Because yesterday was Valentines Day, I was forced to consider how I was spending it, riding my scooter. A good scooter ride always puts a smile on my face. While in school I often rode my scooter at strange hours just to release the frustrations of a young twenty year old. It has always been my recess.

Onions are like...

I remember the first time I heard someone compare their complex identity to an onion. I shouldn’t have to explain why, but at first it seemed like such a simple and useful analogy –especially when compared to other produce items (which my mind usually limits itself to when confronted with “come up with something better”).

I have problems with the onion analogy.

First, my life has never been organized enough to establish layers. And just when I think I can distinguish two different ideas, they merge and influence each other.

Second, an onion can only have so many layers. Even a giant onion has fewer layers than the issues I work through my head before noon.

Third, an onion only develops once. Lets say I can compact all my complexities into the limited number of layers in an onion, what if I want to change?

Forth, onions are accessible. Pealing back one layer reveals a new one. This can’t work as an analogy because I surprise myself all the time with crazy preconceived/subconscious notions.

Fifth, I’m not an onion. I believe people love to make comparisons to naturally occurring phenomenon because if it exists in nature “it’s gotta be true.” Right? Well, I’m not an onion, stream or a hound dog. I’m a person who is complex –just like other people.

This Reader Response is Getting too Real

I’m reading the book “the wind-up bird chronicle” by Haruki Murakami. I have enjoyed the style of writing and the magic realism plot.

The book takes the readers expectations and bashes them against the wall of improbable. One page is full of a detailed description of folding clothes and the next is an image of a mind whore –if you can even imagine what that is.

Half way through the book, the protagonist develops a blue tinted mark on his cheek. He believes it is related to the mind whore, but it also might have something to do with his willful decent into a dried up well.

The day after this mark appeared on the protagonist’s cheek, I noticed one of my own. The protagonist noticed the mark after shaving for the first time in three days. I noticed mine just after shaving.

The similarities continue, but suffice it to say, “I was a little freaked out.”

Luckily I’m just sane enough to recognize the non-consequential coincidence –but I would still feel relived if the book ends well for the protagonist.