NORWEGIAN WOOD IS ANOTHER FICTION FAIL

Had a post mulling around in my head for a few days now, which is a half assed review of Haruki Murakami's critically acclaimed novel, Norwegian Wood. It was one of the books sitting on my bookshelf since last year that I never got around to reading, so I picked it up once winter break started two weeks ago.

Norwegian Wood is a coming of age novel set in Japan during the 60's. It's about mental illness and sex and suicide and discovery.

It is also shite.

I know I'm very particular about writing styles that I like, especially when it comes to fiction, and this generally means that I hate a lot of fiction, but I try to always give a book/author a chance. I'd never read any Murakami before, and for years kept seeing the cover staring at me in every bookstore I walked through so finally I yielded. I got to page 189 until I could no longer go on. And I don't intend to finish it.

It started out alright. I laughed a couple of times, even while sitting in Au Bon Pain at 7am eating a spinach and cheese croissant with book in one hand. Storm Trooper, a minor character, yet the most fascinating, disappeared without any explanation part way throught the story. He was the only character that showed any promise. Even the characters in the novel acknowledged his disappearance as a loss, so what gives?

The novel went downhill from there.

All of the female characters in the novel are boring and unbelievably obnoxious. Naoko, Midori, and that weird older lady, Reika - all are portrayed as weak in their own ways. I can't relate to their need for dramatic woe-is-me shit. Why Murakami had to paint all three women that way is beyond me. And the fact that the narrator, Toru, is a magnet for the three women like he's a savior type, philosophical good guy was a laugh. All the guy did was eat, and I found this information unnecessary. 

I don't know what it is, but some writers describe eating in a very cringe-worthy way. I remember attempting to read a Jodi Picoult novel some years ago, at the behest of a Jodi Picoult fan, and was on the second page or so where one of the characters was at a dinner party and was talking with her mouth full. And Picoult illustrated this with something along the lines of, "...she said, her mouth full of egg roll." And I wanted to set the book on fire. I think it has to do with my being a visual person, so images form in my head as I read, which correspond with the text. All I could see was some piggish lady talking with her mouth open and Chinese food spilling out of it, while the people seated around her at the table didn't mind this grown ass woman showing no amount of decency. Unrealistic. Which is why I tossed the book then and there.

Murakami does the same with Toru. He comes off as gluttonous, and what can I say, it's unbecoming. Maybe it's odd that I pick up on such a trivial detail, but it was incredibly hard for me to ignore. I wouldn't be oblivious to something so pronounced in real life, so a book is not that much different.

References are made several times to Holden Caulfield and Catcher In the Rye, which critics have also compared to Norwegian Wood. People are split on Catcher In the Rye - you either hate it or you love it, or you didn't bother reading it. I personally know two people who couldn't get into it and didn't bother reading past the first chapter. I read it at the right age, at a time when I felt hopelessly alone in the world and was rebelling. So that novel means something to me, even though I haven't read it since my teens. To compare it to Norwegian Wood though is insane. One of the worst things about this novel is that the dialogue between characters falls flat, being a bunch of repetitive "deep thoughts" that go on forever. To borrow from Tori Amos, who is appropriate, coincidentally for this genre, "what's so amazing about really deep thoughts?" Because really deep thoughts are meaningless without substance, or even the most minimally likeable characters from which those really deep thoughts emanate.

Some authors successfully portray their self-reflective characters as relatable and real, intelligent and honest. Not so the case here.Those endless paragraphs in the novel seem incredibly unnatural, which is what makes the three women so unlikeable and childish. Top that with their sexual inadequacies and that's pretty much the entire novel. Or up to page 189. Don't know what happens after that.

I'm going to stop here before I am reminded of more reasons to hate this novel. Had I known it was another one of those stories about troubled youth and experimental phases I would've passed to begin with, because those books all say the same thing.

A ROOM WITHOUT BOOKS IS LIKE A BODY WITHOUT A SOUL

Ventured into this used bookstore down the block last night.

Attempted to browse the fiction section, but I was afraid I would leave with a novel I would regret buying.

THE END IS THE BEGINNING

I feel the end of things nearing. And I don't mean because 2012 is about to make its exit.

You just get that feeling deep inside, as you pay attention to details, analyze specific moments, take less crowded routes to and from class and walk in between glass buildings where once in awhile you meet some stranger's eyes when you glance inside.

