January 3rd & January 24th I recently completed Murakami's newest novel, *The City and its Uncertain Walls*. This marks around two years since I began with *Men Without Women*. We can fill in the blanks of the obvious, trite, yet important reflection that my life has changed a lot. This kind of change in conditions—and the resulting shift in mindset— happened like the movement of a glacier or time in general: things changed slowly, until it dawned upon me. In this case, the release of a new Murakami work, which is partially in relation to earlier works, served as the epiphany. Here goes. ~ Today, I dreamed about a girl I dated a long while ago. It's not the girl you're thinking of, nor is it that one either. I don't usually dream — certainly not about distinct people — and definitely wouldn't write about it if it was any degree embarrassing.[^2] I start here because my favourite Murakami books — in fact, this element is so common, it might be more precise to say my favourite part of any Murakami book — involve ancient, adolescent relationships.[^4] So many of these books are about protagonists seemingly swept away, serendipitously, into the clutches of women who vanish, move, or otherwise render their relationship impossible. *The City and its Uncertain Walls*, of course, featured this element. This time, Murakami's chosen female modus operandi is crossing over into another world — the dream world.[^3] When I first read about these bizarre, almost-relationships, I couldn't understand why the protagonist would abandon their world — often alongside a "satisfactory" wife — in order to chase this young, unformed love. Still, there's probably something addicting about the weird, non-loving courtships of some mutual attraction. At least, that's what college has taught me. Yet my favourite[^1] part of the book was actually the afterword. Murakami begins this afterword lamenting afterwords. Then he explains how he took a while to write this book because his earlier abilities as a writer were insufficient. There's something romantic, and parallel, about Murakami's love/obsession with this story and the plot itself. There are elements of this book in all his earlier works, yet none of them all come together like this one. After twenty years, he's finally gained the capacity to write it, and it blossoms into something more than he could have imagined. One hopes for that one person, like this one story, to return after years, once one's equipped to meet them, and for that to turn out better, longer-lasting, than imaginable. Sometimes these moments arrive in stories; in dreams; and in unexpected Murakami releases. [^1]: A close second is that there is comparatively much less ear sexualisation, and no sex scene with a large age gap. This is salient. [^2]: This is probably a character flaw. [^3]: The irony I *dreamed* the starting incident of this post is not lost on me. [^4]: The litmus test of this is how I read *IQ84*, for instance, in less time than any short story collection.