I know that I have it within:
I have to, so you don’t go without.
And it is not in being loved that we win
But in loving beyond reasonable doubt.
* * * * *
Such a beautiful poem.
A friend of a friend on MySpace wrote this, and it really spoke to me (and to the friend who shared it with me) about what we’d both been through at the time.
One beautiful April morning, on a narrow side street in Tokyo’s fashionable Harajuku neighborhood, I walked past the 100% perfect girl.
Tell you the truth, she’s not that good-looking. She doesn’t stand out in any way. Her clothes are nothing special. The back of her hair is still bent out of shape from sleep. She isn’t young, either – must be near thirty, not even close to a “girl,” properly speaking. But still, I know from fifty yards away: She’s the 100% perfect girl for me. The moment I see her, there’s a rumbling in my chest, and my mouth is as dry as a desert.
Maybe you have your own particular favorite type of girl – one with slim ankles, say, or big eyes, or graceful fingers, or you’re drawn for no good reason to girls who take their time with every meal. I have my own preferences, of course. Sometimes in a restaurant I’ll catch myself staring at the girl at the next table to mine because I like the shape of her nose.
But no one can insist that his 100% perfect girl correspond to some preconceived type. Much as I like noses, I can’t recall the shape of hers – or even if she had one. All I can remember for sure is that she was no great beauty. It’s weird.
“Yesterday on the street I passed the 100% perfect girl,” I tell someone.
“Yeah?” he says. “Good-looking?”
“Not really.”
“Your favorite type, then?”
“I don’t know. I can’t seem to remember anything about her – the shape of her eyes or the size of her breasts.”
“Strange.”
“Yeah. Strange.”
“So anyhow,” he says, already bored, “what did you do? Talk to her? Follow her?”
“Nah. Just passed her on the street.”
She’s walking east to west, and I west to east. It’s a really nice April morning.
Wish I could talk to her. Half an hour would be plenty: just ask her about herself, tell her about myself, and – what I’d really like to do – explain to her the complexities of fate that have led to our passing each other on a side street in Harajuku on a beautiful April morning in 1981. This was something sure to be crammed full of warm secrets, like an antique clock build when peace filled the world.
After talking, we’d have lunch somewhere, maybe see a Woody Allen movie, stop by a hotel bar for cocktails. With any kind of luck, we might end up in bed.
Potentiality knocks on the door of my heart.
Now the distance between us has narrowed to fifteen yards.
How can I approach her? What should I say?
“Good morning, miss. Do you think you could spare half an hour for a little conversation?”
Ridiculous. I’d sound like an insurance salesman.
“Pardon me, but would you happen to know if there is an all-night cleaners in the neighborhood?”
No, this is just as ridiculous. I’m not carrying any laundry, for one thing. Who’s going to buy a line like that?
Maybe the simple truth would do. “Good morning. You are the 100% perfect girl for me.”
No, she wouldn’t believe it. Or even if she did, she might not want to talk to me. Sorry, she could say, I might be the 100% perfect girl for you, but you’re not the 100% perfect boy for me. It could happen. And if I found myself in that situation, I’d probably go to pieces. I’d never recover from the shock. I’m thirty-two, and that’s what growing older is all about.
We pass in front of a flower shop. A small, warm air mass touches my skin. The asphalt is damp, and I catch the scent of roses. I can’t bring myself to speak to her. She wears a white sweater, and in her right hand she holds a crisp white envelope lacking only a stamp. So: She’s written somebody a letter, maybe spent the whole night writing, to judge from the sleepy look in her eyes. The envelope could contain every secret she’s ever had.
I take a few more strides and turn: She’s lost in the crowd.
Now, of course, I know exactly what I should have said to her. It would have been a long speech, though, far too long for me to have delivered it properly. The ideas I come up with are never very practical.
Oh, well. It would have started “Once upon a time” and ended “A sad story, don’t you think?”
