I'd let it get to me once I'd be finished. I was scared I'd just keep slipping down and down. I'd crawl to school with a temperature of 103. The teacher would ask me if I was sick, but I'd say no. When I left they gave me certificates for perfect attendance and punctuality, plus a French dictionary. That's why I'm taking German now. I didn't want to owe this school anything. I'm not kidding."

"Hey, tell me, what do you think the best thing is about being rich?"

"I don't know."

"Being able to say you don't have any money. Like, if I suggested to a school friend we do something, she could say, 'Sorry, I don't have any money'. Which is something I could never say if the situation was reversed. If said "I don't have any money', it would I really mean "I don't have any money'. It's sad. Like, if a pretty girl says "I look terrible today, I don't want to go out,' that's OK, but if an ugly girl says the same thing people laugh at her. That's what the world was like for me. For six years, until last year."

"You're very clear about what you like and what you don't like," she said.

"Maybe so," I said. "Maybe that's why people don't like me. Never have."

"It's because you show it," she said. "You make it obvious you don't care whether people like you or not. That makes some people angry."

she sang an odd one that she said she had written herself:

I'd love to cook a stew for you, But I have no pot.
I'd love to knit a scarf for you,
But I have no wool.
I'd love to write a poem for you,
But I have no pen.
"It's called 'I Have Nothing'," Midori announced.

"It's true I have a cold streak. I recognize that. But if they - my father and mother - had loved me a little more, I would have been able to feel more - to feel real sadness, for example."
"Do you think you weren't loved enough?"
She tilted her head and looked at me. Then she gave a sharp, little nod.
"Somewhere between "not enough' and "not at all'. I was always hungry for love. Just once, I wanted to know what it was like to get my fill of it - to be fed so much love I couldn't take any more. Just once. But they never gave that to me. Never, not once. If I tried to cuddle up and beg for something, they'd just shove me away and yell at me. "No! That costs too much!' It's all I ever heard. So I made up my mind I was going to find someone who would love me uncon- ditionally 365 days a year. I was still in primary school at the time, but I made up my mind once and for all."

"I guess I've been waiting so long I'm looking for perfection. That makes it tough."

"No, even I know better than that. I'm looking for selfishness. Perfect selfishness. Like, say I tell you I want to eat strawberry shortbread.
And you stop everything you're doing and run out and buy it for me.
And you come back out of breath and get down on your knees and hold this strawberry shortbread out to me. And I say I don't want it any more and throw it out of the window. That's what I 'm looking for."
"I'm not sure that has anything to do with love," I said with some amazement.
"It does," she said. "You just don't know it. There are times in a girl's life when things like that are incredibly important."

"For a certain kind of person, love begins from something tiny or silly.

From something like that or it doesn't begin at all."

"But it's the only way I know how to think. Seriously. I'm just telling you what I believe. It's never crossed my mind that my way of thinking is different from other people's. I'm not trying to be different. But when I speak out honestly, everybody thinks I'm kidding or play-acting.

When that happens, I feel like everything's such a pain!"

"But, I'm not afraid of dying. Really. Like here, I'd just be overcome with smoke and lose consciousness and die before I knew it. That doesn't frighten me at all, compared to the way I saw my mother and a few relatives die.

All my relatives die after suffering from some terrible illness. It's in the blood, I guess. It's always a long, long process, and at the end you almost can't tell whether the person is alive or dead. All that's left is pain and suffering."

  In any case, though, I believe that I have not been fair to you and that, as a result, I must have led you around in circles and hurt you deeply.

  In doing so, however, I have led myself around in circles and hurt myself just as deeply. I say this not as an excuse or a means of self- justification but because it is true. If I have left a wound inside you, it is not just your wound but mine as well. So please try not to hate me. I am a flawed human being - a far more flawed human being than you realize. Which is precisely why I do not want you to hate me. Because if you were to do that, I would really go to pieces. I can't do what you can do: I can't slip inside my shell and wait for things to pass. I don't know for a fact that you are really like that, but sometimes you give me that impression. I often envy that in you, which may be why I led you around in circles so much.

