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I think part of the reason I love Murakami novels so much is because frequently I find myself in the protagonist… even if it’s just small glimpses. Sure, being able to connect with characters is important in fiction – if there’s no connection, it’s difficult to bring the reader in, make them understand, make them feel, make them interested in what’s going on – but this is beyond that.
It became more and more obvious until South of the Border, West of the Sun basically hit me over the head with it.
But I don’t like how things turned out in that story.
Even though some of it has already happened.
But that story is not my story. My story is my own, and nothing is quite so clear.
It’s always interesting how in novels, people say they are so sure something was a mistake, or a wrong move, or that something was definitively so. How can you possibly know that? How can anything be so clear?
Even from a one-sided point of view, even if it isn’t really so, for someone to feel such strong conviction about events…
There are probably just two things in my life that I have such strong opinions on, one point in time, and one general decision.
That night, I should have stayed alone. If I managed that much, I don’t know what would have happened, but I know that’s what I should have done. If I could go back to that night, I would make sure I stayed alone. Without question.
Going to Japan was the best thing I’ve ever done for myself. Maybe I should have gone for longer, but the fact that I went at all changed me in a way I would never want to give up.
There’s actually a third thing, but it’s more difficult to explain, less easy to pin down in a way that makes sense in words.
But those two, those two ended up defining my life more than most people will ever know.
I’m naturally an introspective and obsessive thinker. I go over events, phrases, actions repeatedly in my head, and analyze them. It gives me perspective. When I try to use this perspective in my explanations, I’m sometimes told that the past is the past and you can’t change it.
No, I can’t. But that past has changed me, and by understanding it, I can understand myself, and perhaps avoid falling into the same traps again and again.
I can’t change the past, but I can shape the future.
To move forward, it’s not necessary to discard memories or to disregard past actions.

Part of what I love about living is my ability to get carried away with things… frequently things that aren’t real. Worlds that don’t exist, people who have never breathed, scenarios that are so close but so far.
I can get deep inside these things and live and breathe them for days or weeks. Usually not much longer than that.
I love emotions. Well, most of them. Fear is one I try to avoid, and thus the horror genre doesn’t factor into my obsessions much. Fear is present enough in my life as it is.
To feel is to live. For some people, that phrase means physical pain. To me, it’s emotions. Call them electrical impulses, pick apart the minute workings of the brain and nerves if you must, but I don’t care. Feeling is living.
Not feeling is dying.
Or death, depending on how seriously we’re talking.

I believe you can strengthen feelings that already exist, but you can’t create them out of nowhere. No, there has to be a trigger.
Fiction is a great trigger. Music is a wonderful trigger. Nature works sometimes, too.

I feel like someone switched me On when I was 13 and from that point I was On all the time. It’s like really hearing for the first time, like seeing for the first time, like touch – overwhelming and crushing.
If you’re On all the time, it’s hard to live. You’re a live wire, sensitive to every word, every glance, even if they don’t hold meaning. When people play with your feelings, it cuts deeply. You trust people you shouldn’t, you say things you should never say, and you throw yourself out there in an attempt to find something solid.
Being On all the time makes you crazy. Or maybe you can only be On all the time if you are already crazy.
Either way, the end result is the same. Insanity. Instability. The complete lack of any kind of rationality.

There is no emergency brake at those times. Just speeding along as everything becomes a blur.

The thrill is extreme, but your body can only endure so much.

Instability breeds bizarre solutions. Breeds mind-games within the Self, and traps. Self-preservation. Inability to be honest, because to be honest is a scary thing that is wanted and not wanted at the same time. Honesty is an obsession.

But traps are not really a brake, they don’t stop the flow, just how it’s perceived from the outside.

The idea of stopping feeling is almost as scary as continuing to feel. In this situation, the choice becomes, live, or be unable to live. Function, or fall apart. Self-preservation kicks in. Function it is, then. { After all, it’s not a problem if you can function, right? We learned that in psychology… }

The brake has been installed.

I can still get carried away, but it takes more to push me to the place where it’s pure emotion. But it’s okay, no matter how far I fall, I’ve got the brake now, right?

As long as I can reach the emergency brake…

and as long as I have the willpower to reach out for it.

M’s post about feeling like she’s not able to dress the way she wants kind of reminded me to talk about this a little bit…
As far as fashion goes, what people around me (that is to say, random and not-so-random people I encounter on a daily basis) think about what I wear doesn’t bother me much. If they like it and say nice things, all the better, but if they don’t… well, so what? I can ignore them easily enough (hence, the music) and I dress the way I do because it makes me happy. And after enduring months of being stared at pretty much constantly in Japan… what’s the point in getting skittish now?
But, it’s not to say no one can affect how I dress.
People who’s opinion I actually really value can impact it greatly. Even small remarks, maybe not even necessarily meant so strongly, impact it.
And, having my carefully chosen style completely ignored by these people bothers me as well. It’s fine if you like me the way I am normally, but at least try to appreciate the effort I’ve taken to express what I feel like inside myself.
Girls understand this, I’m sure, but I don’t know if guys do, as much.
One side to wearing makeup is of course to appear more put-together (hiding the lack of sleep, for example?) but the other side is… well, boredom! To see that face in the mirror every day… don’t you just want to change it, sometimes? I don’t think you can really say to anyone else that it’s not boring to see them because it isn’t the same. This is a boredom born from an entire lifetime of staring in the mirror, from the time you recognized your reflection. To other people, you seem to have changed, but inside yourself, it’s too steady a flow to see it, and so it always seems the same. I suppose it would be weird to find a completely different person in the mirror sometime… but still, the boredom is there.
Clothing is the same way, and even if there’s not a set rubric for what each color, texture, and style is expressing, at the very simplest, it’s expressing what I think looks good at that moment, on that day. And that’s a part of me I’m sharing with you. Sometimes the intent is low, sometimes I’m just cold, or hot, so comments then mean even less because I’m not trying. But sometimes the intent is high, the effort is high, everything is chosen with love… to ignore that, is to ignore me. Maybe I’m not dressing for you, but my heart is in it, nonetheless.

Last night, after rehearsal, I went outside and sang Overture.
As loud and as full as I could.
Even though it’s not really in my range and I can’t sing it well.
I was surprised how loud I can get, since when I sing at home I have to be aware of everyone around me. In fact, I’m always surprised that I can get that loud. It’s not stage level projection but it’s definitely loud enough to bother neighbors…. so the people who live there probably are annoyed by it, but I don’t care because I don’t know them. If they noticed, they probably don’t know it’s the same girl as five years ago, either. I used to go out and sing there all the time, as loud as I liked. Because I could. Because no one I knew would be around.
I got interrupted near the end, which surprised me, but I had to finish the song because the last four lines are my favorite part. They’re the whole reason for the song.
I’ll never have an amazing, unique singing voice, but as long as I can sing words that mean something to me, that’s all that matters.
Even if no one else can hear it.