March 26, 2006 Archives
Haruki Murakami's Kafka on the Shore was one of the books I took with me last year (and subsequently didn't read). I finished it in a bit more than a week, which is quite a personal achievement for a 400-something pages book. I forgot all about the synopses I've read, and it was for the best: the review simply told too much about the story to come, just b/c it is simply so hard to describe an initial situation from the first few chapters of the book. Does it make sense? Some reviews on the official author website in North America went as far as using story elements from the 3rd quarter of the book! I won't even go into details about the main characters - best is to take the book without prior knowledge about the story, except that the boy at the beginning took "Kafka" as a name. The book takes you for a hell of a ride, a bit like Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, which I actually borrowed during my 2002 trip to HK, and read on and off without ever going past the first few chapters.
No jazz bar, but yes, some student protests. It's Murakamesque - reality intertwined with portions of dream. Some characters live in the same realm of logic as the reader; others just indiscriminately bend along with the bending reality.
I felt it sounded like an interesting blog entry title. but I am not sure what I want to say in it. It's Saturday night - my parents have been arguing about the layout to adopt for our house renovations. It's beautiful to see then weigh the pros and cons, agree to a consensus. The process has been draining my parents, but I do find it a remarkable mid-life project to take on and admire the effort they're making to improve our house. My father agrees with me that the bathroom that my brother and I use should be baby blue with mosaic-size tiles - it's retro cool.
I had two mezzo latte at Starbucks on Ste-Cath near Guy this afternoon. One iced, the second one hot. By chance, the original activity my brother planned with my cousins and friends was cancelled and I took the chance to meet up with T. The buzz is still on, as if my body was always two steps ahead of me. Temperatures would hint that snow is never going to show up again for 8 months. The sun shone timidly, a haze of dust surrounded the city. Toronto Maple Leafs fans proudly expressing their preference for tonight's game (which Montreal's team eventually won).
it didn't take us very long to walk from the Concordia area back to Westmount. We each remembered our experiences of Greene street, whose portion between Ste-Cath and Sherbrooke is a microcosm of posh shops - straight out from an old British tale come the time of Christmas. For me, it was strolling, feet in slush, a dark evening of January, from Metro Atwater with my date to her friend's place in order to get a pair of shoes for the evening. I thought the path lost its significance after walking it casually for the next few years - but it barely did.
I feel young in the track pants I'm wearing now. They remind me of someone I've decided to lose a long time ago. They are black, with white stripes on the side - some fake Adidas my grandparents bought a few years ago, in Shenzhen, I guess - and has a slight tear over the right knee, from sliding to catch a frisbee at ultimate in the October mud.
The music currently playing is from SS Cardiacs.
Silence.
