on reading Murakami in the morning

my yin and i woke the morning and spent an hour in bed reading Haruki Murakami: me, South of the Border, West of the Sun; and her, The Elephant Vanishes. i was turned onto Murakami some months ago, when i received a random missive from a friend in Portland. he has known nearly as many incarnations of "me" as myself, and the letter came, unexpectedly, in response to this very forum.

but this is beside the point and, overly comma-ed.

Haruki Murakami, living genius

the point is that with each new obsession, i find myself taking on aspects of the object of my fixation. in yoga this is known as dhyana, the point at which the subject's concentration on the object becomes so constant as to erode the division between them, allowing two to become one. in less precise (or at least less pretentious) vernacular, i believe this idea is best approximated by the expression: "imitation is the greatest form of flattery."

and that is exactly what i found myself doing this morning, when i finally set aside Murakami's novel and picked up my journal. what came out is eerily apropos of the overcast and evening showers that have dominated the past three days, and it's almost as if my friend's beloved Portland has come to visit South Florida, each raindrop a postcard from the past...

all fragments written on 25 September 2010 and taken from:

my journal, the one that spans from summer to fall

fragment #1

wake and make coffee, journal, probably read some – what happens on these forgettable mornings doomed to anonymity? one task flowing into the next without even the structure of routinization to etch its meaning into memory. maybe this lack of memory is the meaning. perhaps i've been reading too much of alienation in Shibuya, Shinjuku and Japan. tiny unpronounceable fragments signifying an immense landscape - as much psychic as geographic - of which i've never known.

a former lover, a girl with a grandmother in Kyoto, may have told me of these places, but if so i've long since forgotten. what i do remember is calling there one December. she had left index cards with phonemes written on them (black or blue, i do not know) so i could call her grandmother's home and ask to speak with her. i do not remember the conversation, but within the year it no longer mattered; there is no greater distance than the width of a bed between lovers, one of whom is already gone.

this is not the girl with a grandmother in Kyoto

fragment #2

we leave at 8pm, drop leftovers at home, and go to the inlet in search of a drum circle. i don't want to be there, but go anyway, remembering how my earlier agoraphobia had proven fatuous and empty. we find no one but fishermen and geriatrics, burnouts and immigrants, a strong breeze and the current rushing under the bridge. there is a deceitful full moon behind the clouds, promising to reveal itself.

we drive home moonless and silent.

this is not the drum circle in question

fragment #3

the final thing about last night is that strange tongue-tied sensation while talking to J___ and G_____, like i couldn't quite express myself, or else the words got contaminated as they traveled through the air. i envy, sometimes, the (apparent) ability of others to say what they mean, or at least not notice or care how their words are destined to fall short of true communion. i got a flash of this in bed with my yin yesterday, when i looked at her face after making love.

in that moment i gained a momentary understanding into the nature of images. her face, only inches away, was nonetheless separated by an unbridgeable chasm. the eye is forever flawed, forever searching for what is outside of itself. it relies upon the hands, upon the lips, upon the touch to bring it closer to the things it holds dearest – but it can never be one with them.

so long as we are dependent upon images, we are locked in a world of infinite superficiality, a world without depth, where every passing gaze promises to bring us close, but only pushes us further apart.

this is not the image in question