The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami

I started reading this book before my recent visit to Japan, where I visited Shinjuku, Ginza and other area of Tokyo, which enabled me to get a much better picture of  the novel’s location. The plot is simple: Toru Okada has given up his job to consider what he wants to do in life and goes in search of his missing cat, which is called Noboru Wataya after his brother-in law. This leads him into encounters with eccentric characters in bizarre situations and dissolving realities. During the course of the novel, Okado’s wife, Kumiko, also disappears and his goal becomes getting her back. The cat eventually returns and is re-named ‘Mackerel’ but Noboru Wataya, the man, becomes the focus of the disparate narratives; somehow to blame for his sister going ‘bad’ and the ”defilement’ of other characters. There is also a story told by a Lieutenant Mamiya who who was involved in the wars between Japan and Russia, and China and WWII. Through him the reader is introduced to another ‘evil’ character, ‘Boris the Russia’. He does have another name but that would be giving away something of the story for those who have not read it. What happens is a mixture of surrealism and the occult and there is a fatalism about individual destinies.

The characters have memorable idiosyncrasies: Malta Kano with her red vinyl hat; Creta Carno with her Sixties hair and make-up, the impeccably well dressed Nutmeg and her mute son Cinnamon, who like Toru Okado, does the domestic chores. Nutmeg and Cinnamon are enigmatic but there is a sense in which they appear to be good, helping their clients to overcome the badness in themselves. Murakami is interested in questions about existence and moral philosophy. Okado’s story is linked to that of Lieutenant Mamiya by a well; both characters spend some time down a well. Okado’s well is in the garden of the so-called Hanging House, which is empty because of its history. Another character, seventeen year old May Kasahara lives across the alleyway from the hanging house. She ultimately finds the answer to life’s problems by appreciating small things.

This is my second Murakami novel: the first was ‘Hard-boiled Wonderland and The End of the World’; written as two parallel narratives which eventually meet. I can see the development from wells, passages and labyrinths to the more  science fiction/fantasy world over the later novel.

blog-tag you’re it

Question 1. Readers who have been hanging with you for a while probably know this, but those of us who are newer don’t…what is your connection with a ‘watermaid’? How did you come to name your site that? ‘

Watermaid’ is one of a sequence of poems in ‘Labyrinths with Path of Thunder’ written by African poet, Christopher Okigbo, who died fighting for Biafra in the Sixties. His poems, only available second-hand, in back copies of Transitions or in the Appendix of Aestheticism & Modernism, contain a mixture of Judeo-Christianity (notably Genesis and Revelation), African religion and African colonial and post-colonial history.

The flower weeps, unbruised,
for him who was silenced
whose advent dumb-bells celebrate
in dim light with wine song:

Messiah will come again
After the argument in heaven
Messiah will come again…

Fingers of penitence
bring to a palm grove
vegetable offering with five
fingers of chalk…

I started my blog soon after I’d been studying Okigbo’s poetry. ‘Watermaid’ made for an alliterative title and I’m drawn to water as well as to poetry. I live a couple of miles from the south coast of England and I also love rivers, lakes and waterfalls.

2. You’re quite the melding pot of science, philosophy and spirituality. Can you tell us a bit about how each of these disciplines makes your life deeper, richer, more meaningful?

I’m really rather boring. Science is simply what I studied at University. My chemistry teacher told my parents that I had ‘an academic nature’. Throughout my life, I have felt the need to study something: chemistry, physics, biology, mathematics, statistics, psychology, philosophy, literature and even ‘how to do’ creative writing. A friend once described me as very ‘cerebral’ (and that was at a time when I was running a group for mums and toddlers!) So I guess that it enriches my life when I’m able to use my brain.

I don’t come from a spiritual or religious family but as a child I chose to go to Sunday school and I went to church until I was sixteen. At that time I started to question some of the ideas I’d grown up with and I also became interested in boys. For a time I was drawn to eastern religions and I have never stopped seeking. On many issues I am an agnostic. I believe that there is a God shaped hole in all (or most of us). This was confirmed only this week by Sir Robert Winston, a biologist, who said that spirituality is genetically programmed. As I’ve said in my post ‘The Mystery of Life’ on Watermaid’s Webblog, I don’t think the findings of science have anything to say about the mystery of life or spirituality. The new science of evodevo will probably be able to predict the future course of evolution but for me that has nothing to do with the God debate. I’m glad I did science because it enables me to understand things I wouldn’t have otherwise been able to understand. I’ve also been able to earn a living as a science and maths teacher.

Philosophy, as well as being useful in enabling me to check for flaws in an argument, is also the place in which to ponder such things as being and existence. When I was studying philosophy, we were told that philosophers divide 50:50 on the existence of God.

3. What is the hardest type of poetry for you to write? Can you explain why?

That’s an easy one. Poetry that is very fanciful. I admire bloggers who have a more powerful imagination than mine. So it’s a failure of imagination on my part. The nearest I can get is to write the sort of poetry that might appeal to children – sort of fairy stories. You haven’t asked me what sort of poetry I find easiest to write but I;m going to tell you anyway – poetry with rhythm and rhyme – because I love mathematics, music and dancing.

