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riviera1
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Name: NAOMI.
Birthday: 9/29/1988
Gender: Female
Interests: philosophy, science fiction, jiu jitsu, cinema, anime, german, japanese, guitar, books, photography, travelling
Message: message me
Member Since:
4/29/2004
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Evelyn...
Light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul.
Just kidding. Ie been reading Nabokov. Ie been doing a lot of reading lately, since the journey from Chislehurst to university takes about an hour and a quarter each way. I always bring a book. Helps me block out the presence of the other sweaty miserable sods that pack into the tube at peak travelling times (I'm onto my eleventh novel since I got here). Can you read this alright? I trying to write clearly but I think the effort's making my writing messier. I would have written earlier except I didn. I also didn want to send you a letter full of generic platitudes ("What the weather like in Germany?" "Have you made friends?" "I miss you" etc. Dull stuff). I wonder what you're doing right now. I'm listening to the Beatles, though I should be writing my logic essay.
Life's pretty comfortable. Central London is smelly, crowded, expensive and dirty, but where I'm living I can forget that I in London at all (technically, I not). I get my meals cooked for me, there's Won Hwa Do on saturday mornings, there's even a vending machine. The local BCs drop by on friday evenings, and I have a roommate who brings me back things to eat from where she works. I don't miss Newcastle. I never get home sick, but the opposite; I get restless. Here it's like I'm a little closer to where I'm supposed to be.
I don know if Ie ever told you this straight out before, but I don believe in God. Or an afterlife, or the supernatural (including astrology, by the way, which I don't appreciate you comparing to psychometric testing in terms of accuracy). And I don think that likely to change. For whatever reasons, some people are indisposed to make leaps of faith, and nor do they lament the fact. Which isn't to say that I discount the possibility of a divinity in reality existing. My stance is agnostic. I don't think leaps of faith are necessarily unjustified, but God simply isn't relevant to my life; "I have no need of that hypothesis".
I don advertise this. I suspect I be expected by some people to justify myself, not something I have the time, energy or inclination to do. I have told you this before; I have nothing to prove. That still true. I can pretend to know where my life is going, but I don think that something that many, if any people can do. Incidentally, if I never thanked you for begging insisting that we go to Korea, I doing so now. I am grateful that we went, if only for the people and the change of scenery (not grateful enough for me to cancel out your debt to me. I expecting to see that money again). Familiarity can be damaging. I don't think many people realise just how.
My own laziness aside, university's going well. There are something between fifty and sixty straight philosophy students, and about another thirty or so taking philosophy along with something else (theology or psychology), who flit in and out of our lectures. I go in three days a week and sit with the mellow twenty-something guys. "Male, pale, casually dressed, a day or two worths of stubble", is a description that would fit most of the class. As personalities go, there's a mixture, but they're mainly the type of person who if you said "jam or butter?" to, would respond "false dichotomy". Not that everybody's highly intelligent and insightful or anything. If there's one thing I've learnt from my lectures, it's that there in fact is such a thing as a stupid question.
I'll stop there. Hope I amused you. Write back if you can. Inform me of major events at least, like if somebody gets matched, or killed (wouldn't be the first time it's happened on STF). Peace.
-- Naomi.
PS: Do I get to rule over Oz while you're gone?
Christine!
Thanks for your letter. It arrived the other day, despite my having given you the wrong postcode (oops). Glad you liked what I wrote. I can't really remember what it was, but I remember it was a lot, so I hope I made at least some sense. Given the opportunity, after a certain amount of time I'll just start to spout crap . Amazingly, people don't seem to ever notice (it would be a bit of a relief if one day someone saw through me one day to the idiot hiding in plain sight). Don't worry about the cost of photocopying; living in London, you start to consider anything that doesn't involve breaking/letting go of a note really cheap. We're allowed to photocopy anything we want (does that sound legal to you?), so if there's something philosophical, theological or psychological you'd be interested in reading about, let me know.
