Cindy's 1108 blog post:

The Flying Tobita Sisters: I enjoy reading this short story because I always dream to fly, too. But before reading the story, I have never seriously considered that in order to fly, we have to make sacrifices, too, such that our feet will gradually lose its support and strength as a result of an overuse of the wing. Therefore, I like how this short story depicting winged humans in a very practical light. Also, I think that the structure of the story is well-arranged in the sense that we have dual narrative going on and converging in the end as our protagonist began to run. It is kind of ironic to think of that humans want to fly so bad when they can only walk, and people begin to want the feeling of walking on the ground when they are able to fly. Wishes carry us far and bring technological developments yet on the other hand, people are also nostalgic about the past and unwilling to lose certain things. It seems like we are always moving forward but also lingering behind at the same time.

Meditations on Green: This short story on paramecium is a little sophisticated and a bit dark, considering the nature of the nameless narrator's experiment, but the end is sweet. This short story talks about the religious and philosophical features in paramecium, but I towards to take this as a metaphor for humans, too. Paramecium can evolve into human after lots of mutations, according to the text, and in some sense, we are from the same root. And their "original sin" in the lab mimics ours in the real world to certain extent. "Short lived but enlightened" vs. "Long-life yet blunt". It is hard to say that which is better and which is worse. Characters in this short story seems to have a suspicious and critical view towards everything in the world, such that there are nothing we can say for granted.

Paprika Jiro: Our protagonist adopts a vegetable name paprika and he is a green grocer, which design I like a lot. This is a crazy story, those strange people who destroyed the peace of the market constantly I thought to be the absolute villains first but somehow it turns out in the end that they are in a desperate condition and due to lack of faith in them, their appearance decreases evidently. But who are they? I am so intrigued.

Goodbye Christopher Robin: This is a really moving story, such that I am so happy to get a chance reading it! This surrealistic story combines many famous tales into it, Alice in wonderland, Little Red Riding Hood, Winnie the Pooh, Astor Boy, and so on, giving a dreamy feeling as I was reading it. I think that this is a story more to feel than to reason with. But what is Winnie the Pooh fighting against, what is this nothingness, the nothingness of the real world? or the nothingness of writing? Is he fighting back against the end of story-telling? In the end, with a little melancholy and faint hope, I feel a reluctance to let go of precious memories. This is a really beautiful story.