My Sputnik Sweetheart.

I am now afraid of Ferris Wheels.

And I have my Sputnik Sweetheart to thank. Or is it Haruki Murakami? I'm not quite so sure. I've had trouble sleeping for two nights in a row - I'm not afraid of monsters, and it isn't the thought of monsters keeping me wide awake at night, but the fear of nightmares as I close my eyes to sleep. On the third night, I actually had to pray for a peaceful, free of nightmares sleep.

But let's just stop with the disturbing facts for a while.

Murakami makes me want to just smoke and read with a cup of scorching coffee in one hand. All day. ALL day. For years now, I've managed the latter parts, but not quite the "smoking" part. Really! I could just imagine myself, like Sumire, sitting at a cafe along the cold streets of Japan, mundane and unnoticable, smoking, reading, and drinking coffee. Nothing sounds more perfectly meant to be combined, than these three.

Murakami made me come back to this seat in front of my desktop and write again. I've been forced to immense myself into the real world for a while, crawl out of my personal utopia and put on a mask. I haven't written anything for exactly two months.

Wait, scratch that. Murakami not only made me want to write again (so badly), but he made me want to be such a great a writer, perhaps write my own book, let my works be known. Let my words be heard.

I just don't know what I should write about.

I don't have half of the greatness he has. Nor half the stories all brilliantly stored in his mind, subconsciously putting little pieces of expensive rocks together forming a masterpiece. That great imagination of his. (that creeps me out, by the way) But it doesn't matter. He is still a master of this art.

I am afraid of Ferris Wheels.

Those fascinating lights moving upward and then down in the sky, colorful and all happy.
There's a mystery about this Ferris Wheel that I am yet to find out. And I don't mean that literally.

"Shut the lid on the piano, and come down off the stage."
- Sputnik Sweetheart, chapter 4