4. What is the oddest pair of shoes (or hat or some piece of clothing) you’ve ever owned or worn?

I hate hats. They don’t suit me so I don’t wear them. I suppose the wellies (and I’m not keen on wellies either) that I bought last winter are a bit odd. They are brightly coloured because they are covered with red, yellow and green peppers. I have an eccentric friend who owns two horses, some jersey cows, several dogs and with whom I sometimes walk in the New Forest. She gets people lost and this often entails wading through bogs – hence the need for wellingtons.

5. What are three words/phrases that describe how you live your life?

quirkily – my eldest son said I was ‘quirky’

independent – I actually enjoy living on my own. I was very bad at marriage.

spiritual – I value love, truth and justice. I get very worked up when I think than something is unjust. I have had to answer these questions as honestly as I can. The greatest thing of all is love.

I think I may have cheated on the last question. Thank you Beth for interviewing me.

Please let me know if you wish to do an interview. Here are the instructions: 1. Leave me a comment to this post saying, “Interview me” and give me a way to contact you. Or you can email me at carole14641(at) hotmail (dot) com

2. I will respond by e-mailing you five questions (I get to pick the questions!)

3. You update your blog with the answers to the questions. If you don’t have a blog, I will post your answers on this one in the comments section, or maybe make you into a guest blogger!

4. Please include this explanation and an offer to interview someone else in the same post.

5. When others comment asking to be interviewed, you will ask them five questions….and on we go!

Poetry Action Plan 2009

1.  I will write at least one poem a week. This sounds rather modest but it is achievable. At the moment, I’m writing more but I need to make allowance for holidays, and times when I know there will be other pressures. There will be times when I write a poem a day. Last year, I participated in  NaPoWriMo, which gave me 30 poems in various stages of completion; my success largely thanks to prompts from Michelle at Poefusion. This brings me on to…

2. Sadly those 30 poems are no further on than they were last April. In 2009, I intend to set aside a time for re-reading, re-drafting and generally organising my poems. I’ve bought an A4 diary, in which I’ve started to paste print outs of my poems, prompts, left-over writing (edited out snippets that didn’t fit but have potential), random jottings and free writes. I will also organise my computer files, so that nothing is either duplicated or necessitates me using the ’search’ facility. I’ve also finally acknowledged that my muse works better when I’m tapping at a keyboard than when I’m poised with pen and paper. See my previous post: left-brain/right-brain.

3.  To be a writer, it is generally acknowledged, it is also necessary to be a reader. There’s some superb poetry in the blogosphere. I am also regularly updating my blogroll.  I make a point of reading the posts of anyone who takes time to read mine.

4.  I think January’s idea of a mid-year review is a good one so I am putting  ‘Action Plan Review’ on my calendar for 1 July 2009.

The Light of the World

Painting by William Holman Hunt (1854)

Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with him, and he with me. (Revelations 3:20)

Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror, then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part, then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.   (I Corinthians 13:12)

left brain/right brain

Today I am starting a new blog in which to set down my thoughts. I will continue to post my poetry on Watermaid’s Weblog.

Image found here.

When I was following a creative writing course with the Open University, W.N. Herbert, who wrote the poetry section, was very much opposed to writing poetry on a computer.

Go in fear of computers they produce dangerously ‘finished’ versions, and they leave few traces of the process. Your previous drafts need to exist if you are to work on them. if you must use computers, save drafts, print out frequently, and get used to marking the page. (Creative Writing, 2006, Ed. Linda Anderson)

Now I start off with a disadvantage in so far as creativity is concerned because the analytical and logical side of my brain received intensive training when I followed an undergraduate course in chemistry many years ago. I also seem to be what Freud described as anal retentive i.e. I hate messy crossing out. Before the advent of computers, I would endlessly re-write letters in order that they would be as near as possible perfect. I may also be marginally dyslexic – I could not spell until I went into teaching and started to notice my pupils’ endless variations on the same word – which did not help. My son, who was diagnosed as dyslexic, was the only child in his primary school class who could spell ‘isosceles’. It’s the little insignificant words that pose a problem. Using a computer (and now a browser) with an inbuilt spell checker is a boon. But I digress…

While I was doing the course I dutifully submitted to the orthodoxy of free writes in a note book and kept all my drafts. However, I’m now wondering if the computer is the best way to harness my creativity. The response to a recent poem of mine, My Enemy Grows Cold, suggests that it is. This poem was written entirely on the computer and grew out of that first line. I  let the poem guide me with my inner editor only allowed to fashion the form into what I now know, thanks to Dave King, is parallelism, a poetic form found in the bible. The bible (King James version) and Shakespeare have to be my most pervasive early influences, followed by Eliot and Larkin.

I would like to start this new blog by inviting my readers to participate in a poll. I’m also interested in how other people unleash the creative side of their brains.