what i talk about when i talk about murakami

READING Murakami has always felt like walking downhill, along a strange street, alongside a stream in search of the shortest possible route toward the sea, but gently, quietly, and you follow it with the curiosity of a moth to a flame. And when you finally find your feet being licked by the water, you realize: that street was not so unfamiliar a place all along. You've been there time and again, back and forth. You've always been there, standing on the shore, eyes full of wonder to the distant horizon of a dream.

after the quake

I HAVE NEVER liked the way you make yourself known, like a troubled ghost, sometimes a wave of nausea, a vertigo attack. The way you operate on faults nor how you always catch me unaware when you're there or not there. I have never ever liked the way you shake my world.

leftover

THIS FEELING doesn't get old, does it? The feeling you get as your train pulls away from a station, from a comfortable familiar place. Only, you're not the one leaving, but a leftover washed ashore from a sudden shift of the tide, impermanence at default. Gears turn. The machine whirs. The laundry spins, as does the world, along with everything else sucked in time: all parts working to force change, always. So remind me again. Change is good and ever bittersweet. It never grows old.