mehta

In the last few months I've thought often of her, in fits and starts. The plot and character have no substance. But I feel now like I'll have to start writing, or maybe die.

Mehta's world is rotting. Cities crumble as the ground underneath them is swallowed by sea, or just disappears. Roads crack into dirt. Maybe not water, actually -- more like sand. Something that makes it hard to see, that bleaches the world white and wears it down a grain at a time.

I think maybe in her world, the people are rotting too. There's a kind of sickness inside of humans, and 'humanity' is what we call the act of fighting it back. Forcing the cancer into remission. But all around her, the sickness is winning. Like the skin is disappearing and we're seeing the black veins underneath. I'm thinking this is what a world looks like as its creator forgets it.

You've heard this story? That the world is the dream of a stranded man on a desert island. And now he is dying too, or maybe just waking up. Anyways, the dream is fading.

leaving the cat town

I finished reading Haruki Murakami's book 1Q84 yesterday. I was sick all weekend, God knows when I'd actually have finished it otherwise. If you can make it through all 900 pages, it's a good read. If you want to read the book unspoiled, you ought to stop reading this post now.

The dust cover claims that 1Q84 is about all sorts of characters: a wealthy dowager, an ugly private detective, a polite bodyguard, an abused seventeen-year-old girl and so on. It's not, though. It's actually about only two people named Tengo and Aomame, who were once elementary school classmates and who are now searching for each other after a twenty-year absence. They were only classmates for a short time, and now that I think about it, I don't think they even had a single conversation before the twenty-year gap.

In other words, it's the perfect, archetypal Murakami romance.

The year 1Q84 exists in a world slightly forked off of 1984 Japan. Tengo and Aomame enter this world separately and a few other people are pulled in as well. Most of the world is unaware that this forking has happened at all. Tengo is pulled in when he agrees to secretly rewrite/ghostwrite a novella called Air Chrysalis, which is supposedly a fictional work by a young author but turns out to be a too-accurate story about the Little People -- the fantastical antagonists of 1Q84. Aomame accidentally enters the year 1Q84 as she sets out to murder an abusive husband (not hers) and is later tasked to kill the leader of Sakigake, a religious group which worships the Little People.

The antagonists are described and defined more clearly in 1Q84 than in any other Murakami work I can remember reading. In other books it's always been some mysterious disappearance in the moonlight, or at most some dead figure from the past. Something more internal than external, usually. I think that Murakami leaves this in an unfortunate middle ground -- the Little People and the religious organization that follows them are tangible enough to invite scrutiny and curiosity, but not fleshed-out enough to have real substance. More generally speaking, Murakami has always excelled at creating a conflict that embodies some intrinsic and inescapable quality of the hero (say, Sumire's need for a different Miu, or Kafka's feeling of abandonment). In 1Q84, there are some internal conflicts and some external ones, but they seem much less connected than ever before. When Tengo and Aomame escape 1Q84, it's as easy as climbing over a highway barricade -- a simple material action.

I do think that 1Q84 represents an expansion in Murakami's scope in some pleasant directions as well. The relationships are less one-sided, the danger more real and present. He experiments with multiple perspectives, including a female protagonist's. Of course, he hits all the old notes I've come to expect: wistfulness, a sense of wonder and the need for closure and reconciliation. And -- is this another Murakami first? -- in the year 1Q84, it's not too late for our heroes to find these things.

cycle

Shivering on the corner of Sutter and Polk, I'm starting to remember that August in San Francisco means sweaters. I dig my hands into the armpits of an inadequate white t-shirt, into the pockets of my jeans, into anything warmer. Watching the lights turning, traffic slowing. I'm wondering if I'm at the right place at all -- 'Space Gallery', says the sign in front of me, but the paint is peeling and there's an rusted iron railing over the door.

A block away, I think I spot my cousin. He's balancing two foam cups of coffee in one hand, rolling a cigarette around in the other, walking away from me. I'm a little early, anyways. From the looks of it, he's running late. Which is typical.

I kick at my suitcase, trying to remember if I've packed anything warmer inside.

