the place where i make no mistakes and where i’ll never be forgiven

This is not researched. This is not rigorously drafted. This is another episode of Eli being trapped in self-reflection.

Operation Commence

The subject scans their room seeking inspiration for a detailed account of their being. The words must carry the grandeur of fiction, yet remain tethered to this world. What then, would their being-here serve if we sought to escape into a fictional world? The crystallization of new futures serves a different purpose. They would rather engage with the artistic equivalent of self-harm; thus, they look endlessly around the room.

What’s the difference between a torture chamber and a normal room? One of them is at least honest. The room is fitted with all of the basic necessities: A heavy door that shakes the room no matter the amount of force applied in shutting it. A window optimally shadowing over an unknown street. A door leading to the shower room, to simulate self-purification by sodium lauryl sulfate. A bed misaligned with the wall out of a lack of will to correctly position it after replacing their bedsheets. Everything serves as a reminder that the outside world is not the enemy; no one is radically unpleasant to intersect with. Maybe the empty cigarette cartons are the enemy. Maybe the mass conspiracy is in their mind. The world is alienating; this is no surprise, but where do you direct that energy? The ideal is to change the world, is it not? The answer isn’t within yourself, nor is it published within the rounded spine of an academic text. Suffering and understanding are one and the same.

The products that simulated the corroboration between the subject and other living beings are not treated with respect. The figurines, once protected from the collector’s ultimate antagonist (dust), now fully embrace the eventual corrosion of the world. You’d have to clean the glass case either way. Bottles of soju lie in wait, Yohji Yamamoto garments thrown lazily on the one-room recliner. A loss of love, perhaps? A changing of priorities? Absolutely. There isn’t more to gain by staring at the wall.

Execute / Abort

I find it fascinating how little things have changed. Not in regard to my interests and what I do for study; it’s been a short while since I was posting on Facebook about early Existentialist texts, and for that I am happy that I’ve moved past. But it occurred to me last Friday as I stood over my balcony, lighting up my favorite brand of cigarette.

I wrote a small essay about cigarettes in a Barthesian tone, and though I obviously lacked the semiological rigor he has, I came across an idea while figuring out the words to my thoughts. Fire, and thus speed, is integral to the mythology of the cigarette. I pulled from Bachelard in his writing in The Psychoanalysis of Fire to form a view on why cigarettes have more aura (not in the Walter Benjamin sense) than their simulacrum counterparts.

“If all that changes slowly may be explained by life, all that changes quickly is explained by fire.”

Gaston Bachelard (1938)

I thought for a moment that 1. The cigarette was like a friend to me. Warm to the touch, wearing a fragrance I can easily discern in a small crowd, and of course, burning me when I handle it too roughly. 2. Fire is needed in this mythological act; you need to burn quickly in order to understand speed, be it changes in tobacco length or, more grotesquely, in a life. Purification by fire, perhaps. 

Warped in ordinance unbefitting of my character, I let my eyes wander away from the floor and came upon the dark sky. The peerless night drifted clouds below the moon. The street below me was dead. Another wind blew in the direction I was facing. I hated the wind. It ruined my hair. I bought a Zippo lighter engraved with clovers. These lighters are windproof, but I wasn’t lucky at all. I still haven’t replaced the wick. I can’t even use it. The night was as silent as the day, and I wondered if it was simply a matter of when I leave for work or when I choose to smoke. People aren’t ideal in this romantic scenario; I would often leave when noticing another person perceptible enough to realize how silly I look, puffing smoke and staring off into the distance. These schizotypal tendencies have rendered me afraid and distant from myself. I fear that I am nothing. The flame burns away the ends of the cigarette as I masochistically revel in my fear. It was brief, and it was already all gone.

I return to my room, the place where I read, write, eat, shit, and sleep. The only place I seem to return to. The room doesn’t matter, the place doesn’t matter. I’ve lived in many places, and these slow changes are explained by how I live my life. To quote myself before I chose to move away from everyone I’ve ever known: “In about a week or so, I will be leaving for another city, away from everything familiar. Starting over. I won’t be alone; I’m armed with the latest releases from NekoNyan, my MAL backlog, every single GWAVE release, and the mountain of books I’ve since added to “want-to-read,” fully knowing that some of them are in foreign languages.”

In two months, it will be two years since I started writing on this blog. Originally, I was excited to embark past my original realms of desire. I wanted to know more about everything. I wanted to write about things I’ve read and thoughts I’ve had and dabble in writing beyond surface readings of text. But I realize how much time I’ve wasted and how much time I’ll waste in the future.

Suspension

I don’t miss the past. I don’t want to go back, and I know things have changed. Even my writing is changing, changing for the better, I want to believe. For now, I still do the equivalent of cultural criticism, but I want to do more theory-heavy work in the future. Pleromatica, templexity, control societies, new wave Japanese film, the genealogy of J-core, denpa music, and infantile aesthetics—anything that piques my interests. There’s so much more for me to learn, so many more things to be aware of before I can form a stance on anything. I am “I need to catch up on the literature” or “read theory” embodied.

