. Spinning .

Finally, I’ve reached a concept in the book that really struck me. This dialog between the narrator and his shadow, the shadow slowly dying, still planning its escape, yet anxious to relay what he’s learned since separated from the narrator:

“Just now you spoke of the Town’s perfection. Sure, the people here–the Gatekeeper aside–don’t hurt anyone. No one hurts each other, no one has wants. All are contented and at peace. Why is that? It’s because they have no mind.”

“That much I know too well,” I say.

“It is by relinquishing their mind that the Townfolk lose time; their awareness becomes a clean slate of eternity. As I said, no one grows old or dies. All that’s required is that you strip away the shadow that is the grounding of the self and watch it die. Once your shadow dies, you haven’t a problem in the world. You need only to skim off the discharges of mind that rise each day.”

“Skim off?”

I’ll come back to that later. First, about the mind. You tell me there is no fighting or hatred or desire in the Town. That is a beautiful dream, and I do want your happiness. But the absence of fighting or hatred or desire also means the opposites do not exist either. No joy, no communion, no love. Only where there is disillusionment and depression and sorrow does happiness arise; without the despair of loss, there is no hope.” (p. 334)

After all the oddness the two worlds have revealed as Murakami has drawn them (I at first thought they were parallel, now feel they are more past and future, as indicated by the tense structure as well), it is this lesson or possibility that he has brought us to: losing one’s self into the will of the community and secondly, one extreme demands its opposite, or otherwise normalcy involves a type of apathy.

This last thought reminds me instantly of the need for evil to know good, for sadness to have happiness, etc. that is a topic of importance in The Consolation of Philosophy by Boethius. It is based on the theory that if we have not experienced sadness, for example, then we could not comprehend its opposite of happiness because there would be no way to gauge the contrast. I find as I grow older I am more convinced of this personally. Traumatic events of the past hold their own in my mind until something worse might happen; same thing with events or people who delight me. Age hones the senses rather than dulling them, I think. And to shut oneself off from the world in order to protect oneself, to attempt to live in peace and harmony, tends instead, to numb one to all feelings, good or bad, frightening or comforting.

I’m getting towards the last 50 pages here, and I’m anxious now to see how Murakami fuses his two worlds. He has already made the narrator aware in the past that he will die and move onto another world, but as we see the present, the shadow here is speaking of escape before it itself dies, and is begging the narrator to leave with it.

And this is neat; within the expected action and resolution crops up another conflict: his feelings towards the Librarian.

I didn’t listen to the State of the Union address last night; didn’t even read the full text the next day as I usually do. Nor have I been following the GOP primaries. The time to listen to politicians is certainly not in an election year when lies fly like bullets.

My concern in upcoming major elections is not as much who gains the oval office, but more importantly, that neither party ever again gains control of the presidency, the House, and the Senate, all three.

This to me is the very antithesis of a democracy. At best it represents the will of half the populace. I would prefer the frustrations and time delays of gridlock (gridlock, meaning that two opposing sides cannot compromise; not that one will not bend to the wishes of the other and take the full blame for the hold-up) to the steamrolling over of one half of society’s desires and values in favor of the other’s. Forcing one political policy on the entire population of a country is called a dictatorship.

First of all, let me say that I’ve been reading this book like forever, or at least it seems that way. To be fair, my mind had been retrained to seek the immediate resolution of flash fiction and thus a novel-length book was suddenly overwhelming unless it was quick-paced action that required little involvement from the reader. Murakami demands more.

I’m not totally convinced that the story itself and even the writing wasn’t falling a bit short of my expectations. Surely McCarthy or Faulkner would not have let me put them down for weeks at a time. And this story of Murakami’s is not one that is easily followed unless you keep in mind that there are two stories here: likely the same narrator, a futuristic analyst with a brain implant who is caught up in a weird world of a scientist and his granddaughter in one; and in the other, a dream reader who must give up his shadow and live within the confines of a town walled in and watched over by a Gatekeeper. The former is written in the past tense, the latter in the present.

The thing with Murakami is that he manages to create unusual environments, lay them out, people them with characters with whom for some reason, have depth but do not truly elicit empathy, juggle pace and plots so that sometimes reading two pages is a chore and sometimes reading twenty flies by in a snap, include dull details interspersed with danger and action, and toss action and danger amid dull details.

There is no real lovely language here; it is stark and perfectly suited to the dreary starkness of both worlds. Even in the simplicity of words the settings emerge real enough in the reader’s mind–even if it’s not what Murakami himself imagined. Therefore, there wasn’t anything I read that sent me dashing off to the laptop to blog about and share, until this:

No, these holes could go on forever. And I would never get to read that morning edition. The fresh ink coming off on your fingers. Thick with all the advertising inserts. The Prime Minister’s wake-up time, stock market reports, whole family suicides, chawan-mushi recipes, the length of skirts, record album reviews, real estate, . . . (pg. 235)

This is the narrator’s thoughts as he’s following the scientist’s granddaughter through a slick black plateau of holes from which leeches emerge in this underground world. The thought is odd because as the story is evidently the future, the looking back to a more normal present for this character goes further back to a time not of DVDs or CDs but of “record album” reviews. And newspapers–which have already become a rarity for morning reading.

Even as I feel these two stories are of the same character and are separated by time, there is at last a reference in one of the other:

Back to the newsreel, arcs of water shooting across the screen, spillway emptying into the big bowl below. Dozens of camera angles: up, down, head on, this side, that side, long, medium, zoom in close-up on the tumbling waters. An enormous shadow of the arching water is cast against the concrete expanse. I star, and the shadow gradually becomes my shadow. (pg. 238)

This, in the dark underground world, as he is following the granddaughter to some sort of safety. This, while in the parallel narrative, he has given up his shadow to the Gatekeeper.

And, a hint at what is perhaps being drawn out as a theme; the loss of self? No names are given to the narrator nor any of the main characters. They are the Professor, the Colonel, the chubby granddaughter, the Librarian, etc. This would also tie in with the rather flat characters who we never-the-less endow with a sense of reality. And just at this point in the story, the narrator also begins to realize that when he gave up his shadow, he gave up his memory, his own sense of who and what he is.

I’m not sure whether the story’s getting better at this point or I’m just coming down from a flash-fiction high and learning to concentrate for longer than two minutes, but I know I’m enjoying the story more and want to read, rather than pushing myself out of guilt.

(Still, I must admit that reading the jacket blurb describing the book as  “hilariously funny” isn’t something I remember feeling at all.)

Well yes, I guess the last full novel I read was “The Namesake” back in April 2011. And yes, shortly thereafter I started Murakami’s Hard-Boiled Wonderland and The End of The World but in truth, I’d only made it 200 pages in by the end of the year.

Well of course I’ve been reading! Short flash pieces of my friends’ work. Poetry, art (yes, you can read art just as you can paint a story), too much current event news coverage, and my own pieces as I flash-edit (a new term I’ve just made up to indicate the fast nature of flash fiction writing). That’s what I spent most of last year doing: writing. Every day, a story a day. Now I need to organize them all in Tinderbox (as I did the previous year’s 100 Days Project), tag them with style or theme if not genre, clean them up, and plan to put a book or two together out of them and make some attempt to publish.

I’m also getting (or planning on getting) more active with my reading and reviewing here at Spinning. I suspect that my couple of years of reading and writing flash fiction may have tuned my mind into short spurts of attention, and I may have to slowly expand it into novel length not only to read, but to write.

See, I’m also planning on writing a hypertext narrative of novel length.

But first, I’ve just gone through fifty more pages of Murakami today and once I go back and refresh my memory with what I read in the beginning of the book, I’ll post the first review. Not my usual style, where I’d post almost daily as I read, but it’s a start!

With a Photoshopped version of the snowstorm…

Help the children by your purchase (all proceeds to charity) and read some beautiful and heartbreaking stories by buying the e-book “The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology” available at Amazon, Smashwords, and Barnes & Noble–and yes, I’m proud to be included here! Purchasing info at: http://the-lost-children.blogspot.com/

Let’s say I agree that the money and wealth at the top 1 or 2% needs to be equally redistributed to the remainder of the populace. No matter if that money was ill-gotten or earned by hard work. Sounds good no?

Since I’m not in that top percentile, I’d make out well. And, that extra bonus money (since I certainly didn’t earn it) would be quite welcome and appreciated. Now, let’s look down the road, a generation beyond the great equalization of wealth.

I’d bet my entire windfall that in less than a decade, the shift in wealth would have already become evident. There would already be new billionaires, and there would be a large portion of society that had long lost every penny they’d been given. You see, when you win the lottery, you win money–not brains.

We are not really all born equal, nor are all able to overcome their obstacles and gain their desires, become educated, earn a good to great living, invent the latest new gizmo that benefits mankind. Nor will all born with the silver spoon manage to get much beyond toddling without losing the spoon.  This is the nature of man. Some folks have ambition, some have genetic predisposition to fuck up.

Soon the whole balance would once again reassert itself as a society. The haves would do better and better, while the have-nots would grumble and complain and blame everyone else but themselves. You can’t say that some have an unequal chance in life when you see the self made millionaires like a Bill Gates or an Oprah Winfrey or a Barack Obama who have found their own ways of using their talents to get ahead in a world where they weren’t marked for greatness.

I’m not rich because I’m not super intelligent, or super creative, or super silver-tongued and self-confident nor have the ambition to overcome my shortcomings. It’s my fault and my fault alone.

I often post the same thing on twitter and Facebook and did so with this:

Ever wonder what life would be like if it were the men’s movement of the sixties instead of the women’s? If men decided that the glory of raising children shouldn’t be for women only, quit their jobs and stayed home?

What’s interesting is what came out of it. On twitter, it went in the direction of certain college campus behavior and men hating women. On Facebook, it took off in the theme of women hating men. Oh the wonders of diversity of opinion!

I personally don’t think that men hate women or women hate men. It really has nothing to do with it, though there may be some resentment involved. Basically, I think it has more to do with self-image and projected image and perception.

