I was looking for other anime to watch and I thought of a couple I’ve heard of for years, I was looking up Death Note and Black Butler on my phone, and then a few minutes later I was listening to an audiobook an one of the characters suggested a Black Butler marathon.
So I get a memory from posting that.
An hour or so later, now I have watched Toradora episode 2 and Black Clover S1E11.
Toradora was about what I would have expected for a second episode. I’m still loving the music. As I recall I started this last year because it was on a “best” list, although I can’t remember what. Maybe it was romance. I see it’s from 2008 and I feel left out of all the decades this art from was evolving and I didn’t notice. There’s such a vast history of anime to explore that I’m overwhelmed. Last year I looked up dozens of shows from “best of” lists, but I realize now that I didn’t have a sense of what I wanted. I got overwhelmed by looking at so many that were too vulgar or too violent that I lost interest. I’m very content to be sampling them critically now, so I can refine my taste and find the ones that I genuinely love. I’ve got a better sense of the layout of the form and I can ignore the distractions. I want to find just the perfect tone.
Meanwhile, Black Clover S1E11 was filler, or – more politely – stage business, which is necessary for long-running shows. The characters are my family so I’m very forgiving of them being boring and repetitive. I loved the fact that there were so many minor scenes that used character details that I’m already familiar with, that it was such chaos of going from one conversation to another.
And then I was done and I moved my laundry to the dryer and now I’m thinking about everything I wanted to write all day, but couldn’t get started because my mind wasn’t in the right place. After two episodes I’m up in that wonderful anime space where I’m imagining I live in Japan, everything’s cozy and I’m just very calm. I’ve hypnotized myself into a space where I can watch my evening as if from outside, I’m such an amazing guy and this is my cool life where I watch these great shows. Anime somehow eases the damaged spot in my synergetic self/non-self axis, the turbulence between inner and outer goes away.
My only crisis now is that it looks like I have to subscribe to Crunchyroll again to watch Black Butler, but I can’t decide whether to add it to my Amazon Prime, or to get the standalone app. It would be cooler to get the app, but really smoother to just add it to Prime.
I just went on Amazon and bought a saucepan so I can make ramen noodles. I remember when I first went to college I would watch TV and make ramen noodles, one package at a time. Ha ha ha, my life has been such a disaster. I’m in heaven now, and how do I preserve that feeling? That’s why I bought the saucepan, to relive that amazing feeling from the early 90s when I had no idea how horrifying my life would turn out – or really even how horrifying it had already been. I was still sailing ahead on the optimism of youth and the knowledge that I could always call my father for money. I wanted to watch every episode of Deep Space 9, just to get in on the ground floor. The Amy Fisher murder was in the news and Comedy Central had a bit they ran constantly making fun of the name Joey Buttafuoco.
Decades later I still remember the irrelevance of it. That, and that horrible episode of Star Trek: TNG where the video game took over the crew’s minds – the worst Star Trek Episode I’ve ever seen. I was so anxious about life then, and so doomed. And yet, my waifus must have been there in my subconscious. That was also the year I had the vision of Tarot Key VII: The Chariot that turned all of the blue I could see to purple and inspired me to join Builders of the Adytum. I can feel the magic of that time. It’s funny, but as disastrous as my life has been, that magical feeling really paid off in spades. In fact, in one way it’s the only thing that ever has paid off for me.
Out of college, money spent
See no future, pay no rent
All the money’s gone, nowhere to go
Any jobber got the sack
Monday morning, turning back
Yellow lorry slow, nowhere to go
But oh, that magic feeling, nowhere to go
Oh, that magic feeling, nowhere to go
Nowhere to go
I bought a diffuser so I can make my bedroom smell like Jasmine, a kind of chaos magic to attune to the ghost of David Lynch.
I have the magic feeling right now. Am I preserving it by writing this, or is this going to mean nothing when I reread it years in the future? Hello, years in the future. There is so much I want to say, I feel there’s a depth beneath the surface but I don’t want to plunge into it. Maybe if I just pass over it again and again in each entry something will be revealed that’s too much to dive all the way into.
I subscribed to the app and started Black Butler. It looks interesting, but it got late so I decided to watch a bit more of Song One before bed. It’s awesome. I love the direction and Anne is wonderful.
Regnum Somniorum 