'Moon Palace' og '9th and 13th': Spontanitet og komfortzone

Should we live as we feel or should we just follow the stream? One of the themes in this story and in the other could be spontaneous vs. thoughtful or comfort zone vs. outside comfort zone. In both stories spontaneity is dependent on the right settings. In a way you can say that the need of the right settings is in fact not spontaneous, and actually very controlled. The character in “Moon Palace” needs to be in the park before he can be spontaneous. The character in “9th and 13th”has to be at the piano playing, before he can be spontaneous.

Moon Palace is about a man who lives in New York City, the main character has no name and we don’t know anything about him except what he feels about the park and the city. We don’t know if he lives in a house or if he is in fact homeless. In the story we primary hear about two places or settings, “the grit” is the pavement in between the skyscrapers, the road to and from work or just the daily trips in the town. The other setting is the park that also refers to the title as the Moon Palace. Our character is seen in both of these settings, but he has totally different relationships to the two settings. In “the grit” as he calls it, he doesn’t feel safe and comfortable. He calls it “the grit” because in New York City the buildings are divided into squares so the roads make a grit of straight lines. When our character is in the streets he doesn’t feel comfortable because he feels misplaced and that every sudden move, makes him stand out. He needs to be able to be spontaneous, and in the streets he can’t be that. Everything needs to be “normal”. In “the grit” people can only walk in straight lines and they will never wander off in a random direction. He feels like he is dirty and that someone always have an eye on him, to check if he acts different then all the others that are walking in the crowd.