I'm currently reading The Coma by Alex Garland. He also wrote The Beach which I didnt really enjoy, but didnt particularly hate either.
The story:
A young man is brutally assaulted late at night in an Underground train by a gang of thugs. Beaten unconscious, he lies for days in a hospital bed - but appears to make a full recovery. On discharge from the hospital, Carl picks up the threads of his daily life, visiting friends, seeing his girlfriend - until he starts to notice strange leaps in his perception of time, distortions in his experience. Is he truly reacting with the outside world, or might he be terribly mistaken?
It turns out that Carl never came out of the coma. What Carl perceives as his daily life is no more than a 'half-reality' of memories and manifestations. It isn't long before Carl discovers his 'predicament' and sets his mind's eye on waking up.
So I started to think...What if I'm in a coma right now? I mean, what if I never made it to Japan? What if I was brutally assaulted in the DC metro by a gang of thugs? What if I am actually lying in a hospital bed and imagining my life in Tokyo?
For two days I've been weighing the possibilty that this is happening.
1) I have a pretty vivid imagination. "It's all the comic books you read growing up," a friend tells me. Moreover, my dreams are normally pretty detailed. I think that it's entirely possible that I am creating a world full of spectacular, vivid images.
2) I experience so many weird things in Tokyo. Strange things. Peculiar sights. Uncommon smells and sounds.
3) I am having a lot of fun. I am happy. I dont think coma patients are required to be sad. In the movies we never see what the comatose person is feeling - only what their family is feeling. Maybe their alternate reality is more fun than their actual reality.
4) Time moves very quickly. My week is usually work, sleep, work, sleep. My weekend is usually vodka, shake, chill. Im not exactly experiencing 'leaps in my perception of time,' but the pace is pretty disorienting.
5) I listen to people and don't understand what they are saying. Yes, they are speaking Japanese. However, my dreams often contain written or spoken words that are merely blurry images or sounds. Maybe the people are speaking Charlie-Brown-teacher-talk combined with the little Japanese I knew before I 'left' DC.
6) I havn't seen any new television shows. The little amount of American television I watch consists of old episodes of 90210, National Geographic specials about polar bears, and the occasional Woody Allen movie. Any knowledge of recent episodes of 24, Lost, or Heroes could be what I overhear my mother and grandmother discussing at my bedside.
7) I eat food that I dont recognize. Bizarre pyramids of rice and odd looking fish. Most of it tastes ok, but nothing tastes like food from home. Plus, I am losing weight. Maybe I am being fed intravenously in real life.
Anyway, lets just see how it goes. If I am correct, then I will trust my subconscious to show me a good time. If I'm terribly mistaken, then my time in Tokyo is something I will never forget.
The story:
A young man is brutally assaulted late at night in an Underground train by a gang of thugs. Beaten unconscious, he lies for days in a hospital bed - but appears to make a full recovery. On discharge from the hospital, Carl picks up the threads of his daily life, visiting friends, seeing his girlfriend - until he starts to notice strange leaps in his perception of time, distortions in his experience. Is he truly reacting with the outside world, or might he be terribly mistaken?
It turns out that Carl never came out of the coma. What Carl perceives as his daily life is no more than a 'half-reality' of memories and manifestations. It isn't long before Carl discovers his 'predicament' and sets his mind's eye on waking up.
So I started to think...What if I'm in a coma right now? I mean, what if I never made it to Japan? What if I was brutally assaulted in the DC metro by a gang of thugs? What if I am actually lying in a hospital bed and imagining my life in Tokyo?
For two days I've been weighing the possibilty that this is happening.
1) I have a pretty vivid imagination. "It's all the comic books you read growing up," a friend tells me. Moreover, my dreams are normally pretty detailed. I think that it's entirely possible that I am creating a world full of spectacular, vivid images.
2) I experience so many weird things in Tokyo. Strange things. Peculiar sights. Uncommon smells and sounds.
3) I am having a lot of fun. I am happy. I dont think coma patients are required to be sad. In the movies we never see what the comatose person is feeling - only what their family is feeling. Maybe their alternate reality is more fun than their actual reality.
4) Time moves very quickly. My week is usually work, sleep, work, sleep. My weekend is usually vodka, shake, chill. Im not exactly experiencing 'leaps in my perception of time,' but the pace is pretty disorienting.
5) I listen to people and don't understand what they are saying. Yes, they are speaking Japanese. However, my dreams often contain written or spoken words that are merely blurry images or sounds. Maybe the people are speaking Charlie-Brown-teacher-talk combined with the little Japanese I knew before I 'left' DC.
6) I havn't seen any new television shows. The little amount of American television I watch consists of old episodes of 90210, National Geographic specials about polar bears, and the occasional Woody Allen movie. Any knowledge of recent episodes of 24, Lost, or Heroes could be what I overhear my mother and grandmother discussing at my bedside.
7) I eat food that I dont recognize. Bizarre pyramids of rice and odd looking fish. Most of it tastes ok, but nothing tastes like food from home. Plus, I am losing weight. Maybe I am being fed intravenously in real life.
Anyway, lets just see how it goes. If I am correct, then I will trust my subconscious to show me a good time. If I'm terribly mistaken, then my time in Tokyo is something I will never forget.
4 comments:
maybe you're a character in a Murakami novel and we're all just indulging you by having you believe you really exist...i know, you're "Nakata" from Kafka on the Shore- Nakata lost many of his mental faculties when, as one of sixteen fourth-graders out on a mushroom-gathering field-trip toward the end of World War II, a strange silver light was seen in the sky and the entire class fell into a deep sleep. Unlike the other children, who woke up in a few hours, Nakata remained unconscious for many weeks, and, upon finally awakening, found that his memory and his ability to read had disappeared, as well as his higher intellectual functions. In their place, Nakata found he was able to communicate with cats.
A few things:
1) I just finished reading Kafka on the Shore and agree that this is entirely possible. Also, it would explain why my cat was always so...er...friendly with you.
2) When I was in fourth grade, I became completely obsessed with the idea that we (as in humanity, earth, etc) were all living inside a jar set on a giant's nightstand. I used to picture him waking up in the morning and looking inside the jar at all of us. Earthquakes were him shaking the jar. Rain was him spitting in it (I'm not sure why he was always spitting). It was kind of my idea of what God was like, I guess. It was God, FraggleRock style. I have this friend who says I read a lot of novels as a little girl...that could be it ;)
3)"Vodka, shake, chill" would be a great name for a book or a blog about "going out."
a jar, a giant, a nightstand...i love it! :p
Maybe you never lived in DC either. Maybe you never woke up after that weekend at the beginning of college and the only japanese you know is what you picked up from those subtitled anime flix. And since the only thing I really remember you ever doing back then was watching reruns of 90210 and National Geographic specials about penguins, maybe you're just living those most recent TV moments. I don't know where you got polar bears from, but I guess they have a close enough relationship with penguins that after years of watching penguins the polar bears just became more interesting...
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