Norwegian Wood

Friday was a slack day for me. The teachers were buzzing around, marking homework, preparing lesson plans, chatting with one another, or surfing the net for the latest handbag or gadget to purchase. Not especially interested in what they were doing, plus, I had no classes to teach, no work to be done but the weekly journal to hand up to MOE, and there was simply no inspiration to write. So I did what I usually do. Grab a book.

There's a fantastic teacher's library in the staffroom, less than 10m away from my desk. How convenient. Since I was introduced by my supervisor to that place on Day 1, I had been gobbling down quite a few books from the shelf. No, I don't really care if the other teachers think I'm slack when I seemingly spend more time with my face buried in a book than doing absolutely anything else. I mean... I'm more than happy to help them in whatever way I can, and I always have been, without any hesitation to put down my book and render my services in any way. And the teachers have been exceptionally nice to me, so I guess I'm let off the hook with my behavior.

Anyway, most of the books I had chosen were little short biographies, self-help books, Christian books etc. Mostly non-fiction or advice. I had really thought that my obsession for fiction was over. It died more or less end last year, when reality hit me for the last and final time, and my "hopelessly romantic nature" laid crushed and desolated. I had never picked up a romance novel since then, and Microsoft Word is the only reason why my wastepaper basket isn't filled with a trillion balls of crushed paper with the beginning chapters of my own attempts at writing love stories.

But that Friday, I got cheated. I never thought that Norwegian Wood by bestselling author Haruki Murakami contained anything linked to romance. After all, Zhiqi had told me that his stories were depressing, grave, and heavy. At least she felt this way, and she still does. His original work was also in Japanese, and I was holding the translation in my hands, so I thought to myself, how bad could it be? It shouldn't do much harm reading a book like that.

However, it was harmful. So harmful that I finished the 400-page book in a total of 4 hours. It had been ages since I had read such an addictive book. The dominant setting was in Tokyo, Japan, a place that I was pretty familiar with, and the lifestyles there were pretty familiar to me, thus I was secretly enjoying the fact that I understood more or less everything the author was feeling and saying. But as I continued to flip the pages, to my horror and delight, I found that I was reading my own autobiography. The story that I never wanted anyone to know about.

Let me just quote a passage from the book, a letter addressed to the author written by a depressed, eccentric girl (Naoko) whom he was in love with:

Please forgive me for not answering sooner. But try to understand. It took me a long time before I was in any condition to write, and I have started this letter at least ten times. Writing is a painful process for me.
Try not to get so worked up about things. Whatever happened - or didn't happen - the end result would been the same. This may not be the best way to put it, and I'm sorry if it hurts you. What I'm trying to tell you is, I don't want you to blame yourself for what happened with me. It is something I have to take on all by myself. I have been putting it off for more than a year, and so I ended up making things very difficult for you. There is probably no way to put it off any longer.
I feel grateful in my own way for the year of companionship that you gave me. Please believe that much even if you believe nothing else. You are not the one who hurt me. I myself am the one who did that. This is truly how I feel.
For now however, I am not prepared to see you. It is not that I don't want to see you. I'm simply not prepared for it. The moment I feel ready, I will write to you. Perhaps then we can get to know each other better. As you say, this is probably what we should do: get to know each other better.
Goodbye.

When the author read the letter, he goes on to say how sad he felt, the bleak misery that overwhelmed him as he read and re-read it again and again. Incredibly as I was reading, the familiar torrents of emotions, emotions that I had assumed quelled and vanquished over this half year, just washed over me. Because this letter, this small abstract, sounds so much like...






You.





The female leads in this story are all eccentric, slightly depressed, and in need of help. There are two of them: Naoko and Midori. The author doesn't really describe in detail what they look like physically, besides them being beautiful. But his writing style focuses on their minds, their thoughts, at least from the author's perspective. And I find myself falling in love with both of them. I remember smiling as I reach the end of the book, because I have seem to found an author (or the character at least) who loves the same type of women as me. Sexy, non-conventional, quirky, eccentric, slightly depressed, needy yet independent, feminine, intimacy-craving, affirmation-desiring, emotional, intellectual ladies. Indeed I have always wondered why I've never really fallen in love with those normal, cute, bubbly girls that every guy seems to be attracted to. I've read hundreds of chick flicks and romance novels, yet none of them had really hit the nail like Murakami did.






It's really amusing, come to think about it. How many guys out there can say that they love beautiful, mad women?





Then as I think further, maybe I do, because I am mad myself.







What makes us normal, is knowing that we are not normal. -Reiko, Norwegian Wood

For those of you all who haven't read the book yet and I had recommended it to you, I've changed my mind. Don't read it, please. It is an almost mirror-replicate of my adolescent life, and there are some things inside there that I want to forget, things inside there that don't want you to ever know about me. -Valentino Casanova