Sunday Reflection

 

“Lost opportunities, lost possibilities, feelings we can never get back. That's part of what it means to be alive. But inside our heads - at least that's where I imagine it - there's a little room where we store those memories. A room like the stacks in this library. And to understand the workings of our own heart we have to keep on making new reference cards. We have to dust things off every once in awhile, let in fresh air, change the water in the flower vases. In other words, you'll live forever in your own private library.” -- prolific Japanese writer Haruki Murakami, from "Kafka on the Shore" (2002), born 76 years ago today.  Considered by some as a "black sheep" in the Japanese literary world, many other critics believe he's one of the great novelists and short story writers alive today.  His style is generally described as "magical realism" with surreal elements -- sounds just right for our times!

Sunday Reflection: Sandstorm

“Sometimes fate is like a small sandstorm that keeps changing directions. You change direction but the sandstorm chases you. You turn again, but the storm adjusts. Over and over you play this out, like some ominous dance with death just before dawn. Why? Because this storm isn't something that blew in from far away, something that has nothing to do with you. This storm is you. Something inside of you. So all you can do is give in to it, step right inside the storm, closing your eyes and plugging up your ears so the sand doesn't get in, and walk through it, step by step. There's no sun there, no moon, no direction, no sense of time. Just fine white sand swirling up into the sky like pulverized bones. That's the kind of sandstorm you need to imagine."--  from "Kafka on the Shore" by acclaimed Japanese novelist and essayist Haruki Murakami, turning 71 today.  He is the author of such works as "Norwegian Wood," "The Wind-up Bird Chronicle," "South of the Border, West of the Sun," and translations of such American authors as J.D. Salinger, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Truman Capote. Each year, when the Nobel Prize for Literature is discussed, Murakami's name is always in the mix, as it should be.