Nick, another look

Sorry I didn't and haven't written sooner or lately.

Sometimes this life thing turns into this Life Thing.

Attention at those junctions of interference tend to interfere with the direction we were heading and divert our attention towards certain mystery in some still certain places.

I read your thoughts on omiyage and felt compelled to discuss somethings with you.

See i always thought that la souvenir was more indicative of a remembrance and de souvenir was more like to remember. I mention this because I think the distinction is important. If i'm wrong the next part is moot and mostly garbage, but if I'm right then there is an idea here you might be interested in, especially as you are living "so far" from home. (for the waljees, this thought by virtue of the common degree of separation, ensnares you as well).

I think the separation of remembrance vs. to remember is in the act of the memory itself. A separation perhaps of reflective and evocative. To remember is much more participatory act, a voluntary act whereby we give ourselves up to the thought. It is harder, stricter and far more defined by the objective search parametres and boundaries.

A remembrance however is something much more passive, hidden and reflexive. It is something that Marcel Proust so wonderfully defined as involuntary memory. In his first volume of A la Recherche Du Temps Perdu, there is the famous scene of the narrator eating a madeleine cake
and the flood of memory it brings back to him. The very secret of its combination gives it its very freedom. It is an aspect, a moment.

So the idea of omiyage is very interesting to me because what I took from the post is the idea of a poeple, a culture actively seeking to evoke. There is something so uniquely human and transient about that idea that makes me sigh. It's such a fascinating idea - trying transport the subjective in an objective manner. The formality itself of the act is worthy or special note and regard.

You mention how souvenirs, at least how we've come to know and value them are acts of clutter and perhaps items destined for the bin.

I'm not sure I agree that if I stick to my perspective on souvenir. I think if I hardline the French idea (as I see it) then it is more of a remembrance, something remembered. We get souvenirs for people because we remembered them and if they keep that trinket then we have perhaps transfered the act of remembering to them by association with the object. That association in turn one day, one moment will spark, and you will be confronted by an involuntary memory that is a deluge of personal and subjective evocations.

So what happens when one day from now you taste something japanese and all of a sudden takes you back to that moment when you first had it as someone gave it to you from a place you had been because they thought of you when they went that place. What is the nature of the involuntary and lingering effect of the omiyage as it carves it's own place in an individual psyche?

Thoughts?

p.s. you spelled centres wrong. I'm disappointed, you're representing the Leaf more than ever when you're all the way across this sphere.

p.p.s. we invited you to our superbowl party, not to be cruel but to always make known the open invitation should you have somehow found yourself on this side of the sphere by some magic, decision or confusion.

p.p.p.s. I think the desire and seeking of adventure is that as we get older and perhaps accept the boldness of our positions and thoughts, come to value those thoughts, perhaps we are actively seeking to live. Perhaps that too becomes more a participatory, voluntary but mingled with notions of erasing parametres and boundaries. It isn't the Fuck You rebellion of youth and the danger it seeks for dangers sake. It is the fuck you of knowing more and more what we want. I feel that wanderlust too. I feel that need to do more, see more, experience more.

I don't want anything.
I want it all.

peacelove freedomjustice

-s

And when we meet on a cloud
I'll be laughing out loud
I'll be laughing with everyone I see
Can't believe how strange it is to be anything at all
-Neutral Milk Hotel (In the Aeroplance Over the Sea)