all the little things
Vampire Hunter D, Berserk and the end of Summer.
I truly love animation. This is one of the best animated movies I've ever seen: an incredible English dub, a beautiful story and stunning character design. You can see the work Yoshitaka Amano put in.
The truth is, I needed something to pick me up; summer is coming to an end, things are changing, nothing stops. As I steer away from social media and interacting too much online, it gets really lonely (and really boring). Lately, I've started reading tons of manga, most notably Yona of the Dawn and Berserk. The latter has sucked me in with its incredible story and unparalleled art. Truthfully, I acknowledge manga as a complicated and relatively underappreciated artform, and there's no need to pit two queens against each other, but Berserk goes above and beyond any other manga I've put my eyes on.
I'm currently on volume 8 or 9 (lost count), still a long way to go, many hundreds of chapters away from the current decade, so I'm just starting to discover these characters. I'm sure I'll come back to this and change my mind in some way, but for now, Griffith is a superb character. He's a little cunt, a little glam, a little goof. Guts' backstory makes all the sense in the world and manages to not fall into the usual anime/manga toxic tropes, and I find that this story isn't very comfortable to read, but it's fascinating and deeply philosophical. Berserk is the Dark Souls of reading manga. Looking forward to suffering for the next 300+ chapters.
ガンダム
A month ago, J gave me a gunpla model kit. I'd never dabbled in anything like this, and was rather slow at building Legos. All the layers of plastic seemed entirely foreign to me, and then I also had the pliers, a cutter and nippers. This was the first one I built:
The process was slow, my thumbs hurt from pushing in all the plastic, and I stayed up until 2 am. It was therapeutic. I could insert myself into this thing, not think about anything else at all, and lose myself in the hours spent while these bits and pieces took shape. I think I'm very old now, but I'm ecstatic to have found a new hobby, and to know that I can still surprise myself. In short, I'd say putting together Gunplas is on par with Legos and painting in terms of passing time and relaxation; it requires a little more attention, organization (of which I have very little) and nitpicking, but the resulting feeling is the same. Yesterday, my legs were sore as fuck, and I've been constantly fatigued for a week, so I stayed home and built two more Gundams: the Transient and the Aegis. We picked up the Aegis from Otaku Center, a nerd store in a nerd alley in center Madrid, a little way from Gran Vía. What kind of nerd am I becoming?
How To Be Alone
I've been using my time rather languidly? Some entity possessed me and I rewatched the whole of Attack On Titan, I started reading Berserk, listening to a lot of house music, I went swimming on the 40 degree days, and read a total of 1 book: How to Be Alone, by Jonathan Franzen. Frankly, I was lured in by the title, but it turned out to be a nice experience. I felt like I got to know Jonathan, who I didn't really like at first (I abandoned the book at 50% and moved on to cheerier people with cheerier books), but ended up feeling really familiar with. His book is about the rapid overtaking of technology over books, and the deep changing in society through the coming of the 21st century, which makes this book really funny to read in 2025, when I can ask chat GPT to nickname himself after a vampire (I did this 2 months ago and "he" still remembers) and write a novel about whatever I can think of. A shitty novel, of course, crunched out by a virtual machine that needs constant cooling somewhere in the world. I think this is part of what he feared. He says, in one of my bookmarks:
I wonder if our current cultural susceptibility to the charms of materialism--our increasing willingness to see psychology as chemical, identity as genetic, and behavior as the product of bygone exigencies of human evolution--isn't intimately related to the post-modern resurgence of the oral and the eclipse of the written: our incessant telephoning , our ephemeral e-mailing, our steadfast devotion to the flickering tube.
He comes from the past like a horseman, warning about terrible cyber-enemies to come, terrified of TV and e-mailing. I can't remember the last time I wrote and e-mail that wasn't somehow bureaucratic. But I too am overwhelmed by the world changing, by the pressing obsolescence of so much. He also confesses I want to be alone, but not too alone. I want to be the same, but different. Isn't that why this place exists, why I try to write instead of post, why I try to increasingly separate myself from the vacuum of social media? And isn't that okay, and healthy, and beneficial for my mental health? More and more, I am unable to properly communicate online, to feel comfortable and welcome anywhere. I've deleted most social apps from my phone, and don't really text anymore, except to my mom, who I love. I try not to be too into this lifestyle change, but without the constant flow of notifications or generally things to look at on my phone, there is one difference in my day to day: I'm looking more at people, particularly, on the subway. And though I'm not any exception, and I'm not cured of my post-modern post-TV anxieties, I do believe I owe it to myself: to give myself space, to be nice to myself, to do as I feel. In any case, I'm sure Jonathan has an iPhone and at least texts now.
given 
this almond cake from ikea
was fire
05.08.2025
who knows where this leads?