Living like Running

I finished reading the book What I Talk About When I Talk About Running: A Memoir (New York: Vintage, 2009), written by Haruki Murakami (村上春樹), a Japanese novelist. When Sue and I were in San Francisco, we went to the Japan Town. In the mall, there is a Japanese bookstore. We went in and checked it out. Sue had a glance on a book called The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (發條鳥年代記). She then bought a kindle version and started to read it at night. Because she talked about him and the book here and there, she kindled my interest in him. (But she stops reading the novel in New York.) I read one of his novels when I was in Hong Kong. I still have the Chinese version of that novel Norwegian Wood (挪威的森林). (I am re-reading it in my “free” time.)  I only read a few novels in my life. This is one of them. I always think that reading novel is a waste of time. I think I look at it slightly different now. Perhaps, I am more in tune with my ordinary living. And I am a bit more mature to engage with human nature. I can now see myself in those characters in the novel. I can identify more with how they see the world and why they talk and think in certain ways. On the surface, the conversations and the story plot seem pointless. Indeed, they reflect life. They talk about human nature. They are everywhere around us.

The book I just finished reading is not a novel, however. It’s his memoir. It’s about running. It’s about writing. He is a professional writer. He is also a Marathon runner. He talks about how he became a writer and a runner. He talks about his own temperament as a novelist. He talks about his mental capacity and physical training as a runner. Even though he mostly talks about running, I think he basically talks about living and writing. The way he approaches running is the way he approaches life and writing. On running for Marathon, he wrote,

“Instead of forcing myself to run, perhaps it would have been smarter if I’d walked. A lot of other runners were doing just that. Giving their legs a rest as they walked. But I didn’t walk a single step.  I stopped a lot to stretch, but I never walked. I didn’t come here to walk. I came to run. That’s the reason—the only reason—I flew all the way to the northern tip of Japan. No matter how slow I might run, I wasn’t about to walk. That was the rule. Break one of my rules once, and I’m bound to break many more. And if I’d done that, it would have been next to impossible to finish this race.” (p. 111)

This is his philosophy of running; this is his philosophy of life as a novelist. This is how he finished running many Marathons; this is why he finished writing many novels. “No matter how slow I might run, I wasn’t about to walk.”

In the afternoon of April 1, 1978, while he was watching a baseball game with cold beer, all of a sudden, he said to himself, “You know what, I could try writing a novel.” In the Spring of 1978, he finished writing a 200 page work in Japanese and sent it out to a publisher without making a copy of the original manuscript. For some reason, he won the new-writers prize for that. He has become a novelist since then. In 1978, he was 29. I was born in that year. In the same year, I became a being. Someone became a new being in the middle of life. There are many twists and turns in life. Who knows what we will become?

At the end, after running his seventh Boston Marathon, Murakami wrote,

“‘What in the world happened?’ My wife, who had been waiting for me at the finish line, was baffled. ‘You’re still pretty strong, and I know you train enough.’

What indeed? I wondered, not having a clue. Maybe I’m simply getting older. Or perhaps the reason lies elsewhere, maybe something critical I’ve overlooked. At this point, anyway, any speculation has to remain just that: speculation…

There’s one thing, though, I can state with confidence: until the feeling that I’ve done a good job in a race returns, I’m going to keep running marathons, and not let it get me down. Even when I grow old and feeble, when people warn me it’s about time to throw in the towel, I won’t care. As long as my body allows, I’ll keep running. Even if my time gets worse, I’ll keep on putting it as much effort—perhaps even more effort—toward my goal of finishing marathon. I don’t care what others say—that’s just my nature, the way I am. Like scorpions sting, cicadas cling to trees, salmon swim upstream to where they were born, and wild ducks mate for life.

I may not hear the Rocky theme song, or see the sunset anywhere, but for me, and for this book, this may be a sort of conclusion. An understated, rainy-day-sneakers sort of conclusion. An anticlimax, if you will…

What I mean is, I didn’t start running because somebody asked me to become a runner. Just like I didn’t become a novelist because someone asked me to. One day, out of the blue, I wanted to write a novel. And one day, out of the blue, I started to run—simply because I wanted to. I’ve always done whatever I felt like doing in life. People may try to stop me, and convince me I’m wrong, but I won’t change.

I look up at the sky, wondering if I’ll catch a glimpse of kindness there, but I don’t…I probably shouldn’t be looking up at them. What I should be looking at is inside of me. Like staring down into a deep well. Can I see kindness there? No, all I see is my own nature. My own individual, stubborn, uncooperative, often self-centered nature that still doubts itself—that, when troubles occur, tries to find something funny, or something nearly funny, about the situation. I’ve carried this character around like an old suitcase, down a long, dusty path. I’m not carrying it because I like it. The contents are too heavy, and it looks crummy, fraying in spots. I’ve carried it with me because there was nothing else I was supposed to carry. Still, I guess I have grown attached to it. As you might expect.” (pp. 149-150)