#Being The Emotional Caretaker and if i cant fulfill that role then life is actually not worth living

[variantoutcast]

[yfere]

meta something i can't get over- it's episode 66 and caduceus is still so- the best i can describe it is "formal" with the m9? like he still calls them mr fjord and miss beau and when he and fjord have their religious talk in the most recent ep, for example, he says "You have great friends"- he doesn't include himself. not "we" but "you". i dunno maybe im not getting something but it's just weird to me, considering how long he's been with them now, how distant(?) detached(?) *something* he is

(same cad anon) and yet- sorry to just. throw this at you but its been bugging me for ages and your takes on stuff are always incredible to read- he’s also so weirdly close. like, in the same religious convo, he asks fjord to just “let us take care of you”. so its like. i cant tell if thats just a Caduceus Thing, or if he really hasnt had very many close moments with the group. aaahhh i love this guy but i dont Get him at all anyway i’m done now. :)

This is fascinating stuff, I could talk about it all day. There are a lot of what look like contradictions to Caduceus and how he interacts with people, ways he shows affection and emotion that really don’t resemble how anyone else approaches the group. We can see, for instance, that he very much views his role as that of an adviser and a caretaker–it’s what he’s good at, the type of social script he learned at the Grove, and it’s also what he likes to do. He only began liking his time on the ocean once he started feeling “useful” to the group, like his skills were Helping Them Achieve Something. His primary form of communication after Confusion is Sage Metaphors, and the sheer strength and stubborness with which he holds to his particular ideas about how the universe works and how it is appropriate to act results in him constantly offering somewhat forceful, somewhat parental/coach-like advice to the others. That’s not to say Caduceus thinks of himself as a parent, but his focus seems to be on Helping Them Become Emotionally Stable and Helping Them Reach Their Potential, (while they help him reach his), while at the same time he holds very specific ideas about good ways vs bad ways for them to reach that potential. 

And he cares for them in other ways too–Caduceus, arguably even more so than Caleb and Jester is a compulsive gift-giver, a crafty DIY guy who makes things for the sole purpose of giving them away–fixing a sword for Fjord, making copper door chimes for Caleb, taking a single spare moment in the Barbed Fields to weave a sunhat for Yasha. His projects, even when they’re simple, show a great deal of thoughtfulness and are made for functionality– showing understanding of Fjord’s need to be useful, Caleb’s ever-present anxiety and paranoia, hell, Yasha being pale and likely to burn! He takes gifts that other people have given him, like the tree, and makes it into a communal area for all of them, with spaces for all of their gods. 

So it’s true that he cares about them, but it’s also true that he holds them at a remove. At a time when Caleb and Jester are calling the M9 a family, Caduceus is drawing lines in the sand–in his religious conversation with Fjord, he talks about “his” family, and “Fjord’s” friends. Because Caduceus already has a family, and not one that can be restructured and absorbed into the M9, like Nott’s family and Jester’s mother can. A family that doesn’t actually resemble whatever mess the M9 are to each other. Caduceus keeps to formal address, and while this is a quirk I personally nevereverever want to go away, it shows not only politeness but a reluctance to engage on a familiar level, to acknowledge a personal and enduring attachment.

If I were to speculate, I believe Caduceus is viewing his project and his attachments with the M9 as transitory and somewhat professional in nature. Not in the same way Fjord thinks it’s transitory, in that Fjord refuses to decorate his room and fears either they will pack up and leave or he will be personally booted from the group the second he’s not professionally useful so there’s no use getting comfortable. Caduceus’ version is more that he sees a definite End to the M9′s relationship, and believes they are following a Direction, however meandering, towards that End. Once they have helped each other fulfill their destinies, Caduceus imagines himself going back to the Grove and continuing to do what his family has done for generations, what they are Supposed To Do. Just like how you handle a mourner in the Grove by offering them help and guidance, and keeping a professional distance before sending them off to live their life away from you, it looks like Caduceus is treating the M9 in large part as a collection of mourners he can offer mutual aid before they set themselves free of each other.

The trouble is that the M9 aren’t customers and mourners it’s necessary to keep a professional distance from, they probably wouldn’t want to float out of his life when all is said and done. And Caduceus, who has only ever interacted with The Family He’s Known All His Life and Outsiders/Customers (he didn’t even have a friend like the Traveler) doesn’t yet know how to alter his social scripts to handle these new relationships he is seeing and participating in.

[p-aralian]

Men Without Women by Haruki Murakami

Men Without Women is a collection of short stories so I feel like I should review this both by their individual stories and as a whole.