  He told me that, in a sense, what I was feeling was right, that we are in here not to correct the deformation but to accustom ourselves to it: that one of our problems was our inability to recognize and accept our own deformities. Just as each person has certain idiosyncrasies in the way he or she walks, people have idiosyncrasies in the way they think and feel and see things, and though you might want to correct them, it doesn't happen overnight, and if you try to force the issue in one case, something else might go funny. He gave me a very simplified explanation, of course, and it's just one small part of the problems we have, but I think I understand what he was trying to say. It may well be that we can never fully adapt to our own deformities. Unable to find a place inside ourselves for the very real pain and suffering that these deformities cause, we come here to get away from such things. As long as we are here, we can get by without hurting others or being hurt by them because we know that we are "deformed". That's what distinguishes us from the outside world: most people go about their lives unconscious of their deformities, while in this little world of ours the deformities themselves are a precondition. Just as Indians wear feathers on their heads to show what tribe they belong to, we wear our deformities in the open. And we live quietly so as not to hurt one another.

"What happens when people open their hearts?" Reiko clasped her hands together on the table, cigarette dangling from her lips. She was enjoying this. "They get better," she said.

 "The dead will always be dead, but we have to go on living."

"Every once in a while she'll get worked up and cry like that. But that's OK. She's letting out her feelings. The scary thing is not being able to do that. When your feelings build up and harden and die inside, then you're in big trouble."

" Not a thing. Don't worry. Just speak your mind honestly That's the best thing. It may hurt a little sometimes, and someone may get upset the way Naoko did, but in the long run it's for the best. "

"The most important thing is not to let yourself get impatient," Reiko said. "This is one more piece of advice I have for you: don't get impatient. Even if things are so tangled up you can't do anything, don't get desperate or blow a fuse and start yanking on oneparticular thread before it's ready to come undone. You have to realize it's going to be a long process and that you'll work on things slowly, one at a time. Do you think you can do that?"

 The years 19 and 20 are a crucial stage in the maturation of character, and if you allow yourself to become warped when you're that age, it will cause you pain when you're older.

When you're living with people, you sense what they're feeling, and I hated it

That's the most important thing for a sickness like ours: a sense of trust.

"He was always like that around you. He struggled to keep his weaknesses hidden. I'm sure he was very fond of you. He made a point of letting you see only his best side. He wasn't like that with me. He'd let his guard down. He could be really moody. One minute he'd be chattering away, and the next he'd be depressed. It happened all the time. He was like that from the time he was little. He did keep trying to change himself, to improve himself, though."
Naoko re-crossed her legs on the sofa. "He tried hard, but it didn't do any good, and that would make him really angry and sad. There was so much about him that was fine and beautiful, but he could never find the confidence he needed. "I've got to do that, I've got to change this,' he was always thinking, right up to the end. Poor Kizuki!"

"Because we would have had to pay the world back what we owed it," she said, raising her eyes to mine. "The pain of growing up. We didn't pay when we should have, so now the bills are due. Which is why Kizuki did what he did, and why I'm here. We were like kids who grew up naked on a desert island. If we got hungry, we'd just pick a banana; if we got lonely, we'd go to sleep in each other's arms.But that kind of thing doesn't last for ever. We grew up fast and had to enter society. Which is why you were so important to us. You were the link connecting us with the outside. We were struggling through you to fit in with the outside world as best we could. In the end, it didn't work, of course."

So what's wrong if there happens to be one guy in the world who enjoys trying to understand you?

"I told you in my letter, didn't I? I'm a far more flawed human being than you realize. My sickness is a lot worse than you think: it has far deeper roots. And that's why I want you to go on ahead of me if you can. Don't wait for me. Sleep with other girls if you want to. Don't let thoughts of me hold you back. Just do what you want to do. Otherwise, I might end up taking you with me, and that is the one thing I don't want to do. I don't want to interfere with your life. I don't want to interfere with anybody's life. Like I said before, I want you to come to see me every once in a while, and always remember me. That's all I want."

"What makes us most normal," said Reiko, "is knowing that we're not normal."

No matter what we said, people would believe what they wanted to believe. The more we struggled, the more vulnerable we'd be.

I knew I'd be like this for the rest of my life, and I didn't want to drag anyone down with me. I didn't want to force anyone to live in constant fear that I might lose my mind at any moment.

Don't you think it would be wonderful to get rid of everything and everybody and just go somewhere where you don't know a soul?

"That's how people live in the real world: forcing stuff on each other."

"Because sometimes I have a need for human warmth," I answered honestly.

