What I Talk About When I Talk About Running - Exercising Passion
Thoughts On: What I Talk About When I Talk About Running (走ることについて語るときに僕の語ること, 2007)
Haruki Murakami's memoir detailing his fascination with long-distance running as a writer.
I'm not a huge reader. I used to love books as a kid; some of the best times of my teen years were defined by the consumption of Darren Shan novels. As I grew older, I became aware of my inability to visualise a story as I read it. That mental distraction pulled me away from books somehow and towards writing and cinema. In writing, I could record active visualisation and practice channelling a flow of conscious thought. I came to love writing with the realisation that its practice lead to the creation and development of thought itself; in writing, one can uncover feelings, intentions and concepts that appear seemingly out of nowhere yet simultaneously emerge from within. Watching movies was a bit of an inverse but pretty much the same practice: external visuals inspired that described mode of discovery; and I wasn't distracted by the apparent chasm between understanding and visualisation that exists in my cortex with film.
As I wrote more and then started uni, reading became a whole new practice; it was work. Instead of enjoying the narratives of others like Darren Shan, I was studying academic texts and critically reading my own work. The latter is a process almost impossible to enjoy, and I honestly believe it has the capacity to destroy the mind and soul; the misery of it says a lot about how I have chosen to practice writing over the past few years. Almost all of the material I write at present goes unpublished; my efforts go almost exclusively into journaling nowadays. The impetus of this is centred on the fact that I have always written for myself. I enjoy publishing my work as a practice of honesty; one should not hide themselves from the world in my view. However, I despise (in part of me at least) making an effort to impress people; I am specifically repulsed by a sensation that I am potentially yearning for the approval of others in my intellectual and creative practices (though I am liable to mouth off about cycling and the stupid things I do). Uni really settled that notion in me. Not only did I spend years and thousands of hours of intense thought to build my philosophy on cinema, but I did so without much respect for the field of film studies. It's all pretty meagre and frail; praise to Epstein, Jung, Tarkovsky and a few others with backbone and heart, but almost no one else has my respect. That said, who cares? It's all little more than my opinion. I like what I like and never felt I fit into the field - at least, that was how things sat from my perspective and exposure to things. Yet it was being conscious of this difference, being guided and critiqued by a field and academic system I didn't really respect, and in turn attempting to critique myself from their outside to my in, that I found strife and struggle. In the end, I crashed and burned out, refusing to sit in a sphere of external- and self-judgement. Writing was hard work then when I didn't want it to be. I grew and developed exponentially from the pressure; there was great value in the strife I put myself through in uni; the field I didn't respect shaped me in ways I respect. However, the balance wasn't there and I wasn't who I wanted to be, nor was I going somewhere I cared to be. And so my writing practice shifted completely.
At the base of everything, the true and most genuine value of the practice of writing, to me, was the sensation of feeling myself think and discover thoughts. There's innumerable ways in which you can do this, and ever more contexts in which to do so. I have come to settle in recent years to my own confines, chasing a description of self and recordings worthy of nostalgia. I used to like reading the stories I'd write to myself, but lost that in the distraction of assuming others should like them as well. And, no doubt, others should probably like your writing if you wish to consider it of societal value and to become successful as a writer. Alas, I eventually overcame the shame of admitting to myself that I did not have the mental fortitude to consciously manage the dialectic between success and practice; the harder and longer I pushed myself to become 'something' as a writer, the less I could write and the more I saw myself as nothing. So, I had to eventually ask myself what I valued more: writing or success. I did not want to surrender my passion and sense of contentment to financial gain and academic recognition. Perhaps that is selfish or cowardly, but I came to let go of any bother in that regard. I write for me... whatever else can come as it may - not my concern or business. It's this mentality that has seen me flourish with positivity withinside myself, and so I transpose this way of being onto all of my passions: writing, photography, music and cycling - all for me and not for gain. Such brings me to Murakami and his presentation of how and why he exercises passion.
