Kafka on the Shore

I have been procrastinating the review of this book, Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami, until now. It is one of those books that after reading it, it leaves a bitter taste in the mouth. I felt betrayed reading it.

The japanese literature has always been a concoction of reality and fantasy, weirdly and successfully webbed into a twisted plot. It is a dish of fable, metaphor, and nonfiction. At least this is what I feel everytime I come across anything japanese.

I found this book from a rummage sale at the church some years back. Being far away from the last pay and still halfway through the next, I dig in the pile of forgotten books in the store room to find one that would momentarily satisfy my hunger. I have read somewhere about Haruki Murakami before, a distant memory, of how talented this guy is who penetrated the western market. Minutes, if not hours, of going through my books one by one, I have decided wildly - I would give this book a shot.

Turning the pages did not seem like a task because this guy does have the flair for writing. This book was originally written in his mother tongue, and the translation may have an effect on the whole package. However, the sequencing, the movement from one thought to another, the story telling are most likely retained. Before I realized it, I was already immersed in it.

The book is about sexuality, coming of age, darkness within, and light without. Haruki Murakami tackled all sides of sexuality, and he elaborately weaved it into the plot. He presented another side of intimacy, one that feels raw and uncomfortable. The intricate, lights-off details that have not landed in a decent piece I have read before are found in this work. It also enveloped on itself the idea of our reality, until you encounter the talking cats. Then you'll bounce back to what it really is.

I read the book without much expectations. I went through the words and watch the characters take flight before my eyes. I did not understand some of it. I tried to reason it based on what is normal everyday, due to its attempt to make it as normal as possible. But I guess there are some things beyond the boundaries of logic, and therefore, accepting it as it is is the most convenient. I let the plot flow in me, taking it literally within the context of its environment. I stopped thinking about it.

The interesting part of the book is the established connection between Kafka, Mr Nakata, and Miss Saeki. Miss Saeki is the beginning of Kafka and the end of Mr Nakata, with the mutual effect on her. Miss Saeki was a walking zombie of her emotional past; her revival started and ended with Kafka. Her broken shell that she somehow managed to recollect shattered to its tiniest bit at the presence of Mr Nakata. It is now that I realize, while writing this blog, that the coming of age was presented in three different possibilities - Kafka being a teenager, Miss Saeki after a terrible heartache that stopped her youth, and Mr Nakato, who had never experienced any transition at all, turned into adulthood, at the age of 60. He took risks, followed his heart, made his one and only friend, and found himself. When he finally took hold of the physical world, he stopped understanding cat talks.

The book has a gloomy texture, coupled by the cover of that printed version copy of mine. It felt like walking through the pages of Sophie's World, and of reference books about musically influential people. It injected a drop of japanese mythology, widened its scale with a grab of the taboo, thus freeing the author of inhibitions. It is in this book that the not-normal camouflages into the norm, and anything otherwise is but an accessory. Now you know why I felt betrayed reading this book. I permitted its storyline to transform to any manipulative rhythm and perspective, but by doing so, it lost me. Or I lost it. This seductive strategy, this self-inflicted cat-and-mouse chase was what glued my hands to this book. The curiosity that welled up inside me made me turn pages through pages until I hit the full stop. If Mr Nakata did not lose his ability to talk to cats and joined the army of Johnny Walker, he could have understood me. And killed me. Then add my soul to a collection of cat souls to make a flute.

100

I am so proud of myself recently. With the hypes and distractions brought about by smart phones and an addiction to it,  I managed to finish, after a long time, a 387-paged, small font-sized book in one week. In one week! The days of hard-bound, 600-paged Harry Potter book nights are long over. I have graduated to low-key, out of bound books that I flip snail-like that could go on for years. So this one week saga is really an achievement for me.

The book "The One Hundred Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out Of The Window And Disappeared" was written by the Swede Jonas Jonasson. An emulation of its predecessor "Forrest Gump", the book intrepidly treaded on the most influential and controversial of historical figures and events of the 20th century. Only an imagination as daring as his could pull off such a gigantic plot.

