More Ruminations

Finally, he could accept everything. In his deepest soul. Tsukuru Tazaki finally understood. One heart and another are not bound by harmony alone. They are, also linked deeply through their wounds. Pain linked to pain, fragility to fragility. There is no silence that does not contain a cry of grief, no forgiveness without bloodshed, no acceptance without a passage through acute loss. This is what lies at the root of true harmony. --Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage, Haruki Murakami Reading Murakami always inspires rumination in me--most especially, for some reason, with his novel Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki. There is something that touches me on a personal, deeply experiential level--on an emotional plane, I mean. Not an identification with the specific events of the novel, but with the underlying thrust of dissonance, bewilderment, pain, grief, and resolution. Harmony, in a sense, is nothing more than the subjugation of dissonance. It is present from the beginning, but must be groomed and sought after. The deepest, most soul-satisfying harmonies must be discovered. They do not come with the understanding only of one's own repertoire of notes, but with the inclusion, the discernment of the tones outside oneself. Harmony is a work of love, a willingness to bear pain, a stubborn insistence on unravelling the dissonance string by string. It is for the wounded, the fragile; not for the proud or impassive. Verily, verily I say unto you, unless a grain of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone; but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit.