murakami, haruki - Norwegian wood

Thinking back on the year 1969, all that comes to mind for me is a
swamp - a deep, sticky bog that feels as if it's going to suck off my
shoe each time I take a step. I walk through the mud, exhausted. In
front of me, behind me, I can see nothing but the endless darkness of a
swamp.
Time itself slogged along in rhythm with my faltering steps. The
people around me had gone on ahead long before, while my time and I
hung back, struggling through the mud. The world around me was on
the verge of great transformations. Death had already taken John
Coltrane who was joined now by so many others. People screamed
there'd be revolutionary changes - which always seemed to be just
ahead, at the curve in the road. But the "changes" that came were just
two-dimensional stage sets, backdrops without substance or meaning.
I trudged along through each day in its turn, rarely looking up, eyes
locked on the never-ending swamp that lay before me, planting my
right foot, raising my left, planting my left foot, raising my right,
never sure where I was, never sure I was headed in the right direction,
knowing only that I had to keep moving, one step at a time.
I turned 20, autumn gave way to winter, but in my life nothing
changed in any significant way. Unexcited, I went to my lectures,
worked three nights a week in the record shop reread The Great
Gatsby now and then, and when Sunday came I would do my washing
and write a long letter to Naoko. Sometimes I would go out with
Midori for a meal or to the zoo or to the cinema. The sale of the
Kobayashi Bookshop went as planned, and Midori and her sister
moved into a two-bedroom flat near Myogadani, a more upmarket
neighbourhood. Midori would move out when her sister got married,
and rent a flat by herself, she said. Meanwhile, she invited me to their
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