“Twelve years ago, this was it.” ANTagonist Inc‘s N64 Fortress.
Flashed back twelve years ago. I’m not quite sure if I could attribute it all entirely to the cup of Turkish Coffee I had for breakfast. It was the most engrossed I could ever get. Legs locked, precariously perched on my computer chair, I fiddled between a borrowed copy of Spook Country and a 4B Staedtler. The latter, led worn and ornamented with a retro National Bookstore label, looked like it predated most of everything in my room. A hint of perhaps where all this penchant for nostalgia is suddenly coming from.
With all the media, and information we’re now receiving, it almost feels as if there’s no more room for memories. More so for the ones of years ago. Like the aging beige of IBM computers, it feels as if the now archaic hard drives we were installed with at birth were never meant to handle and store this much information. With only sentimental strain forcing our brains to cope, its beginning to feel more often than not, that we no longer remember.
Fidgety, the combination of the humid tropical heat and the terrible choice of tweed upholstery forced this almost unconscious cycle of me having to readjust. “I’ve always loved these books,” I thought. Ever since first picking up a copy of Pattern Recognition. It was the type of literature that was an unusual combination. Alienating and familiar, all happening at simultaneously at that. Even just a chapter or two was enough to take you outer space.
I suppose it lends the feeling a lot reminiscent to those of what would be an early cosmonaut’s. Sent up in a pretentious gesture, to marvel briefly at cold silence and sudden absence of gravity, only to re-enter as a bright fireball straining across the sky. It was a spectacle, clearly separating those who can’t from the few very capable. And in this Cold War, and even contemporary reference, William Gibson would be the Russia of Russia’s, “First out, and still doing it.” This turn around though with Spook Country, was proving to be a feat. In hindsight, I could really just about blame the coffee.
The kick came somewhere in the middle of the first and second chapter. A trained monkey could have easily recognized that there was something wrong this picture. Skimming across the pages, there was an increasingly severe diarrhea of cryptic markings. Cross marks, hashes and brackets, contrived and made to look like the work of some Slavic scientist, littered the page. There, usually in an attempt to note any words, obscure terms that I would normally never come across. They typically litter the books I have. Often in mediated doses, though in this instance, looking more like refugees. Uneven and rampant in every manner, occupying the gray space in between uniformly black characters.
(Editor’s Note: I had a point somewhere with this, but after three hours and the lack of lunch, I’m exhausted. Maybe I’ll get to it tomorrow.. Maybe not.)