Restart

>“Inconsolable beads of vapor shatter across the smooth surface, dragging kindred content until beaten into numerous immaterial bodies, streaking carrying their absence. Left alone. Filled. Left alone again”

>“Contextual and unknown, breathing upon trembling hands gesturing toward the double doors. The conception remains indefinable. You cannot know it. Walk into this city and don a cloak of safety. You can never be known. Unlock the doors and gander in the hallways. The room will be traversed, yet you will not be there.”

>“The noise hymns familiarity. The information of wavelengths is the ritual in which she will inscribe herself. Her thighs meet at a fixed point, blurring causality and rupturing scent. The body never meets the faculties of logic. The beads come across indefinitely and she will be here once again.”

“I can’t remember the last time I’ve slept.”
“Sleep isn’t pleasant. Nor does it energize me.”
“She told me, ‘It’s good for you. Sleeping can free your mind from reality. I think it’s good to escape every now and then.’”
“She was so sure of herself. So sure that I too would experience wonderful things in my slumber.”

“. . .”
[sound of fabric shifting, followed by silence]
“My mind won’t allow it. . . A sleeping moment is a break. I’ve wasted enough time.”
“If I were allowed the mercy of dreams, they would choose not to speak to me.”
“Slumber ruptures my flow of time. Here will become another here. I cannot for a moment forget that I am here now.”

“. . .”

“She’s probably right.”

“Perhaps I have dreamed once. And if I did, I can’t remember it. Nor if it moved me.”
“Maybe it was because of that that I am sent here, the worst of all possible worlds.”

Reinitialize

The past always seems nicer, doesn’t it? I remember when I was struggling to make rent but still figured out how to save enough to spend an egregious amount on anime figurines. I was happier, or at the very least, I seemed to care about something. It was something banal, subscribed to the god kings of commodities, probably just as rudely trite as the things that made the Frankfurt school even exist, but to quote a comfy substack I was reading earlier:

“It’s consumerism, capitalism, and objectification at their finest. But it’s also, like, really fun?”

So, to put it plainly, I listen to music that I was into during that time. Maison Book Girl, some niche alt-idol groups that wouldn’t even break 50 listeners on Spotify, and a lot of EDM. I realize that my taste in music hasn’t grown. The things I listened to then, albeit only about 2 years ago, are completely suited to my sonic palette. Decadent, sometimes incredibly rich textually, but always having a massive appeal to soundscapes, the musical environment a song might create. I find that they pull me back, back to that time where I felt I was happier, less aware of who I am and what I do, complicit in my goals in being a cog in the machine with no ambitions for anything greater. I just wanted to be an Otaking, of course, paying homage to the film from studio Gainax. It was the text I followed; it was everything I felt that I wanted to be. Now, things have changed.

System Compliance

I stood inside of the warehouse I helped manage. My eyes were open, and I scanned the room as if I were a camera attached to a tripod. The colors were to my liking. It was heavy in dull tones, beige in some, and grey in others. It was pleasant but also irredeemably isolating. I work night shifts, so I was alone with just a few bats and rats to keep me company. I’ve always felt at home in a place like this. Not suffering in some humanist way, not even happy at knowing that I may be forgotten here. I just enjoy these moments, which I would no doubt encounter if I dared to gaze above an LCD screen.

There’s no point in chalking up my attitude to what my previous cult had adorned me with. In fact, I can understand why that would be the case, but there’s no going back now. I wouldn’t even change the past if I could. Material conditions and such—I figured I should mention that here because it popped in my mind as I was thinking. I have to go back to work; that’s all I have left now.

I question if they’re delusions of grandeur, if my desire for this inexplicable polemic against a mundane life is rooted in my want for… well, being more than just a lonely person who watches anime in their free time. I’d like to think they aren’t, and I’d like to say that my mindset wouldn’t change even if I did achieve something; to some level I would feel embarrassed for just mentioning it. There really is nothing more delightful than another wound for an already wounded person. Suffering is the key to making art, right? A lot of my friends seem to think so, and I would be inclined to agree. But just for a merely anecdotal assumption, it’s hard to work under mass suffering, just like the body; we need time to correlate our findings, time to let the micro tears in our muscles regain their structure to come away better for it. The mind surely works differently, at least to a small degree. You can live like many of the great thinkers of our age utilize what I believe is the strongest aspect of our species as we are today. The ability to lose oneself to their work, to forget about all other things than the production you have already subscribed to. But I personally wouldn’t want to die such a horrible death like the ones who came before us. Well, at least if I do die, I would want to die in the best possible position I can muster. It’s either irrational individuation or transcendental exhaustion.

Carry On

The squealing halting of my brakes faintly whispered into the cabinet of my steel carriage. On my right shoulder, an ongoing weather report blares from the speaker system of a gas station. The newscaster’s professional cadence returns a lullaby for daily life. The acousmatic field produces another hopeful anxiety, that the city would be unperturbed by snowfall, instead replaced by the gentle song of rain.
The lights played a feign of hand, and instinctively I roared the engine of my chariot.

