I recently read two stories. One by Kawabata called "The Master of Funerals." Another in Murakami's new collection Sleeping Willow. I don't remember the exact title of the Murakami story. Anyway, both stories feature a relatively young man who begins to attend an inordinate number of funerals. The odd thing was that I only put together the two stories in my head several days after reading both of them--even though it couldn't have been a week between the time I read the first and the second. Now the connection seems obvious, but somehow it wasn't that obvious when I read the Murakami story. Maybe they aren't all that similar on the surface and I had to forget a portion of both of them before the similarity dawned on me.

I'm interested in these small cognitive oddities in my own brain. For example, when I wake up realizing something obvious, but something that I hadn't realized the night before.