"i was alone, this bird had flown..."

just recently, i read haruki murakami's norwegian wood... i thoroughly enjoyed it and hope to own a copy someday... another book i really hated to put down and dreaded the story coming to an end...

i just read that it's been banned in a new jersey school district. i guess i understand why it would be banned in a middle school... there's language and a lot of sexual situations and frankly the young women in the novel have questionable logic - to put it nicely... but i really think a high school senior could read this... i think it would be life affirming for someone moving onto a new chapter in life... the characters make for lively traveling companions...

nowegian wood has also been turned into a film... can't wait to see it:



despite all that, i did feel a lot of sympathy towards the characters, especially the main character, toru.... death figures prominently into the lives of all the characters pretty much... and this passage towards the end of the book resonated with me:

"...i felt guilty that i hadn't thought of kizuki right away, as if i had somehow abandoned him. back in my room, though, i came to think of it this way: two and a half years have gone by since it happpened, and kizuki is still seventeen years old. not that this means my memory of him has faded. the things that his death gave rise to are still there, bright and clear, inside me, some of them even clearer than when they were new. what i want to say is this: i'm going to turn twenty soon. Part of what kizuki and i shared when we were sixteen and seventeen has already vanished and no amount of crying is going to bring that back. i can't explain it any better than this but i think that you can probably understand what i felt and what i am trying to say in fact you are probably the only one in the world who can understand."

of course, my thoughts return to my best friend, andra brubaker, who passed away on this day in 1993.

and like toru's memories of kizuki, andra will always be 21 years old and waving to me from the back of a bus taking her home...

i'm not sure i'll write a post about andra next sept 10 because i think i'm emotionally too tired to remember this day... i was so easily irritable yesterday... and i couldn't help thinking about today and what happened so many years ago that it felt too immediate... and that chasm of loss opened up instantly...

i think i'd much rather remember her on her birthday and write about her on THAT day... we'll see next year i guess...

a few years ago, i got to see "wicked" here in chicago... i enjoyed reading the book and i'm fairly sure andra would have too.... when the actresses began to sing "for good", i couldn't help but think of her - she was a radiant glinda to my disfigured elphaba.... and like 90% of the audience, i bawled... the lyrics still break my heart...



"...i do believe i have been changed for the better, because i knew you, i have been changed for good..."

i miss you so very much, andra...