1. finished book 3, Thalia I'm reminded again how great the return on investment is that cheap tricks still yield immense power even these days. Also I'm feeling extremely cornered. It seems I've hit a bottleneck trying to invent new ways to interpret imagery. Or perhaps, in general, I have totally lost interest in old art. It truly feels it's illegal for the world to let me down so much. At the same time, I've been letting myself down as well. It's quite clear this is now a negative feedback loop. Like an addict the threshold of my taste in goodly amusing things has been raised too high, and now nothing can satisfy me.