Nightly Write #4

Happy Saturday. I hope your day went well. Mine kind of did.

My mother, sibling and I visited my other sibling at college to deliver some of her winter clothes. We got take-out from McAllister’s, ate in the car together and decided to visit Barnes & Nobles.

One thing about me: I love bookstores. Like, absolutely love. I have explicitly thought about them during the quarantine and fantasized about the day I could spend an hour and a 1/2 wandering through the different sections.

Second thing about me: I think I experience the Mariko Aoki phenomenon whenever I visit bookstores.

The Mariko Aoki phenomenon is the urge to go #2 after walking into the bookstore. The woman the phenomenon is named after wrote about it in a 1985 essay in Hon no Zasshi (“Book Magazine”).

It’s not officially proven (by scientists) but the common symptoms based on Mariko’s letter is that a) you’ve been in the bookstore for some time, b) there’s this sudden, c) urge to poo.

Not to mention today we limited our visit to 30 minutes (and it felt excessive for a pandemic). And on top of that I was looking for something I couldn’t fully figure out —

I wanted a book that was about politics and economics but had elements of philosophy and possibly socialism involved. Technically there were at least two books I could find a short period of time related to that. One of which I bought. But it was harder than I thought to pick stuff because there’s just so much to look at.

I was torn between philosophy and social sciences. Philosophy won out but I still felt a tug towards the other as we checked out. Lately it’s what I wanted to learn about.

This pandemic has allowed me to start having deep third-awakening thoughts, and you guessed it, I have these thoughts at night.

It’s hard to articulate it. I want to say it but it’s hard and it sounds nonsensical in a way, but the convolutedness of explaining it makes sense. It’s this same feeling I get whenever I watch a lefttube video.

You’ll find discussions about capitalism, philosophy, politics, livestream debates, art in relation to politics, beliefs and ideologies. And history. It’s a whole combination of current events, meets aesthetically pleasing set design, classical background music, and a Socratic-seminar-esque narrative to answer a big, common question about a topic.

I love that shit. I mean love that shit. Almost too much. And I want more of it. In fact, I can’t get enough of it.

It was lefttube, and being radicalized by the George Floyd protests and how the U.S. badly handled protecting citizens from Covid-19 and keeping them afloat financially that fuels this lust.

I want to know more. I want to know what I need to know more. I don’t know where to look. I’m not sure where to start first. I’m a very nervous kid in an intellectual candy store and I’m about to go nuts, in the best way. Like, it makes my chest flutter or something.

With that being said, I also want to write more store about that. But my voracious appetite for cultural analysis/criticism, social sciences, philosophy and marxism/socialism dwarfs my ability to plow through texts and the time I have outside of work.

But boy, it lights a spark. And sometimes that’s something you need to keep you sane in these times. A time-consuming interest that leaves you wanting more.

And I hope you find or have found a similar interest or hobby that keeps you up at night, makes you lose track of time, and keeps you hooked. With that, I gotta sleep.

Stay thirsty folks.

XXXO,

Kmuan