A memoir with muscle

This small book covers a lot of territory, besides territory in Japan, Greece, New York, or Boston. In under 200 pages, Murakami brings up many issues: attentiveness to rhythm and music, preference for solitude, his inclination towards setting expectations for himself, total commitment, habituation, acceptance of events outside his control, and, of course, a multiplicity of connections between running and writing.

Last year, as I read this book, many of these issues jumped out at me, for instance, his preference for solitude, which he asserts early on at length:

...I'm the kind of person who likes to be by himself. To put a finer point on it, I'm the type of person who doesn't find it painful to be alone. I find spending an hour or two every day running alone...as well as four or five hours alone at my desk, to be neither difficult nor boring. I've had this tendency ever since I was young.... I could always think of things to do by myself. (15)

This was refreshing. This was true of me. This is true of me this morning. I sit on the back porch of my host's home in Washington State near Vancouver, and I put together this essay on What I Talk About When I Talk About Running. I pause to look at the plants, herbs, and flowers in pots on the wooden railing. I read Catfish and Mandala, which I'd bought a few days before at Powell's Bookstore in Portland, then I head toward the Clark County Fair, where I will pick up a shuttle bus to Vancouver Mall. From Vancouver Mall, I decide to go into Portland and take a look at Pioneer Courthouse Square, from there wending to the Chinese Garden in Old Town... I, too, can always think of things to do by myself.

A word that jumped out at me at the start of the book is "accept," first on p. 17 ("...we merely accept that vast expanse [of sky]...") and then on p. 18 ("Just like I accept the sky, the clouds, and the river.") Nor is this a mere flash never to re-appear. On p. 22, Murakami talks about accepting the process of aging, on p. 86 about accepting his body and face, and on p. 120 about accepting "my runner's blues"--a sudden loss of enthusiasm for running, as much a mystery to him as "the tide rising and falling, John Lennon's death, and miscalls by referees at the World's Cup." (120)

All this talk of acceptance struck me for a couple reasons. One, it brought back to mind the concept of Radical Acceptance in Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT), a concept that was hard for me to grasp until I connected it to the Serenity Prayer: "God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference." (Which, nevertheless, presents a tall order.) Two, at the same time that Murakami stresses acceptance of life events, he is talking a lot about running, which involves striving. At one point, when his whole body starts hurting during an ultramarathon, Murakami "tried to talk each body part into showing a little cooperation" (109), so that he could finish the race. He is not accepting his body's aches; he is not accepting an event outside his control. Is this a contradiction to his usual Radical Acceptance? Or a complement to it? (My guess: a complement).

This year, while pedaling vigorously on the elliptical at the gym, I remembered that Murakami had talked about making the muscles used to unwonted physical effort. This came as a relief. Instead of a heroic "No pain, no gain" push, working out could be a matter of gradual strengthening through habitual physical exertion. Murakami puts it in this (humorous) way:

If you carefully increase the load, step by step, [your muscles] learn to take it. As long as you explain your expectations to them by actually showing them examples of the amount of work they have to endure...as long as you take your time and do it in stages, they won't complain--aside from the occasional long face--and they'll very patiently and obediently grow stronger. (71)

For this habituation to be effective, total commitment to the process is required. This is not a hardship for Murakami. Quite the opposite. It is customary for him to "totally commit to whatever I do." (31) When he opened a jazz club after college, he "figured...that since failure was not an option, I'd have to give it everything I had." (25) The phrase "everything I had" recurs--
when he decides to become a professional novelist, and then when he chooses long-distance running to keep fit. And it inspired me to work out at the gym at least four mornings a week for about two hours.

Murakami's many connections between running and writing are indisputably at the heart of this book, and yet, I confess, they did not make much impact on me. Except one. In Chapter 4, Murakami talks about the qualities a novelist needs: talent, focus, and endurance. Unlike talent, he writes, focus and endurance can be acquired through training--i.e., through habituation--like the strengthening of muscles. He draws this conclusion briefly on p. 78 but then elaborates on it from p. 79 to p. 82...

...with humility, humor, and candor. Wowza!