2013.01.19 01:00 - Unlived lives

Wol Euler was guardian for this session.

Hana Furlough's current display-name is "Hana".
Hana Furlough: Hello Wol
Hana Furlough: and nice coat ; )
Wol Euler: hello hana
Wol Euler: happy new year
Hana Furlough: happy new year to you too!
Hana Furlough: and wb
Wol Euler: thanks, it's nice to be home
Wol Euler: in both worlds :)
Hana Furlough: : )
Wol Euler: the coat is new (to me) from Eshi
Hana Furlough: it's amazing
Wol Euler smiles.
Hana Furlough: wow
Hana Furlough: very classy
Wol Euler: sparkly :) many colours
Hana Furlough: lol
Wol Euler: it's a bit big for me, but I haven't had time to resize it
Hana Furlough: it looks great
Hana Furlough: i want one for RL
Wol Euler: heheheh
Wol Euler: I'd wear one indoors right now
Wol Euler: it is so chilly in the apartment after a month without heating
Hana Furlough: seriously
Hana Furlough: oh i can imagine
Wol Euler: well, only background heating, I turned it down to 15 degrees
Hana Furlough: brrr
Wol Euler nods.
Hana Furlough: so how long have you lived in germany for?
Wol Euler: masonry walls retain the cold
Wol Euler: this is my 18th year here
Wol Euler: 1994
Hana Furlough: wow amazing
Wol Euler: indeed
Wol Euler: time flies past, on the long scale
Hana Furlough: yeah it does
Wol Euler: even if the single days drag
Hana Furlough: they do
Wol Euler: how are your footnotes coming along? :)
Hana Furlough: ahh they are coming along pretty nicely
Hana Furlough: it's the body of the text that's the problem : )
Hana Furlough: are you a german citizen?
Wol Euler: no, british
Wol Euler: that makes me European so I can work anywhwere
Hana Furlough: oh wow
Wol Euler: very handy
Hana Furlough: yes
Wol Euler: the Brits believe in dual citizenship, so I kept my Canadian passport too
Wol Euler: but Germans don't
Wol Euler: if I were to quality for a German pass, which I don't, I would have to give up the others
Hana Furlough: oh interesting
Hana Furlough: it's good you have both
Wol Euler nods.
Wol Euler: though I haven't used the Canadian one in years
Wol Euler: even when going to Canada
Wol Euler: it saves neither time nor hassle in Customs & Immigration, so why carry both?
Hana Furlough: yeah that makes sense

--BELL--

Hana Furlough: what's the best part of living in germany for you?
Wol Euler: hmmmm
Wol Euler: density and culture
Wol Euler: density makes culture
Wol Euler: being able to walk everyhwere
Hana Furlough: nice
Hana Furlough: sounds great
Wol Euler: I don't feel German, but I do feel very European
Wol Euler: how do you feel in Kyoto? very odd?
Hana Furlough: interesting
Hana Furlough: not really. pretty normal actually but i can feel that way only because i know i look different from most other people
Hana Furlough: is it easy to blend in in germany?
Wol Euler: yes, until I open my mouth nobody would know
Hana Furlough: ha
Wol Euler: and even after that, sometimes people take a while to notice
Wol Euler: if there is a lot of background noise, so my accent is harder to hear
Hana Furlough: your german must be amazing
Wol Euler: mmhmm :)
Wol Euler smiles modestly.
Hana Furlough: : ) no need for modesty
Wol Euler: looking like the locals is a great help, of course
Hana Furlough: yeah i bet
Wol Euler: I felt comfortable in Kyoto too, actually, I lost the awareness of my different appearance after a week
Hana Furlough: oh wow!
Wol Euler: about the time that people stopped looking generically Japanese and started looking like individuals
Hana Furlough: haha yes
Hana Furlough: i've heard east asian people say they have the same problem with white foreigners
Hana Furlough: and african americans
Wol Euler: I'm sure it's true
Hana Furlough: so i guess that's a universal problem
Wol Euler: when you first meet a person from a different nation
Wol Euler: (trying to avoid the word "race")
Wol Euler: at first every aspect of their appearance is entirely new
Hana Furlough: (right...a very difficult word)
Wol Euler: it takes a while, and a few more people for you to acquire a "baseline" on their national characteristics
Wol Euler: after that you can separate the charactzeristics that all Japanese people have, from those specific to an individual
Wol Euler: and you learn to ignore the common characteristics when seeing people
Wol Euler: my theory :)
Hana Furlough: sounds sound to me
Hana Furlough: i think one does need a frame of reference
Wol Euler nods.
Wol Euler: I read something similar about anthropology
Hana Furlough: oh yeah?
Wol Euler: and standards of beauty
Wol Euler: an anthrop. said that when he went to a new place, it took a while before he could see the beauty of the women there
Hana Furlough: wow
Wol Euler: but after a while, he learned to spot which ones were beautiful
Wol Euler: same story, the baseline
Hana Furlough: fascinating
Wol Euler: it is!
Wol Euler: if only somebody had told 17 yr old me that there was a career in looking at people and thinking about what they are doing :)
Hana Furlough: ha!
Hana Furlough: indeed
Wol Euler grins.
Wol Euler: because I do that all day anyway, for free
Hana Furlough: hehehe
Hana Furlough: although i hear it's very difficult to get a job in anthro right now
Hana Furlough: so things might have worked out for the best
Wol Euler: seems to be hard almost everywhere
Wol Euler: sure, I'm not dissatisfied
Wol Euler: at least not about my choice of profession

