The Tropic of Orange
In this book, we get a new Tropic of Cancer. For those who don't know, the Tropic of Cancer is a line around the globe (there is another one, and they straddle the equator). In this book, the Tropic of Cancer is given a strange origin story—a man named Gabriel who works in LA as a reporter also owns property in Mexico, and he lets a woman live there who needs refuge from a painful marriage separation. She picks a favorite tree while tending to his property, and an angel takes a sacred fruit from that tree to the Tropic line. This is a mythic indication that everyday life has mythic, mystic consequences that the characters themselves typically don't consider.
Traffic jam advice
Because of the details in the scene, the reader can construct a fascinating conclusion from the scene about the traffic post-apocalypse. The scene seems to be a joke about the feeling one has when stuck in LA traffic (which is truly nightmarish). At the end of the day, the conclusion is that Murakami the character can be taken as a piece of clever advice to fellow Californians, as if the author is saying "When I am stuck in traffic, I listen to Haruki Murakami audiobooks." This is technically a plausible interpretation of the art.
The border between US and Mexico
The US-Mexican border is cleverly assigned symbolic value, not by what it does, but by what it does not do. It does not distinguish the stories in Mexico from those in America whatsoever. The border is arbitrary in the book's point of view, and it doesn't mean anything to the plot except its literal reality—it is the line between two governments. Does it stop patterns of nature? No. Does it distinguish the humans above the line or below the line? Not in any essential way.
The wrestling match
When luchadores SuperNAFTA and El Gran Mojado are asked to wrestle each other, that is a symbol of another real conflict, the one between the Rio Grande (the US-Mexican border), and the effects of trade agreements between the North American continent. This is a hysterical depiction of contrary points of view, and it frames politics as a kind of barbaric entertainment for divisive people.
The Buzzworm
A Buzzworm is a person who tattles often through gossip. In this case, a literal character is assigned the name, and the author asks the reader to consider the idea of gossip. In the same act, a man named Murakami directs traffic, so perhaps the Buzzworm is to Emi and Gabriel what other artists are to this novelist—Buzzworm represents the flow of influence and ideas between authors.
