As I got home, walking to the elevator, I was still pondering the fun, “Which came first, the purse or the lack of pockets?” question in my mind. I don’t really want to know the answer, it’s just fun to consider.
Not everything needs answers.
I’d given up coming up with theories on the ffft-ffft lady.
Not everything has answers.
On the way there, my trains of thought – I never have just one train going – were interrupted by some friendly faces. A newly married couple, I know he sells insurance and is generally a nice guy, while his new wife is still a bit of a mystery to me. She’s nice, polite, and likes coffee, which makes her a better human being than him in my eyes.
He doesn’t drink coffee. That seems sinful after all the wars and empires involved in bringing coffee from Ethiopia to the rest of the world, but what I consider sinful is subjective.
We have polite conversation, and going up in the elevator, he spots my book. I had returned home early because I was thinking of meaning and wanted to get that writing done and didn’t want to get lost in another group of trains of thought, so I had my receipt from the coffee shop sticking out from the pages.
“What are you reading?”, he asks.
“Oh, some Murakami. I haven’t read this book in some years and decided to revisit it.”, I respond.
His eyes blank, he has nowhere to go with that. It’s not something that is standard fare in Trinidad and Tobago, I suppose, so I try to be helpful.
“It’s where that quote about the storm comes from. How when you come out of the storm you’re never the same as when you went in.”
This, according to his facial expression, did not help either, but the idea began to toss around in his head.
“OK”, he says, as I exit the elevator. He never struck me as a reader, but then most of the literati in Trinidad and Tobago have an insane focus on the Caribbean and Caribbean authors, enough so that in some ways Trinidad and Tobago is a tidal pool, where ideas wash in mainly from distilled island authors.
At least that’s my experience, what I have observed, and it’s purely anecdotal. To me, though, if you have not read Haruki Murakami, you’re missing a bit of life.
Suddenly, as I unlocked my door, I laughed to myself.
I had just done an elevator pitch of, “Kafka on the Shore” without even knowing it.
I hate elevator pitches.