Searching For The Sea 2

Today I borrowed Gregory Khezrnejat's "鴨川ランナー". This book contains two novels. Both of them are expressing the same theme. The main character is a foreigner (a native English speaker) and he has to encounter the cultural gap the Japanese society has. It's also a gap of language. In one of these two stories, he tried to read a Japanese legendary novelist, Junichiro Tanizaki. Although at first he had to feel the difficulty to keep on reading his works. But a person gave him the advice as "Catch the sentences, not any single word", "Read the words by your voice before chasing for their meaning"... So he started to follow that advice. Then he could enjoy Tanizaki's novels.

This episode reminds me of an "interesting" event once happened to me. I tried to write my novel in Japanese, but I couldn't write anything. No, all I could write was only one word. "I". But suddenly this "I" started showing a deep strangeness. "Who am I?" or "What is I?". These questions started annoying me so I had to stop. I couldn't even name the main character.  Of course, every novel has its flow/groove. I remember... once when I had been into Haruki Murakami's novels, I could feel a certain "flow" in his ones. So I could read his ones. Chasing an enigmatic sheep, exploring two fantastic worlds, and walking in a tiny street in Tokyo with a girlfriend. But if it becomes my turn, the trial of writing something can be ended by my parents.

Now I am writing my truth like this. Maybe it's because I had tried to write mine in English. I couldn't have been good at using English or languages generally. Now, how should I do? Always, doing the first step stops my activity. My mind becomes blank.

But I also decided me to try to write anime and manga. This can be a good writing? I can't see. All I want to do is not getting any prize. I want to write my truth fully. For example, I would never be called "Gaijin" in Japan. I want to treat my identity with reading that novel completely.