On Reading Murakami

I finished reading Norwegian Wood this morning. It would be fair to say that the book depressed the crap out of me. Before scouring the Internet to see what I should make of this book, I was swept away by a mound of paper cutting, painting, thumb tacking, and the non-elusive world of paper cuts. But, somewhere in the back of my mind, the character I loved most stayed with me. Since I have been accused of spoilers recently, I won’t go into the details, but I could positively say that I could see her on the board in my cafeteria. She didn’t have sad eyes, but I thought of her long and hard as I stood looking at scribbled text that was her picture. I can’t seem to recall what I thought but I saw her in front of me. Like she knew that I knew her story. Like she knew that I wondered what happened. She asked for no commiserations. At all. She just stared at me and I looked back at her. Hurriedly, I fiddled with scissors, coloured paper and sketch pens, and went back to my desk.

Now that I think about it, it seems totally weird to me that I could do something so mind-bogglingly childish when a whole life just fell apart. It didn’t make me sad. I just went on. I picked up a paper, a scissor, some pens, and went back to make a flag. A flag! I mean, really. What’s the point?

A girl lost everything.

And I made a damned flag!