I had a day off today. This morning, I attended a Zoom meeting in English. Today's topic was IKEA's new online promotion. After that, I went to the police office to update my driver's license, and after that, at a library, I borrowed a new book by Li Kotomi, "In the Country of the Language 'Kotodama' Flourishes [李琴峰『言霊の幸う国で』]".
After having lunch and taking a nap, I went to the main house of the group home to write some signatures on paper and also paid my money as the rent for my room. Finishing that, I went to AEON to enjoy reading the rest of Souseki Natsume's "Kokoro" (with the music by Fennesz and Ryuichi Sakamoto). Reading that steadily, I found that this evergreen youth novel tells me about the concept of death. In other words, Souseki tries to describe how our life can be by writing about that concept in contrast.
For a while, I quit reading and started writing English notes on my memo pad as usual... This feeling/impression seems to me to be like Haruki Murakami's famous novel "Norwegian Wood", which exactly taught me how our life can show its aspects by various "leaving and meeting", or "coming and going". One simple fact is that I have never died actually (at least, physically), therefore finally I can't tell you how death can be... but (indeed, although it must sound too conceptually) in my opinion these authors gaze at this ultimately enigmatic thing/object with their diligent decision. It must appeal to the young people who start having various difficulties in their minds (I believe so).
You would think the things I have written above are just so strange or simply nonsense... because young people must not think about death deeply (yes, they must learn a lot of things through the process of actual living and learning such as the first romance, etc). However, as Japanese author Ango Sakaguchi taught us, every young person can have a certain "mature" mentality through their adolescence/youth period, therefore with their tough struggles they will learn how important to think about death.
As a 49-year-old reader, I am certainly learning several things by reading "Kokoro", even though I am still in the process of finding/discovering what the meaning of being alive can be because I have not experienced a lot even now. What will be the next "first experience" for me? It can be the experience of enjoying Captain Beefheart and Sun Ra.
