kingtycoon | I slept terribly last night. Barely (Reply)

Now then, in this place of outmoded things where nevertheless hands are turned to fashioning the essential components of our fragile culture I think about outmoded technologies and the erasures that come of the relentless advance of days.

Once, long ago (but not long, not really) I felt like a hundred years – a hundred years is a manageable era, a period of discernable change – decline & progress but visible in the life of a single person. Now, I look back 50 years & with above-average knowledge of the events of that era – I guess, my era – and think ahead t 50 years. It’s too distant – the century is an unfathomable distance on that axis. Too unknowable. Fifty years is an era, or ten. Age is making my assessments concerning time & its relentless advance differently. Everyone says that. I’m trying to think of an interesting way of saying it. That communicates something unspeakable in the human experience. That’s what I always try to do.

Among the ruins of the labors of the ancients I think again about projects, visions, goals. Me, living in the shadow of the last century – perpetually. In the 100 year old house in the 100 year old town – riding on the 100 year old streetcar line… Working in the 100 year old factory manufacturing 100 year old technologies. Iterative improvements notwithstanding – everything in my material experience is antique.

So better get to like them right? Or figure out a better way forward.

And then there is my urge for projects – side projects. My work is a project wide in scale, satisfactory in scope – but what’s life for? Making a rich asshole richer by trading your labor? or making a rich asshole richer incidentally while you try to entertain yourself?

I think on obsalesence & new ways forward – antiquated modes & my own inertia – let’s change things up. But only gently now – I’m at the edge of my competence at this moment – busy. So what’s an easy, antiquated thing that is outside of my ordinary preferences. Ah yes, that is it. I shall listen to records.

Julie says that I’m not perceptibly stranger than non-brain injured men except in that I don’t like sports. But I have definitely observed that people respond with much greater surprise/alarm/contempt when you say you don’t like music. Boy they hate that.

There’s all sorts of rationales I can use. Per my arguments you probably don’t like music either. But whatever. Maybe it’ll be a lark if I decide to try and listen to an album each day-or-so for the rest of the year?

Maybe I’ll do that. Huh!

Last year I tried reading a book each week & then fell out of the material experience of book-having-and-reading by getting hooked on comic-book apps on my phone. Shoot – I read 10-12 books last year & 30 years of comics. Mutations of modes. Who knows. Maybe I’ll get something out of this. A dumb project.

Plus an easy way to get me back into regularly writing things out. I gotta do it.