Back in January after the new year had rang in and all the festivities were completed in Times Square, I sat down with my trusty pen and devoted journal to write my resolutions for the new year. I decided this time, it wasn't going to be a huge list of "hopes" and "dreams" for self improvement. There were going to be S.M.A.R.T. goals as Jonny liked to put it. Simple, something for M, attainable, revisable, and timely. I'll fill in the "M" later. Haven't been around Jonny long enough to remember everything that he tells me.
But yes, this year, I only had 5 things I wanted to accomplish and the first one was writing. I have always considered myself a weak writer. Despite the immense creativity I have in the visual, it's the imaginary visuals of the written language that still escapes me sometimes. I love reading and find the treasures of each book ever lasting as well as life changing. Like when a starking painting sheds light to the dark corners of your mind and you eyes realize they have never known true love til this time. And just like love, art and books give one all kinds of love. Every kind of love imaginable and then some unimaginable prior to encounterance. But unlike the failed love stories that occur so often in everyday life, this kind of love is ever changing. Perhaps because the heart becomes more open as it experienced multiple and different kinds of love, and so it too changes over time.
Going back to my resolution, I decided that reading and writing went hand in hand. And to exercise only one muscle wasn't good enough; if I wanted to become an accomplished writer, it meant exercising my reading and writing muscles. Facebook knows I already have the quick and nimble fingers needed for this kind of writing exercise. What I really needed to focus on is the kind of none-stop writing. Or word vomit as I once phrased it back in college when I was trying to explain to Lydia my methodology for writing my papers. It's not that I can't write, it's that I can't edit because I'm always editing as I write. Like trying to walk with several chains attached to each limb to withhold me from advancing. And then there are the times where I "borrow" words and phrases from others such as my professors to try to make my writing more "professional" and articulate when in actuality, the grasps of such complex concepts are beyond my meager reach. I also have a mind that jumps back and forth from thoughts like a child who can't comprehend the rules of hopscotch. It stems from my own lack of confidence to back up my words and decision with pride from the fear of being labeled wrong.
So it's not so much rambling that I need to work on; it's thoughtful, clear writing that I need to practice. In order to do so, I have to be thoughtful.
So the thought for today is dedicated to Haruki Murakami's contemporary novel Sputnik Sweetheart. At first, the book image and title strikes the reader as a bit perplexed as to why Murakami would use the name of a Russian satellite as a nickname for a sweetheart. The word "Sputnik" itself meaning "traveling companion" in Russian. But after a long, in-dept reading of his novel, the title is most befitting for such well written literature. Murakami provides for me a new kind of love that is all in one breath, refreshing. His ideas have a current relevance to the natural disasters I'm witnessing in my current situation and at the same time, he provides a new streamline of ideas that are thought provoking, imaginative, and most of all crystal clear. As long time reader of contemporary books, the best part for me about Murakami's novel is his subtle guidance through his odyssey, making the course one smooth transition from one chapter to the next. The journey itself isn't always pleasant and is full of vague blank holes between words and sentences, particularly the one at the end of the book. Yet the brevity of his words shows readers that Murakami does not claim a higher truth to anything. He doesn't presume to know the answers and we the readers cannot ask for such higher truth that we can't find within ourselves. All the novel truly accomplishes is putting out the right questions to produce the thoughts that can then engender answers. The metaphors themselves in the novel surpass my own genius and truly expand the range of human emotion to another level of complexity, making all prior individual emotions seem elementary and almost robotic.
My favorite line from this novel would have to be K's imagery of the cucumber in a refrigerator in the middle of summer. A technique I have to wonder if Murakami himself has used when in sticky situations. ^_^;
The title Sputnik Sweetheart is exactly what it promises, a companion for the long journey through Murakami's wonderland world, which when put into thought is just a mere mirror of our own. And like in Alice's journey through the looking glass into a world in opposite dualism with reality, Murakami's world shows our world in truer color than we may have ever seen it.
"Before I knew it, the world around was drained of color. From the shabby mountaintop, the ruins of those empty feelings, I could see my own life stretching out into the future. It looked just like an illustration in a science fiction novel I read as a child, of the desolate surface of a deserted planet. No sign of life at all. Each day seemed to last forever, the air either boiling hot or freezing. The spaceship that brought me there had disappeared, and I was stuck. I'd have to survive on my own"~K.
If Chicken Soup for the Soup is meant to coddle the cold heart and bring fuzzy, warm feelings to its readers, Sputnik Sweetheart speaks to the lonely individual in all of us, floating around our own empty space, giving reassurance that we indeed have a travel companion for that lonely trip.
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