Haruki Murakami is one of my favorite writers. I can’t even really think of why right now, aside from the fact that nobody does metaphor like he does, but that’s fine because I’m not really bringing him up to talk about his work. He comes to mind because of the story behind how he decided to be a novelist, which in short is that, while at a baseball game, when he heard the crack of bat meeting ball, it just came to him: “I think I can write a novel.” He says baseball wasn’t what caused him to change careers; the connection there is just happenstance.
Nine summers ago, I was very depressed. When Robin Williams died, I didn’t think “I also want to kill myself,” but I did think, “I get it.” On the surface, there was a girl on the other coast and I was sure that if we could just be together, my problems would go away. Truthfully though, there were demons inside of me and I was running out of ways to hide. I wouldn’t become lucid on that for a good number of additional years, though.