--BELL--

Hana Furlough: that is good
Hana Furlough: i was wondering about these kinds of unlived lives recently
Hana Furlough: like what if i had pursued a different path when i was young
Hana Furlough: i know it's kind of cliche to think about this kind of stuff
Wol Euler nods.
Hana Furlough: but i wondered what happened to those dreams
Wol Euler: doesn't make it less fascinating, and vaguely sad
Wol Euler: the possible futures that are no more, yes
Hana Furlough: yes
Wol Euler: one mourns them a little bit
Hana Furlough: for sure
Wol Euler: I think the potential of happiness lies at the end of all those paths
Hana Furlough: aww that's a really nice way to look at it
Wol Euler: if you have it in you to be happy at all, then you could be happy anywhere with anything
Hana Furlough: right
Hana Furlough: i recently met someone who is living the dream of high school me
Hana Furlough: it's fascinating to see, of course, but strangely it feels okay that i didn't go that way
Hana Furlough: but still a little sad, as you say
Wol Euler smiles.
Wol Euler: wistful, perhaps, is a better word
Hana Furlough: yeah
Wol Euler: may I ask what that dream was?
Hana Furlough: sure
Hana Furlough: i wanted to be a newspaper reporter
Hana Furlough: until i was 21, very seriously
Hana Furlough: but i was too shy
Hana Furlough: lol
Hana Furlough: what did you want to be when you were in high school?

At this point I crashed and was gone for a few minutes.

Wol Euler: sorry about that, my modem had a hissy fit
Wol Euler: I missed your answer
Hana Furlough: np
Hana Furlough: i'llcopyit
Hana Furlough: sure [01:52] Hana: i wanted to be a newspaper reporter [01:52] Hana: until i was 21, very seriously [01:52] Hana: but i was too shy [01:52] Hana: lol [01:53] Hana: what did you want to be when you were in high school?
Wol Euler: ah :)
Wol Euler: d'you know, I don't really know
Wol Euler: as a child I wanted to be a long-distance truck driver
Hana Furlough: wow cool!
Wol Euler: running up and down the Trans-Canada Highway, or up to Alaska and back
Hana Furlough: amazing
Wol Euler: but never got a driving license :)
Hana Furlough: even now?
Wol Euler: even now :)
Wol Euler: it has a certain rarity value
Hana Furlough: wow
Wol Euler: in high school, I had no idea of what to do
Wol Euler: I did choose architecture, and studied that, and work as an architect
Wol Euler: but somehow it doesn't feel like I am "living the dream of high-school-aged me"
Wol Euler: it's just a fact
Hana Furlough: right
Hana Furlough: probably better that way
Hana Furlough: can i share a poem on the subject?
Wol Euler: please do
Hana Furlough: great

--BELL--

Hana Furlough: this is 15th century poet-monk shotetsu

"on reminiscing"
all these images
from a world of long ago
of what good are they?
pine winds come, please blow away
these unforgotten dreams

Wol Euler smiles.
Wol Euler: yes, that's it :)
Wol Euler: do you know C.P. Cavafy?
Hana Furlough: :)
Hana Furlough: no tell me more!
Wol Euler: egyptian poet, same period as T.S.Eliot, between the great wars
Hana Furlough: ooh interesting
Wol Euler: Alexandria, on the Nile
Wol Euler: he lived a very "internal" life, never changed address, never left the city
Wol Euler: many of his poems have that mood of longing for things past, for might-have-been
Hana Furlough: fascinating
Hana Furlough: can you recommend a poem of his?
Wol Euler: hmmmm, I'd have to get the book, sec
Hana Furlough: it's ok
Hana Furlough: thought maybe you had something in your mind
Wol Euler: heheh, I have the feeling-of-a-poem in mind
Hana Furlough: ahh then that is enough
Wol Euler: there's a paperback Collected Poems with very good notes, published by the Hogarth Press, edited by George Savidis
Hana Furlough: nice
Hana Furlough: i'll check it out
Wol Euler: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/181786
Hana Furlough: wow
Hana Furlough: knock me over
Wol Euler smiles.
Wol Euler: he is great
Wol Euler: the master of nostalgic sadness
Hana Furlough: indeed
Wol Euler: heheheh, how funny that we are side-by-side in two worlds at once, none of them "real"
Hana Furlough: haha i know!
Wol Euler: (I just posted that link on Facebook, and Hana "liked" it)

--BELL--

Hana Furlough: or all of them are real?
Wol Euler: all are real
Wol Euler: but some are more real than others
Wol Euler: FB is for me less real
Hana Furlough: than SL?
Wol Euler: yes, it doesn't have the connectedness that I find in SL
Hana Furlough: really?!
Hana Furlough: wow it's exact opposite for me
Wol Euler: wow :)
Hana Furlough: can you say more about why that is?
Wol Euler: well, there is a "me" in SL that I can experience being
Wol Euler: I share in her activity
Wol Euler: we meet people, talk to them, dance with them
Wol Euler: to me, there is no "me" in FB
Wol Euler: that is like a printed notice that I hang on a corkboard with a pin
Wol Euler: sooner or later, somebody comes past and scribbles on it
Wol Euler: but except in very rare cases, I don't see it happening
Wol Euler: and while I can reply to their comment, it is at such a great distance of time that there feels to be no more connection there
Wol Euler: it's a second note pinned to the same corkboard
Wol Euler: I guess what SL has that FB lacks is that immediacy
Hana Furlough: ahh i see
Wol Euler: how do you experience them?
Hana Furlough: well, i feel like FB is more real because i know everyone from "RL"
Hana Furlough: i like SL too of course, but for some reason i find it hard to really interact with people unless i've actually met them at some point in RL
Hana Furlough: i'm pretty sure this is just a failure of my imagination
Wol Euler: awwww :)
Wol Euler smiles.
Hana Furlough: i feel like one can get a lot of "information" just from looking at another person's face
Hana Furlough: i'm not sure how to do that in SL, though i imagine that's possible
Wol Euler nods.
Wol Euler: that is true, and it is of course missing here
Wol Euler: though one gets a few clues through the mechanics of typing
Wol Euler: when people's responses speed up
Wol Euler: when they start making typoes
Hana Furlough: yes
Hana Furlough: that makes perfect sense
Wol Euler: but you are right that we are communicating here through a very narrow channel
Wol Euler: and only one
Wol Euler: unless you count the manufacture of appearance, our AOs etc
Hana Furlough: right, and i think those should be counted
Hana Furlough: i'm just presently illiterate in reading them
Wol Euler: practice :)
Wol Euler: and relaxing into it
Hana Furlough: : )
Wol Euler: wu wei!
Hana Furlough: yes!
Wol Euler grins.
Hana Furlough: it's been great chatting with you
Hana Furlough: i should let you start your day
Wol Euler: and I should let you end yours :)
Wol Euler: it was great to see you again, hana
Wol Euler: take care, enjoy the weekend
Hana Furlough: thanks : )
Hana Furlough: you too! until next time!
Wol Euler: bye!