The sunlight and the leaves on trees will always be there, you think as you walk the obscure paths through the campus, and so will these feelings you have inside of you. The only thing that won't be there, and that will change are the people you harbor those feelings for. They will be replaced with new people, and the feelings you had will just continue onto them. But, there are only a special few that really had a profound effect on you, and are what the best stories of pain and joy are built upon.

Everyone else is replaceable.

QUIET TIME

Angelica is back in Indonesia for her sister's wedding, but she left me a key to her apartment because she thinks that I am actually her roommate. I have to keep breaking it to her that I'm not.

Also because I leave my Shakespeare textbook at her place. It's 7.7 pounds. Which is roughly the weight of an average newborn. Or a human head, which is really 8 pounds, but you get the point. I can't be lugging the entire works of Shakespeare with me every Tuesday and Friday when I have other books to carry, so I pick it up before class and then drop it off later since A lives right behind the subway station.

THE GIRL THAT CAN'T BE MOVED

Angelica reminds me this morning that she got us both second row seats for The Script concert tonight. I like The Script, they have some good songs, but I paused and then said to her, "Have someone on backup just in case, alright? I've been up since 7 this morning." To which she gives me some grief (though she did make a few calls when I asked her to). "Sorry, no backup. Looks like you're going with me," she says, tossing her phone on the couch.

I then explain to her that I'm not trying to be a party pooper or a fun sucker. It is out of habit now, that I decline social invites, as the 80 year old in me prefers hanging out at home rather than go out to crowded shows. My passing up a Bloc Party show a few months prior, a band I've loved for years, shows how serious I am about this. She offered me court side tickets to a Celtics vs. Sixers game a few weeks ago and I choked on my response that, "I have this Shakespeare paper to write." Which was true. She texted me from the game later that night saying, "You are missing out on some fine ass men, my friend."

Priorities, though.

The world is in sufficient supply of fine men, and will be for awhile.

IT JUST STARTED SNOWING OUTSIDE

On the topic of sweet gestures by your buddies, Angelica bought me a sunflower on one of the worst days I had recently, in an effort to cheer me up.



And then we had Popeyes on campus because it was a Popeyes kind of day.

THE CITY

I tend to think that cities are not that much different from people. Which is probably why I feel hopelessly homeless at heart all of the time. You are in search of something - possibly a sense of relief, a place you feel you belong. It is not that nothing is good enough. It is just like people. You give it a try, and after awhile their flaws overshadow their qualities and you decide you've had enough. 

Cities have their own personalities after all, an inalterable convention that adapts to no one. It lives and breathes and sleeps even when you can't. It does not wait for you. It is like the most severe, uncompromising partner you could have. Most people who live in the cities they grew up in, or for most of their life, love their city. It is part of who they are, they say. In a way, I envy that sort of loyalty. It is like how you love a family member you can't simply walk away from forever. You can't bring yourself to leave them behind no matter how many times, and how badly they've let you down. Or a first love. No matter how imperfect and fault-ridden they are, or were, they remind you of what love is when you have trouble remembering years down a lonesome, loveless road.

I heard a man speaking about his first love once. He said, "She finished with me when I was 20 years old. I am fifty eight now. I still think about her."

We tend to remember what is real. Pain is very real. And it is a very large part of our memories, which is why we always look back on it. Why would we be too affected by what is or was false? Our emotions cannot be separated from what we remember most, especially if what we remember most is loss. Or suffering. It reminds us of how fragile we really are. Or also, I feel, it reminds us of how everything seemed more clear cut and simple when we were kids. Younger. Because we weren't really searching for the meaning of life. Or the meaning behind everything. It is both a comfort and a grievance when looking that far back.

I finish with people all of the time. Not because they are not good enough for me. But because their flaws and faults start to overshadow their qualities and I decide I can't bear anymore disappointment. It is akin to giving up on an unhealthy substance before it completely kills you. This in turn, is my biggest fault. My only comfort is that I had not been dismissive at the start.

I am like the city.

I am not inalterable, but I am severe and resolute.

TO BE, OR NOT TO BE?

Production of William Shakespeare's Hamlet by the Globe Theatre of London in downtown Boston, Friday night.

What Hamlet is contemplating is the comparison between the pain of life, which he sees as inevitable (the sea of troubles - the slings and arrows - the heartache - the thousand natural shocks) and the fear of the uncertainty of death and of possible damnation of suicide. 

