stars on my back

Haruki Murakami, a famous Japanese author, is the only one keeping me company nowadays. I do not mean physically of course, but then there is something about his books that makes the surreal quality that is he linger for a long time in my mind.

A Wild Sheep Chase; South of the border, west of the sun; The Elephant Vanishes; and so on; from these, you can see the clever, touching, both real and unreal characteristics that usually lay behind the covers.

After all, how often do you get engaged by a story of finding a mutant sheep with a star on its back in the cold mountains of Hokkaido in Northern Japan? How often can you read a short story entitled "On seeing the 100% perfect girl one April morning" or "Honey Pie" and still feel swept away? Whatever the titles of his books may be, millions of fans around the world attest to the fact that he can write beautifully about adventures in search of the metaphysical, isolation, longing. Such is his originality and talent in making different realities work.

From the first chapter of A Wild Sheep Chase which is about the protagonist`s former girlfriend in college who recently died:

"I forgot her name. I could pull out the obituary, but what difference would it make now. I`ve forgotten her name.

Suppose I meet up with old friends and mid-swing the conversation turns to her. No one ever remembers her name either. Say, back then there was this girl who`d sleep with anyone, you know, what`s-her-face, the name escapes me, but I slept with her lots of times, wonder what she`s doing now, be funny to run into her on the street.

"Back then, there was this girl who`d sleep with anyone." That`s her name.
From the third chapter, about his ex-wife:

"The vacant chair in front of me made me think of an American novel I`d read a while back. After the wife walks out, the husband keeps her slip draped over the chair. It made sense, now that I thought about it. True, it wouldn`t really help things, but it beat having the dying geranium staring at me....

I checked the bedroom, opening all of her drawers, all empty.... From the photo albums, every single print of her had been peeled away. Shots of the both of us together had been cut, the parts with her neatly trimmed away, leaving my image behind. Photos of me were left behind. Photos of me alone or of mountains and rivers and deer and cats were left intact. Three albums rendered into a revised past. It was as if I`d been alone at birth, alone all my days, and would continue alone.

A slip! She could have at least left a slip!"

I wish I could write like Haruki Murakami does. Maybe in thinking of him first while writing this column, I have already signed a death wish. No matter what I do, yes I know, I will never get to be in his league. So death wish it is.

I have never been much of a person who can just pop in front of a computer and words could suddenly appear. On the contrary, I take my time with ideas, waiting for the right mood to strike so I can organize my thoughts into a coherent form.

A friend told me that this was the wrong way to become a writer. He said with all seriousness of someone who went through the same thing, "You`ll never realize how far you can push yourself to write if you do not write everyday." In other words, condition my mind to literally grind out ideas and plots and stories. The exercise of the mind maybe, but for me it is just the outlet of the inner soul.

Sometimes, I hate to use these kinds of words: inner soul, new world. They all sound so overdone that they have lost the original meaning they were supposed to convey. They are like
the words the heart within. Now, they have no impact; they lost their voice.

Writers come in many shapes and sizes. You have aspiring writers, poets, editors, starving artists, dedicated masters of the pen, journalists, essayists, songwriters; all have this amazing need to write and to lose and express themselves in the only way they know how. Like when they`re sitting alone on a train and saw something that inspired them, and the only thing they think about are the words swirling around in their heads. They can look hard in the mirror and be able to fill a web page with thoughts about it. A math-inclined person would see numbers, we agonize over vocabularies and grammar.

This is not to say that I am a writer writer. I am not one, yet, just someone who see those swirls of words but isn`t good enough to join the leagues of those dedicated to the art, of those who have a real knack for story-telling and have originality. When I compare my sophomoric attempts and the brilliance of these people, I am dumbfounded and envious.

For example, I was staring at the snow falling a few days ago and wrote in a journal.

"But even if this year seems like one endless parade of laag after another, it still gets lonely. Having spent the Christmas holidays here, and welcomed a whole new year seemingly alone, it is true that being in a different country can test how strong you are. It opens your mind to the fact that life after graduation is just around the corner, and this might be the last time you take a moment, and make yourself happy. It makes you value the people you love, the culture of your country, the food and the blessed noise.

My sister [celebrated] her birthday on the second of February. She [is now 18] years old, and I wasn`t there. Dyan, my favorite person in the world, the Computer Engineering sophomore who looks like me, only she has the raised eyebrow and the loveable smirk. How I miss her."

My own writing process usually just involves sitting down in front of a computer and type. And then I edit, and that is it. No tweaking countless words, agonizing over story lines, redoing scenes. I do not have the patience for that. Thus, I come up with winding babbles.

So does this mean that I am destined to see swirls of words only to realize I can`t put them down on paper? Maybe so. I could possibly live my life without ever writing one, cannot-put-down story. And I`m scared as hell of it because it is how the good is separated from the great. All I want is just one good story. But I have nothing to tell.

This is not only about me and writing. It could be the same for a singer, painter, teacher, leader. All the passion in the world is there but sometimes, we end up chasing them away. The only that is left is the hopelessness of being inspired, and knowing we can only paint a part of the picture not create a brilliant, new world.

It`s the swirls I tell you. The wind is blowing them away.