I fell asleep last night reading the new Haruki Murakami story, "The Kidney-Shaped Stone That Moves Every Day," in The New Yorker. I bought the magazine after seeing that guy last night. I bought it just for the Murakami story. I also rented Head On and bought Chinese food. The two of those were consumed pleasantly together. Both were really good.

I climbed into bed after the food and the movie with this new story by this author whom I used to love and whom I still do, just not as intensely as a couple years ago. It was a crush and what happens with everything happened - my interest waned and new things, new writers piqued it. But, of course, that did not stop me last night from hopping into bed with him. After a few pages, the time, two-thirty or so, started to catch up with my body and right at this moment, as the couple in the story was lying in bed, talking before they fell asleep, I could no longer keep my eyes open and tossed the magazine to the side.

Today, I reread the paragraph I was reading when I just could not do so anymore and discovered on either a second reading or a first one this sentence, that is so gorgeous and so un-Murakami in its ornateness, but is totally lovely still. Here is the sentence along with the preceding one for setup:

Juniper was falling asleep and could not answer. In the night air, her sentences lost their shape as grammatical constructions and blended with the faint aroma of the wine before reaching the hidden recesses of his consciousness.

Maybe you should read that a second time, too, and see how lovely that is. Normally, Murakami does the whole short and potent Carver style, which works well, but man, this sentence, for whatever reason, I really love. Maybe it was the afternoon light filtering through the ginkgo trees outside my bedroom window that totally made this story seem more amazing to me today. Everything about it wowed me today. Same thing with Running with Scissors - when I read it at night, I think it is such mediocre writing, but then when I read it during the daytime, I actually think some of the writing is pretty good.

But back to this story - there's a character who throws this kidney shaped stone into the ocean, does it knowing it is some big gesture, and that hit me so strongly, remembering throwing a wax heart offered to me into the Hudson River. And my heart beats so freely lately, throws itself around much more grandly than I could ever hope to do in some throwing my heart to the sea gesture. I feel it shooting out of my chest, attaching it to boys walking down the street, telling me to follow them, follow them if you want your heart back. This tough boy today outside of Domsey's in a Snowman shirt, my heart went after him. It totally went crazy today for this Murakmai story. It went crazy because a CD was lying on my bed, play surface up, and the sky was there so bright and blue on my bed, this perfect little circle. And oddly, or perhaps typically, it is sort of restrained in anticipation of meeting up with this boy, Victor, tonight - and I don't know how to play the piano. I just like to hit the keys all over whenever I get near one, loud and spastic, just making noises, hitting those keys. And it sounds good to me and I know to no one else and it is something similar, the wanting to hear all they keys at once, the crushes on everything and everyone, and getting bored when someone tries to teach me how to play or plays an actual song for me, showing me how it is done.