XI
i left my naturopath and i walked two kilometers and i collapsed on a curb.
i cried about my body and i cried about my friend who is gone now.
unmoored, i walked into chapters and straight to a book. my body hurts me now but it still is good at finding books. my body touched murakamiâs first two novels, hear the wind sing and pinball, recently printed for the very first time. i opened hear the wind sing. it was a page about a man jumping off the empire state building. i bought the book.
in may i read murakami because may is like this: transient. in may time is funny.Â
this may i went to the library to pick you out kafka on the shore because i thought it would be good for your heart which is stuck right now. but i read a few pages of kafka on the shore and i remembered how strange it was, there are talking cats in it, and how you probably might not like it, so i googled best murakami novel and google said a wild sheep chase so i rented a wild sheep chase and i read most of it in the bathtub when my pain would be too bad to do anything else.
i didnât like a wild sheep chase. it made me feel strange and not good strange. i didnât like that The Rat hanged himself from the ceiling because that is what my friend did. but the characters in a wild sheep chase are the characters in hear the wind sing and i liked that, i liked that coincidence a lot.
i remember when i woke up in the middle of the night three years ago on your chest and started crying. i was crying for a different time. in may time is funny.
last thursday i left you for a while and walked down queen street. a man stopped me and said i looked so happy and it made him happy how i looked. i wanted to tell you this story but i didnât think you would believe it and maybe you would think it was silly so i didnât tell you.
i also didnât tell you these things:
- i loved you three years ago
- i never stopped loving you
- i donât know when i ever will not love you
âTime weighs down on you like an old, ambiguous dream. You keep on moving, trying to sleep through it. But even if you go to the ends of the earth, you won't be able to escape it. Still, you have to go there- to the edge of the world. There's something you can't do unless you get there.â
â Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore