I [Kidney] You

February 8th, 2007

I’ve been teaching a section of creative writing at Otis, and it meets for three hours, once a week. The class is right after lunch, so there’s a subtle drag on enthusiasm, an undercurrent of nap-yawn. Yesterday we had a great discussion, though, about two Haruki Murakami stories we had read. If you have read any Murakami, then it makes sense to you that some of the discussion questions I posed were these:

- Why spaghetti?

- Why a kidney shaped stone, rather than some other shape?

- What if she had been something else, instead of an urban tightrope-walker?

The class came up with creative and intelligent answers for all of these questions. My favorite were the associations with kidneys: They filter things. They have no cliche social connotations (like the heart does). They make you think of beans. And you can donate one. With such insight, I saw the story in a new light. And now, for Valentine’s Day, I think it would be more romantic to receive a piece of jewelry depicting a kidney than one depicting a heart. Or better yet, a real kidney. That’s love.

One Response to “I [Kidney] You”

  1. cindy Says:

    I think an iPod shuffle would be love. Yes. Especially and orange one, with something engraved on the back. Yes.

    Oh, and I LOVE the Murakami story about the tightrope walker. In fact, I love all of Murakami’s stories and novels. After the Quake is one of my favorite books of all time.

    I once spent an entire weekend in college writing out one of his stories by hand so I could feel the rhythm of his writing. It was so beautiful, I cried myself to sleep every night.

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