Once upon a time, there lived a boy and a girl. The boy was eighteen and the girl sixteen. He was not unusually handsome, and she was not especially beautiful. They were just an ordinary lonely boy and an ordinary lonely girl, like all the others. But they believed with their whole hearts that somewhere in the world there lived the 100% perfect boy and the 100% perfect girl for them. Yes, they believed in a miracle. And that miracle actually happened.
One day the two came upon each other on the corner of a street.
“This is amazing,” he said. “I’ve been looking for you all my life. You may not believe this, but you’re the 100% perfect girl for me.”
“And you,” she said to him, “are the 100% perfect boy for me, exactly as I’d pictured you in every detail. It’s like a dream.”
They sat on a park bench, held hands, and told each other their stories hour after hour. They were not lonely anymore. They had found and been found by their 100% perfect other. What a wonderful thing it is to find and be found by your 100% perfect other. It’s a miracle, a cosmic miracle.
As they sat and talked, however, a tiny, tiny sliver of doubt took root in their hearts: Was it really all right for one’s dreams to come true so easily?
And so, when there came a momentary lull in their conversation, the boy said to the girl, “Let’s test ourselves – just once. If we really are each other’s 100% perfect lovers, then sometime, somewhere, we will meet again without fail. And when that happens, and we know that we are the 100% perfect ones, we’ll marry then and there. What do you think?”
“Yes,” she said, “that is exactly what we should do.”
And so they parted, she to the east, and he to the west.
The test they had agreed upon, however, was utterly unnecessary. They should never have undertaken it, because they really and truly were each other’s 100% perfect lovers, and it was a miracle that they had ever met. But it was impossible for them to know this, young as they were. The cold, indifferent waves of fate proceeded to toss them unmercifully.
One winter, both the boy and the girl came down with the season’s terrible influenza, and after drifting for weeks between life and death they lost all memory of their earlier years. When they awoke, their heads were as empty as the young D. H. Lawrence’s piggy bank.
They were two bright, determined young people, however, and through their unremitting efforts they were able to acquire once again the knowledge and feeling that qualified them to return as full-fledged members of society. Heaven be praised, they became truly upstanding citizens who knew how to transfer from one subway line to another, who were fully capable of sending a special-delivery letter at the post office. Indeed, they even experienced love again, sometimes as much as 75% or even 85% love.
Time passed with shocking swiftness, and soon the boy was thirty-two, the girl thirty.
One beautiful April morning, in search of a cup of coffee to start the day, the boy was walking from west to east, while the girl, intending to send a special-delivery letter, was walking from east to west, but along the same narrow street in the Harajuku neighborhood of Tokyo. They passed each other in the very center of the street. The faintest gleam of their lost memories glimmered for the briefest moment in their hearts. Each felt a rumbling in their chest. And they knew:
She is the 100% perfect girl for me.
He is the 100% perfect boy for me.
But the glow of their memories was far too weak, and their thoughts no longer had the clarity of fourteen years earlier. Without a word, they passed each other, disappearing into the crowd. Forever.
A sad story, don’t you think?
Yes, that’s it, that is what I should have said to her….
___________________________________________
by Haruki Murakami
Buy it here:
While I was out eating sushi the other day, I saw a car that belonged to one of my neighbors from two apartment buildings ago.
She was the one who, when my cat would catch a mouse, would knock on my door and say angrily, “Katrina’s caught a MOUSE.”
“Of course she did, she’s a cat.”
“Well, you need to train her or something.”
“How am I supposed to do that? She’s a cat. She eats mice.”
“Well, she’s torturing it. . .playing with it and teasing it.”
“They all do that. I cant train that out of her, it’s cat nature.”
or this:
(knock knock knock) “Katrina’s caught a BIRD.”
“Oh, good for her. . .she doesn’t have any claws.”
“. . .”
“I’d rather she didn’t do that, but I can’t really stop her.”
“Well, maybe you could TRY.”
“OK. (lol) I’ll try.”
Yeah, so I wasn’t looking forward to seeing her today. Luckily I didn’t have to.