But getting back to the original question. While one’s first thought would be, “You can’t do that because someone has to earn a living to support the family.” But look at the women’s movement away from the constraints of home and family to grant time for full time meaningful employment, and meaningful employment often means success-oriented with goals that might challenge any normal schedule and a job into much more than a 40-hour week. Didn’t anyone say, “You can’t do that because who’s going to raise the kids?” Or even watch the kids for that matter. Well that problem was solved with daycare that took care of infancy through age six when kindergarten is normally started. Solutions do manage to come up when someone wants something bad enough to make it work.

It’s an interesting question as a “what if?” and it no doubt would have had as large an impact on society as has the feminist movement of nearly fifty years ago.

Well, another year down and another 100 stories written–though they’re only a portion of the 365 I’m committed to write this year.

The summer 100 Days Projects started in 2008 with Carianne Mack painting daily and a poem inspired by it by Steve Ersinghaus. This collaboration resulted in a beautiful book of the complete works. I started the 100 Days Project in 2009, writing a hypertext story every day for 100 days in conjunction with about a dozen others who dedicated their days to art, poems, stories, films, audio, etc. In the summer of 2010, I participated with 100 flash fiction pieces and a matching image which served to practice my Photoshopping and Photography skills.

There were about sixty participants starting out this year, with a good forty-plus finishing. Some of the most fantastic artwork, poetry, photography was produced by some extremely talented artists and writers. What was neat for me this year was that a few of my friends from Fictionaut were coerced into joining up and so there was a better sense of camaraderie and support. While we can say we create for ourselves, we really do appreciate an audience for our efforts and there were a precious few folk (bless ‘em!) who read or viewed almost all the work of their fellow artists and were encouraging by their comments and retweets or Facebook notices. Believe me, that was most appreciated.

But I’m not nearly done; I’ve got an end date of December 31st, 2011. While I may have written 240 stories this year, I’ve still got 125 to go. Then editing, reworking, and sorting into some semblance of order for either individual or an anthology submission

Love these new little round cucumbers; they’re delicious and look like miniature turban squash or honeydew melons.

Interesting, though not really all that surprising to me, that every one of the sympathy cards we personally received on the death of a close family member were from those I’d consider conservative-leaning.

Ah, it’s not a question of tradition or romance. And the prices have come down within reach. It’s not a case of fighting the onslaught of change or resistance to modern technology.

The Book rises over the Kindle, the Nook, et al, for this: it can be safely left on the table beside a hospital bed without fear of theft or confusion. It can be picked up by anyone, any of his visitors who are willing to sit and read to him. A continuing narrative stopped not by button but bookmark, a thin slip of paper holding the place.

Wife, son and brother, sisters and an occasional temporarily-approved friend. Each know the mechanics of opening a book, flipping a page, reading. Even an aide may get antsy herself, go through the motions, her voice carrying the story on through conflicts no worse than what the man goes through just lying there on the bed. He gets tired, frustrated, scared in uncomfortable, pinned down like a butterfly day after day. His vista a wide-open expanse of the ceiling with the occasional head popping through like a cloud in his sky.

He escapes into dreams in his sleep. But he needs more to escape while awake.

I like the new GEICO commercial, where the little kid gets hung up in the basketball hoop. It’s an irony that will go over the heads of many who will chuckle perhaps, completely missing the heavier story that underlies it.

The young couple stands in front of a nice suburban home, and tell us something to the effect that their 401k wasn’t going to be enough to send their 5 year-old son through college, so they “taught him to dunk.” In the background, the little boy slam-dunks a basket and hangs there. “Scholarship!” the mother proudly beams.

And while everyone watches and giggles, no one realizes the import of not the advertised message-a GEICO savings plan–but of the ease with which one can get access to an education by learning to bounce a ball. Easier than saving money or earning a scholarship based on intelligence and knowledge. Yep, college ain’t for smarties. College is for those who can play games.

While I’m taking part in another summer’s 100 Days Project, I’ve really been writing a story a day since January 1st and have passed the halfway mark a few days ago. Everything that started here was transferred to the Talespinning site at the end of May.

Several changes have occurred in the process. Starting out, I wrote a story as influenced by Carianne Mack Garside’s artwork. Her own commitment to produce a piece daily was affected by her baby’s growth and curiosity and resulting need for extra attention so I continued on my own. Inspiration came out of thin air. When the 100 Days Project came up at the end of May, I decided to once more hook up with the group, and so it goes. Even with this project, we’ll be hitting another halfway mark of 50 days of daily work this weekend.

It’s amazing how many ideas and storylines a writer can find, either spurred by the creativity of others or just by life itself. Someone made a comment on one of my stories to the effect that he found it surprising that I could develop some many different characters, a new one each day. I laughed and responded that perhaps it is the writer’s version of multiple personality disorder.

Meanwhile, because I have been reading the other participant’s work, as well as those of fellow writers on Fictionaut and new literary publications as they come out, I haven’t kept up on my novel reading, nor my hypertext and new media learnings (last posting at Hypercompendia was on the Morpheus software!) so these two weblogs have been sort of stagnant for a while except when something interesting (at least to me!) happens and I’ll post to the Reality category.

Gardening, framing, reading, and writing; this will be my summer.