the living room~

come have a seat on the couch

the living room is a place to just hang out- talk about random things, watch tv or play games. you know. in my digital living room i'm going to dump some things i like to watch/do for fun and my thoughts on them.

maybe in this little uncharted part of the internet ill finally be honest. is it lying by omission if you never tell anyone how you feel? is it unfair to them? or just to yourself?

i'll rewrite this in like a real way when i actually finish this but a girl walks home alone at night is seriously the most beautiful movie i've ever seen. so little is said in words and so much in what the characters do on screen. it's violent and heartwarming and heartwrenching at the same time. it's like peering into a world almost exactly like our own, but tweaked. there is something just slightly off, things are just not quite the same. the ambiance is unsetteling, sure, but it feels familiar nonetheless.

south of the border, west of the sun - haruki murkami

a.k.a boring emo horndog cheats on wife and regrets life. The story is well written and i really don't think hajime is supposed to be very sympathetic, but damn i couldn't like this book no matter how hard i tried. i've owned this book for forever and read like 1/4 of it in 2016 but i recently read it all the way through. I think to pull off unlikability in a story the character should have a redemption (or desecration), or their unlikability should at least be interesting. a "bad" protagonist making horrible decisions that drive plot developments is not the same as one that simply picks the [BAD] dialoge option every time.

(a woefully inadequate synopsis) the story follows hajime- a middle aged, married, father of two who owns some successful restaurants. The events of the novel take place in a small stretch of months in the middle of hajime's life, but the nature of the events cause him to reflect on his entire living experience. Even before the events begin, hajime's entire conception of his life is framed around a fleeting relationship with his great first love, Shimamoto. he spends pages lamenting their lost connection, the time they shared, how things fell apart. he constantly compares everyone to shimamoto, and bases his own identity around the time they spent togther.

That time, mind you, was occasionally hanging out throughout the course of about one academeic year when they were pre teens. in his reminiscing on his time with shimamoto, he can never certainly say she felt or acted in any particular way. he goes on and on about his confident speculations into her mindset.

so hajime loved his first real friend, shimamoto, but he moved towns away from her and they ultimately fell out of touch. despite his feelings for his friend, hajime goes on to get a different girlfriend, cheat on that girl with her cousin, leave both of them, and then date around before ultimately meeting and marrying his wife. he also has a collection of decidedly mediocre experiences in his social and work life until his wealthy and successful father in law sets him up with a business of his own.

hajime has this whole life created for himself where he runs these live jazz bars. its very glamorous and dramatic, until a magazine runs a segment about him. this dreggs up some old childhood and highschool aquaintances who visit the bar until the one and only shimamoto shows up.

now shimamoto is giving manic pixie girl final BOSS vibes here. she looks drop dead gorgeous, she smokes, she refuses to explain anything about where she's been or what she's been doing, clearly has a dark past and leaves just as mysteriously as she arrives. hajime is hooked, all these lingering background thouhgts he'd always had about shimamoto come flooding in and he's completely taken in. also this man regularly cheats on his wife with random women! that's thrown in to the story about as tactfully as i'm mentioning it here.

but those times don't even count this is different because its *shimamoto*

don't get me wrong shimamoto seems really cool and i'd probably be fucked up about her too if i fumbled with her but he takes it to another level. these two never dated, they were barely friends, and he just never let her go in his mind despite also never contacting her. he's in love with a girl he knew when they were both 12 and he believes that despite all the evident trauma she experienced before and after meeting him that he knows her in any way that matters.

well, shimamoto also fuels this delusion by being equally hung up on a brief window of the past that would have been largely inconsequential to a well adjusted adult.

there's elements to shimamotos story that if she had been given a full character depth probably could be used to justify why she feels so strongly about their relationship. she has a disability and seemingly moved often as a child making it difficult to make and keep friends. nothing about her shimamoto's world is revealed in the story aside from three things: 1. she was married at some point, might still be 2. she lost a child and 3. she's never worked a day in her life. so she has at least one confirmed trauma and it is heavily implied that it's not the only tragdy that's struck her in the twenty some odd year's they've been apart.