It's Timmy's birthday!
I feel great today. Work went well, nice and smoothly, the evening was fine and there were no usual calamities that usually occur on Sunday nights. I was all set on reading the Zelanzy novel this evening but while I was shelving a different book caught my eye, one that I never would've expected to be in the library, let alone in translated english.
Somehow I stumbled upon 'Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World', the novel by Haruki Murakami that inspired the anime Haibane Renmei. I've read a hundred and fifty pages in one evening and it has totally sucked me into its absurd and somewhat frightening world.
I can really see where ABe got his inspiration from. The town in the novel is like a dark facsimile of Glie, populated by ghosts, or what seems like ghosts. There is something very subtle about this novel that actually scares me, scares me more than a mere story usually does. Maybe it's because of its implications on the real world? The price for peace is the mind, the human soul, represented by the way that the citizens of the town don't cast shadows and are unable to feel love, to feel anything? All they can do is imitate it.
They have become automatons, no better than robots. Losing your soul is one thing, you wouldn't realise it once its gone, but to lose it gradually over a period of time and to feel it slipping away from you is downright scary, because once you lose your soul there is nothing left, just a body and a semblance of intellect.
What gets me the most is seeing the people of the town live after their souls have been taken from them, trying so very hard to be the people that they need to be despite their loss. There's something so amazingly sad about that fact that moves me half to tears. It's like watching a blind man trying to draw a map...
It's scary, it definitely hits a nerve, but... I can't stop reading...
I need to see where this version of instrumentality will take the main character. And more than that I need to know what goes on beyond the walls. What happened to his shadow? Was his shadow the real him and the person in the town is the true ghost, the man who slowly loses himself? Was the shadow the man, and the man the shadow?
Reading it gives me a sense of coldness without cold, it just speaks to me. I guess the thought of losing one's sense of real self has always interested me. After I finish this novel I'm going to rewatch Haibane Renmei, I think I will be able to appreciate it more this time around.
I usually do a bit of writing before work to properly wake my brain up for the new day. Yesterday was fruitless because I had only just posted something on ff.net and I usually spend a day after that unable to write anything worthwhile. I sat on the park bench for half an hour with my notebook in my lap and a pen in my mouth, staring at the clouds and the sky. I bet to passers by I must have looked really silly.
Today my muses came back to me and were practically cramming a pen into my hand and urging me to write, and I did two pages before work, but after that I got so caught up in reading that novel that I just couldn't comply to their demands. It feels like I'm wasting creativity, but I am not to be distracted from this wonderful book. Sorry muses, I'll make it up to you all another day.
But my muses hate to be ignored. They'll probably team up and go on strike the moment I want them as a revenge. Meanwhile I'm still trying to come up with new things to do. Working at a library is great when you're digging for information, especially when you're looking for hobbies that are relatively cheap.
At the moment I'm chatting with my old friend Timmy. He turned nineteen recently, although apart from his beard he still looks exactly like how I remember him from school, the grinning quiet kid. Happy birthday Tim! I still love ya! as does Chris in a totally non-sexual way. Yeah right...
...
Ya know.
Okay, I'm silly. But we're all turning into adults and I don't like it. I wanna be a little girl forever...
Somehow I stumbled upon 'Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World', the novel by Haruki Murakami that inspired the anime Haibane Renmei. I've read a hundred and fifty pages in one evening and it has totally sucked me into its absurd and somewhat frightening world.
I can really see where ABe got his inspiration from. The town in the novel is like a dark facsimile of Glie, populated by ghosts, or what seems like ghosts. There is something very subtle about this novel that actually scares me, scares me more than a mere story usually does. Maybe it's because of its implications on the real world? The price for peace is the mind, the human soul, represented by the way that the citizens of the town don't cast shadows and are unable to feel love, to feel anything? All they can do is imitate it.
They have become automatons, no better than robots. Losing your soul is one thing, you wouldn't realise it once its gone, but to lose it gradually over a period of time and to feel it slipping away from you is downright scary, because once you lose your soul there is nothing left, just a body and a semblance of intellect.
What gets me the most is seeing the people of the town live after their souls have been taken from them, trying so very hard to be the people that they need to be despite their loss. There's something so amazingly sad about that fact that moves me half to tears. It's like watching a blind man trying to draw a map...
It's scary, it definitely hits a nerve, but... I can't stop reading...
I need to see where this version of instrumentality will take the main character. And more than that I need to know what goes on beyond the walls. What happened to his shadow? Was his shadow the real him and the person in the town is the true ghost, the man who slowly loses himself? Was the shadow the man, and the man the shadow?
Reading it gives me a sense of coldness without cold, it just speaks to me. I guess the thought of losing one's sense of real self has always interested me. After I finish this novel I'm going to rewatch Haibane Renmei, I think I will be able to appreciate it more this time around.
I usually do a bit of writing before work to properly wake my brain up for the new day. Yesterday was fruitless because I had only just posted something on ff.net and I usually spend a day after that unable to write anything worthwhile. I sat on the park bench for half an hour with my notebook in my lap and a pen in my mouth, staring at the clouds and the sky. I bet to passers by I must have looked really silly.
Today my muses came back to me and were practically cramming a pen into my hand and urging me to write, and I did two pages before work, but after that I got so caught up in reading that novel that I just couldn't comply to their demands. It feels like I'm wasting creativity, but I am not to be distracted from this wonderful book. Sorry muses, I'll make it up to you all another day.
But my muses hate to be ignored. They'll probably team up and go on strike the moment I want them as a revenge. Meanwhile I'm still trying to come up with new things to do. Working at a library is great when you're digging for information, especially when you're looking for hobbies that are relatively cheap.
At the moment I'm chatting with my old friend Timmy. He turned nineteen recently, although apart from his beard he still looks exactly like how I remember him from school, the grinning quiet kid. Happy birthday Tim! I still love ya! as does Chris in a totally non-sexual way. Yeah right...
...
Ya know.
Okay, I'm silly. But we're all turning into adults and I don't like it. I wanna be a little girl forever...