The main guy, Allan Karlsson, is not your ordinary, typical neighbor. His life was never simple; it was short of splendid. During his salad days, he got himself a job in a nearby factory that nurtured his love of explosives. He met a bunch of small time gangsters and a lady who loves expletives on his 100th birthday. During the course of his life, he saved General Franco, worked for President Truman, dined with Stalin, snuck in and met Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il, saved Mao Tse-Tung's wife's life who in return Mao saved his. The story may seem trodding along the path of communism, but the book is noncommittal, being Karlsson himself is neutral. What magnetised him to them, or them to him, is his passion for explosives. This knowledge was in demand at that time, and the most essential in those days. It was the era of world wars.

I had been noticing this book in bookstores I frequented, but only until I vacationed in the Philippines did I decide to take out my card, swipe it through the machine, and bring home this baby. It was one of the most worthy impulsive spendings I made.

This book is commendable for its facts and fiction. It is playful and courageous. The lack of sense of danger of the character makes him a composed individual ready to take on challenges, thanks to the contradicting advices he gathered from his parents which he somehow sews into one proverb he lives by. This book shows the complexity of situations that gets straightened by the simplicity of an idealogy behind a solution. Karlsson had not finished school, and he furthered his knowledge by self-studies and his virtue of prudence. He proved these to be enough to get by.

I have read a few days ago another meaning of the word flow in psychological context - a matter or activity so absorbing that time passes without realizing it, resulting in the achievement of a goal that could then lead to happiness. Time did pass swiftly as I leafed through this book; I got "Flowed" and had achieved the goal of finishing it with no procrastination, which then led to my happiness. But at the same time, it led me to sadness. Departing from a lovable protagonist is a flaw in my character. Karlsson seemed real that I almost looked him up to find out if he really was in every turn of history. Yeah, I am naive.

It is refreshing to read something factually painful, with all its tendency to be harsh, to  come out light and joyful. I enjoyed every leaf of this beautiful book. Life is an adventure, the message that persistently oozes out. Karlsson's adventure never ceased even on his 100th birthday; he got married at 100 and a few months, got intimate for the first time, and was still a consultant up to the last page of this 387 beauty. Jonasson has the flair for mad twists. The story ended how it began.

And I am so proud of myself recently. For finishing this 387 book in a span of one week.

Gross National Happiness

Inspired by The Day of Happiness last 20 March 2014 and their suggestion to be happier, I have been jotting down on my happiness notebook my answers to the following:
a. Things I enjoyed
b. Things that went well
c. Things I am grateful for

At the end of the day, before going to bed, I traverse down memory lane and replay the happenings of the day. It has been more than a month since I participated in it.

According to their website, www.dayofhappiness.net, recent study shows that people who write down their answers tend to feel happier as days go by. Notice that the word I used is happier and not happy, because as human as it may seem, we always long for something more than what we already have. Intangible things like happiness is definitely one of them.

So I took up the challenge. I went to a novelty shop and bought the cutest notebook with different inside designs, its goal being to stand as my inspiration to pen down the events of my day (who does not get inspired writing on cute papers, anyway?). So the first day was translated to written words, and the second day, and the third, and the weeks that followed. When I went on a trip to Kuala Lumpur, despite my aching body and uncontrollable dozing eyes, I continued my quest to write happiness. The joy travelled from my brain, to my heart, down to my fingers, only to go back again through my fingers, then parks in my heart. There it found its sanctuary.

What is good about doing this, you may ask? Sure, sometimes I dreaded the work of penning them down because it steals a few minutes from my sleeping time. But once I hold that pen and open my notebook, my gray matter gears up and recollects those happy moments, those rainbow-coated moments, and my heart enlarges for joy it cannot contain. To relive is to live. To repeat is to feel like it is the first time. Like that time when I put my ipod on repeat almost the whole day for Crack the Shutters song by Snow Patrol. I let my body sway to it after the third or fourth time. It has conquered my soul.

