#316

Perhaps it is to become a tradition, or at any rate, a yearly condition of this blog that I will fall off posting around November through to January. Anyway, it happened, for no real reason other than that it did. Also, it is very cold in my bookroom/writing office, as it is basically a converted attic space, lacking ventilation and not amply insulated. At any rate, we forge onwards. Brave 2023, we greet ye!

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Largely, I hewed to my word concerning my reading plans--plans whose layout and execution are doubtless the main reason anyone reads this blog. Completed Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman, as planned, and read 1Q84 and First Person Singular, as planned, but could not bring myself to let it rest there and subsequently acquired and read Men Without Women, Colorless Tsuruku Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage, (at this point there was a brief pause on the Murakami and I read Shigeru Mizuki's Tono Monogatari while waiting for more books to come in the mail) and Sputnik Sweetheart. Also acquired A Wild Sheep Chase and Dance Dance Dance, but have not read those yet, nor reread Ulysses.

Primarily this shortcoming is due to the glut of video games I downed in the months of November and December, as well as a great cacophony of films and television programs. Watched Sopranos for like, what, the ninth time? Also, The Many Saints of Newark, for the second time. Exhaustive detailing is more work than with books, which is part of why I talk about it less, but here is merely a sampling of the rest of the backlog: Boardwalk Empire, The Irishman, Strange World, Amsterdam (if I gave Moving Picture Awards, like some asshole Academy, this would be my best picture for this year, I think, though it's not easy to be definitive about this, given human limitations on time and attention, and also, Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery would certainly be a contender as well), Guillermo del Toro's Cabinet of Curiosities, American Splendor, and a whole bunch more. All kindsa stuff.

Videogames, though. Notably, Pokémon Violet/Scarlet versions dropped, and I sank thirty hours into the former in a single intensive weekend. I beat it and completed its Pokédex in record time, a very enjoyable endeavor. Also picked up Sonic Frontiers (probably the best Sonic game made in about twenty years, as far as I'm concerned), Super Mario Odyssey, NieR: Automata - The End of YoRHa Edition, Pokémon Shining Pearl, Death's Door, Disgaea 5, Cuphead, and Fire Emblem: Three Houses. I played all of these and more to varying degrees, eating up a lot of time I might have reasonably devoted to reading and writing, but it was fucking great and I regret nothing, a life practice I recommend to everyone, applying to everything they do. 

Remorse and regret are different things, by the way. Remorse is fine. Not that I feel any over playing video games. Remorse is reserved for hurting people, indecencies, so forth.

Remorse is a natural and noble reaction to a past made up of imperfect choices, a side effect of our paltry, laughable consciousness. Regret is an affront to God's perfect universe, a seductive trap that keeps us enmeshed in samsara's gravid loop.

Something to consider for the new year.

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So! Today I set out on this year's literary journey with Alison Weir's The Wars of the Roses. Thought it best to finish all the Murakami after I complete my planned task for 2023, and then, in that distant future, we will see what comes next. Pretty great so far; it really does read like Game of Thrones! Life is so wild.

Feels good to be back in the nonfiction section. Gonna read the shit out of my books this year, dear reader, all my nonfiction and poetry and comics, and I'm gonna tell you all about it. Might have to hit the library or secure more poetry and comics in order to properly alternate between them and my nonfiction, but that'll just be even more fun. Plus, we'll see what else happens. A whole blank slate to piss and shit all over! Ahh, the illusory yet very real grace of elliptical orbits.

--JL