The days are starting to run together; I seem to be in a constant state of movement even though I am still in the same place. Maybe I’m just running in place. The upside of this is that I get to satisfy my guilty pleasures: books and music.
Going into a bookstore/music shop is something that drains my checking account quite easily. Of course, I’m still trying to ‘catch up’ on the last year that I spent in a near civilization and the two years I spent sipping ‘chiyaa’ and watching the water buffaloes graze. I’ve gone on binges of buying printed materials the last couple times I’ve been to Borders. Every time I go to Charlevoix with my brother to fetch Slurpees, I plunk down $1.50 for the New York Times. I’ve been buying printed things that I don’t normally: literary journals. I even bought the fiction issue of The Atlantic. In addition, I try to imagine what I would think if someone of my ilk showed up at my register to purchase the items I buy. What did the chippy gal think of me buying the following: DVD first season of ‘Kung Fu’ (for my father’s birthday), a Murakami novel, a White Stripes CD, ‘The Atlantic’ magazine, and a moleskin.
Nevertheless, I’ll continue my guilty pleasure of conspicuous consumption until I get shuttled off to Indonesia one more time, no matter what the girl behind the counter thinks.