i've nearly finished dance dance dance. naturally, i am loving it. there is something so perfect about murakami's world, as if he's captured the essence of something in an orb of glass and invited you to examine it from all angles. it's absolutely so beautiful, but so subtle. what that 'something' is, i don't know. but i'm happy to keep reading.

i have a cabbage plant in my room. the cabbage plant is rather a difficult customer, i have realised. you have to water him very often or his leaves shrivel up and can then be pulled off, crispy. i spent a few minutes doing this the other day and now he's just a sort of bald crispy top sticking out of a sad bed of soil. not so attractive, but i like him all the same.

speaking of attractive, a very beautiful man came into the office today, which was a bit of a novelty. i don't know if anyone else is like this, though, but when someone's too attractive it freaks me out - when they are there i feel a bit ill and when they're gone i experience a strange empty feeling. someone else expressed this in something i read recently - i forget what it was, sadly - but a devastating feeling that the beautiful things are not meant for you, and that you'd rather never have seen them.

also i have decided that aubergines are the meatiest vegetable.

the other day the screen at the train station said something like 'leaf fall timetable' and then some writing and numbers after it. i thought, how poetic.

catching a falling leaf is supposed to be good luck. i've been trying half-heartedly for a few years to catch some. i remember when we were at school me and my friend kitty used to jump around under this particular tree when it was windy and try to snatch the flying leaves out of the air. i was always worried that whether or not you had good luck depended on whether or not you caught an odd or even number of leaves - i never kept count so i was always on edge.