Happiness is a choice. A choice to see it. Days after, I began to see the joyful, pure happiness that does happen everyday, in every minute of our lives. In every pulsating minute of my life. I started to recognise it, I took a mental picture of it,  and I stored it in the database of my heart of hearts. They get to come out at night before bedtime.

There was a suggested experiment in one of the books I was reading. It said to visualize a dollar with all its attributes (weight, color, the feel when holding it), and soon on the same day, the coin will keep popping up out of nowhere. It is literally everywhere we lay our eyes on. Has it always been there but had not been noticed, or they just start to appear because of the power of the mind? No one knows. Imagine doing this experiment, substituting the dollar with happiness. Happiness will keep appearing like that dollar(s) on that sidewalk you just took.

Once we start to take note, we will notice how blessed we are too. It has a domino effect, this journalling of happiness. It is causal to our current standing. And all it takes is a pen, a pretty notebook, and an open heart that sees.

"It is only through the heart that one can see rightly. What is essential is invisible to the eye." - The Little Prince.

Life's A Leap

I read from somewhere that human beings live two lives: the first is the current one, second is when you realize how short the current one is.

My father passed away three days before Christmas last year, twelve days after he was diagnosed. This painful and dark path in my life left a food for thought for me. Death does exist, and it can strike whenever it wants to, whether we are ready or not. I was not ready for it.

The change adversified my outlook in life, that relationships matter, that laughter and smile are our daily visas to a smoother ride. I realised that our struggles to achieving the highest peak of our lives lead to the same end, that death, once it embraced us, transforms our lives' achievements into a piece of paper. At the end of everything, we all get summed up to a piece of crucial document.

This thinking led me to the deactivation of my Facebook account. In the toughest and most difficult journey, the truest of friends rose to the top like a cream. I have hundreds of Facebook friends, I have tens and twentys of true ones. I do not need the others to decorate my life, a superficial acquaintanceship with millions of seconds spent on never ending browsing thru feeds is time thrown into the dust bin. I stopped the old life to give space for the new. I ceased the old life and refreshed it. I closed the browser and cleaned the cache.

Although it is a new philosophy to me, I am learning to drive my life governed by an emotional state. I would feel more to relate more. I would share more to receive more. I would smile more to feel happiness more. Life is not a composition of the grandeurs, but a puzzle of simplicity and passion that makes up a bigger picture. We need to find the part that clicks to make it work. A simple hello is the missing puzzle to the busyness of daily living. I am decided to finish this one and put all the pieces together.

According to the Taoist philosophy, the world is a reflection of us. It responds to how we perceive it. We mold it according to our thinking. I believe that the world is a happy place where love thrives. Suffering and pain are the spices that make life worthwhile, and relationships are the sprinkles that add flavour to it. We live two lives - the first is the current one, and second is when we realise how short the current one is. I know which phase of my life I am now, and although a novice, I have an idea or two how to walk through it. Baby steps are a leap of faith. That leap of faith is the beginning of a fuller life.

I'm back

And I'm back. :)

I am not sure how many times I have wandered on treacherous virtual islands, treading away from the depths of my heart to seek the greener land. But regardless how far I have gone, my heart bleeds for unproductive days. Words untranscribed haunted me. My heart beats letters and thoughts that need to be blogged. I was made to write. Now I vow to stop stopping myself.

2014 has come, and it already made a tremendous change in me. After years of browsing the lives of strangers, millions of minutes wasted through newsfeeds of hundreds upon hundreds of faceless list, in the middle of January 2014, I pulled the plug. I have had enough of Facebook.

I tried it last year. Two days later, I came back running. I am proud to say that after nearly two weeks, the Facebook temptation never crossed my focused mind. I do not see any sign of relapse on the horizon whatsoever.

