Riya - Thoughts for October 28th Readings

 In Flying Tobita Sisters I interpreted it as a message about grounding yourself or being true to your roots or something. The cultural shift from walking to flying reminds me of technological advancement, or general human evolution where previous functions which may have seemed useful at the time are now obsolete. Applying this to this story, the Tobita Sisters and the main character using their feet could represent resisting these large cultural norms where literally everyone else is doing one thing by doing something they wanted to do. Despite being physically envied and having no trouble fitting in if they didn't run/jog everyday, them choosing against that is actively displaying their individuality in a world that basically expects conformity (judgment from peers, using feet/legs is not normalized in this society so them using theirs was considered weird).

In the Monkey short story, I interpreted it as a story about motherhood and identity, where the monkey could represent a baby. I noticed how when the narrator was going through their identity crisis and smashed the mirrors into fragments, the actual text (which was long run-on sentences before) got fragmented into shorter sentences. When she did this action for herself, her thoughts seemed more organized and put together, indicating a clearer mind/mindset, or a lack of franticness from before. 

In Mogera Wogura, I was wondering about the role of the main guy and why he provided sanctuary to all these people.. I wonder if this guy represents some kind of stage of death, something like a limbo where a person is not really dead or alive. Maybe the death does not need to be physical, but rather the death of these humans' will to live (or more specifically referring to the phrase "something died on the inside"). 

My Baby is a story that, to me, represents grief over the loss of a child, where the mother would spend years trying to piece (a memory of) their child back together but always missing something you can never get back. 

In Peddler of Tears, I felt bad for the main character. After falling in love and experiencing jealousy, the main character almost started spiraling and started sacrificing parts of her body just to make herself cry, eventually consuming herself until all that was left were their tear ducts, and all they could do was cry. I wonder if this is a message about letting emotions consume you, or maybe a story that cautions against letting yourself be consumed by relationships. She seemed to have a pretty successful side hustle where she was somewhat passioned about, but then when she fell in love she started going through many changes, some positive (falling in love, emotions and experiences associated with that), and some negative (losing her physical body). 

Paprika Jiro was the most confusing to me. The creatures that look like they have sunglasses and suits on represent some kind of destructive force tearing up a community, where the people in that community downplay the harm caused (by normalizing it). I have no idea. I was mostly shocked and wondered why the asian man and the white woman would purposefully target these stalls. What was their problem?