The Wind-Up Bird

These days it seems I can't escape my subconscious. Every night I go to sleep and have dreams of her and I getting back together. And every morning I awake only to be left in her absence, her imaginary impression in the left side of the bed. Her smile still burned in my eyes, her voice still ringing in my ears, her words in my heart. People talk about lucid dreaming, about being able to control things but it's something I've never been able to do.

I finished a book last night. A book that was hard to pick up after she left. A book that was both the best book I've ever read and the most difficult. This book, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, it was mirroring my life. It just got too bizarre and when she left, so did my desire to finish it.

Yesterday I picked it up again.

There's a quote in there toward the end that left me eviscerated. It tore me open when I read it. There was no precision as if it had taken care and cut me open with a scalpel. No, this had all the care and comfort of a shotgun blast aimed at my chest.

"People were no more than dolls set on tabletops, the springs in their backs wound up tight, dolls set to move in ways they could not choose, moving in directions they could not choose. Nearly all within range of the wind-up bird's cry were ruined, lost. Most of them died, plunging over the edge of the table."

If you think of the bird as fate, you get the metaphor. These people were made for ruin.

I talked to a friend last night. She told me that one of her friends has this dad and every weekend she goes over for dinner. Well, her dad has taken to making salads before the main course. In regards to lettuce he always asks her, "iceburg or Dole?" The thing is, they're both the same. There is no choice. So what he's saying is, you better just accept it, cause it's coming anyways.

These days I have to give myself over to the flow. There's an ocean of people out there who all share my fate. There's no lucid dreaming, no fighting it, no changing it. Not for me.

Amelie has stopped running to the door everytime she hears the honk of a car alarm being armed. Maybe it's time I should too.

I just have to let go and hope I don't fall off the edge.