Tom McCarthy’s Remainder (2005), hysterical realism and a journey that leads to nowhere!

Tom McCarthy’s Remainder (2005), hysterical realism and a journey that leads to nowhere!

I’d grabbed McCarthy’s Remainder (2005) randomly from a row of books in a bookshop in Tokyo and read the summary. Apparently, it’s hero had had some sort of life-threating accident and was trying to reconstruct his life after it, in a new search for identity. Coming from a risky hiking accident in September 2016, when I had almost, literally, rolled into an abyss, that was enough to sell the story for me. I paid and turned the next corner, towards a nearby park, where I sat in a bench and started reading straight away. Now, that I have finished the novel, I can say it was a boring read, yet, I can’t say I am too disappointed. I didn’t read it with any expectations, just wanted to follow the story of a fellow life-threating-accidents club member. And that exactly...

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Learning to look beyond projections

Learning to look beyond projections

“Who looks outside, dreams. Who looks inside, awakens” Karl Jung   It was a breezy November afternoon as I was rushing to the train station, making my way towards southmost part of Shinjuku,  Tokyo, to meet Y., who had reserved us a couple of seats on the right wing for the biggest projection mapping show in the world. After being postponed due to a typhon in October, it was rescheduled for November 12th. We had a pleasure to view the projection show consisting from 19th finalist coming from all over the world. The projections were dancing all over a castle like structure, creating a surreal environment that immediately made me feel like I had landed in a scene of Blade Runner (1982) or in a rather Murakamiesque universe. I had to look into Y.-s pretty face, to...

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