Vivat Libertas

I have a mathematical mind. To those who know me, this is no great secret. To those who don't know me, it's not something that I try to hide. I can't necessarily say that it's particularly fun, nor that it's particularly difficult. It's just how I am and I've never known anything else, so I can't compare. It's definitely useful for a hell of a lot of stuff, from analysing music and literature to doing the stuff I'm actually supposed to do. What I will say is that it's frustrating. Imagine that you speak another language pretty much natively. To an English speaker, for example, this language is abstract, unintuitive and overall difficult to understand. The language is difficult if not impossible to translate without butchering it beyond all recognition, and people think you're strange for speaking it. All the same, English and not mathematese is the current lingua franca, so you grit your teeth and get translating. Now imagine you st...

I've had a lot of time over the past weeks - after finishing the semester (and nearly collapsing with exhaustion, which means I need to take it easy next semester) and flying south for the winter - just to think. It's been good; my brain was nearly frazzled through with physics. Considering that it's by and large frazzled anyway, this was not too great. I've been staying with my boyfriend, which is great because I get to relax, unwind and revise and not have my parents nag me (best of both worlds). Because he's an insomniac and I'm...well...not (my sleeping patterns are great if I can be bothered to get them right), I tend to wake up a bit earlier. I'm also a lazy arse owing to having overworked myself, so I just sort of...well...lie there and curl up and think. It's good for me to try untangling my mind. One of the things I managed to untangle was why I love music so much. Of course, lots of people like music, even to the point of saying it's th...

There are two things I like about second-hand books: the price and the atmosphere. Living in London, where a decent science paperback can set me back anywhere between £8.99 and £10.99 and hardbacks break the £20 barrier, being able to get books cheaply is important to me and my insatiable desire for more stuff to read. ...Maybe the problem is that I've got too many books. That's probably it. The atmosphere, however, is what makes me love coming in bookshops - any sort of bookshop. In a normal bookshop, the kind where all the books are fresh and bright and new, I love just getting lost looking at the new releases or the promoted books, or going further back into the winding bookshelves to search for their classics and foreign literature sections. I love picking up books and looking at the blurb, or catching a whiff of some of that new book smell as I quickly flip through them to see whether I like the writing style. I love sitting on the floor to arrange the books I wa...

The older I get, the more I feel the need for places that cater to over-16s only - or at least more places that have over-16 nights and such. I very much hope I'm not being discriminatory; it's just sometimes...well...let me explain. I don't hate kids with a violent passion, but I'm not particularly keen on them either. I like some (my friend's two younger brothers are sometimes quite difficult to deal with, for various reasons, but both utterly adorable) and not others, just as I like some adults and not others; it's really that simple. I don't see why I should fawn over your child simply because they're small, and I will fawn over them even less if they get in my way and they're noisy (I have an anxiety condition that is aggravated by loud noises, and aggravating a condition that causes me to spasm uncontrollably and feel like I'm about to die from fear is not the best way to get me to like you). And while I don't expect or want your spro...

Why do I try to be a good person, even if I frequently fail? It's a question I frequently ask myself - but why should I be asking myself at all? Shouldn't I be secure in the knowledge that I am  trying? Is my questioning a sign that I'm a bad person? I don't know - but what I do know is that I question myself to find reasons for things, to help me understand myself a bit better and to clear up the murky waters of my mind. And I suppose I'm questioning myself, too, to prove something to myself - to prove that my motives are pure. Maybe I will succeed in that, maybe I won't. I don't know; this is mainly a thought exercise. I know what aren't  my motives, though... 1. I don't try to be a good person because I get off on the warm, fuzzy feelings.  Well, to be honest, I do  get off on the warm, fuzzy feelings I get when helping someone else out - but that's not my motive to be a good person. It's a nice...a nice side-effect, if you will, but...

Apparently, ideas are dangerous. In a way it sort of makes sense; an idea is, essentially, a plan or model for doing something. If that plan or model is developed and then carried out, it could...ahem...upset people, from the grey shades too frightened of change to even consider it to the people who have vested interests in resisting certain changes. And ideas are intangible, so (the line of reasoning goes) you can't kill them/evict them/whatever the slogan is at the moment. "Books, pamphlets, newspapers, plays are burned" Pardon my cynicism and my bad language, but bollocks to that. (Actually, that's probably an insult to bollocks.) