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Excerpts from The Wind-up Bird Chronicle, by Haruki Murakami:
The first thing I did when I got to the well was to remove the stones that held the cap on, then take off one of the two wooden half-circles....There was no water. I set down the knapsack, took the rope ladder out, and tied one end of it to the trunk of the nearby tree....If, by some chance, the ladder somehow got loose or came undone, I would probably never make it back to the surface.
No matter how far I went, though, there was no bottom. My descent seemed to take forever.... When I had counted twenty rungs, a wave of terror overtook me....There was no way this well could be so deep. This was the middle of Tokyo....I held my breath and listened, but I couldn't hear a thing....It was a separate world down here, one cut off from the surface, where the sun shone so unstintingly.
Looking directly up, I now could grasp how very deep the well was. I gave the rope ladder another hard tug. As long as it remained in place, I could go back to the surface anytime I wanted.
Taking a breath, I sat on the floor of the well, with my back against the wall. I closed my eyes and let my body become accustomed to the place. All right, then, I thought: here I am in the bottom of a well.
As time passed, my eyes became more accustomed to the darkness....As much as my eyes became used to it, though, the darkness never ceased to be darkness....In it, you could see something. And at the same time, you could see nothing at all.
Here in this darkness, with its strange sense of significance, my memories began to take on a power they had never had before....Every now and then, while searching through my memories, I would reach out to where the rope ladder was hanging against the wall and give it a tug to make sure it hadn't come loose. I couldn't seem to shake the fear that it might simply give way at any moment.
Three p.m....The light up there overwhelmed everything, and yet just below it, down here, there existed such a darkness. All you had to do was climb a little ways underground on a rope ladder, and you could reach a darkness this profound. I pulled on the ladder one more time to be certain it was anchored firmly.
Seven-thirty p.m....Now I was enveloped by a darkness that was total....Staying very still in the darkness, I became less and less convinced of the fact that I actually existed...my body began to lose its density and weight...wordless tug-of-war were going on inside me, a contest in which my mind was slowly dragging my body into its own territory.
Then it occurred to me to grope along the wall for the ladder....The ladder was nowhere....The ladder had disappeared while I was sleeping. It had been pulled up. Taken away....Once it was gone, I stood there, hollow, empty as a gutted animal....Strangely enough, all I felt at that moment was a kind of resignation.
This person, this self, this me, finally, was made somewhere else. Everything had come from somewhere else, and it would all go somewhere else. I was nothing but a pathway for the person known as me.
I dreamt of the smell of rosemary. No, I was not smelling rosemary in my dream. Quite simply, its smell permeated my subconsciousness. That I could dream about a scent, without any setting or narrative, fascinates me.
Somewhere long ago, I heard that rosemary means "remembrance".
While the bosses are away on a two-and-a-half week vacation, I am dogsitting for their two standard poodles at their house. Even though the heated pool and the hot tub are of no use for me, life is still very good—I can watch Food Network whenever I want. The dogs, Zoey and Wally, are picking up on my low-key energy level and the three of us are enjoying a relaxing and lazy weekend together.
I was taking a break from Food Network to watch "Roman Holiday” earlier this afternoon when I noticed Wally’s feet twitch. He had fallen asleep next to me on the sofa. He started breathing faster, and the tips of his nose moved as if he was sniffing. Then his lips curled up, occasionally showing fangs. Wally, the dog, was dreaming.
There is no way possible for me to know what he was dreaming. But from what I saw, my guess is that perhaps he was fending off an enemy—say, a cat or a squirrel ten times his size—that broke into the house, by cornering the creature and gnarling at it. Whether he dreamt as far as being rewarded with a giant pig ear for his heroism will remain unknown. Whatever his dream was, I am sure it was a fun and happy one. And watching him dream such a dream, I felt a brief warmth inside that I have not felt in a long while.
The work I was doing continued on in my dream. Only I was not creating a 3D model of the space. The space was already built, in all white, and I was inside the space, working on creating a receptionist. She was to come alive when I finish. The boundaries--reality and dream, work and play, life and death--were all blurred.
It is the ungodly hours of the early morning. I wake up from my sleep and walk out to the living room. In front of the window, I see a pair of men's sandals, showing obvious signs of wear. They belong to him.
I start to look around the house. Little details within have been changed in very subtle ways. A few books are out of sequential order and my red Swedish wooden horse has been shifted. I leave everything as I find them because I realize that I cannot simply erase his presence. He is already inside.
This dream was relevant then and it is still relevant now. One given situation can yield two (or more) varying results. Whether to make miso soup or bouillabaisse--the choice is mine.
* * * * *
There are two separate pots of boiling water on the stove. I add bonito flakes to both to make soup base. I do not yet know what I am making. All I know is that when the cooking is done, the same soup base will have become two entirely different cuisines.
Of the fifteens books I read of Haruki Murakami, my favorite to date is Hard-boiled Wonderland and the End of the World. The novel is formatted so that two different universes are presented in alternating chapters. One universe is the "hard-boiled wonderland" (imagine Blade Runner in Tokyo), or reality. The other is the "end of the world" (imagine The Lord of the Rings with unicorns), or the world of narrator's subconsciousness. This latter universe much intrigued me and had me wondering how my subconsciousness would translate.
The revelation came one morning last year most unexpectedly. While I was blow drying my hair, getting ready for work, I was suddenly reminded of a dream I had in first grade, and its "sequel" of a dream I had as a college freshman. And I knew that these old dreams, somber and morbid, were the portrayals of my psyche.
Ever since, I'm more attentive to my dreams. These are my inner voices, an introspective mirror. Their messages are clear. Unfortunately, they must first be deciphered.
Edvard Munch, Anxiety, 1894
It was not unlike my typical dreams--monochromatic, dark, dimly lit. Surrounded by strangers, I could feel an indisputable sense of looming haste. Most details of this long and exhausting dream have already escaped me, lost in the midst of thirty hour sleep. It would have remained lost, if it had not been for an object I saw--a pair of red shoes.
Inside a plain and simple shoe box were a pair of new stilettos, in bright red patent leather. A theatrical spotlight was lighting them. I stared down at them for a long while. The pair of red shoes, in unison, seemed to be evolving into a conscious entity, while my psyche started to disappear.
Eventually someone put a lid on the box and the dream continued on--darkly, dimly, and without narrative.
