"I want you always to remember me.
Will you remember that I existed, and that I stood next to you here like this?"
Haruki Murakami from Norwegian Wood
"Sometimes fate is like a small sandstorm that keeps changing directions. You change direction but the sandstorm chases you. You turn again, but the storm adjusts. Over and over you play this out, like some ominous dance with death just before dawn. Why? Because this storm isn't something that blew in from far away, something that has nothing to do with you. This storm is you. Something inside of you. So all you can do is give in to it, step right inside the storm, closing your eyes and plugging up your ears so the sand doesn't get in, and walk through it, step by step. There's no sun there, no moon, no direction, no sense of time. Just fine white sand swirling up into the sky like pulverized bones. That's the kind of sandstorm you need to imagine.
An you really will have to make it through that violent, metaphysical, symbolic storm. No matter how metaphysical or symbolic it might be, make no mistake about it: it will cut through flesh like a thousand razor blades. People will bleed there, and you will bleed too. Hot, red blood. You'll catch that blood in your hands, your own blood and the blood of others.
And once the storm is over you won't remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You won't even be sure, in fact, whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm you won't be the same person who walked in. That's what this storm's all about." -Haruki Murakami from Kafka on the Shore
images from the Tale of Genji from the 12th century illustrated hand scroll
read more about the novel here
more about Genji here- I can not recommend this novel enough, recognized to be the world's first novel , written by Japanese noblewoman Murasaki Shikibu in the early eleventh century, around the peak of the Heian Period.
Noruwei no mori a novel by Haruki Murakami, the movie Norwegian Wood, adapted from the book.
video 2 from the score for the movie by Jonny Greenwood adapted from the composition DogHouse.
video 3 Doghouse performed by the BBC Concert Orchestra.
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