I just finished all episodes of The Melancholy of Suzumiya Haruhi this evening. What can I say? I find it easy to get emotionally involved in the stories I read and watch - it's not so much reading or watching as experiencing.

Spoilers, hey? Skip the next paragraph if you want to find out for yourself about that title.

So I found it inexplicably sad for some reason when Kyon-kun desperately tried to persuade Haruhi and ended up kissing her, and the <Celestials> disappeared, and the Closed Space disappeared. The rest of it was just wrapping up, and, not satisfied, I followed the fansubber's url and read the prologue and the first chapter of the transcribed manga - manga, was it? At any rate, I don't think there are any more anime episodes out yet; the official airing date was June, barely a month ago.

I've always been alone; I mean, not counting my current situation with my brother. Moving, changing houses and schools like other people change clothes. That turned my focus away from people, from making friends, since they didn't keep - I read instead. I'm a speed reader. I can demolish a Clive Barker book in one day, you know, those 1,200 page monstrosities printed in tiny 6 point font, not like those flimsy "bestseller" paperbacks (those are 200+ page weaklings for casual readers).

Naturally, years of tuning out distractions and trying to submerge other frustrations by reading has allowed me to attain a trance-like state where nothing else exists but the thing I'm experiencing. I'm not discounting my spiritual training either, but that if anything should make me less susceptible to these mood swings I get when I read - sorry, experience - things.

So when I came to the end of The Melancholy of Suzumiya Haruhi, there was the usual disconnect when I resurface from an experience. For a moment I got the strange heavy feeling I'd be crushed like when I finish playing Kana Imouto (if you don't own it, go buy this game now) - but no. However badly I felt for Haruhi (and Kyon-kun, since he is the series narrator, hero, and victim rolled into one), they at least have each other at the end (of this season, in any case), and life appears to continue as normal.

Detaching myself from any experience I've submerged into isn't easy, but there's a trick to it I've noticed more strongly over the years. It's like when you yank out the signal cable, and you get static on the screen. In those paralysing moments as my brain unwraps around the ending, I feel that static blot everything out. No other mental images intrude. An almost complete cessation of thought during those few seconds while I disconnect.

And now I can leave Haruhi behind. Because that's what life does. It leaves things behind. It leaves you behind. Not in the sense that I'm forgetting all about it, you dope. I meant in the sense that, any time you recall it later, the memories are detached and indistinct, vague. Unless it was a very strong experience, but in that case I don't disconnect from it that sharply. Case in point, playing Kana Imouto. You don't disconnect from something like that. It'll break you. I need a few hours to stop spontaneously crying.

Of course, the human psyche is wonderfully illogical, and there are days where some random violent fantasy intersects, and I daydream of innocent passers-by falling under a skidding, crash-landing passenger airliner, and the whole mess of twisted metal erupts in a horrible explosion, raining fire and death everywhere. And I find myself picking myself up, and stepping around the carnage because I need to keep an appointment.

I don't know. Things just happen. Sometimes I need that disconnect. Sometimes I don't. I can't help it, it's not like I asked for it. And if you actually read this entry, this far - let's just say that our unsavoury predilection for the obscene emerges at surprising moments.

This is Mikami V, signing out.