The Novel soul

Currently working through a great book called Kafka On The Shore by Haruki Murakami. I admire writers of the novel. Haruki pours his whole heart into it. I feel like novels take so much of a writers energy.

I'm only through the first 100 pages, but the way Murakami writes puts me in awe of the possibilities of text. He has a masterful craft for story telling, a way to keep the reader guessing.

I went to a reading by Martin Amis once. He discussed how as we become a world on a faster past, continually being stimulated by TV, music, and the Internet, art must move to keep up as well. Poetry is becoming lost because the whole purpose of poetry is to slow down time in text. His attempt in his book Yellow Dog was to throw imagery out there to inundate the reader, to move along the novel at a faster pace. I can't exactly say Amis did such a great job at it, but I can say Murakami does. He writes simply in a Hemingway tone, but with the Garcia Marquez eye for detail and Camus craft for showing thought.

The content of the story itself, I can't quite write about yet. It's about a 15 year boy who runs away from home and a man who lost half of his shadow.  See, it confused the hell out of me too, but you just have to read it yourself.

Murakami explains a Japanese myth in the legend, that a soul can leave the body before death leaving the body to resume it's basic functions without a soul to govern its heart. The soul must have a will strong enough, and usually it is to put order back or for revenge. Once the task is done, the soul will reunite with the body.

I've been thinking about the soul lately. What drives it? Why do we sometimes deny it? Do you think if we deny it long enough, it will become more and more quiet? Or will it scream louder and louder until we break? You have to believe we are more then what we have collected in our heads, our memories, experiences and knowledge. There is something else in there that is making you tick and it comes from the heart. Haven't you ever read about hear transplant patients who after the surgery develop different taste in foods, become fans of mint chocolate chip ice cream because the person who had their heart before loved it?

You have to believe that there is more in this world then what we drive to work, how much money we have and where we vacation.

My Tattoo on my arm means Chi, Japanese for Energy. It's a base symbol for Strength and Power. During a physics class in High School I came across an article by Einstein. He was discussing energy. I can't remember the article, but I'm a big admirer of Einstein. He said energy never dies, it just gets transferred. Energy is finite. It is science that confirms a life after death. A tree dies, but the energy of what that tree once was becomes transferred to the shelter it provided, the seeds it planted, the food it gave off. A person dies and the energy that person gave off is a reflection of his whole soul, who he loved, who he helped, who he touched, where he has walked and what he has left behind.Then there is the energy that is his life force, something that is fed by all those experiences, all those people you've met, loved, places you been, things you've seen. That is the energy that stays with you until the very moment your body gives out. When the body dies, the soul goes gets tranferred. To where? I'll tell you after my body gives out. There is a sudden weight loss as well. I found this article a while ago. http://www.snopes.com/religion/soulweight.asp
It explains an experiment done by a doctor in Massachusetts who measured a patients weight right after the moment of death. He found there to be a loss of 21 grams (hence the movie). So the soul weighs 21 grams. Those 21 grams gets transferred somewhere. One of his patients actually loss the weight, then had it regained to lose it later on. His explanation, the soul of that woman was stubborn and tried to come back only to realize it couldn't.

So that was a mess of thoughts I put up there. Now if I can put it all in a story, that would be a Murakami novel.