How often have I lain beneath rain on a strange roof, thinking of home.

In my previous blog, I was trying to enjoy a video game but our poisonous politics and internet freakout culture kept getting in my way, and it all somehow had something to do with wizardry. It was a bit of a leap. I think I had started out just wanting to write a bit about magic in general, since there seemed to be some relevance at the time with all the magically themed game releases, but then the parallels between the fantastical worlds we all inhabit and the harsh realities of our hellish media landscape seemed obvious and worthy of commentary.

Since then, Contrapoints released a scathing rebuttal which I meant to add as an addendum but never did. It complicates the issue because now I can see the arguments of both sides more crystalline and absolute. The solution might be intractable outside of a come-to-Jesus-hug-it-out from either party. But now… I could honestly care less about all this because it's frankly exhausting and very very dumb.

Then I went to Thailand.

I've been all over the U.S. and to Canada and Mexico, but I've never been this far away from home before. There was a one hour flight to Atlanta, the glorious hub of the South, then a fifteen hour flight to Seoul, South Korea, and then another five hour flight, finally, to Bangkok. If it's 2 o'clock in the afternoon in Central Standard American Time, it's 2 in the morning in Bangkok - it's about as far away as you can get.

It's also hot as balls.

For real, this was in April and the "feel like" temperature was often 110 degrees Fahrenheit +. Anyways, it was culture shock, I went there to meet my girlfriend's family and to vacation, and it was amazing, life changing, omg yada yada.

However, since I got back I've had an ache that I'm having trouble expressing in words. For instance, I listened to the entirety of Is This It by The Stokes for the first time since I was probably a teenager, and for a while afterwards I was just looping it over and over again. That album came out in the summer of 2001. I was about to enter 11th grade and I was 17 years old. I couldn't have been more target audience. I always really liked the opening title track, with it's kickass bass line and heavily compressed vocals. The Strokes are pretty rad, and have continued to put out albums, but this is the only one I actually own. "Is this it?" Is a question that's been in the back in of my mind more generally lately.

I suppose it's a normal thing to grow up, get a job, get your student loans paid off and get a nice place and buy a car, meet your future spouse, get a cat, get a house plant, buy all the stupid shit cough cough video games cough you ever wanted but couldn't afford - and then be kinda like: now what? *Is this it?*

I must be having a difficult time accepting reality.

In recent months, especially right after the Thailand trip, I've been finding comfort in a sort of curated nostalgia. For instance, because the new Final Fantasy game drops literally the same day as this blog post, the Summer Solstice, I've been remembering the first time I played Final Fantasy. It was the summer of 1997 and I was visiting a friend in Florida. I was 14 years old. We went to a video store. Just the concept of a video store at all triggers this feeling. On the rack in the gaming section, I distinctly remember seeing the CD jewel case for Final Fantasy VII. It looked so cool. Months earlier, I had seen a magazine exposé about it and the art alone got me stoked.

We rented it, went back to my friend's house, and snuck into his older brother's room so we could use the PlayStation. This bedroom is what I'm talking about. I wish I could pluck it from my mind, encase it in resin, and put it in a museum. It was a typical teenage boy bedroom: cluttered and disheveled, a guitar with missing strings, random socks and Butterfinger wrappers scattered about the floor. I'm probably not remembering it well. It was dark, with hues of blue, despite having a large window to the literal Sunshine State in the background.

I played Final Fantasy VII and hated it because I had never played a turned based Japanese role playing game before. I didn't understand the chibi characters during exploration and the more realistic ones during combat. I didn't understand why I couldn't just swing my sword by pushing the square button and why was everyone talking so much?

I've since come to revere Final Fantasy. Not just VII but all of them. I recently picked up the Pixel Remaster of I - VI and have quite the little collection of handhelds devoted to being a living library for JRPGS in general. I beat XV and XII, was a beta tester on XIV, and have XVI preloaded on my PS5. But in 1997? Not so much.

I think that might be what's so interesting about these memories: simply how different everything was. Not just the world, but myself too.

Apparently, nostalgia was considered an ailment in the not too distant past. It almost is an illness - a sometimes unwanted yearning for something you may not have even ever had, a desire to return to a moment that has been stripped of any negativity, in which only the airy lightness of its goodness is recalled. In a different context, it could perhaps be seen as demonic possession.

I’m not alone in this derangement though. Judging by the default music in Instagram reels, the popularity of shows like Stranger Things, podcasts, video games, and even the design of some current and upcoming cars this aesthetic pursuit seems to be a norm. I was born in the 80s but I barely remember that time period at all. This nostalgia of things from that period is a really good example of the osmosis of pop culture, and how we collectively influence each others individual conceptions.

A game that has captured this nostalgic feel the most recently has been Slipstream. There have been a lot of others such as Sonic Origins or The TMNT Cowabunga Collection, but Slipstream captures both the feel of old Arcade / Genesis / Megadrive with that Vaporwave vibe and I dig it oh so much.

I’m deep in the weeds painting Page 52, The New Fifty Two as it were. The first episode is finally starting to wrap up, but there’s at least another ten pages or so. In the last year I’ve managed to speed up my process quite a bit so there’s less of a time gap between pages. I also have some backend technical stuff in the works for the website that @SnkyGames has been helping me out with that might improve the readability and functionality.

I'm finally starting to get back into that calm, centered way of being that I remember from my early 20s. I used to drink nothing but caffeine and smoke cigarettes, yet I could be still and read a book for hours. I doubt I've read anything long form in my 30s and I certainly don't stick to things the way I used to; FLOLAS of course being an exception - I've been working on this thing for a decade now. I was getting to the point that I was finding it difficult to even sit still long enough to write these blogs, but now I’m finding writing and drawing a lot more soothing - as I once did.

Phantoms of a bygone past… As you get older, the rose colored glasses become a deeper hue of red. They grow, evolve, split the spectra into multiples, moving laterally, spiraling into liminal nests, webs of neurosis: self soothing with memory. This dance is like a weapon of self defense, against the present. The present tense.

In you I’m lost.