Hamlet's dilemma is that although he is dissatisfied with life and lists its many torments, he is unsure what death may bring - the dread of something after death, fear of the unknown. He can't be sure what death has in store. It may be sleep but in perchance to dream he is speculating that it is perhaps an experience worse than life. 

"The undiscovered country from which no man returns, puzzles the will, and makes us rather bear those ills we have than fly to others we know not of." 

In essence, life is bad, but death might be worse.

OLDER

Took Angelica out for a birthday dinner, and a cake afterwards. 

The cake was really a chocolate "pizza" which immediately made me say what when she wanted to order it. But she was happy, and it was her birthday.

VERSES

Things base and vile, holding no quantity,

Love can transpose to form and dignity.

Love looks not with the eyes but with the mind.

And therefore is winged Cupid painted blind.

Nor hath Love’s mind of any judgment taste—

Wings and no eyes figure unheedy haste.

And therefore is Love said to be a child,

Because in choice he is so oft beguiled.

As waggish boys in game themselves forswear,

So the boy Love is perjured everywhere.

One thing about taking a Shakespeare class is having to analyze passages of Early Modern English which occasionally has me stumped. The discovery of meaning in something that confuses you, like prose from the Elizabethen period is worthwhile. Especially when you realize how it is very much still applicable today. Suddenly you understand it completely. Love, humor, tragedy. Frustration, desperation, humiliation. 

After trying to translate English to English, that is.

We read one play a week and discuss it at length. This week it's A Midsummer Night's Dream. Above is one of my favorite passages from Act I.

Translation :

Love can make worthless things beautiful.
When we’re in love, we don’t see with our eyes but with our minds.
That’s why paintings of Cupid, the god of love, always show him as blind.
And love doesn’t have good judgment either - Cupid, has wings and no eyes,
so he’s bound to be reckless and hasty.
That’s why they say love is a child.
Because it makes such bad choices.
Just as boys like to play games by telling lies, Cupid breaks his promises all the time.

A GOOD FRIEND IS HARD TO FIND

We were at Angelica's place a few nights ago watching television, switching back and forth from I Am Legend and Sex and the City (the movie) between commercials. This starts to annoy me, as I am easily annoyed, though I am good at hiding it until I can no longer contain it. 

"Do you mind if we just leave it on I Am Legend?" I ask irritably at one point. "It's weird going from that to Sex and the City where she's crying about not having a big enough closet for her stupid shoes."

"You're friends with me though," Angelica points out after she learns of my disgust for entitled people, especially those with money.

But that is just how unpredictable life can be, when it comes to the people we become close to so effortlessly.

STAGNATING

LAST NIGHT I DREAMED ABOUT EVERYONE

For my birthday I decided to do something out of character and get a tattoo.

Not! Angelica was going on for awhile now about how much she wanted to get one, and took the plunge last week. She asked me to be on hand for moral support, though all I really did those few days leading up to her appointment was ask repeatedly if she was completely, absolutely sure about getting it. "It's going to be on you for the rest of your life." I can't help but feel like people seem to forget that one significant part of getting inked. I guess I've see one too many ugly ass tattoos, especially those that hold personal meaning. I'd just make a scrapbook.

I'm indifferent about tattoos. I'd never get one, only because I don't think you should put bumper stickers on Ferarri's (comedian Sebastian Maniscalco's eloquently phrased words). And I'm not implying that I think of my body as the automobile equivalent of a Ferrari, nay. Rather, I am of the school of thought that the sleek and refined vehicle exhudes enough mystery, and performance capabilities to draw attention to itself. 

Anyway.

Dave did her tattoo that day.

Deep personal meaning.

So cryptic!

And tiramisu for my birthday.

MEET ME HALFWAY

Needing a break from re-organizing my room the entire day, I walked a few blocks down to get a sandwich and an iced mocha for dinner. Angelica called as I was mid-stroll, asking where I'd been the past few days (my phone had been turned off because I hadn't bothered charging it). "I'm walking to your place right now," she says. "And I never walk." She exaggerates, that one.

We sit on the benches in Copley Square right as the light starts to fade and the night finally arrives. She does most of the talking while I break fast at 8pm there on the bench and listen. We sit there for some time, gazing at the beauty of Trinity Church before us, and the Boston Public Library right behind us, and the gleaming John Hancock Tower looming over us.

I have a love-hate relationship with this city nowadays. That night, in the middle of busy Back Bay, I forgot about the hate part momentarily.

