After Dark by Haruki Murakami
Enter Eri and Mari Asai. Mari Asai and her sojourn into the night. After dark she finds answers to questions she hasn’t asked yet. People she meets after dark, who dwell in the gaps of conventional existence, take her to the source of her angst. The others play a role in ‘her’ life, their lives merely piquing her interest and evincing a hint of retrospection on her part. Eri Asai’s sleep is described in great detail and one wonders what to make of it all while being a mute omniscient observer. I have to get back to Shirakawa to find out why he left the Chinese prostitute naked and bleeding.
Book gives off a faint whiff of hope. The superficial is quickly whittled away – ‘After Dark’ there is much that can be gleaned from seemingly normal conversation. One is not preoccupied by the elaborate routines that one must play to satisfy ones role. At the price of uncertainty and security Mari Asai, ventures into a diner with a big book to deal with her questions.
Mari returns to something she perceives as solid and not ephemeral – reminiscing about the last time she was close to her much more beautiful sister. She had to lay some of her own doubts about herself to rest and work out a few others which the wee hours afforded her.
I wonder how many of us are lucky enough to get a chance to tie up all of the loose yarn that we make in a life of satisfying ourselves and others or in finding meaning, in the course of a night or some other time frame or event. How many of us will be sufficiently aware to perceive such an event, how many courageous enough to embrace it, and how many who are even ready to take a lesson from it. We attach too much importance to events which we participate in by choice. People like me who are obsessed with control, almost always miss the potential of the coincidental. The right side of the brain is given a miss, never taken seriously enough. Inebriation would make me better prepared probably.
Labels: after dark, book review, reflection
