And Sights Become Mysteriously Distorted

Time flows in strange ways on Sundays.

Haruki Murakami

I came across this quote today and wondered about the man to whom it is attributed. He's a Japanese writer of books and stories. His titles include, A Wild Sheep Chase, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, Kafka on the Shore, and Hear the Wind Sing. From what I can tell by reading short summaries of these works on the Publishers Weekly website, it looks as if he writes magical realism. One of the descriptions begins with, "If Gabriel Garcia-Marquez and H.G. Wells had gotten together to write a novel, it might have looked like this."

I love magical realism. I write magical realism. I didn't know that I did that until a writing teacher referred to that genre five years ago when describing my writing. I'd never heard of it before even though my undergrad degree was heavy in literature. I'm not sure they were teaching about that in the late 70s and early 80s. If they were, they didn't teach it to me.

It's interesting how we can do a thing without knowing we are doing it. It's interesting that we can be part of something without realizing it. It's interesting how the creative muse gives us what we need to be where we need to be. 

His heroes routinely journey into a metaphysical realm -- the unconscious, the dreamscape, the land of the dead -- to examine directly their memories of people and objects they have lost.

From the same Publishers Weekly piece, this description of his literary explorations sounds familiar. In my story The Journeys of Rainbow Snake, characters move in and out of myth, dream, and memory to explore the ending of a marriage and the place of women in relationships through time. The main characters include a woman in real time and women who move through the labyrinth of time, dream, myth, and memory, and who are strangely connected in a single moment and in a decision being made by the woman in real time. 

Curiosity is a wonderful facility of our imaginations and creativity.

Long after I post this writing I will be exploring articles about Murakami's work and very likely making an unexpected trip to the used bookstore in Doylestown to see if I can find some of his books. It's probably the only used bookstore in the area that might have one of his works. I was just there the other day and picked up a fascinating title by Salman Rushdie -- Haroun and the Sea of Stories. The title pulled at me. 

The description -- In his most humorous novel, Salman Rushdie gives us an imaginative work of extraordinary intensity and power that is, at its heart, an illumination of the necessity of storytelling in our lives.

Works for me. That's pretty much the core of the work that I do.

But it's going to have to wait. While I read several books at once, I read only one fiction work at a time. I picked up Mary Shelley's Frankenstein on the same trip to the bookstore. I've been wanting to read it for awhile and it's one of those books you take your time with. 

I'm learning to read fiction again. After my marriage ended, I lost my capacity to focus while reading fiction. Most of my time has been spent writing and reading non-fiction and poetry. It's strange, because I once devoured novels, literary fiction, and short stories. I could move through a Donna Leon story in a day. I read several books a month. Now my library is filled with things like archaeology (always an interest of mine), physics (another favorite), and mythology (definitely a beloved genre), as well as others. But of fiction, I can boast only of stacks of books I've picked up over the last six years to tempt myself. Sometimes I begin one of those books, but rarely do I finish it. 

I'm hoping the drought around this is coming to an end. Reading is a peculiar treat and giving time to it is one of the ways I am loving toward myself.

In the meantime, I want to find the book that unlocks the secrets of the quote above. The mystery deepens as I discover that it is part of an even more interesting sentence. 

Time flows in strange ways on Sundays, and sights become mysteriously distorted.

                                                                                                                        IQ84

I had to stop writing a moment to look up some of his quotes on Goodreads.

Wow. Just wow.

The Summer of Self-Love is a daily writing practice created to harness three months for thriving. The goal at the end is to host a dinner party. Sounds like an unusual Hero's Journey, doesn't it? Most of them usually are.