SLIPPING AWAY

"People and places and feelings kept slipping away from me. Even if I had my life to live over again, I couldn't imagine not doing things the same. After all, everything—this life I was losing—was me. And I couldn't be any other self but my self. Could I? Once, when I was younger, I thought I could be someone else. I'd move to Casablanca, open a bar, and I'd meet Ingrid Bergman. Or more realistically—whether actually more realistic or not—I'd tune in on a better life, something more suited to my true self. Toward that end, I had to undergo training. I read The Greening of America, and I saw Easy Rider three times. But like a boat with a twisted rudder, I kept coming back to the same place. I wasn't going anywhere. I was myself, waiting on the shore for me to return. Was that so depressing? Who knows? Maybe that was "despair". What Turgenev called "disillusionment". Or Dostoyevsky, "hell". Or Somerset Maugham, "reality". Whatever the label, I figured it was me." 
Haruki Murakami

This excerpt was written by Haruki Murakami in his Hard-boiled Wonderland and the End of the World almost towards the end of the book, and it seems that the whole book was written just so everything he wrote was going to revolve around this quote. I know I am babbling. Writers like Murakami don't do things like that.  They don't just think of an idea and then wrap the whole novel around it. Or maybe that is precisely what they do? Sometimes, at least.


Despair or disillusionment, hell or dreams, that is the question. Is reality real,is  the reality we live in an illusion or is it just a dimension? In his novel, he deals with how the human brain perceives reality and how he sees conscious and subconscious work.

Regardless, this imagery created by Murakami`s quote left me speechless. That's why I am writing my speechlessness down. 

There is a tinge of sentimentality I am detecting underneath the layers of his writing or maybe it is nostalgia. Perhaps, a sentimental nostalgia for some undreamed dreams or alternative realities we create to escape the reality. It is a well-known fact that writers create their own realities. They have to do it, it is their daily bread.

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Everything is slipping away. Our youth, time on earth, friendships, our own selves. Everything is slipping away. Everything is dissipating. Slowly and unmistakably. We are going towards the end of the world. Does that bother me? Of course not, because everything must end, in the end.

I myself have a problem of slipping away. I myself sometimes chose to sneak away and disappear from people, places or events. There seems to be too much noise that is bothering me. Clamour of people talking and talking and never saying anything. I want to learn something new, but it seems that books are the only source of knowledge, written by people who are millions of miles away from me. Separated but connected. Yes, separated. I did not choose to be born here, nor did they chose to be born there. So, yes, we are separated by time, space, the velocity of our thoughts and whatnot.

No one gets to chose where they are to be born. What a genius thought. However, some of us who are similar yet far away somehow manage to find the way to each other. Like two or more strange and abandoned islands connected with some invisible bridge built by an invisible hand against all the odds of time, space and everyday logic.

I am talking about writers and their readers. I am talking about people who have never met, yet they are exchanging letters, electronic correspondence, via some social apps and what have you. Far away in different countries but speaking the same vernacular, somehow. The same vernacular of feelings, thoughts, experiences, lives that are different or not so much different.

It is like this - in every corner of the world little boys of twelve or so are playing war games; in every corner of the world, little girls of twelve or so are playing with their dolls. A universal language of playing is the same thing as the universal language of books. As much as we understand the language of the game so much we understand the langue of books. Regardless of the story or the style or the actual language in which the story is written, books have their own universal language that any soul on earth can understand.


"I thought I could be someone else". Who hasn't have a thought such as this one? Every teenager every human being. It is a question of one's self, of one's own identity. What is identity? Is it a question of the place where I was born, where I actually belong to or is it a question of my race, knowledge, education, nationality. What makes me who I am? My DNA, forebearers or people and situations surrounding me.

Whatever identity means or is, it does not tell me anything. Why am I who I am and why I am not the other person? How am I different from the others? Those were the questions I have been asking myself since childhood. I am asking myself the same question now when I am older and supposed to have all the answers.

I realised I am everyone, I am me, and I am no one at the same time. I belong to a nation, my parents, my ancestors, and finally, I belong to me. If we can really choose who we want to be why cannot we change ourselves easily, inside or outside? It seems I am also a sum not only of my genes and experiences, but also I am a sum of my own self, my core being, which is not known to anybody, nor me.