That was a great apartment, too, by the way. 1915 Tudor-style building with French doors, 11-foot high arched ceilings, and hardwood floors; nice courtyard where we’d all sit outside drinking wine and talking until late into the night. . .such a nice place. Sure was a shame when some of the original people moved out and were replaced by older, slightly more neurotic people.
Like the lady who would shift every conversation into one about rats. More specifically, HER rats. You could be talking about the AIDS epidemic in Africa and she’d say, “Oh yeah, and I heard that too and it reminded me of something the rats did. Rats are very susceptible to disease, and if you feed them blahblahRATSblahblah–” You’d just want to strangle her. You may think I’m exaggerating, but she would really turn sentences around that fast.
Anyway. . .that was about five years ago, and it feels like a completely different life ago. I wasn’t playing in a band or anything, I had ONE crappy guitar, ONE crappy little amp, and a couple of cheap keyboards. Every time I’d play one of my songs for someone, they’d kinda go, “Enh. . .” And I’d say, “Yeah, the sounds suck, but the melody sure is nice. What about that? And y’know, I played everything on there. I was thinking of this French movie I saw recently. . .” “Yeah, well, it’s not really my thing or whatever.”
So after a while I’d just stopped sharing that stuff with people. I had my little regular job, and just was going about my life. And if you’d asked me, I’d have told you I was happy.
Until one day, I made a new friend who would turn everything upside down and change things for the better. . .
This is my favorite scene in “Amelie”. . .when she’s sitting at home making her ‘famous plum cake’, daydreaming about her guy going to the market to pick up some stuff, then coming back to surprise her, dragging his fingers across her bead curtain when he arrives. Suddenly her bead curtain rattles. . .no guy, only her little cat sitting there.
Such a beautiful and touching scene.
I checked in on the Young Immortals site and see if anybody’s commented on our new song. Mike and Jake have been working hard on spreading the word about it–which is awesome, and I APPRECIATE YOU GUYS SO MUCH!–and I wanted to see what The Kids are saying about the song. So far, this one’s my favorite, from a girl whose page says she’s 17, but down a little further in her profile it says she’s 14. SOo o o. . .yeah. Here’s her comment:
“Yeah…I really like the music its awesome…for real tho i think you guys will be pretty famous just keep goin. Youll run into obsticles but just work your way through them…you’ll get there.”
I laughed out loud at that. I mean. . .she’s completely naive, but she’s writing as if she’s a world-weary veteran of the music business. “You’ll run into obstacles. . .” Oh, Tiff, you are SO right about that. I’m sure I don’t need to tell you that the ‘obstacles’ could be your bandmates, or more likely, your own inner demons. Or there could be drugs involved. Or maybe your drummer, who’s been playing with you for a year and a half, can’t cut it in the studio, so you have to fire him, but he’s the one financing the album. OR you could have everything going for you, but the record company goes bankrupt. Or you could become so famous and popular that you hole yourself up on your personal ranch with a pet chimpanzee and snake and invite little boys to stay overnight with you and stuff. I mean, the list of obstacles is endless and different for each situation, but you keep doing Your Thing because you’d die if you didn’t, and because you believe in yourself and your music, and it makes suffering the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune all the more worthwhile if you get any kind of success. Not that I know anything about outrageous fortune, either, but I DO know a lot about slings and arrows.
Then again, we could all become Portland hometown heroes like the Decemberists or Everclear (Dare I mention Elliott Smith?), or even lifelong worldwide stars like the Beatles, but then that level of success brings plenty of obstacles as well. We’ll gladly deal with any of these issues as they arise. It sure is good to know we’ll “just have to work our way through” all that and “we’ll get there.” What a relief to know that such an easy road lies ahead.
I must sound like a pessimistic a-hole by now. Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s a totally sweet thing for her to say. She could’ve just as easily said, “Man, you guys totally suck” or something. So I appreciate that, FOR SURE. It was just her tone, coming from a place of such deep knowledge and understanding, that made me laugh and sent me into this truthful but hopefully still comic diatribe.
