#93 Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman- Haruki Murakami
Reading Murakami is often a visceral experience, feeling
like you’ve been hypnotized or fell into a ludic dream. To be able to have this
effect even when translated is a testament to the power of his abilities. He
doesn’t merely write stories, he composes literary music. Murakami says that if
writing novels are planting forests, then writing short stories are planting
gardens. Sometimes you just want to walk through the garden. You can feel the
author’s connection to these stories. Murakami writes:
“My short stories are like soft shadows I’ve set out in the
world, faint footprints I’ve left behind.”
So following in those shadowy footprints, we begin this
collection with the title piece, Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman. Like most of
Murakami’s work, this has a tinge of the supernatural, here it comes in the
form of a made-up tree.
A young man takes his cousin to the hospital to get his ears
checked out. The cousin has an un-diagnosable condition where he suddenly and
intermittently loses his hearing. While he waits outside, he remembers the last
time he was in the hospital for a friend. She told him a poem she was writing
about Blind Willows.
“A blind willow looks small on the outside , but it’s got
incredibly deep roots…[it] pushes further and further down into the ground.
Like the darkness nourishes it.”
Flies gather the pollen from the blind willows and bury
themselves in the ear of a woman putting her in a deep sleep. Murakami often
has these parallel story lines, one in reality and one in a dream. They aren’t
necessarily connected, but they’re not separate either. We each have our lives,
and the selfishness stemming from our lives, some running from deep and dark
places, make us deaf to the needs of those around us.
Notable Passage: “I stood there is a strange, dim place.
Where the things I could see didn’t exist. Where the invisible did.”
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