I love listening to conversations. People seldom realize the brightness of their own words: how they drop, glittering, from their lips without second thought. Like a magpie, I love catching each precious phrase in my palms, so that I can reflect over their flushed colors in private.
Conversations at Oxford are all the more interesting to think about, as they are so integrated with academic learning. People stroll around casually debating the usefulness of an omniscient being in thought experiments or the political ramifications of an economic model. Just a few days ago, as I waited in line for lunch, I listened to several students arguing fiercely about the different definitions of reality.
âSo letâs say itâs true that the sun has a certain diameter. But thatâs not the same as being necessarily true. Or being possibly true. It could be necessarily possible that x is true, or possibly necessary that x is true.â
âYes, but for different semantics in objectsâŠâ
âI know, but Iâm saying, the question is, how can we prove that there are six maximum possibilities for the reality ofâŠâ
Whoops. This was getting beyond my comprehension. Cradling my pasta in my hands, I edged gingerly away from them, as edified as I was entertained.
//
Outside the classroom, of course, such discussions tend to derail with all the elasticity of youth. My visiting student friends and I were enjoying curry and ramen together when we noticed Lynette carrying Heideggerâs Being and Time with her. âFor fun,â she said, cheerfully. âI really enjoy reading Heidegger.â
âFor fun?â we cried, gaping at her in horror.
âHeidegger? Do you mean Heineken?â interjected Lou helpfully. âOh wait, thatâs a beer brand.â
âFor shame,â said Jess sternly, âitâs common table manners to know your Heidegger.â
âYes,â said Lynette, smiling, âI enjoy him and Albert Camus very much.â
âAlbert Camus?â Lou exclaimed. âI know an Albus. Albus Dumbledore.â
âYes, Camus was a famous French philosopher,â said Berlin, nodding. âHe had some very interesting views.â
âCamusâs The Stranger is so disturbing,â I said with a shudder.
âYes,â Lynette said gravely, âwith its famous first lines: âMother died today.ââ
âââOr maybe, yesterday; I canât be sure,ââ I joined her. Those two lines carried such unsettling meaningâor lack of meaning, as Camus might argue. We were silent for a moment, and then Lou said, âCamus? Do you mean Caboose? Albus Caboose?â
Berlin smiled mildly and stirred his ramen, ever the peacemaker. âLetâs talk about the weather instead.â
//
It is difficult not to talk about academic subjects, however, as so much of your time is spent reading, writing, breathing them! As I wrote several essays on the boundaries of reality and theatricality in Jane Austen and the impact of 18th-century female namelessness on Freudian theory, I found myself also thinking about my life, and writing to my sisters, in the light cast by my recent studies.
My philosophy professor at Whitman once said that our everyday life is âstereoscopicâ: that there is someone living within this embodied imagination as if this scene could be right out of this novel and yet is just this scene. That I should pay attention to deja vus, where my past conflates with my present, and when the theories I learn or the novels I read echo loudly into my own life.
And isnât that, after all, the joy of learning? To reflect and know more about how the world works, so you can begin to know yourself? Oxford has compelled me to think not only more deeply about my favorite authors, but also about this complex, self-contradictory thing called my own life. I have come to question my own performativity: to what extent am I adapting myself to societal structures, or sacrificing sincerity for survival? And my own relationships: if I feel so uncomfortable with the âhappy endingâ marriages for Burney and Austenâs heroines, what kind of âhappy endingâ do I really want for myself?
Like literature, life is never easy to analyze. Both resist easy answers. Yet I am grateful for the opportunity to do so, and to continue to be amused and moved by the way other students also grapple with everything they learn, as they shape their supple and ever-growing lives.
Love your writing as always, especially your dialogue. I hope you’re doing well!
Awww thank you Nathaniel! I hope your study abroad experience is proving splendid yourself <3