It is an irony. Facebook's motto is to bring people together, but if bringing people together means checking on their profiles and liking their pictures thus updating ourselves with their lives, discounting interaction because information is provided freely and accessibility is timeless, then yes, it has reached its goal. If friendship is equated to commenting on posts,  sharing photos, advertising your life to be adored or abhored (secretly) by others, Facebook is a powerful tool. But we are people, and no matter how much evolution we surpass in the waves of time, our relationships, the deepest of them at least, are all based on personal interactions. I will never forget a conversation with a friend while waiting for my bus some months ago. Another friend whom I was talking through a messenger years ago called me long distance that day just to share five minutes of laughter. There were no words uttered, just a long, vibrant, teary laughter was all that could be heard on the other end. Apparently, a typed Hahaha or HAHAHA were not enough to express this hearty, big guffaw. We shared a duet.

It is the pouring of our hearts that include the tone of our voice, facial expression, body language, the crackle of laughter that gives tummy ache, the touching statements that produce tears, these are essentials that bond us together. Facebook masks these vital information. Unfortunately, they can never go online.

According to Pope John Paul II in his Theology of the Body, men and women are called to communion with one another. That communion is a bodily thing, and our presence to one another should be bodily as well. We are made to spend real things with real people and real events, and these activities give us lasting joy. I spent an afternoon yesterday at a park with my friend's five year old daughter. She played with her friends and classmates, while I took the swing for the first time in many years. I sat and aimed at the highest, the leather seat and metal chains brought me to the sky and the clouds above. The wind on my face, the rubber ground on my feet, the smell of steel that swayed me back and forth, the sound of children laughing and teasing in the background, the afternoon sun kissing a tangy orange light on my face. It was the most fun-filled afternoon I have had in a long time. I felt in the present. I felt alive.

We are called to live our lives. We were born to be alive. Spending so much on modern day gossiping destroys our humanity. All things will come to an end, and however we brush it off, life is short. Let us start living before the wick of our lives spew its last flame. Let us start being in the present, involving our five senses, especially our hearts. Let us see the world through it. It is only through it that we see all. That, indeed, the world is a beautiful creation of God. That God, indeed, is in everything He created. That, we, ourselves, are a wonderful creation of His. We are beautiful, real people of God. Let us not disappoint Him.

Relationships

It is almost two weeks since I came back from a volunteer work in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. It was a fulfilling journey; God manifested Himself through other people for the whole duration of the experience. He showed us the good and bad side of the place; He sent angels to lead us. He pulled us through. But apart from the divine, I realized something. In relationships, depending on avenues, time spent may not be time well-spent, or may be time well-spent.

Before I went on my trip, a group was created using the Whatsapp platform to communicate with the people who also volunteered for the event. In March of this year, this group chat was born. It has been labeled as a 24-hour chatroom because of the unceasing beeping of our phones from people conversing all over the globe. It has reached its maximum capacity of 50 participants; twenty or less are actively engaged.

It is a common conception, especially of the traditionalist and conservative, that a relationship that sprung from and developed on the internet is a superficial type. The foundation is weak and has the tendency to crumble. We have been communicating for almost everyday, yet when we finally met face-to-face in Rio last July, our connection was dissolved by some unknown formula. It remained on the surface level; there was not an attempt to level it up. Or at least that was what I felt. I am one to blame, to be honest. I was not motivated to extend the friendship, neither was I inspired to invest personal time. Constant virtual communication failed to go past that thin boundary between an acquaintance and a friend for keeps. We met and talked and listened. That was all.

My work as a volunteer was to man the train station at Campo Grande SuperVia in Rio. I worked with a group of fellow volunteers. We greeted pilgrims with our biggest smile and most sparkling positivism. We shared some moments of hysteria, our way of expressing hospitality and warmth towards our fellow volunteers and pilgrims who came by the station. Sometimes the train was packed. Sometimes it was not. During our free time, while waiting for participants to board or alight the train, I turned to the people composing our group and talked to them. Some of them did not speak English. Some just smiled and stared helplessly at me and at others who might be able to translate. I used hand gestures to send my messages across. Google Translate was a sympathetic tool. Good thing laughter was a universal language.

We drowned ourselves in music. We sang and played air instruments, pretended we were in a concert hall, thus thanking everyone who had 'come to see the show'. We froze the moments. We took mental pictures. We laughed till we cried. We cried till we said goodbye.

