Murakami and Our Uncertain Walls

I truly believe literature and children are at the core of who I am. They're my square one - where I find my peace. All the time, in any second, these two aspects are in my DNA. Life seemed to have had other plans for me, and I don’t yet know what this newly forged "I" will look like in the future, but whenever Life pushes me too far – into its chaotic mazes, its never-ending working hours, when I feel like a marionette, I pull the string and try to go back to square one, to my real sanctuary.

Style has always been something that I look for in a book, and although I have always enjoyed Murakami’s writings and his ideas, I have always felt something missing in the language, something that felt false, like it got lost in translation. Dialogues that sound unnatural in Romanian, descriptions that lose their meanings, and so on. So, with his latest novel, I tried the English version, which I think sounds much better than what I have read so far by him in Romanian.

Reading this novel felt like sitting in a quiet place, jazz playing in the background, rain tapping the windows. It’s like stepping out of reality, of how the world goes, and enjoying the other World that is in all of us, surrounded by our own Uncertain Walls. The borderland, the place where fiction and reality, conscious and unconscious, meet and have a drink together, where no one has a Name, and it’s ok, because here, in this place, there is no time, no hands on the clocks, no running, no egos, no shadows.   

“In my head, there was a battle going on between reality and unreality. At this moment I was standing right in the interstice between this world and the other world. There was a fierce split between the conscious and the unconscious, and I had to choose where I should belong.” (121)

“The flow of the river became an elaborate maze, and, just as it traveled deep underground, our reality, too, seemed to proceed inside us, branching out down several paths. Different versions of reality mixed together, different choices became intertwined, out of which a composite reality – or, what we come to understand as reality – took shape.” (131) 

“Single people need those kinds of modest rituals in their lives. To get through each day.” 366

“I shut my eyes and thought about time. In the past – for instance, back when I was seventeen – there was literally an inexhaustible amount of time. Like a huge reservoir, filled to the very brim. So there was no need to consider time. But now was different. Time, I knew, was limited. And as I aged, considering time ahad even greater implications. Time, no matter what, ticked away, ceaselessly. (370 )

“However, there isn’t just one reality. Reality is something you have to choose by yourself, out of several possible alternatives.” (423) 

Black and White and Tons of Colours

If there is something I truly believe in is that the world is not only black and white, but there are always dozens of greys and tons of colours in between. We are not only the “I” that we see in the mirror, or the “you” that we see in front of us. We – the simple people - are our ancestors, their stories, our stories, overlapping, mixing, meeting at the borderland that we define as “I” or “you”.

Despite everything, I still believe in humanity. I still believe that there is that “good” part in most of us – in the humble, common people – we just need to really listen, not only hear that “You” in front of us. I believe in the simple people who enjoy a sunset, a walk in the park, a talk with a friend, a cup of coffee on an orange bench, or we, who see all our humanity in the smile of a child. The people who try to breathe and keep on living in the wrath of history.

I am tired of people who think they are the only ones who detain the truth. Tired of judging people, tired of people who see only the ugliness of this world. I am tired of the noise around me. So sick and tired, beyond my own words. Nowadays, in the new world that arises, and that shall pass one way or another, we, the common, simple people, need to keep on caring the fire of humanity in us. And accept all the colours around us. Because our truth about the other is not THE truth if we can see only the black or the white.