Autumn Reading and the Vertigo of Thought

Even though a bright, vibrant mandarin cake still sits on my plate, the wind blowing outside has fully taken on the feel of autumn.

The season I love most of all is about to arrive. My birthday is coming up soon, too, making me think from the bottom of my heart, "Ah, I'm so glad I was born in autumn." There is an exquisite beauty in the air of autumn, wrapped as it is in a subtle melancholy.

I've been cooped up, just reading books. My bookshelves have already exceeded their capacity; there is nowhere left to store any new books. Even so, I simply cannot let go of my insistence on holding physical books, feeling the paper, and turning the pages by hand rather than reading e-books. That is why I always end up picking up more books and reading on.

Feeling the lingering warmth of summer give way to the changing autumn breeze, while occasionally poking at my mandarin cake, I sat down at my desk today intending to finish up some unfinished work. However, distracting thoughts refuse to clear away, and I can't quite bring myself to touch the work.

What kind of imagination is actually equipped within myself? The very power to imagine things—that is the ultimate source of everything.

The 21st century is an era where humanity has materialized and brought various things into concrete reality, someone like me—growing up with high sensitivity—finds her interests welling up one after another without stopping, unable to ever converge them into one.

Because of this, as I let my mind wander through these outlandish continuities, a detached version of me peeks out.

Yet recently, a slight shift has made me feel a bit more positive.

One thing I've strongly realized is that the authors I love all share the foundational idea of being "unfinished" or "imperfect."

I let my thoughts wander endlessly—leaving behind the process of letting them roam everywhere, along with the repository of those thoughts, trying to weave those logs together. I think I must really like that part of myself.