FRIDAY NIGHT LONELY HEARTS CLUB

Last Friday night I was at Angelica's place watching Miss Congeniality when there was a knock at her front door. She told me she was having the usual church group meeting and since it was just one other guy coming over that night (everyone else in the church group was out of town for summer), she asked if I'd stay and join them.

Miss Congeniality is funny and all but my first opportunity at participating in a Bible study trumps all in chill Friday night plans. Benjamin Bratt who? Let's get this party started. Just hanging out with Christians and taking turns reading verses from Jeremiah and discussing his self-doubt in being chosen by God to deliver an important message. I have to say I enjoyed the session more than I thought I would. Richard, the guy leading the study was a cool guy, my age, and was super stoked to have a Muslim sitting in and running her mouth with questions and remarks.

It kind of blew my mind though that a lot of people aren't aware of the many similarities the three Abrahamic religions share. I got to thinking how useful and rewarding it would be if people of all faiths or atheists even volunatarily sat in on each other's meetings in efforts to understand the complexity, as well as similarities of what we each believe and why, something no class could teach, but that's just me. It is curiosity and inclination without confinement, and it is rewarding, without a doubt. Acceptance and appreciation for things that are not familiar to us always is.

We sat around in the living room for three hours, going off topic at certain moments, and then they told me that they ended each meeting by praying for others, and then sharing a personal trouble in our own life that we'd like the rest of the group to pray for. "So, how we do it is, we'll each pray for the person beside us. I'll pray for Angelica and what she just talked about. She'll pray for you, and you me," Richard instructs. We close our eyes and I can hear them muttering words around me. I say mine silently in my head.

Angelica turns to look at me after we're done and says, "Our friendship just reached a whole new level. I'm praying for you now."

CONVERSATION

Wood had a day off and came over to Boston from Providence to catch up.

We were lost in conversation, like old times, and ended up walking aimlessly from Boston, through Cambridge, all the way to Watertown, seven miles away.

Sometimes that happens.

AMBITION

I want you to understand clearly my conception of art. What I want and aim at is confoundedly difficult, and yet I do not think I aim too high. I want to do drawings which touch some people...In either figure or landscape I should wish to express, not sentimental melancholy, but serious sorrow....I want to progress so far that people will say of my work, he feels deeply, he feels tenderly - notwithstanding my so-called roughness, perhaps even because of it....What am I in most people's eyes? A nonentity, or an eccentric and disagreeable man - somebody who has no position in society and never will have, in short, the lowest of the low. Very well...then I should want my work to show what is in the heart of such an eccentric, of such a nobody. This is my ambition, which is, in spite of everything, founded less on anger than on love.

- Vincent Van Gogh, in a letter to his brother, Theo

IF YOU DON'T STAND FOR SOMETHING, YOU WILL FALL FOR ANYTHING

Malcolm X and Muhammad Ali

Just because.

THE WEEKEND

this week has been a swell one. so when Friday rolled around i was feeling good and unimpeded by any obligations.

plus the sun was out despite it still being cold, so i decided to spend the day immersing myself in society after my second class of the day.

i was at Bed, Bath & Beyond for awhile just walking around because they have the best stuff.

this back scratcher for one. i walked by and it caught my eye. it cracked me up, the idea of somebody carrying this around in their purse or bag. i picked it up and went in search of Angelica who was in the next aisle down by the trash bags because i needed to show her the amazing invention.  if i ever saw somebody using this in real life i would bust a gut.
  smells begone!

this one takes the cake.
it's a great alternative i guess, to the possibility of accidently choking yourself while sleeping with your earphones on. i know i like to drift off to sleep listening to my favorite music on my iPod, because it's inconsiderate to impinge on others if you're the kind of person who likes to fall asleep to music or talk shows or the tv on in the background.
the concept of a pillow with a built in speaker is so odd to me. i can't decide if it's a useful invention, or if it's just another product supporting people's over-indulgent, unsatisfiable lifestyles today. so i looked the product up on Amazon to see what customers had to say. unfortunately, none of the reviews helped me decide, because it turns out that those who actually bought this product are retarded. it's like people have no idea of how to make things work anymore because we have been conditioned to depend on crazy products to solve our obtuseness.
we have a solution for all of your inane problems! if your boyfriend is an uncompromising child who refuses to turn the heavy metal music off while the two of you sleep, resulting in you sleeping on the couch in the living room every night, maybe he's an asshole? i just solved your problem for you. you're welcome.

