kingtycoon | Bats and Wolves and Whatnot

Reading on my phone is really changing my experience of reading. I think I’m looking at books I wouldn’t ordinarily ever consider checking out or buying for whatever reason – probably mostly shame and pride though. I was reading these kind of trashy books about Warhammer 40K for example – and they’re sometimes good, often bad, and I think I got through 4-5 earlier in June, then I was reading David Byrne’s really weird book about music and then I was reading a lot of the famous 40 Oz books, then just heaps of technical works related to my job, and then bunches of weird old books from the public domain. I think my phone has a more respectable library on it than most bookshelves – meanwhile my actual bookshelves house the artifact-style books that I just like to have around me all the time – Roman Histories and Chinese Histories and Histories and Theory. I was sorting my bookshelves and stuff and Agatha says: “So dad, why do you need so many books about China?” And I’m explaining to her: “Oh, sweetie – my historical specialization is the history of China in the 20^th century, It’s something I’m very interested in.” And that was a weird exchange between two people who are really involved with each other where they kind of come to understand the limits of human involvement. Like – Oh yeah, you’re a completely other person who isn’t exclusively my experience of you! Which is probably a fairly definitive aspect of MeMyselfandI – that I’m wheels within wheels or inscrutable or something.

Anyhow. Yesterday I worked from home because I was expecting all kinds of packages, and they arrived and I got new shoes because my shoes have holes in them because I am an earnest and devoted pedestrian and I wear my shoes out fast and often. So new shoes, and some container shelves for art supplies – which is hilarious because… Who knew? Right? I cut down on books every time I move, I’m down to a couple hundred dearly favored & that’s about it – and I’m up to ten or fifteen bins of paint and pastels and brushes. Who knew? So my supplies arrive and I have an otherwise useful day, and even clean up my house and feed myself properly for a change and it’s lovely outside and I’m in a pretty okay mood. I was reading a bit too – I stayed up late and read – having on the bus the day previous decided to crack open one of my many available novels (not really books, not really, when you read it on your phone) and I thought, eh? Why not and read the Interview with the Vampire – which I’ve not read before and probably would not check out of a library or a bookstore because of Dignity. Anyway I was all about it! I mean, I stayed up late and got invested and sure-sure, there’s a lot of long droning sections about passions and feelings that I found to be just, overwrought, but I liked every time there was mythology or mystery – it was neat. Anyhow I worked from home and worked a lot, a lot-a lot and then assembled my new apparel and art-supply-bins and then it was time to go to run my game – but I thought, I’ll take a different route today.
And I also thought I’ll wear my black jeans because they are clean and this black t-shirt because it is clean and my new black shoes and I’ll walk through the tourist-italian neighborhood by the gigantical old cemetery where a president is buried and I realized about a mile down this hill that I was becoming, probably in some way, a gothic.
But new shoes make you feel younger because of how you’ve been hobbled by the failings of old shoes, and walking a lot livens the blood and I was springy of step and bright of countenance. And who knows, maybe eating properly is helpful to the disposition? Who even amongst us could say if such a thing were so? And unfamiliar paths and different train-stations and different faces- all of these things are the of the kind that wake up the brains and quicken up the mind. Anyhow I’m at the platform, reading and I’m just tickled by this whole thing. Vampires. Fuck okay. Vampires. But the whole substance of the book is all about passions. Or PASSIONS – dark and urgent or some other grandiose/indulgent turn of phrase involving PASSIONS. It occurs to me that as a younger man I lacked passion, any of them. I’m maybe the most clement, temperate person of all. It takes an armada of stimulants to buoy me up to the point where I’m at all capable of regular performance in society and when I was younger it was maybe moreso. I thought also about being all broody and forcibly subtle, about looming in the corner and saying little. I mean, I tried that face on, it didn’t wear well. On the phone with someone at work earlier we’d gotten into some discussion and I explained: “I’m almost 7 feet tall and big on top of that, it’s not like I’m gonna fool anyone trying to be subtle.” Which is true, and so I am not, it’s anticipated and natural for me to be kind of a blowhard or at least forcible, so I try not to disappoint. Except that you know, I was thinking about being a brooding, sulky teenager, all dressed in black and after all – going to play Dungeons & Dragons and all. And reading about Vampires and the whole thing, just the whole thing.
And I thought about being a younger man and how the pose of subtlety hadn’t suited me or anyone else, and then I thought about passions and how right this moment is probably the high point of my actual capacity in life for passions, like – I’m honestly distracted and consumed by the things I care about and I put a value on those things – believe in their value. As a youth, when it seems that passions are meant to be the thing – romantic construction – I don’t think I cared about anything at all. I don’t think I had a single passion. I remember, sometimes vividly, confessing this to my then girlfriend – and how she was an opera singer and I envied her and I just studied the history of 20^th century China because it was interesting, and because it was unfathomable, and crazy, and different, really different – and I wasn’t at all passionate about it, just interested. I could pick it up or put it down. I picked it up because I thought I didn’t really care about anything else anyway. Now? I mean I’m all invested in everything I do, it’s all so important. I think about this and I think about Rimbaud – who changed his tune in later life, discarded poetry and went into business and I think about how it’s a pose – the youthful enchantment with things, the devotion. It’s an older fellow, who’s seen enough to know its worth that really has a taste for passions.

I ran a very successful game and then came home, a long walk again – not reading because my batteries were killed (advantage: Books) and then came home and using electricity polished off that book and was not exactly satisfied, because it ended just fine – I don’t know – it was not that cathartic, but I was happy about reading it at all. And then I went to bed and it was very late.
This morning I rummaged but could not find my monthly pass- which is fine and paid the fare on the bus in coins, which is fine, and came to work and talked to the regular people on the bus and that was all fine – but I did make a mortal error besides, and that is that I read the first four pages of the second book in that series and oh man. OH MAAAN is it bad, if it was a book-book? I’d have thrown it down and not picked it up, I’d have treated it like litter because that’s all it must ever be. Of course it’s my phone so I just decided to look at the internet for a while instead (advantage: phone).