It takes years to get to know a person fully, and it takes a minute to know if that person is worth-knowing. It takes a million words to develop a relationship. And actions. And laughter. And some conversation we are more comfortable sharing in person, because we are interested to witness first-hand the other party’s reaction. Some memories are lasting and have left an imprint in my heart. Some are fleeting they barely touched my face. Some are tattooed in my memory; some have been swept away like the waves clearing the sentimental words traced by a finger on the shore of the Copacabana beach. Some are chillingly winter and warmly summer. Some are curly innocent and some are a faithful goodbye.

Relationships can be eternal; they permanently reside in the depths of our hearts, whether they are continued or broken. They may be founded on good conversation and sincerest personal contacts. Some interactions are short and are not accentuated by words, but despite their brief attribute, they linger persistently. They sliced sharply onto the most concealed part of my heart, leaving me altered for the rest of my life. I have learned to clear myself of clutter, emphasizing on the most valuable, but not totally forgetting, the not-so. I am learning to grasp the tangible, to reminisce the facts, to trust God with the future. The traditionalists and the conservatives advocate the simplest of truth. Personal touch weighs more than a dozen of internet connection. I am learning to refocus my time. To be totally present where I need to be. Relationship is where I am. It is where my heart is. It helps me find my way home.

Happy New Year!

It is a tradition of a Chinese family to partake in a reunion dinner on the eve of the Chinese New Year, where they share a meal of steamboat, a dish of seafood, meat, and vegetables poured into a boiling soup of chicken or tom yam. A single pot on a micro-stove is placed at the center of the dining table, then randomly, ingredients are put in for everyone to feast on. I was told today that eating from one container, in this case a pot, symbolizes unity and oneness of the family. It is a good way to start the New Year if you ask me. Despite having no Chinese blood and family living overseas, I have been celebrating the eve with a very hospitable, adoptive family, who never hesitated to share their time and sumptuous dinner with me for two consecutive years now.

Apart from the traditional steam boat, there are other dishes of extravagant nature that are popular during this festive season. My friend's family, to make this year of the snake extra special, prepared Pen Cai, or Poon Choi in Cantonese, which translates to Big Bowl Feast. True to its name, this highly interesting and expensive meal consists of eight-layers of ingredients like scallops and abalone, each level cooked separately and exquisitely laid on top of the other. Due to its exorbitant stature, my peasant of a palate is virgin to the abalone's delicate tang. To finally put it into my mouth and chew its rubber-like but brittle texture, for my tongue to register its salty meat taste, my gustatory system sure is one satisfied sense tonight.

Guess how much is inside! :p

And there was the traditional Hong Paos, or Red Packets, normally handed by married people to the unmarried, typically children. Even numbered amounts are popular as they signify auspiciousness, with an exception of the number four as it means death in Chinese. Odd numbers reflect otherwise. The figure inside indicates the closeness of the giver to the receiver; the higher it is, the tighter their bond is.

Despite me being the proverbial water against the thicker blood, the Hong Pao I received was more than my merit. I did not really expect it. I came for the company and the food (yum yum!), not for any figure inside a red envelope. We started the dinner with the Singaporean tradition of Lo Hei, an appetizer where standing participants, gripping chopsticks, verbalized wishes for luck and happiness and tossed the ingredients into mid-air. It is believed that the higher the chopsticks while mixing the contents, the higher the possibility of hopes and dreams to materialize. This act lasts for around five minutes. It is consumed afterwards.

Our rich, strong, and unique traditions, however diverse they may be, have a common denominator: they are preserved as an identity of a nation. They are built on a foundation of a stronger bond among loved ones, meant to deliver happiness. Amidst the hustle and bustle of our modern society, our traditions remind us of who we are within, leading us to who we might become. I am proud to be part of this Chinese tradition. It has been going on for thousands of years, an institution in today's perspective. May this new year bring us hope and happiness, health and prosperity. Yam seng! Xin Nian Kuai Le!