Welcome to Maid Spin, the personal website of iklone. I write about about otaku culture as well as history, philosophy and mythology.
My interests range from anime & programming to mediaevalism & navigation. Hopefully something on this site will interest you.
I'm a devotee of the late '90s / early '00s era of anime, as well as a steadfast lover of maids. My favourite anime is Mahoromatic. I also love the works of Tomino and old Gainax.
To contact me see my contact page.
Near the beginning of "Night on the Galactic Railroad", Giovanni climbs a hill at night and looks down at his hometown below. It's bathed in the peaceful hue of the streetlights and he can hear the noise of the people enjoying the festival with the occasional shout of a child. But Giovanni is separate from the revelry below as he sits on the silent, dark and windy hilltop. He was rejected from the festival and now sits alone outside the town's limits. There is a catharsis to be felt in a lonesome separation from society, and a strange warmth that comes from watching others from afar.
I have had this sensation several times before also. One time I remember clearly is while I was making camp outside a small village in the Cotswold Hills during a hike I was making across Western England. I had pitched my little tent in a Beech grove by an old Roman fort atop a hill, from which I could see down into the valley and the small village of Sodbury below. As the light slowly faded on a warm August evening I cooked up my supper sitting on a log that gave me a clear view down to the village. I could hear all the goings on in little Sodbury: the chatter from the pub, the rumble of the farmer still out on his tractor, the yells from children playing in someone's garden. In that moment I felt simultaneously absolutely separate from the normal bustle of life below, but also a great connection to that village life I was not a part of. A gentle peace that is very difficult to describe with words came over me, and as I rolled out my sleeping bag and went to bed, I could still hear the village noise slowly getting quieter and quieter as they retired for the night, which was an incredibly comfy sensation. That contradiction between belonging and separation giving off a unexpectedly gentle glow.
I suppose the feeling is similar to when you see the world from an aeroplane: a tiny toy-town below you. Many describe this as some form of "realising the insignificance of mankind", but I conversely feel a deep appreciation of mankind in such moments instead. I feel an affirmation of society, by watching it from above you can see that it really is all real. The intricate web of civilisation spreading out before you and existing without you, but of which you are very much a part. The first two Konosuba EDs also bring on this sensation of watching the world go by: flowing like a brook carrying twigs through a wooded valley. Like I described in this article, the ED often has this effect of pulling you back and recontextualising the show, and I suppose this sensation I am attempting to describe is that but for reality. A zooming-out from the bustle of existence to watch the world you are a part of but from the perspective of an outsider. To feel both at home and in exile like a hobo or a vagrant or a madman or a king.
To contrapose this feeling with what may be an opposing one, I will tell another story from my past: my first time in the Southern Hemisphere. I had just flown out to Darwin, Australia to join the crew of a ship heading East into the Southern Pacific. The heat was incredible and the hazy thickness of the air was unlike anything you get in England. By the time I got to the jetty it was after sunset, and most of the crew had gone out into Darwin for drinks so there were very few people aboard to meet me. I dropped my bags off in my cabin and sat up on the upper deck, exhausted from jetlag. Through the thick air and low buzz of foreign insectry I looked up at the moonless night sky: bright with a thousand stars despite our proximity to city light (Darwin is really in the middle of nowhere). Usually I enjoy stargazing, but instead I felt suddenly uneasy. The normal patterns of asterisms that I have always known were, of course, nowhere to be seen. A vast new hemisphere of foreign stars instead greeted me, which I obviously had known would be the case but had passed my mind in the moment. My brain automatically attempted to orientate itself to the kind familiarity of the Plough or Orion, but was greeted only by the mean domain of the Southern Cross. Something so permanent as the geography of the heavens had suddenly collapsed, and I felt further from home than I ever had before. Of course I really was further from home than I ever had been before, but in the plains of America or the scrubland of the Levant at least the sky was a constant. I did soon learn that despite the distance, Australia is a surprisingly similar place to Britain (if significantly unhinged), but in that moment I felt like I was on a different planet: somewhere not right and a place I did not belong.
But the fool on the hill sees the sun going down,These lyrics from Lennon & McCartney are another evocation of the sensation. Here the Beatles seem to portray the fool as a mercurial, semi-divine figure. A wise fool like Odin or John the Baptist who are too close to heaven to be truly integrated into society, so can only observe from a distance as exiles. But the sensation itself is in a way a window into what it must feel like to be divine. To watch a world that you are, by definition, an integral part of, but simultaneously completely separate from must be a cathartic experience indeed.
I don't know if I have managed to describe these quite subtle emotions well, and I definitely don't have the words to explain them properly. To really understand you'll need to experience it yourself (find some together-but-separate hill overlooking your town), but I'm sure this sensation is common to us all, and some of you will empathise with it.
