A quote I stumbled across that talks about the leap of faith in my desires that I’ve been trying to make lately:
Curiosity can bring guts out of hiding at times, maybe even get them going. But curiosity usually evaporates. Guts have to go for the long haul. Curiosity’s like a fun friend you can’t really trust. It turns you on and then it leaves you to make it on your own — with whatever guts you can muster.
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, Haruki Murakami
What I mean by “leap of faith’ is that I’m admitting to myself that I’ve tried a lot before — leather, wrestling, sex clubs, boyfriends, groups, fast and anonymous fucks, casual hook-ups, topping, bottoming — out of curiosity that encouraged me to see what I liked, but I haven’t always had the guts afterward to go after what I really did like if it meant breaking too far out of the character of myself I’d always played. Not that I’d given up on what I liked, but that I’d file things away as a sort of secret life that I kept separate from my day-to-day activity. Well, what the hell’s wrong with going after what you like and being honest about it? You’re sure not going to increase the odds of finding like minds without having the guts to let them find you.
Wind-up Bird is one of my very favorite books. I always have something to talk about when I meet someone who’s spent time in Mongolia.
I really enjoy Murakami. I think “Hard-Bolied Wonderland” is my favorite, followed by “Wild Sheep Chase.” He comes up with some amazing ideas, and there’s something about his style of writing–the way he presents fantastic events in a voice that I imagine as a noir-ish deadpan–that really appeals to me.
A few weeks ago I finished “Underground,” his book of interviews with people who survived the Tokyo subway gas attacks. Painful to read at times…and now I’m really paranoid when I smell something funny on the T.
We just took up “Hard-Boiled Wonderland” at our book club. Everyone loved it and it generated a tonne of discussion. Murakami has a great way of turning an idea inside-out and presenting as something new but disconcertingly familiar. I’m looking forward to “Wind-Up Bird”.
Nice one on the Murakami–great sentiment, great author. Would you believe I got a 16-year-old student interested enough to actually read (and enjoy) “Wind-Up Bird” and three others to finish his short stories in “The Elephant Vanishes”? I don’t know if I would have been up to such complex (albeit rewarding) reading at that age…I had too many Stephen King books to get through. 🙂