Mikael P. > Recent Status Updates

"...Dante speaks movingly (...) of how a man 'uprooted' from his native city is comparable to a water plant torn out of its natural habitat and set down in the desert."

quite enjoyed chapter 10. it had those paragraphs about depression and the 'sad, lonely spring' vibe was on point. i quite like midori and i honestly hope toru ends up with her even though i believe their personalities might clash (midori is open, toru is closed-off) but at the same time midori is a good influence on toru (at least in these trying times). reiko gave toru good advice in her letter, signing off on that

"Thinking back (...), all that comes to mind for me is a swamp - a deep, sticky bog that feels as if it's going to suck off my shoe each time I take a step. I walk through the mud, exhausted. In front of me, behind me, I see nothing but the endless darkness of a swamp.
Time itself slogged along in rhythm with my faltering steps. The people around me had gone on ahead long before, while my time and I hung back, (...).

this was the incest-themed chapter oh god WHY.
midori is so clingy, i don't blame her but why is murakami so hell-bent on writing about pathetic women in such a fetishizing manner? am i supposed to find it cute that she's never been accepted by anyone? is it supposed to be sexy to me that she's clingy because of it?
these characters make me sad and piss me off but i also believe flawed characters should exist. idk.

this book is legitimately dampening my mood because it makes me feel lonely and disattached. that's something that murakami succeeds at.
minimal sex and minor misogyny in chapter 8 so i quite liked it.
hatsumi's suicide wasn't explained or given background to at all, just like all the other suicides in the book. there's a reason for that - is it the fact that we don't really know the character or is it symbolic?

actually really enjoyed toru taking care of midori's father in the hospital. enjoyed the end of this chapter. minimal sex and minimal misogyny - i liked it!

hospitals make me uncomfortable so not particularly loving this but it's definitely better than just sexsexsex and misogyny

reiko you're so cool please don't be a pedophile

why did she do that

boobies :(

girls can't write well?? is that what he's saying??

not sure how to feel about this

"That's the kind of death that frightens me. The shadow of death slowly, slowly eats away at the region of life, and before you know it everything's dark and you can't see, and the people around you think of you as more dead than alive."

same

"Death was not the opposite of life. It was already here, within my being, it had always been here, and no struggle would permit me to forget that."

"'Death exists, not as the opposite but as a part of life.' ... Death exists - in a paperweight, in four red and white balls on a pool table - and we go on living and breathing it into our lungs like fine dust."

"What interested him were things like changes in the coastline ot the completion of a new railway tunnel. Nothing else. He'd go on for hours once he got started on a subject like that, until you either ran away or fell asleep."

me irl