Jimmy Cline > Recent Status Updates

Just finished the analytical part. There is so very much to unpack here. Simmel shares some value preoccupations with Marx, but the former is much more concerned with aesthetics and ephemeral value. Not only that, but how that value is affected by human desires.

Mostly letters to his mother up to this point, regaling her with his various South American and Western excursions. Interesting stuff.

This last section always struck me as way too somber and romantic for the tone of the novel.

翻訳中。。。

So far, this is an interesting exploration of the motives that Islam had for embracing certain aspects of modernity. The absorption of scientific ideas in the Ottoman Empire is fascinating, mostly because it seems like they were eager to access the technological innovations of the West, but not the ideas that produced them.

"To think that I am not going
To think of you any more
Is still thinking of you.
Let me then try not to think
That I am not going to think of you."

- Takuan

Gotta say, the "thing" that the Chums of Chance discover in the North is still an obscure narrative to me. There's a good element of cryptic horror to it. Considering that this book was written decades after the release of John Carpenter's The Thing, I could see him using it as some sort of pop-culture reference, despite the fact that it would be anachronistic within the timeline of Against the Day.