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Leaving the Forest
October 5, 20244 min read
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#murakami#reading#memory#time#audiobook
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I poured myself a glass of sparkling wine, sitting on the couch by the small desk. Outside, the sun was going down, the last light falling across the balcony. The buildings around me were starting to glow. I opened the door and stepped out, leaning against the railing. This city has never been quiet — opening any window brings noise in. That usually bothers me. But right then, it felt solid, reassuring, like proof that the world's enormous machinery was still running. That was exactly what I needed.
A few minutes earlier, I had just finished the audiobook of Norwegian Wood.
I never thought I'd get through thirteen hours of audio, especially an English version. But from the first minute, something locked in. Every word landed clearly, as if it had already been translated into my own language before it arrived. The narrator's voice felt like a melody I'd heard somewhere before and had simply forgotten.
The truth is, I've read this book maybe five, perhaps ten times over the past twenty-five years. That familiarity meant every sentence brought up images before the words had fully formed — the scenes played out ahead of the reading. It made the whole thing feel less like listening and more like remembering.
Time moved without me noticing. I was deep in the book the way I have been at different points in my life — in the forest, as I've come to think of it. Each visit to that forest feels different, shaped by the season and by how old I happen to be. This time was different in a specific way. I've never gone through an audiobook like this before. I've never finished an entire English book either, if I'm honest. Listening forces a different kind of attention — you can't skim, you can't look away. I noticed things I'd skipped over before, things hiding in a landscape I thought I knew.
It reminded me of the first long drive I ever took alone. Before that trip — more than 1,300 kilometers — I couldn't imagine driving more than 200 by myself. Afterward, 500 or 800 kilometers started to seem short. Distance had recalibrated. I think something similar just happened with long audio. Thirteen hours is no longer long.
Time itself has changed for me. When I was young, I couldn't really imagine what life would look like even a few years ahead. I lived in the present, waiting for summer break, waiting for letters to come back. The future was a blank. Now, twenty-five years after I first read Norwegian Wood, I find my relationship with time has turned almost inside out. I can barely place all the readings of this book in sequence. They've blurred together with everything else — other memories, other years. Sometimes I can't tell memory from dream, or dream from imagination.
It doesn't matter. They're all in there. No one else can see them or check them. However much I try to verify the order of things, I can't go back, not even a second. I can only keep going. Leave a little space.
Some scenes stay sharp though, sharper than anything personal. I can still see Colonel Aureliano Buendía facing the firing squad. A woman being approached by a stranger in the lobby of a public building. An old man who tells a woman he has waited for her fifty-one years, nine months, and four days. A boy of twelve or thirteen who sees a girl visiting his house for the first time and says he has met her somewhere before.
The ones I really want to hold onto from Norwegian Wood are these: Watanabe and Naoko walking through a field; a Boeing 747 touching down at Berlin airport; the night of Naoko's birthday; Midori with no one to call. This book changed something in how I make friends, how I write, how I love, how I see what's around me.
From where I am now, looking back to when I first read it — when 37 felt distant and impossible — 37 is already behind me. Only in books do people stay seventeen, then become twenty, then circle back to seventeen again. Only in books does a 37-year-old man replay his early years without aging a day. In real life, time doesn't stop.
This past week, whenever I had a free moment, I put the audiobook on. It ended faster than I expected. And then, suddenly, I heard something — not the narrator, but something else — a voice that said: you've been in this forest long enough. Time to leave.
I had to admit it was true. I've been inside Norwegian Wood for too long. I've read everything Murakami wrote, but nothing has held me the way this one has. I read the books it mentions — The Magic Mountain, The Great Gatsby. I found the music and fell for some of it. I tried to help people the way Watanabe helped Naoko — assuming they were all, in some way, lost. Most people are fine. They don't need that kind of help, and they don't understand why anyone would offer it.
So yes, I've been caught. And it really is time to go, the way Watanabe decided to keep living even after Naoko was gone. I see the truth of it again, for maybe the twentieth time. But maybe it doesn't matter. This isn't an actual forest. I'm the one who decides whether to stay or walk out. Like the well in the book — whether it exists or not doesn't change anything. What it means is real enough.
The last chapter ended. My time in the forest ended with it. I'll finish this glass and go to sleep. Hopefully I'll sleep well. After all, tomorrow is another day.
Translator's note: This article was originally written in Chinese and published on weizhiyong.com on October 5, 2024. The original Chinese text contains several passages that were already influenced by John's reading of translated Japanese literature — Murakami's rhythms are audible in the source. The English translation attempts to recover those rhythms rather than flatten them. The reference to "fifty-one years, nine months, and four days" (Rule 9) is from García Márquez's Love in the Time of Cholera, preserved exactly. The final line is deliberately flat (Rule 10).