I've wanted to find a good book to read for a while. Murakami has been put to me more than once in the past year. I first tried Norwegian Wood. As much as I liked Murakami's (as translated into English) writing style in the novel, I low-key despised his thematic foci and use of character. I am yet to finish Norwegian Wood, so I won't spend time spinning opinion on it. Having put aside Norwegian Wood, another of Murakami's works fell into my lap: What I Talk About When I Talk About Running. In this non-fictional work, Murakami's realism is incredibly palatable with his writing style (again, as translated) smooth like caramel, flowing with good balance between conscious glissando and critical review. His presented understanding of self is as insightful as it is humble, and therefore highly engaging inasmuch as it is relatable. Thematically, the book spoke to me quite personally, galvanising my rumination above. The memoir essentially details and rationalises the relationship between running (marathons, triathlons, etc), writing and Murakami's sense of self. He paints a picture of his life's momentum as a balance struck between physical aspiration and mental stability. Therefore, it is because he runs that he writes, and because he writes that he runs. The equation shapes his calendar and fuels his work.
I could relate to Murakami in regards to his physical aspirations - he runs quite a bit like I cycle - but couldn't dare see myself in his notation of his writing practice. Murakami is a writer writer; and more than that I can only really write when that's all I have to do in life. Lock me in a room with a bed, alone and undistracted, supplied singularly with food, drink, a laptop and headphones, and after a week or two I will discover my ability to write and won't be able to stop. That said, Murakami's interrelation of running and writing is inspiring. The primary insight into his writing practice that I could glean concerns the fact that his writing is his work. It is because of his physical work that Murakami can grind; that is the most relatable and illuminating aspect of What I Talk About When I Talk About Running to me. If I can't cycle, I can't work. Perhaps like Murakami, if there is no enjoyable physical output, strain and aspiration associated with my work and generation of finances, I will implode in poverty. The hardest times of my working life were spent in an office, neglecting my bike and physical body; I'd never dare do that to myself again.
The thoughts that occur to me while I'm running are like clouds in the sky. Clouds of all different sizes. They come and go, while the sky remains the same sky as always. The clouds are mere guests in the sky that pass away and vanish, leaving behind the sky. The sky both exists and doesn't exist. It has substance and at the same time doesn't. And we merely accept that vast expanse and drink it in.
This is the defining passage of What I Talk About When I Talk About Running in my view. It is here that Murakami makes his most profound statement, and does so with utter confidence in his allegory--not a moment of elaboration or justification. Herein, we are told that thinking or writing is living in the clouds; physical exertion leaves one with themselves, thoughtless and truly. Thoughts as clouds is a common equation. However, taken as tantamount to the mind or self unclouded, the notion of the sky presented is deeply intricate. The affirmation that the sky has no substance highlights its unchanging. This is a crucial aspect of the allegory as it neglects the distinction of night and day, and furthermore disregards the space beyond the earth's atmosphere. The sky can be recognised as far more dynamic and fleeting than cloud as a witness to the cycle between moon and sun, and in its position as a grand looking glass into infinite space. It is through the sky that humanity has recognised its place in reality, revolving around the solar system, spinning through the galaxy and spiralling into the depths of the universe and all unknown chaos beyond. To say the sky does not change, to distinguish it from the clouds below and space beyond it, is to define it as an atmosphere alone; an invisible heaven, a containing aura. Such transposes us toward a rather gorgeous notion of self and being. One is not their thoughts; when running Murakami sees these evaporate like cloud. He is left thereafter not with the sun, stars and universe - they exist and belong beyond self - but an atmosphere of and without substance. This beautiful description of the mind in a void speaks to how Murakami sees us to be: a barrier at once obscured and patterned by thought, filtering infinite, inhospitable chaos - the human being an unsubstantial canvas and unchanging veil. Alas, in its insignificance is a vastness, the soul and self an unimportant enormity caught between consciousness and the infinite that condenses down to molecular potential. We are a mundane inbetween of great capacity; so pretty.
An extension of this allegory emerges from a recognition of Murakami's general correspondence of running and writing. Murakami tells us that he writes simply because the idea came to him one day and he impulsively committed to that thought. He sustains his writing practice with long-distance running in recognition of who he is - a functioning body caught in insubstantial existence - for it is running that soothes his meditation on this reality. Such therefore speaks volumes to his memoir's notion of balance and success in life. Both are found in being who one is in thought, beyond thought and lost in existence.
Vidhi
Forever sorry