Half an hour later, I'm sitting in a restaurant when he walks by again. I run out the door and yell his name. Oh hey, he says. We're still setting up. Can you come by in an hour? I have a flight in two hours, but I smile and shrug, go back inside and order a cup of tea.

the idea visits you at night:

nothing of value can be reliably constructed. fate plants a few unique seeds; from these grow everything that has meaning. everything else is a monstrous replication, a multiplying cancer.

---

parade

On the Saturday after the new year, Chinatown hosts an annual parade. The list of sponsors and participants is bewildering, encompassing airlines and high school spirit teams, local dojos and multinational banks. McDonald's boasts a block-long procession of Asian teenagers, twirling the famous yellow-on-red flag in unison. Visa sponsors a large float, with a spinning umbrella plastered with pictures of vacations and credit cards. A few high-school marching bands high-step down the streets behind them. Several have settled on instrumental renditions of "Eye of the Tiger", in honor of the zodiac year.

A Chinese father leads his young daughter to the front of the crowds standing on the curb. The Visa float is throwing candy towards them. She scampers up to a few pieces that have landed in front of her, grabs and shoves them into the pockets in the front of her dress. She shows her winnings to her father and offers him a wrapped peppermint. He pops it into his mouth, does something complicated with his teeth and tongue, and pushes the wrapper out with his lips. He grins and pats his daughter on the head. She is chewing on a candy of her own, laughing.

A few paper-mâché warriors are striding toward them now, standing about a head above the crowds on the curbs. "Stay here," her father mouths and runs towards the them, gripping his camera. He kneels to get a better shot, and she loses sight of him in the crowd.

Black-shirted organizers scatter Chinese firecrackers on the pavement in front of them. The red cylinders tumble and pop, throwing off sparks and small clouds of smoke. A stray flap rolls towards the girl, bounces off her fingers. She draws her hand away, startled but unharmed. The firecrackers' heat dissipates quickly in the night.

A few rockets stream into the sky -- real American fireworks with real explosions, she thinks, big and bright and glorious. The faces of the people around her are illuminated briefly, flashes of red scarves and golden hair, ivory white smiles. The parade is over now, she knows, and the crowd is moving past her, disappearing into buses and subways and parking garages. She sits on the curb and watches the smoke drift into nonexistence, waiting patiently for her father to return.

amsterdam, 3:00am

It is very late at night, and I am lying awake in a hostel in a quiet part of Amsterdam. I watch a ceiling fan trace out circles above me. I run through all the familiar nags -- need to recover, long day tomorrow, important to synchronize sleep schedules. I dig my phone out from under my pillow, check the time, sigh. The fan goes around, around, around.

My feet go tap-tap tap-tap down the steps of a ladder, and the cheap metal of the bunk bed sways and groans. I rub my eyes in the brightness of the hallway.

Someone has placed some folding chairs and table in front of a television, just inside the hostel's doors. A girl with a thick German accent is talking to the man sitting behind the counter. She is blond, probably late teens, slightly overweight. He is dark-skinned, possibly Arab, reasonably muscular. I tap away at the yellowing keys of an old computer that's set up on one of the tables, pretending to check my email.

He's been working the night shift for three or four months now, he tells the German girl. Before that, he was a waiter, and before that he was in the trunk of a car, crossing the border from Egypt. He says that he has a cousin who lives a few towns over, who visits him from time to time. He shows her a video that his cousin took on his birthday, when they took a tour of the city together. He says, he misses his family but it is impossible to go back now.

untouched

On nights that I didn't want to see my uncle after work, I would walk to a small stand near my office. The middle-aged Korean man who worked the night shift there never seemed to age a single day nor learn a single word of English; he had been there for as long as anyone could remember and probably owned the stand himself. The seats were wooden stools pulled up to a bar that extended from his stand. I'd order the only thing on the menu -- a large bowl of noodles in broth -- and take out a book from the library or the used-book store across the street. When I finished, I'd exchange a nod with the owner and leave five or six dollars on the table.

I met Danielle for the first time on one of these nights. It was a pretty cold night for October, and the stand offered little enough shelter from the wind. I ducked under the tin roof and took a seat at the counter, noticed the tall brunette warming her hands over her bowl. Another bowl cooled on the counter next to her. She seemed reluctant to eat. I paged through my book without much interest. When I eventually fished out the last of my noodles and got up to leave, she was still picking disconsolately at her bowl, alone.