Tag: Haruki Murakami

Walking. No, it’s not a mirage.

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Wow, let’s give DK an attaboy for showing up on his own blog? An unscheduled sabbatical, like forever. MIA without notice.

Let’s give Anneli credit for my return, this being a far less ambitious adaption of her February effort, but hey, it’s Something.

The mood has been shifting anxiously between Renkl: “often it feels like the only thing left to do is rage against the dying of the light” and Murakami: “All that remained now was a sort of quiet resignation” and my recent fan boy affection for Charlotte Wood: “The beauty of being here is largely the silence, after all. Not having to explain, or endlessly converse.” 

The Cove Island morning walks continue, despite the bitter cold. If I was counting, it would be 1,746 consecutive (almost) mornings. Like in a row. But who’s counting?!

It’s early morning Feb 10th, I’m heading to the cliff at The Cove. I’m standing in the spot taking the shot above, fingers numb from the cold, winds gusting up to 30 mph.

You Blue DK?

Continue reading “Walking. No, it’s not a mirage.” →

Pure Solitude and Tranquility

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Notes:

  • DK Photo: Sturgeon Supermoon. The last Supermoon of 2022. 1:55 a.m. 66° F. August 13, 2022. Darien, CT
  • Post Title: Haruki Murakami from 1Q84: “He could well imagine what the Moon had given her: pure solitude and tranquility. That was the best thing the Moon could give a person.”

It’s been a long day

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Phoenix, AZ.

Visiting Brother.

Time: Now.

I was inspired by the full Moon over the Camelback Mountains the night before.

I was further inspired by a Moon quote from a Murakami book that I came across this morning.

So much inspiration is grist for a blog post.  As the bio suggests, if it moves me, it goes up. No other criteria required. Full stop.

Tell my Brother that I’m going out to take some shots of the Moon with my Smartphone.  How hard can it possibly be, right?

I step outside.

I walk a block looking in all directions.

Then I walk a second block.  It was a cloudless day in Phoenix. How hard can it be? Pretty damn hard without the Moon.

I get in car.  I drive 5 miles east.  Why East?  Because the Sun Rises in the East.  So Moon must be East. Does this make any sense? It gets Dark, the Moon is there. Does it rise at all?

I could have Googled it before I left (“Does the Moon Rise?  “What time does the Moon rise in Phoenix today?”)

But, WTH would I do that for?

In 50+ years, it has never dawned on me that the Moon wouldn’t be there waiting for me when it was dark on a cloudless night.

I drive back. Wow. Empty handed. Embarrassing and beyond.

“What took so long?”

“I couldn’t find the Moon?”

“You’ve got to be kidding?’

“No Moon.”

“OK Smart a**.  Does the Moon rise or is it just there?”

He has no clue either. Same root, same stock.  Makes sense.

He’s watching me write this Post.  He’s staring, wondering: “You aren’t really going to tell the world that you don’t know Jack about the Moon are you?”

Apparently I’m going to do exactly that. Yep.

I’m connected to my own reality here.

“We’re both looking at the same moon, in the same world. We’re connected to reality by the same line. All I have to do is quietly draw it towards me.”

~ Haruki Murakami, Sputnik Sweetheart 

Notes:

Walking in place. Saturday Morning.

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“I like things I can see as much as things I can’t (see)…that inner light was drawing me in.”

It was an innocuous line by Murakami in Killing Commendatore, but for some reason I couldn’t, I can’t, let it go.

And then it’s Baader-Meinhof. You are shopping for a new car, you fall in love with a particular model, and then suddenly you begin to see it everywhere. But the what is what I can’t see.

Murakami is followed by a passage I read by Immanuel Kant:

“Whereas the beautiful is limited, the sublime is limitless, so that the mind in the presence of the sublime, attempting to imagine what it cannot, has pain in the failure but pleasure in contemplating the immensity of the attempt.”

And it’s early Saturday morning.  Light rain.

I’m in bed, it’s dark out. The body is spent from the week. The Mind is off on its own, its finger tips touching, exploring, wandering, free, weightless. Continue reading “Walking in place. Saturday Morning.” →

Monday Morning Wake-Up Call

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I still wasn’t sure exactly what form the painting would take. But I did know how I should begin. Those first steps—which brush to use, what color, the direction of the first stroke—had come to me out of nowhere: they had gained a foothold in my mind and, bit by bit, taken on a tangible reality of their own. I loved this process.

~ Haruki Murakami, Killing Commendatore: A Novel.  (Knopf, October 9, 2018)

Photo: cnd.ha (via Your Eyes Blaze Out)