(1) Drive My Car

Okay so let me first just tell you that I read these short stories while I was actually in Japan. Prior to my trip, I didn’t exactly have much knowledge on Japan’s affairs, except pretty much for the Meiji Restoration, which I studied in IB History. But I digress; basically what I’m trying to say is that I had no idea just how bad the gender inequality is in Japan. Like literally, women are still seen as the traditional caregiver, not really meant to be in the workforce but rather fulfil the role of a respectful wife and mother. So I guess I shouldn’t really have been surprised at the sexism in this novel, but it was really eye-opening because I guess Murakami’s expression of people’s lives in the book must be an accurate reflection or depiction of how Japanese people actually live.

The story literally starts with the blatant stereotype that women are bad drivers. Apparently we just don’t know how or aren’t built to operate such heavy machinery? Jesus. Sorry, but it’s actually ridiculous how some men think or rather are brought up to think. Must be the whole Confucianism thing. Also, the woman driver he hired was like what, my age, and he was SEXUALISING her. Okay he was kinda doing the opposite of that, ie, saying that she had no breasts and looked like a man but STILL – why do those things even matter!!! Why are you, a like 50+ year old man, evaluating the looks of a girl, WHO COULD BE YOUR DAUGHTER’S AGE. Please. Just. Stop.

Anyways, that aside. I also didn’t really like the story because it was very strange – the guy knew his wife was having an affair and didn’t call her out on it? And befriended his wife’s lover after she died? Dude, you cray. Who does that? Also, story 1 – man without woman because woman died. But woman was a cheating bitch. So again, not the best impression of women.

- In every situation, knowledge was better than ignorance. However agonizing, it was necessary to confront the facts. Only through knowing could a person become strong. - The proposition that we can look into another person’s heart with perfect clarity strikes me as a fool’s game. I don’t care how well we think we should understand them, or how much we love them. All it can do is cause us pain. Examining your own heart, however, is another matter. I think it’s possible to see what’s in there if you work hard enough at it. So in the end maybe that’s the challenge: to look inside your own heart as perceptively and seriously as you can, and to make peace with what you find there. If we hope to truly see another person, we have to start by looking within ourselves.

(2) Yesterday

I liked this one. I don’t really get how this falls into place with regard to the underlying thread that is supposed to bind all the stories together – “men without women”. Honestly, I don’t want to go too deep into this story. Essentially it’s about two people that the narrator knew who could have been together, probably wanted to or were meant to, but didn’t. (Note: there’s a touch of a woman’s unfaithfulness in this one too). Anyways, I feel like it’d be better if I just shared my favourite quotes from it:

- I wonder if life should really be that easy, that comfortable. It might be better to go our separate ways for a while, and if we find out that we really can’t get along without each other, then we get back together. - Maybe going through that kind of tough, lonely experience is necessary when you’re young? Part of the process of growing up? … The way surviving hard winters makes a tree grow stronger, the growth rings inside it tighter. - I truly love Aki-kun, and I don’t think I could ever feel the same way about anybody else. Whenever I’m away from him I get this terrible ache in my chest, always in the same spot. It’s true. There’s a place in my heart reserved just for him. But at the same time I have this strong urge inside me to try something else, to come into contact with all kinds of people. Call it curiosity, a thirst to know more. More possibilities. It’s a natural emotion and I can’t suppress it, no matter how much I try. - Music has that power to revive memories, sometimes so intensely that they hurt.

(3) An Independent Organ

This one was my favourite. It really got to me. Like really got to me. Like I was crying for quite a while after I was done with it. The narrator was again talking about someone else’s life, a plastic surgeon and bachelor who had never been in a long-term relationship with a woman but rather preferred to have good conversations, good sex and no commitment. (Fair enough, I get that). So most of his women tend to be married because apparently a lot of women want the committed part of a relationship with their husbands but ALSO the company of another man who can remind them what it’s like to date and flirt and whatever, I don’t know. Anyways, this doctor falls in love, with a married woman. Surprise surprise. But no. He then has an existential crisis and then dies. He dies because he is lovesick and heartbroken and he dies at his own hands, condemning himself to a slow death by anorexia. He becomes but a shadow of his former self and just dies. Because of the bitch, who not only abandons her husband but also the doctor for, get this, a THIRD lover. Ok so, unfaithfulness again. But that’s not the point.

I feel it was a little melodramatic and unrealistic that he just gave up on life after this woman broke his heart (or maybe it isn’t, maybe because he was so set in his ways of non-commitment that falling in love with a woman and then being betrayed by her could be so heart-breaking that he wanted to reduce himself to nothing? I still think it’s a bit much but it’s not my place to comment on these things after all.) Nonetheless, it broke my heart. I can’t even begin to imagine what betrayal feels like – like he said, if she had told him that she couldn’t be with him because she wanted to keep her family together, he would have been fine, but it was solely the very act of betrayal that drove him to non-existence. Fuck.

