“What the hell are they doing up there now?” Frustrated by the logistics of apartment-building revenge—when your upstairs neighbors drag their furniture around every night, it’s difficult to reciprocate passive aggressively—my roommate banged a kitchen chair against the ceiling until the phone rang.
In a whimsical piece for the Threepenny Review, Javier Marías reflects on this well-known feeling of perplexed annoyance (article not available online). Here’s an excerpt:
For years, a female friend of mine had a neighbor who, as far as she was aware, always entered and left her apartment wearing sensible flat shoes; when her neighbor was at home, however, the noise made by her footsteps convinced my friend that this neighbor must immediately put on a pair of high-heeled mules, to which my friend’s imagination couldn’t resist adding a couple of pompoms to complete the image: in the end, she was utterly convinced that, each night, her discreet, sober neighbor made up for all that sober discretion by donning a negligée, the aforementioned high-heeled, pompommed mules, and, possibly, some sort of diabolical underwear, even if she wasn’t expecting a visitor. I once asked some young people about the dull, continuous “papapam” emanating from their apartment, as if they were working some kind of printing press, and their answer was even more bizarre than my imagined explanation: “Oh, we’re running an illegal whisky distillery,” they told me.
'The most wonderful thing about it is, when you're up there you change yourself as a human being,' Kirie declared to the interviewer. 'You change yourself, or rather, you have to change yourself or you can't survive. When I come out to a high place, it's just me and the wind. Nothing else. The wind envelops me, rocks me. It understands who I am. At the same time, I understand the wind. We accept each other and we decide to go on living together. Just me and the wind: there's no room for anybody else. It's that moment that I love. No, I'm afraid. Once I set foot on to that high place and enter completely into that state of concentration, all fear vanishes. We are there, inside our own warm void. It's that moment that I love more than anything.'
Kirie spoke with cool assurance. Junpei could not tell whether the interviewer understood her. When the interview ended, Junpei stopped the taxi and got out, walking the rest of the way to his destination. Now and then he would look up at a tall building and at the clouds flowing past. No one could come between her and the wind, he realised, and he felt a violent rush of jealousy. But jealousy of what? The wind? Who could possibly be jealous of the wind?
Junpei waited several months after that for Kirie to contact him. He wanted to see her and talk to her about lots of things, including the kidney-shaped stone. But the call never came, and his calls to her could never be 'completed as dialled'. When summer came, he gave up what little hope he had left. She obviously had no intention of seeing him again. And so the relationship ended calmly, without discord or shouting matches - exactly the way he had ended relationships with so many other women. At some point the calls stop coming, and everything ends quietly, naturally.
Should I add her to the countdown? Was she one of my three women with real meaning? Junpei agonised over the question for sometime without reaching a conclusion. I'll wait another six months, he thought. Then I'll decide.
During that six months, he wrote with great concentration and produced a large number of short stories. As he sat at his desk polishing the style, he would think, Kirie is probably in some high place with the wind right now. Here I am, alone at my desk, writing stories, while she's all alone somewhere, up higher than anyone else - without a lifeline. Once she enters that state of concentration, all fear is gone: 'Just me and the wind.' Junpei would often recall those words of hers and realise that he had come to feel something special for Kirie, something that he had never felt for another woman. It was a deep emotion, with clear outlines and real weight in the hands. Junpei was still unsure what to call this emotion. It was, at least, a feeling that could not be exchanged for anything else. Even if he never saw Kirie again, this feeling would stay with him for ever. Somewhere in his body - perhaps in the marrow of his bones - he would continue to feel her absence.
As the year came to an end, Junpei made up his mind. He would count her as number two. She was one of the women who had 'real meaning' for him. Failure number two. Only one left. But he was no longer afraid. Numbers aren't the important thing. The countdown has no meaning. Now he knew: What matters is deciding in your heart to accept another person completely. And it always has to be the first time and the last.
One morning, the doctor notices that the dark kidney-shaped stone has disappeared from her desk. And she knows: It will not be coming back.
Six words can tell a story. That’s a new book’s premise, anyway. “Not Quite What I Was Planning.” A compilation of teeny tiny memoirs. The forebear, it’s assumed, is Hemingway. (Legend: he wrote a miniature masterpiece. “For sale: baby shoes, never worn.” Slightly sappy, but a decent sixer.)
The book’s originator: SMITH online magazine. It started as a reader contest: Your life story in six words. The magazine was flooded with entries. Five hundred-plus submissions per day.
Anyone?
Jacek
Condensed literature
Could you sum up a classic in six words? Members of Salon's community, Table Talk, take a crack at it this week.
In honor of "the six-word short story" and "your life in six words," this thread is open to six-word homages to classic works of literature.
Whether you want to reduce Jane Austen's classic opening sally to six words (Truth here: Rich men need wives) or sum up Robert Frost ("Out walking. Took a new path"), this is the place to do it.
