little boxes

Some of my books came today. My dad sent me my symbolic logic book, the rest of my Wittgenstein, Being and Nothingness, and Jon Rawl's Theory of Justice. I doubt I will read them, besides the sybmo I am thinking of taking a class in that, I think it would be fun, i really like doing logic, something that demonstrates that there is a surprising amount of creativity allowed within a narrow set of rules. To be perfectly honest my books did not come today, seeing as it is Sunday and the UK is a union town. It probably came one Friday, but I was not here to receive them.

The program that is organizing this whole study abroad experience sponsored a weekend in London where they fed us and too us on a boat tour. So I left on the rail Friday mid day and didn't do very much, actually we went to a couple bars and we met this very interesting guy from South Africa/Ethiopia. He had studied in the UK, the US, Sweden, and Mexico. And for about a half hour he just went on and on telling us how much he wished to be back in school and how much he missed it. He worked as a recruiter for some IT company, and judging from the neighborhood, how he was dressed, and the tax he paid on his apartment (£600) he has done very well from his self. But the one thing he seemed to miss the most was freedom. Whichever way you want to look at it we, or rather I, as a student have so much freedom. Sure I have much less freedom in some ways than others because of certain financial situations. But I have the freedom to get up and leave. I have not become settled into a life not yet.

I spend most of the day saturday with 35mm camera in hand taking pics for the family. My roommate said he would take the film back to the states and mail it to my family, no point in wasting money here. The boat trip was a bit of a waste of time. Seeing the Thames at night was nice, but the boat was crowded an there was only one deck outside. I spend most of my time there... smoking. I've decided to quite that, yellow was never my favorite color. Unless of course, its a Van Gogh yellow. I saw some Van Gogh in the National Gallery, I just quickly walked through. The more I think of it the less I like museums as a form for presenting art. Once you make an institution of something like art you sap all its power, it becomes something lifeless and dead.

I was too cheap spend £4 on a tube ticket this morning so I walked the 2 miles or so to Paddigton station. I would say it was a nice walk but, most of the walk was through a very residential area, and affluent residential area. London is unlike New York in that regard, affluence and whatever the opposite of non-affluence would be, are not mixed. London is a very expansive city and it lacks the tall residential areas that in many ways define New York. There are places like that but they are shoved on the outskirts of the city hidden from the prying eyes of tourists. Paris is like that as well. Looking at a map of PAris in is amazing to see the growth of the city in the last 50 years compared to all the centuries before that. But one rarely things of anything new relating to Paris, besides the Center Pompidou, and the Eiffel Tower. But those were both very controversial.

I have always liked trains. One of my earliest memories is of ridding on the train to Vienna to visit my Aunt, and the trolly going to preschool. There is a certain majesty in trains that is lacking in every-other form of transportation. The train seems to have more power, more presence more nobility. Something about adhering to certain laws. Niestzche would certainly make fun of my preference for self tyranny. I abhor the idea of absolute freedom. I see no value in a thing which hurts others. Perhaps I am weak, so be it. This idea of freedom as unconstrained will is ridiculous. What you do or do not do has an amazing echo, and it should not be something that destroys. Littering has always annoyed me. I do not understand why someone would be so careless as to simply drop something on the street. They are not thinking of the person that has to pick that up. We do not think of the long term influence of our actions. But that again if we were to thing of the impact of our actions we would be petrified to do anything.

On the train we passed many different kinds of neighborhoods. I remember looking at one set of houses with their own couple feet of fenced in back yard and seeing how they were all very different. Some had paved their backyard, others had trash, others had a trampoline, others a small flower garden. The outside looked all the same, but inside in this fenced in backyard each house was unique. I never understood the obsession with symmetry, with neat rows of houses all bunches up together like little boxes. Yet, perhaps I have been to often too quick to judge. Everyone wants to maintain the same front, but in their backyard where they really matter they have a very different idea of what they want. Nobody wants to be ordinary, not really (this generalization may not be fair but..). Laws that seem constraining often allow for the greatest freedom to be shared by all. Certain things have to be certain, to abide to laws to allow others to flourish. I do not think we should have the laws dictated to us, but they should come from within us. When we act we know what we should do and if we were to think about are actions a little more we would begin to better understand the power that actions have.