My favourite quotes are as follows:

- I’ve been out with lots of women who are much prettier than her, better built, with better taste, and more intelligent. But those comparisons are meaningless. Because to me she is someone special. A ‘complete presence,’ I guess you could call it. All of her qualities are tightly bound into one core. You cant separate each individual quality to measure and analyse it, to say it’s better or worse than the same quality in someone else. It’s what’s in her core that attracts me so strongly. Like a powerful magnet. It’s beyond logic. - ‘Having seen my love now / and said farewell / I know how very shallow my heart was of old / as if I had never before known love – Gonchunagon Atsutada ... I’ve finally experienced what the poet felt. The deep sense of loss after you’ve met the woman you love, have made love, then said goodbye. Like you’re suffocating. The same emotion hasn't changed at all in a thousand years. I’ve never had this feeling up till now, and it makes me realise how incomplete I’ve been, as a person. - The more I get to know her, the more I love her. We’ve gone out for a year and a half, but right now I’m even more entranced than I was at the beginning. It feels like our hearts have become intertwined. Like when she feels something, my heart moves in tandem. Like we’re two boats tied together with rope. Even if you want to cut the rope, there’s no knife sharp enough to do it. - As long as it makes sense, no matter how deep you fall, you should be able to pull yourself together again. - Women are all born with a special independent organ that allows them to lie. It depends on the person, about the kind of lies they tell, what situation they tell them in, and how the lies are told. But at a certain point in their lives, all women tell lies, and they lie about important things. They lie about unimportant things, too, but they also don’t hesitate to lie about the most important things. And when they do, most women’s expressions and voices don’t change at all, since it’s not them lying, but this independent organ they’re equipped with that’s acting on its own. That’s why – except in a few special cases – they can still have a clear conscience and never lose sleep over anything they say. - Just as that woman likely lied to him with her independent organ, Dr. Tokai – in a somewhat different sense – used this independent organ to fall in love. A function beyond his will. With hindsight it’s easy for someone else to sadly shake his head and smugly criticize another’s actions. But without the intervention of that kind of organ – the kind that elevates us to new heights, thrusts us down to the depths, throws our minds into chaos, reveals beautiful illusions, and sometimes even drives us to death – our lives would indeed be indifferent and brusque. Or simply end up as a series of contrivances.

The paragraph on women born with the ability to lie really got to me. 

(4) Scheherazade

Lol. I had a friend called Scheherazade so this was very difficult to read without imagining her. Also because it’s a pseudonym for a Japanese woman, but I just wasn’t able to picture it that way?!!! Okay. I’m going to call her Schez for short. Schez is weird. She talks about her past, in which she describes having a crush on a guy in high school and sneaking out of school to break into his house and smell his things and god knows what else – not cool at all, in fact really creepy. Another thing is, she’s a caretaker who has sex with the dude. Is that a thing? I wish they’d say a little bit more about who the narrator was and why he needed such caretaking to begin with? It all just felt really misplaced. Also don’t get how this fits the whole men without women theme again. Oh and also, Schez was married and I really don’t think the sex can just be dismissed or classified as simply being part of her job – that’s total unfaithfulness as well. Please.

- Life is strange, isn’t it? You can be totally entranced by the glow of something one minute, be willing to sacrifice everything to make it yours, but then a little time passes, or your perspective changes a bit, and all of a sudden you’re shocked at how faded it appears. What was I looking at? you wonder.

(5) Kino

I like this one. Since I’ve been consistent in highlighting this fact, let me just start by saying – there’s unfaithfulness by a woman in this, AGAIN. But other than that, it was really mysterious which was a welcome change. Were the supernatural occurrences real or were they just manifestations of the narrator’s subconscious, forcing him to come to terms with how he truly felt about his wife’s infidelity? This felt like proper Murakami. The snakes, the vanishing cat, the rain, the knocking, I loved it.

(6) Samsa in Love

I have Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis somewhere. I think it’s in London in my brother’s house. I wish I’d read it before this. Maybe then I would’ve had a little more context for this story. But alas it’s not hard to figure. Metamorphosis. That’s pretty self-explanatory. Reviewers online say it’s an interesting take on Gregor Samsa. I don’t know, I don’t really have too much to say about it really. Also, don’t really see how it fits in with the theme again. You know what, that’s it. I got nothing.

(7) Men Without Women

“Men Without Women”. Repeated way too many times in one story. Okay so the narrator receives a phone call from his ex-lover’s husband to be told that she is dead. He thinks about her and their time together and also of how he imagines meeting her earlier in high school and stuff like that. I dunno. I just liked how she played a certain song when they had sex. In fact, you know what I love all of Murakami’s allusions to music and the power it has on people, on memories, on emotions. If I can relate to anything, hell it’s that.  

So I read in an interview with Murakami that he doesn’t analyse the images or thoughts derived from his subconscious which form the content of his stories, instead he merely records them. Honestly, I don’t want to over-analyse it either. These stories took me on a journey, gave me a peek into different worlds, some of which I could relate to more than others. I am glad to have read them and that’s that!