#135 Airplane: Or, How He Talked To Himself As If Reciting
Poetry- Haruki Murakami
A twenty year-old man is having an affair with an older
woman. Neither of them are entirely sure why the affair exists, they don’t love
each other, nor do they hate each other. Their love-making is cold and
mechanical, but yet, it seems to have meaning.
“Far more meaningful than age differences, he felt were the
different tendencies that each individual possessed. He couldn’t help thinking
that this was an important key for unlocking the riddle of life.”
While they spend time wondering about seemingly important things,
she cries often, and he talks to himself in poetic verse. These odd, personal
idiosyncratic tics is what makes them unique. It’s in the others reaction of these
traits that their own being becomes apparent. It seems that we only know
ourselves through each other’s eyes. There can be something so apparent and germane
about yourself to the outside world but it is something that we can only see
through the help of others.
We often spend time worrying about the wrong things, things
we have no control over, things that will go on ticking even if we had not
noticed:
“…she looked at the clock again. It had done its job: in the
five minutes since her last look, it had advanced five minutes’ worth.”
Subtle and impossibly simple at first, Murukami can be
utterly florid when we look slightly deeper. A point made by the following
passage, that at first can seem like a cliché point, but when read in full
context of this piece, sticks with you:
“I sometimes think that people’s hearts are like deep wells.
Nobody knows what’s at the bottom. All you can do is imagine by what comes
floating to the surface every once in a while.”
Notable Passage: “She seemed to have lifted the edge of the
world, and now she was loosening its threads little by little—perfunctorily,
apathetically, as if she had to do it no matter how long it might take.”
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