Kafka On The Shore

You're one microscopic cog in his catastrophic plan,

designed and directed by his red right hand...

Finally, a day off! Today was the commanding general's annual run, which went pretty well. For a change we ran as a battalion, something we don't usually do. It went well! The weather was nice, though more than a little windy.

At any rate, I read a great book on the way back to Oklahoma, then finished it up here in town. It was Kafka on The Shore, by Haruki Murakami. Highly recommended, as are most of his other books. My favorites are A Wild Sheep Chase, and its sequel, Dance, Dance, Dance. Both deal with a guy in a raggedy sheep suit, and get interesting from there. Also worth a look is Hard-Boiled Wonderland and The End of The World, if you can find it. Often Murakami takes two parallel stories that seem completely unrelated and eventually ties them together in a way you might not expect. I kind of like reading about places I've never been to, in this case Japan- the Japan I imagine is probably a good deal more surreal than the real one. It's definitely worth a look, anyway. This particular book centers around a kid named Kafka Tamura, who runs away from home from a father he really doesn't know very well, and an old man called Nakata, who suffers some manner of brain (we're led to believe) injury, resulting in limited comprehension, but the ability to talk to cats and an often surprising insight into the situation. Kafka ends up working at a library, where the librarians have a long and strange past, and Nakata, who works part-time as a finder of lost cats, eventually winds up near the very same library. Do their stories cross? Somewhat. And who is the cat killer, who constructs a magic flute out of the cats he butchers? Read the book and find out. It's definitely not what I expected, but then, great books rarely are. Often I find reading a book can do one of two things- either you wind up learning something you didn't know, or you wind up with insight into your own situation.

This book did the second- not so much that I'm going to run away to a library, but rather that we're all destined for something great, in our own way. We're all parts of the same machine, though the purpose isn't always clear. You'll know when you get there, in other words. Sometimes, when we find ourselves at a loss, wondering where to go next, which path to take, the answer is simply follow your instincts- let the path lead where it will, because wherever you go, there you are. Whether or not there's something to predestination, I don't know. I tend to think there is- in part. We operate in accordance with our own free will, within confines. One argument I've always heard is we always labor under the illusion of free will- in reality, it's just that- an illusion. What really happens is that everything is all mapped out in advance, and we just follow the course that's been predetermined for us. I'd like to give people a little more credit than that- instead of being compelled, rather we can make choices. We are, however, bound by those choices and decisions. Take, for example, a recent DUI. Not me, of course- this happened to another soldier in the company. Or rather, I should say, he caused it to happen to himself. The path laid out as a result of that decision was pretty clear- he is no longer a soldier, was stripped of rank and title, and is incarcerated. The interesting thing about getting incarcerated in the military- even when you're stripped of rank and given a dishonorable discharge, you first serve your civil prison time (which he's doing right now), then after that the UCMJ (Uniform Code of Military Justice- the servicemember's book of law) kicks in- you may be separated from service, but the government will still collect the time you owe, and you can be prosecuted under both- the principle of double jeopardy applies to specific crimes, not different jurisdictions, such as civil and military. It'll be, sadly, a long time before he sees the outside of a prison. But nonetheless, we all know what can happen- this isn't exactly a secret. The Army has very little patience for substance abuse, perhaps because of the past trend of substance abuse in the armed forces. At any rate, it's not a good plan to get a DUI when Uncle Sam's got your number. The penalties are severe, but on the flip side, we're expected to make responsible decisions. Everyone has everyone else's back- if you need a ride, you're blitzed in some back alley somewhere or some dive bar, you can pick up the phone and call someone. Failing that, call your superiors. You'd be in for an ass-chewing of epic proportions, but you avoid the crime.

So point being, there are consequences to actions. Consciously or unconsciously (or damn near, in this previous case) we create the path we take. Now the question becomes, do we do this consciously, or are we kind of shooting blind? It's certainly true that life does tend to throw the occasional monkey wrench in our works, but that doesn't mean we're powerless. The magic word here is think. Think about what could happen, and what's likely to happen. I think we all occasionally get the little voice in our heads saying 'go here', 'talk to that person', or 'don't do it, you damn fool!' We're all blessed with reason and instinct- we should use the two together. But there's also the things we can't really account for, when things suddenly and incredibly work out for the best! I guess in the end, we do the best we can and hope not to foul up too bad. More often than not- we don't foul up too bad.

Perhaps it's a part of what Buddha was talking about when he talked about mindfulness. He said to be in the present, not worrying about the future or obsessed with the past, but surely in the present we can see where the road goes. If on the one hand, the road dead-ends into quicksand, maybe that's not the best path to take. If we can see that far ahead, we should, rather than look down just at our feet and blunder into it. But quicksand too has its purpose in this world, like everything.