##Moral Obligations in Writing Sputnik Sweetheart kept me up late, and I finished it. I picked out a passage that spoke to me as the author explaining his writing. It jives with what I noted about Murakami's books. In this section, the character Sumire has undegone some sort of life epiphany and written it down. After stating that Understanding is but the sum of our misunderstandings, she goes on to talk about dreams and how it is impossible to know things completely. In this context: Which explains my stance as a writer. I think—in a very ordinary way—and reach a point where, in a realm I cannot even give a name to, I conceive a dream, a sightless fetus called understanding, floating in the universal, overwhelming amniotic fluid of incomprehension. Which must be why my novels are absurdly long and up till now at least, never reach a proper conclusion. The technical, and moral, skills needed to maintain a supply line on that scale are beyond me. Of course I'm not writing a novel here. I don't know what to call it. Just writing. I'm thinking aloud, so there's no need to wrap things up neatly. I have no moral obligations. I'm merely—hmm—thinking. I haven't done any real thinking for the longest time, and probably won't for the foreseeable future. But right now, at this very moment, I am thinking. And that's what I'm going to do until morning. Think. Is that why Japanese novels are so annoyingly ambiguous? Because the authors have no moral obligations, no Judeo-Christian guilt. No need to have the character be redeemed, or condemned. Just think. ##Foreign Service Written Exam I've been reviewing the Arco American Foreign Service Officer Exam Guide. It got awful reviews at Amazon, so I'll have to order the study guide from ETS. This will be my first time taking the test, so I'm not too serious about it. As a reminder to myself, the test is on April 12, 2003, and you can register for the FSWE at the State Department website.