BGM: My Little Lover - ALICE
About reading, probably I am a true epicurean. I don't want to read any "tough" books for me even if they would work as adding knowledge or mental toughness (so I never want to read Yukio Mishima or Ougai Mori). I just choose the books I have been interested in, and I can get a certain pleasure from them. Since I was a teenager, I have tried to stay dutiful for that kind of pleasure. Although I have read Haruki Murakami's "Norwegian Wood" ten times, but I never think it can be a great work. I just needed doing so to cure my soul, so it says that my soul is too weak. Today I worked early. After returning to my room, I tried to read some books by Nabokov, Junichiro Tanizaki, and Mieko Kanai. Yes, they are great magicians of words... but they didn't fit me. It can happen. I want to be soaked into Mieko Kanai's long novel if possible. Yes, someday I want to do so, and try to forget myself. I can be melt into books and that's a pleasure of reading.
I remember... since I was a child, I have been a person who has enjoyed reading as an ultimate pleasure. But I have walked an awkward way of reading. I am not a great reader because I have read Dostoevsky and Flaubert in my 40s. There are certain books and authors I have never read... when I read Easter European literature anthology, I was taught that my worries can be small (and this world can be really big) by touching the book's vast stories. I even felt that my worries had "melted" into that book literally. Reading literature is, for me, a kind of "salvaging my soul". The problem I am facing to (it must be about physical desire) might get more complicated if I read books more and more. But unless I have read nothing, it would still be solid so I am fighting wastefully.
I joined a server about literature on Discord. At there, I talked about Vladimir Nabokov's "Lolita". I remember a writer (probably Choukitsu Kurumatani) said that talking about literature is like a kinky thing. Indeed, talking about the fact what books saved my life honestly might mean the action of talking my weakness or distorted mind. I have enough in my room so read Mieko Kanai a little. Ah, I was really impressed by her books when I was teenager. Her books were really massive... reading can mean "being beaten", "being lost", "being impressed" therefore dangerous. It can mean being destroyed by books. The myself which has made incompletely is crushed by books... but I want to follow Franz Kafka's opinion. "A book must be the axe for the frozen sea inside us". I want to see this truth with courage.
At least, although I am a just old dude but really a bookaholic. Yes, I am a slacker... but I thought I should be firm because I got a kind message from a friend on Facebook. Once I confessed my wish for death, my wish for being helped openly. "I wanna die" so "help me"... it was too honest so made people tired so much. I just don't want to make the same failure. I might need courage to be helped, but never want to be ridiculous. I try to do some lifehacks which helped my life, cured my soul. How about reading Nabokov's "Pale Fire"?... I think this now. Some women read this diary actually. They send me tender messages. I can never escape from my trauma so I think myself, the oneself who has been attracted by my co-worker's beauty of her hip, as a weird. Is it OK? Or writing this kind of thing itself is just a simply "shameless" thing?
