clasp

 

Things from Frontrow that I hope will be further discounted at the end of the season waaaaaah.

Children of the Land

I didn't feel like posting about the last couple of books I finished (From the Ashes, Hand to Mouth, How Proust Can Change Your Life), although it was not because they weren't impactful. It's because there weren't singular items that stood out, and I haven't given enough thought to form overall impressions (not that I explicitly undergo this exercise for other books either).

But here is a long quotation from Children of the Land that stood out. For context, the book is a memoire about the authors' experience being an undocumented immigrant. 

Going to La Loma was the only way I would unravel and return to the world of the living. It happened when I was young. I wandered in the woods of the Sierra Nevada in the warmth of the summer, when the small mountain flowers and mule's ear sprouts were lush, I tried to open. I yellow and yellowed and sang and chanted, but even the warm breeze felt like knives to an exposed nerve. And a few years later, I came close to that disentanglement again, but again there was nothing for me to hold on to, nothing of substance to replay the centre, so I buckled up and tried to drive my car into the river. I didn't want to come back. And once this feeling of emptiness at my core started, it wouldn't go away. It was too late and it felt like I was becoming smaller day by day, unthreading, I could feel how much of myself I left behind everywhere I went. I was almost reeling in it because I felt it as a kind of ecstasy - parts of myself scattered over an entire landscape. A little of me here, a little of there. My anxiety no longer mattered, my sadness, my invisibility, and my hopelessness felt foreign to me, which is to say, they were inconsequential. I withdrew and let the world move my body without me, I tumbled like dried grass. I didn't have anything like La Loma, with its thick walls built by my ancestors, to bring me back to reality. No semblance of permanence. 

I felt most of the writing, and the quotation above especially, has a poetic quality to it. The author is a poet, so that's some basis for my vague feeling as it'd be hard for me to describe what exactly is poetry (and not that I read any). 

If I were to make some generalizations about all of the quotations that I've noted down in my blog, the commonality in style would be this vague poetic quality and the commonality in theme would be...lacking in substance? 

stone

 A representative sample of my meals at home lately:

(the iPhone 12's photography capability really is a vast improvement over my 6s)

Bravely Second...second

via danbooru

I've now beat the storyline final boss, whoo! Was too easy with the ghost mage build, this combo is beyond broken. Now to cruise through the 3 post-game dungeons and optional boss. 

I previously complained about not feeling engaged with the story, and I'm happy to say that all the reconciliation of Chapter 5 did give me lots of feels. Perhaps because the theme is quite pertinent to the current times. Chapter 6 was when my Edea x Ringabel ship set sail!! Only to crash and mildly recover, like c'mon why do they not get an explicitly romantic ending mgrgrrr! At least Edea's growth in the story was satisfying. The other theme of having the courage to try again (aka the title) and to default on other's expectations is also welcoming. Of course it's great to finally wrap up the backstory of the first game, gamely how the great plague came to be. In a way this sequel has elements of a prequel to it as well. It's also commendable how many times they breached the 4th wall. Overall I don't get why the development team felt that they didn't do the series justice with this game. 

But the true purpose of every game review post is to display cute drawings of my fav ship:

all via danbooru (1, 2, 3, 4)

Bravely Second

I finally, and I say once more for good measure, finally started to play Bravely Second. Only like...5 years after I bought the game, which isn't even my worse record. 

I'm about ⅔ way through (50ish hours) and man this is a game that rewards grinding / engine building. But at least it's made more improvements to make grinding even more effortless. The new jobs are not bad though. However I can't get into the story / characters as much as the first game, maybe because my Edea x Alternis ship is even less part of the story this time :(

ray

 I've finally accumulated enough photos of Saskatoon for a post:

r

 Next time there shall be snow.