This morning, I had great difficulty remembering the name "Haruki Murakami."  This, although I have been reading his work steadily over the past few days.  This, although I know him to be one of the more popular modern authors in Japan.  My mind kept stretching and reaching: Yasunari Kawabata?  Yukio Mishima?  Natsume Soseki?  For some reason, the letter "M" kept featuring prominently in my mind, but I couldn't (for the life of me) discover the name I was looking for.  I finally gave up, got out of bed, and actually picked up the book I had been reading (1Q84), and, by the light of the moon, rediscovered that his name was "Haruki Murakami."

It was scary.  Actually, I have been noticing a trend of late, a sort of difficulty with names, names that should be obvious to me.  The other day, when I was writing names on envelopes, I couldn't remember what we used to call "Roy Mitakara" when we were young.  In truth, "Roy Mitakara" was something we NEVER called my uncle.  In fact, I didn't even know that "Roy Mitakara" was his given name until much later.  But again (for the life of me) I couldn't recall what we used to call him.  Strangely enough, it was my wife who blithely gave the answer: Masao.

Am I experiencing a kind of premature dementia?

I am scared.

***

I had a vision of a sunset.  The slanted orange light was passing through large trees, eucalyptus, I think, before the field of the Mormon church in Mililani.  The image was peaceful, but it filled me with a kind of dread.  The sleepiness of it all concealed a kind of despair or regret at something forgotten, and wasted.  The word "solipsism" kept popping up into my mind.  This feeling of being closed off and forgotten, without any ties to an external referent.  That was the feeling that dominated my mind and my heart.

The feeling of old age, of "retirement," of falling asleep.  A sleepy kind of death.

As I was checking out the moonlight, I noticed a shrinky dink thing that my daughter had made: the image of the face of a child with such cheer and enthusiasm that it broke through the darkness.  The happiness of children is my one salve, the one thing that prevents me from falling completely into irrevecoble depression...

***

I did have a dream.  My dreams of late have been largely about finding some sort of internal consistency.  It is as though there were a puzzle or something, and I finally have the answers.  But it means nothing.  It answers nothing.  There is no grand overwhelming experience, no vision of something awesome or terrible.  It is the dream of a little soul.  The falling asleep of a little soul.

I hate that I have been consigned to this place of littleness.