A bleating unreality of the world characterizes itself, playing a tune that only chimes its absence. In place, a metaphysical dread floods o’er the abstractions of presence. The malaise of thought precedes me, my defenses lowered ‘until then.’ The two options of unabated faith or infinite terror resound carefully until harmonizing into their true and proper form: lifeless moratorium.

My destination was unbeknownst to myself; a purpose was even further away. Was I to run for nonnutritious sustenance, following a trail of unchanced encounters in place of another? Travel to a nearby city for the sake of sightseeing? Leave and leave until all is left behind? Experiences are important, of course, but another opportunity to billow my wallet must be avoided lest I make things harder for myself. Either way, a gander through this all too familiar landscape is inescapable. If not fully engaged with a task, the validity of the person comes into question. One must first be acquainted with the causal and the quaint to experience prominence in the flesh. Thus, I remain here.

Exiting a light tunnel adorned with foliage, the propagation of the divine one reflects the heavenly rays indiscriminately. The ocean remains calm amidst the torrent of sunshower. The harsh juxtaposition coats an unwelcoming layer of humidity within the general distance. Seeing as such, the degradation of visual clarity is soon to come.

The pleasing sight is one I most willingly desire to get rid of, for the sake of saving face in front of the Big Other. What good will beauty produce if the project relies on shadows, obscuring through a shroud of noise? All we want to do is dismantle things until the pieces no longer fit. And it seems the authority of fear has affected men of decades past as well. The walls forged up something deafening, familiar plasters across nature, hoping to alleviate the terror of beautiful things, to succumb to the waves of quotidian. Erecting structures in so far as it reaches sublimity, two shadows are cast upon this wonderful earth.

Businesses share large complexes with conspicuously domesticated panes boding above; business begins in the house of worship. Entrances oscillate from small to corporate. The differences in display are staggering; the smaller businesses hurriedly display sickening sweets, while the larger find solace in sparse assortments. Nondescript people, willfully perturbed by the humble display of capital, walk the streets in casual strides. From here, everything is tainted by the apparatus of my window.

Manic Pixie Dream Girls In My Sleep

The first essay—the first serious essay—was my recounting of why I decided to escape my old life. It ended on a positive note to show that I am ready to emerge from my cocoon, ready to face the world. The writing was my first attempt at something, albeit in a pedestrian way, beyond the confines of my classwork in high school or university. There is nothing to take back from the words I so fervently drove into my keyboard, but without returning to reread my thoughts, I remember what I took for granted, the reason I do anything. The essay was largely about my infatuation with anime girls. Chiyuki Kuwayama, to be exact.

There was an essay by Carl Olsson that I came across recently on the Diffractions Collective about geography and how it’s a self-portrait in seeing how we place ourselves in the Anthropocene. It was striking to me by the first dialogue:

Obviously, I am not a trained philosopher, and I pay my due diligence to keep my writings and opinions within my means. But this section pertains to a characteristic I seem to have when I write. Everything, and I mean everything, can be understood by my fascination with the problem of romance, love, and maybe even sensuality. This extends broadly to desire, moe-capitalism, and maybe even the “heat death of the universe” I unfortunately openly crave (if not only fueled by an intrinsic wish for annihilation). More astutely in my particular field of “research,” I think all of my writing is strained, curated, manipulated, digested, veiled, and ultimately dyed through the delirious frame of a man who enjoys the idea of a woman peeking through his peephole in an attempt to lure him outside and cater to whatever she wants.

The database of affective traits, that fun little thing Azuma observed, more or less tells me what “grand non-narratives” I seem to enjoy consuming. Onee-sans are awesome.

I refuse to psychoanalyze it; don’t Oedipalize me! But it’s important to me, purely in the form that I drew upon the magical (corporate) power of Japanese idol music to fuel my soul. The charming allure of an independent character, who must then of course have a higher level of character agency (there’s a fun little article about this specifically in relation to IDOLM@STER, though it’s a great example of research funding going into absolute nonsense). There is something to project onto—a figure that isn’t attached to an actual person—that I can manufacture some kind of affection for.

Which leads me to wonder, is this what I’m missing? It’s no hyperbole to say that I have always been led by the collar by a chimeric assemblage of database traits (a waifu) throughout the course of my life. Maybe I should play more eroge. Or maybe I should allow myself to be cooed by the sweet whispers of a JPEG to break through this and channel the full performance of otaku. 

My innate desire to retain cynicism to its ideological extreme has its benefits and its downsides. I have a hidden inclination to reject the beauty and immediacy art may invite me into. Art should and must be understood through the historical, ideological, material, and discursive venues of interpretation.

Bachelard would likely call towards wonder, finding beauty and joy in art alongside everything else that makes them valuable. There is a balance between inquisition and wonder, between the sublime and the depth. All of this to say: The warmth from ▇▇ reaches me through the vents of my laptop.
I’ve learned my lesson from the past. No grand conclusion. Take care.

BGM: Kakuly – hello