The times were good. Also bad. A Tale of Two Cities
In interviews over the years, Murakami has spoken of his deliberate choice of a simple colloquial register as an escape from the formality of the Japanese literary tradition. His novels have a reputation for sounding cool, modern and disengaged, and clearly this poses special problems for his translators. Jay Rubin, who has translated several of Murakami’s books, has written well about the difficulty of preserving “the American flavour” of the originals, noting that some other translators (including Philip Gabriel, the translator of this book) have tried to cope with this problem by deliberately introducing “a certain exaggerated hipness of expression into the English text”. Perhaps the travails of a middle-aged runner don’t call for much by way of “hipness”, but there is certainly a down-home folksiness to the chosen (American) idiom – “summer warmth is still a ways off”; when we’re young “we can always start over”; he last lived in Cambridge, Mass. “back when Bill Clinton was president”; and so on.
"Perhaps Murakami’s huge following in the world has something to do with this carefully sustained voice. His prose has an artless, stripped-down, talking-to-myself quality, which every so often breaks out into cracker-barrel wisdom. He doesn’t sound writerly; there’s nothing to frighten the horses. "
MONDAY -- This new creature with the long hair is a good deal in the way. It is always hanging around and following me about. I don't like this; I am not used to company. I wish it would stay with the other animals. . . . Cloudy today, wind in the east; think we shall have rain. . . . WE? Where did I get that word-the new creature uses it.
TUESDAY -- Been examining the great waterfall. It is the finest thing on the estate, I think. The new creature calls it Niagara Falls-why, I am sure I do not know. Says it LOOKS like Niagara Falls. That is not a reason, it is mere waywardness and imbecility. I get no chance to name anything myself. The new creature names everything that comes along, before I can get in a protest. And always that same pretext is offered -- it LOOKS like the thing. There is a dodo, for instance. Says the moment one looks at it one sees at a glance that it "looks like a dodo." It will have to keep that name, no doubt. It wearies me to fret about it, and it does no good, anyway. Dodo! It looks no more like a dodo than I do.
WEDNESDAY -- Built me a shelter against the rain, but could not have it to myself in peace. The new creature intruded. When I tried to put it out it shed water out of the holes it looks with, and wiped it away with the back of its paws, and made a noise such as some of the other animals make when they are in distress. I wish it would not talk; it is always talking. That sounds like a cheap fling at the poor creature, a slur; but I do not mean it so. I have never heard the human voice before, and any new and strange sound intruding itself here upon the solemn hush of these dreaming solitudes offends my ear and seems a false note. And this new sound is so close to me; it is right at my shoulder, right at my ear, first on one side and then on the other, and I am used only to sounds that are more or less distant from me.
FRIDAY -- The naming goes recklessly on, in spite of anything I can do. I had a very good name for the estate, and it was musical and pretty -- GARDEN OF EDEN. Privately, I continue to call it that, but not any longer publicly. The new creature says it is all woods and rocks and scenery, and therefore has no resemblance to a garden. Says it LOOKS like a park, and does not look like anything BUT a park. Consequently, without consulting me, it has been new-named NIAGARA FALLS PARK. This is sufficiently high-handed, it seems to me. And already there is a sign up:
Okay…in these trying times we need more than a little frivolity.
10.2
KEEP OFF THE GRASS
My life is not as happy as it was.
SATURDAY -- The new creature eats too much fruit. We are going to run short, most likely. "We" again -- that is ITS word; mine, too, now, from hearing it so much. Good deal of fog this morning. I do not go out in the fog myself. This new creature does. It goes out in all weathers, and stumps right in with its muddy feet. And talks. It used to be so pleasant and quiet here.
SUNDAY -- Pulled through. This day is getting to be more and more trying. It was selected and set apart last November as a day of rest. I had already six of them per week before. This morning found the new creature trying to clod apples out of that forbidden tree.
MONDAY -- The new creature says its name is Eve. That is all right, I have no objections. Says it is to call it by, when I want it to come. I said it was superfluous, then. The word evidently raised me in its respect; and indeed it is a large, good word and will bear repetition. It says it is not an It, it is a She. This is probably doubtful; yet it is all one to me; what she is were nothing to me if she would but go by herself and not talk.
TUESDAY -- She has littered the whole estate with execrable names and offensive signs:
This way to the Whirlpool This way to Goat Island Cave of the Winds this way
She says this park would make a tidy summer resort if there was any custom for it. Summer resort -- another invention of hers-just words, without any meaning. What is a summer resort? But it is best not to ask her, she has such a rage for explaining.
FRIDAY -- She has taken to beseeching me to stop going over the Falls. What harm does it do? Says it makes her shudder. I wonder why; I have always done it -- always liked the plunge, and coolness. I supposed it was what the Falls were for. They have no other use that I can see, and they must have been made for something. She says they were only made for scenery -- like the rhinoceros and the mastodon.