Evelyn stopped by the other day, just for one night. Her STF team needed a place to sleep before moving on to Ireland. She knocked on my door, showed her face, and my mouth formed the words, "Evelyn, you're not dead". I didn't see her for long since it was already quite late and her team needed to leave early the next morning (not that early, but too early for me to be bothered to wake up to see them off), but we talked briefly. That myth about STFers living on McDonalds is untrue, perhaps intentionally perpetuated to encourage recruitment. They live on vegetables. Micheal's hurt his ankle somehow, so is on the "injured" team. This means he only does three hours of fundraising instead of six (or four hours instead of eight; I forget the specifics). Evelyn hangs out with Joy. Everyone's getting on quite well, and learning japanese, apparently. Evelyn's started using phrases like "Caining-out" and words like "blitzing". She seems content. I think she draws a certain comfort from having a schedule, being part of a close-knit group, having a sense of common purpose.
How are you doing? I talked to Philip on msn the other day, and I think the words used to describe you were "anxious, academic, and watching j-drama". I guess 2 (positive things) out of 3 ain't bad. So don't be sad...I like that song. Anyway, stave off the mental breakdown and you'll go far. Your japanese must be improving, right? I'm still learning, bit by bit. Same with the Won Hwa Do. Though I'm usually the only girl there and some of the others have been doing it for over six years (versus my six weeks), I enjoy it.
There's a guy I occasionally sit next to in my lectures. He's twenty-four, pale, thin, even more short-sighted than I am, and so mild mannered swear words almost sound nice coming out of his mouth. He has uneven handwriting and wears scarves. I can feel his cool exhalations on the surface of my forearm when we're next to each other. I want him. But curiously, not as much as I want Battlestar Galactica season 1 on DVD. I think the amount of fiction that I'm exposing my brain to is influencing me. Fantasy and reality seem equally significant. I suppose it could just as well be the Philosophy, or a potent combination of the two. In any case, the internal narrative of my life is sounding more and more like a metaphysical monologue from a Murakami novel (ooh, alliteration).
Read any Murakami, by the way? Themes in his fiction are love, sex, and metaphysics, or at least they were in the three books of his I've read so far. I like his writing, for reasons which probably resist analysis. I'm also quite enjoying writing to you in this way, although it's hardly like I'm talking to you in person. I'm basically talking to myself. I wonder if that betrays a kind of narcissism on my part, though I'm more than happy to hear anything you have to say, and I don't mean that in the luke-warm sense in which the phrase is commonly used (huh...now I'm wondering what exactly being "more than happy" would involve).
It's Christmas break soon. I'm coming down on the 16th with my ? megabus ticket (wahey). I have a serious amount of DVD watching and academic reading to catch up on (both of equal importance). Got plans? I haven't been to the cinema for absolutely ages and I miss the pick and mix.
-- Naomi.
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 | | Which Battle Royale Character Are You? | You scored as Shogo Kawada.
Apathetic, realistic, and independent.
Shogo Kawada | | 78% | Kazuo Kiriyama | | 59% | Shinji Mimura | | 53% | Hiroki Sugimura | | 53% | Noriko Nakagawa | | 39% | Shuuya Nanahara | | 36% | Mitsuko Souma | | 28% |
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Letters written from memory and discarded drafts, heavily edited, added to, mixed up, cut, and spliced. And...59% Kiriyama? Really?
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I often get the sense that I'm the protagonist of a decidedly uninspired novella. My character outline would read something like: Short-sighted, bookish, introverted daughter of european academic and long dead mother. Early childhood in Vienna. Private education in England. Moves to London to study Philosophy. The editor of the story would flick through the pages of my life, shaking their head. "Unoriginal!", they would exclaim, "Boring! Where's the mystery, the drama, the love interest? Shouldn't there be a code to crack, an injustice to stand up against, some heartbreak? The main character isn't even particularly endearing, or the most intelligent or interesting one in the book. It's unclear what role the supporting characters are supposed to be playing. The plot doesn't seem to have any kind of point to it whatsoever."
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| Go to your happy place!
I don't have a happy place.
Yes you do! Inside my heart!
How am I supposed to respect you when you say things like that?
Dammit! I hate it when that happens!
What?
You stick your fork in the crust and the pie falls apart.
I've been thinking.
Uh oh.
The time we spend together's enjoyable, right? So it seems like we like each others' company.
Yes...
But, I can't tell whether that's something to do with us, or to do with familiarity, external things. The general situation.
The situation?