"What human being doesn't hesitate and feel hurt?" Hatsumi demanded. "Are you trying to say that you have never felt those things?"
"Of course I have, but I've disciplined myself to where I can minimize them. Even a rat will choose the least painful route if you shock him enough."

"No," I said. "I'm not that strong. I don't feel it's OK if nobody understands me. I've got people I want to understand and be understood by. But aside from those few, well, I feel it's kind of hopeless. I don't agree with Nagasawa. I do care if people understand me."

"You don't get it, do you? Person A understands Person B because the time is right for that to happen, not because Person B wants to be understood by Person A."

"It must be a wonderful thing to be so sure that you love somebody."

"Maybe because I like you, that's how come! Why else would I be thinking of you? Who would ever think they wanted to be with somebody they didn't like?"

"They just keep doing the same things," I said. "Well, what else can they do? We all just keep doing the same things."

You're the only one I can say these things to. And now I'm really, really, really tired and I want to fall asleep listening to someone tell me how much they like me and how pretty I am and stuff. That's all I want. And when I wake up, I'll be full of energy and I'll never make these kinds of selfish demands again. I swear. I'll be a good girl.

"You sure made a fast recovery," I said. "Not too long ago you were pale and wobbly." "It's because my selfish demands got through to somebody,,, she answered.

 I'm not very good at putting my feelings into words. That's why people misunderstand me. All I'm trying to say is I like you. Have I told you that before?"

"You're really cute," I said.

" - Midori," she said. "Say my name."

"You're really cute, Midori," I corrected myself. "What do you mean really cute?"

"So cute the mountains crumble and the oceans dry up."

"I really like you, Midori. A lot."

"How much is a lot?"

"Like a spring bear," I said.

"A spring bear?" Midori looked up again. "What's that all about? A spring bear."

"You're walking through a field all by yourself one day in spring, and this sweet little bear cub with velvet fur and shiny little eyes comes walking along. And he says to you, "Hi, there, little lady. Want to tumble with me?' So you and the bear cub spend the whole day in each other's arms, tumbling down this clover-covered hill. Nice, huh?"

Reiko says it's good I can cry. But feeling lonely really hurts. When I'm lonely at night, people talk to me from the darkness. They talk
to me the way trees moan in the wind at night. Kizuki; my sister: they talk to me like that all the time. They're lonely, too, and looking for someone to talk to.

"Don't feel sorry for yourself," he said. "Only arseholes do that."

What a terrible thing it is to wound someone you really care for - and to do it so unconsciously.

I'm not a teenager any more. I've got a sense of responsibility now. I'm not the same person I was when we used to hang out together. I'm 20 now. And I have to pay the price to go on living.

"You know, they've got these chocolate assortments, and you like some but you don't like others? And you eat all the ones you like, and the only ones left are the ones you don't like as much? I always think about that when something painful comes up. "Now I just have to polish these off, and everything'll be OK.' Life is a box of chocolates."

"You know what girls are like," he said. "They turn 20 or 21 and all of a sudden they start having these concrete ideas. They get super- realistic. And when that happens, everything that seemed so sweet and loveable about them begins to look ordinary and depressing. 

"I don't care what you do to me, but I don't want you to hurt me. I've had enough hurt already in my life. More than enough. Now I want to be happy."

I think you take everything too seriously. Loving another person is a wonderful thing, and if that love is sincere, no one ends up tossed into a labyrinth. You have to have more faith in yourself. My advice to you is very simple. First of all, if you are drawn so strongly to this Midori person, it is only natural for you to have fallen in love with her. It might go well, or it might not. But love is like that. When you fall in love, the natural thing to do is give yourself to it. That's what I think. It's just a form of sincerity.

Despite your best efforts, people are going to be hurt when it's time for them to be hurt. Life is like that. I know I sound like I'm preaching from a pulpit, but it's about time you learned to live like this. You try too hard to make life fit your way of doing things. If you don't want to spend time in an insane asylum, you have to open up a little more and let yourself go with life's natural flow. I'm just a powerless and imperfect woman, but still there are times when I think to myself how wonderful life can be! Believe me, it's true! So stop what you're doing this minute and get happy.

What I learned from Naoko's death was this: no truth can cure the sadness we feel from losing a loved one. No truth, no sincerity, no strength, no kindness, can cure that sorrow. All we can do is see that sadness through to the end and learn something from it, but what we learn will be no help in facing the next sadness that comes to us without warning.