hung around Brookline because Angelica was in search of wine to chug over the weekend. the little booze hound didn't have her ID on her so needed me on hand to make the purchase. i am every underaged college student's best friend. except that i don't have any underaged college friends because i cringe when i have to listen to them talk about their fake ID's and then see them stand around high fiving each other.

i don't know much when it comes to wine but i watched that documentary, Mondovino - about the globalization of the wine industry and its impact on the world, for a class earlier this semester. Napa Valley, where the Robert Mondavi wineries are located and most American wine is produced, was under fire from the French traditionalists in areas like Bordeaux, who base their wine-making on long established methods that run deep. like soil and family and culture deep.
basically American wine is cheap, and their modern wine-making techniques shits on the proper, traditional French ways is what i got from the documentary. the French know whats up. i bought the two bottles for her and then we bounced.

after some Thai for a late lunch/early dinner we drove to the Asian supermarket to get bubble tea. well only i did. Angelica wanted to stock up on some items.
another plus to the two of us hanging out is that we can understand each other in our own languages, to an extent. A is from Jakarta. Indonesian and Malay is practically, kind of, sort of the same language, at least until we stop understanding each other.
she spotted a rack of fortune cookies and looked over at me. "you should get this. then you can have one every day."

ended the day with James Bond and her happily sipping a glass of wine. i decided to go crazy and had a Coke.
this is how we do chill Fridays.

OBLIVION

What are you planning for the summer? Who wants to hang? We don't need to know each other, as that is part of the magic of life and experience. I find that the people I most think about lately are strangers I've met for the shortest amount of time. I just always remember to ask their names, because I don't want to forget them.

Last summer the audacious Uzair started e-mailing me while I was traveling through California and Vegas. He was in New York at the time, and we'd never met before, nor did I know of him (I generally do not know who follows my blog, unless they reveal themselves) but he'd come across my blog and got in touch. He came to Boston for a day and we walked around Back Bay talking like we'd known each other for years. The next morning we had breakfast at Trident before he left to catch the bus back to NYC.

I'm thinking of being somewhere by the beach, where no one knows your name or where you're from.

The deep, endless ocean extending the promise of disappearence should you choose it.

It is romantic in theory, but means surrendering yourself to the world that has broken you, and the world hasn't broken me.

Syukri asked me once years ago if I ever thought about giving up, and I didn't have to stop and think before saying, no, I value life too much.

Why blame the world though, when we are responsible for ourselves and our own individual outcome? I put myself back together, piece by piece, over years of introspection and silence, filling my insides with the sounds of music by musicians, words of poets and authors, all of whom I had come to call my friends, while walking miles through cities and asking myself, how did I get it wrong?

Overall I am alright. I fill myself with things that keep me laughing, I just inevitably carry the tune of someone with the soul of winter, and I feel it amplified as the warmth arrives and anxiety sinks in.

BY 30TH STREET STATION I HAD A CIGARETTE

Walked the streets of Philadelphia with little brother and some of his roommates some days.

Also read Elizabeth Smart's By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept, about her intense eighteen year love affair with a married man. I was first drawn to the book because of the title, but upon reading it, I realized it came off more like the incoherant whinings of a woman who sleeps with another woman's husband. I mean, think how she must've felt. I couldn't figure out why the book has been hailed "a masterpiece" by others.

It all comes down to perspective, I suppose.

THE LOST PRACTICE

At Angelica's apartment, where she has Love Letters of Great Men sitting on her messy dining table.

Remember when men used to write love letters to the woman they were devoted to?

AT THE MUSEUM

When an English class assignment called for students to visit the MFA on our own and pick a painting that stood out to us for whatever reason, I found myself standing in front of John Singer Sargent's psychologically intriguing masterpiece from 1882, The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit. I had never seen, or heard of this painting before that day, but the mysterious artwork, standing majestically on its own wall, in between the two vases depicted in the portrait, gave me an unsettling feeling which confirmed immediately that it would be the painting I would be writing my paper on.

It was also the main reason I wanted to bring Izzat to the MFA, as he was in town visiting, so he could see this unconventional painting in its original grandeur, and tell him its story. How all four girls in the portrait never married. Or that the two eldest sisters, standing in the shadows, the emblematic darkness closing in on them and signifying the loss of innocence and retreat into alienation, grew up to suffer from mental illness.

A chilling sort of foretelling, and truth, in which life imitates art, as Oscar Wilde would suggest, more than art imitates life.