
I overheard the strangest conversation in the bookstore today. (My ears perked up, you see, because someone said “Kierkegaard.”) I don’t even know where to begin on how incredibly strange I found it – but I do, clearly, need to actually read Fear and Loathing. Because what I got out of Kierkegaard was the impression of a very weird sense of humor, you see.
Then again, reading anything in the philosophical vein literally – which I am certain people do – is necessarily going to end in bizarre interpretations.
Anyway. I was thinking about something again. It might have been back to the rant about modern machines & how they shape our approach to certain categories of objects. It might have been something about textiles. I can’t remember from one day to the next – it’s all a bit of a blur. I am pretty sure I want to get a tiny press – not necessarily because I want to print (although I think I do), but because I value the reminders of a possibility that even someone like me can do maintenance on the tools of a trade. Modern machines – especially the harbinger of the future machines – are too arcane, too much left to experts for repair.
I might be wrong, but I think that’s at the heart of the so-called DIY revolution (which is a bizarre phenomenon, and I think I need to do some unpacking of what I actually think about it – because, yeah, sometimes it’s amazing, but sometimes I fail to see the point, or it just seems to be an increasingly stuff-oriented philosophy. Which is, correct me if I’m wrong, not where it was “supposed” to go.) … it’s so alienating to not be able to make a thing you use work, to not understand how its moving parts fit together, etc etc.
Which brings me to something I occasionally cycle through bitterly regretting – I think part of the reason I never really got into computer-guts was a certain operating system which just made everything about the bits and codes and things going on under the plastic that one extra layer less transparent – and so I went back to books and string and tools I could see right to the heart of.
Not that I ever thought of it that way when I was, oh, a wee little thing.
But there you go. And last weekend I finished reconstructing my memory of a bookbinding structure that I did once and took awful notes on – thanks to some pictures on the internet and a diagram I thought I’d lost somewhere along the way. It’s something I’m pleased with – and I’m going to make a few more. Just to see if I can get it up to my own standards (as far as I’m concerned the first one is awful, even if it is a perfectly functional book, and a nifty thing to have made).
That’s going to have to wait, though. I’ve got this huge list of things I need to get done this month. Good grief, how do I manage to get so darn overscheduled just on self-imposed deadlines?


