The Norwegian Wood

RZ says there's a Buddha in everyone. Which inappropriately reminds me of what DX said recently, that there's a suicidal nature in everyone. She was explaining why "the Norwegian Wood" made a superstar out of Murakami Hikaru among youths. I read the book on a plane ride to California from Syracuse on a summer day. I was gripped by the surreality of the scenes in the book weighed down here and there with concrete, day-to-day type of objects and actions. It felt as though the whole world is melting into whiffs of despair, but there are still the little normal things existing without a doubt, binding you down to stay living. And the book conveyed music. I imagined what would happen if, after all that'd been done, SY went jumping off one of those bridges. It was safe to imagine that then at the beginning of a nice summer holiday to the west coast. Ironically, if SY had heard me describe the book, he would have brushed it aside with his first hand knowledge of chronic depression. Anything can become a routine, and it's with this that depression loses poetry. And so the music in the book goes out of pitch when daily quibbles set in.