I went over the Falls in a barrel -- not satisfactory to her. Went over in a tub -- still not satisfactory. Swam the Whirlpool and the Rapids in a fig-leaf suit. It got much damaged. Hence, tedious complaints about my extravagance. I am too much hampered here. What I need is a change of scene.
SATURDAY -- I escaped last Tuesday night, and traveled two days, and built me another shelter in a secluded place, and obliterated my tracks as well as I could, but she hunted me out by means of a beast which she has tamed and calls a wolf, and came making that pitiful noise again, and shedding that water out of the places she looks with. I was obliged to return with her, but will presently emigrate again when occasion offers. She engages herself in many foolish things; among others; to study out why the animals called lions and tigers live on grass and flowers, when, as she says, the sort of teeth they wear would indicate that they were intended to eat each other. This is foolish, because to do that would be to kill each other, and that would introduce what, as I understand, is called "death"; and death, as I have been told, has not yet entered the Park. Which is a pity, on some accounts.
SUNDAY -- Pulled through.
MONDAY -- I believe I see what the week is for: it is to give time to rest up from the weariness of Sunday. It seems a good idea. . . . She has been climbing that tree again. Clodded her out of it. She said nobody was looking. Seems to consider that a sufficient justification for chancing any dangerous thing. Told her that. The word justification moved her admiration -- and envy, too, I thought. It is a good word.
TUESDAY -- She told me she was made out of a rib taken from my body. This is at least doubtful, if not more than that. I have not missed any rib. . . . She is in much trouble about the buzzard; says grass does not agree with it; is afraid she can't raise it; thinks it was intended to live on decayed flesh. The buzzard must get along the best it can with what is provided. We cannot overturn the whole scheme to accommodate the buzzard.
SATURDAY -- She fell in the pond yesterday when she was looking at herself in it, which she is always doing. She nearly strangled, and said it was most uncomfortable. This made her sorry for the creatures which live in there, which she calls fish, for she continues to fasten names on to things that don't need them and don't come when they are called by them, which is a matter of no consequence to her, she is such a numbskull, anyway; so she got a lot of them out and brought them in last night and put them in my bed to keep warm, but I have noticed them now and then all day and I don't see that they are any happier there then they were before, only quieter. When night comes I shall throw them outdoors. I will not sleep with them again, for I find them clammy and unpleasant to lie among when a person hasn't anything on.
SUNDAY -- Pulled through.
TUESDAY -- She has taken up with a snake now. The other animals are glad, for she was always experimenting with them and bothering them; and I am glad because the snake talks, and this enables me to get a rest.
FRIDAY -- She says the snake advises her to try the fruit of the tree, and says the result will be a great and fine and noble education. I told her there would be another result, too -- it would introduce death into the world. That was a mistake -- it had been better to keep the remark to myself; it only gave her an idea -- she could save the sick buzzard, and furnish fresh meat to the despondent lions and tigers. I advised her to keep away from the tree. She said she wouldn't. I foresee trouble. Will emigrate.
WEDNESDAY -- I have had a variegated time. I escaped last night, and rode a horse all night as fast as he could go, hoping to get clear of the Park and hide in some other country before the trouble should begin; but it was not to be. About an hour after sun-up, as I was riding through a flowery plain where thousands of animals were grazing, slumbering, or playing with each other, according to their wont, all of a sudden they broke into a tempest of frightful noises, and in one moment the plain was a frantic commotion and every beast was destroying its neighbor. I knew what it meant-Eve had eaten that fruit, and death was come into the world. . . . The tigers ate my house, paying no attention when I ordered them to desist, and they would have eaten me if I had stayed-which I didn't, but went away in much haste. . . . I found this place, outside the Park, and was fairly comfortable for a few days, but she has found me out. Found me out, and has named the place Tonawanda-says it LOOKS like that. In fact I was not sorry she came, for there are but meager pickings here, and she brought some of those apples. I was obliged to eat them, I was so hungry. It was against my principles, but I find that principles have no real force except when one is well fed. . . . She came curtained in boughs and bunches of leaves, and when I asked her what she meant by such nonsense, and snatched them away and threw them down, she tittered and blushed. I had never seen a person titter and blush before, and to me it seemed unbecoming and idiotic. She said I would soon know how it was myself. This was correct. Hungry as I was, I laid down the apple half-eaten -- certainly the best one I ever saw, considering the lateness of the season-and arrayed myself in the discarded boughs and branches, and then spoke to her with some severity and ordered her to go and get some more and not make a spectacle or herself. She did it, and after this we crept down to where the wild-beast battle had been, and collected some skins, and I made her patch together a couple of suits proper for public occasions. They are uncomfortable, it is true, but stylish, and that is the main point about clothes. . . . I find she is a good deal of a companion. I see I should be lonesome and depressed without her, now that I have lost my property. Another thing, she says it is ordered that we work for our living hereafter. She will be useful. I will superintend.
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