Like now. We're warm, we're fed, we're comfortable, we're inclined to be receptive to another person. If it happens often enough with the same person, we'll probably start to associate feeling nice with them specifically. Even though it's actually not the same thing at all. Do you see? To be sure that we actually like hanging out for the sake of it, we'd have to somehow seperate all the favourable conditions that could be enforcing our subconscious associations, from the act of us spending time together.
Are you saying that, for you to be convinced that what we enjoy when we're in each other's company is in fact, each other's company, we should try hanging out together cold, hungry, and in discomfort?
Exactly! That's true friendship!
How much exactly do you know about that meat on your plate?
As much as I want to know, about. A comfortable amount. The perfect amount, one could say.
Is that so? You know, if you're going to make a claim, the burden of proof is on you. What grounds exactly have you on which to base that assumption?
Seriously? Seriously.
Alright, fine. "Who stole the cookies from the cookie jar?"...
A blah blah blah blah blah. Blah blah. A blah -
Hypothetical question. Would it be within your abilities to stop making noises if, say, your life depended on it?
Uhm. Yes?
Good! Exercise that ability.
But my life isn't at stake...
We'll see.
Only idiots expect the world to cater to their needs.
I'm not asking for that. I'm just expecting people to be reasonable.
Ah, so you just expect people to cater to your needs?
Who are you?
That's for you not to know, and for me to find out.
Damn, these chips are kinda dry...
Ah, yes. Such is the bittersweet contingency of existence.
Jeez, man. Just pass the ketchup.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
I used to imagine that all the possible universes existed, and that everything was connected by imagination in one giant, eternal, self-perpetuating machine. By imagining something, one caused it to happen in an alternate reality, and conversely, everything that occurred in our world was down to the imaginings of beings in other universes. Reality as we knew it existed as part of an infinite, self-sustaining, closed system. Every work of fiction, every book I'd ever read, every film I'd ever seen, every story I'd ever been told, was true, somewhere. Narnia and Harry Potter and Indiana Jones and Mulder and Scully existed. Every story that I made up in my head, existed as I imagined it. I could shape older, younger, different, better, versions of myself and others, and create new life stories. I could do anything. It was fun. It was empowering. The possibilities were, literally, infinite. It was great.
Until actually I stopped to dwell on what "infinite" really meant. It would mean that every possible work of art, or piece of music, or type of individual, existed already, their existence dependent on the imaginings of another. It would mean that every possible scenario - including the one we're experiencing presently - was not only currently in the process of happening, and had not only happened an infinite number of times before, but was going to happen again an infinite number of times in the future. All the suffering of the world would be multiplied by infinity. All the wretchedness of every world, or at best (worst?), every world but one; because I reasoned that even if a perfect world did exist among the countless flawed worlds, there could only be one (looking back, that logic is suspect).
The inevitability of it all, and the acute contingency of existence, chilled me. It was impossible to dream up something original. Nothing "new" could ever really be generated, so there was no meaningful change; there was no meaning, full stop. It was impossible to prevent the future from being what it was going to be, and every facet of your existence - your identity, your actions, your environment - were determined by something outside of yourself. There was no free will, there were no ultimate consequences, and all of existence was essentially futile. Nothing mattered. There was absolutely no hope. And of course, this was only a theory. I had constructed this scenario in my head; there was no reason that it should correspond to an external reality. But the hollowness of the nightmarish universe I had inadvertently created haunted me, because I couldn't disprove it.
What kept you awake at night?
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Changed courses; I'm now going to be doing my BA in Philosophy. I think it's the right decision. Wonder where it'll take me. I wish it were easier to build a career out of dipping into a variety of disciplines. Descartes was a philosopher, mathematician, and part-time mercenary. Not that I think I could do that.
Had high school prize-giving a few days ago. Wasn't going to bother going, but then I found out they were awarding me something (rather irresponsibly, I thought; who gives a pupil who once skived five straight weeks off school a prize for anything?). The presenter of the awards was Sir Digby Lord Jones of Birmingham, who was, it turned out, easily one of the least pretentious people there, and a charismatic guest speaker. He said something to me as I shook his hand, but I was so surprised I didn't catch what it was and ended up just smiling and nodding my head like a grateful Japanese tourist. He actually said something to everybody, which I would have noticed had I paid any attention at all during the prizes awarded before mine. My prize was a ?0 book voucher, and I'm pathetically eager to use it.
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(huh. i'd forgotten about these...)
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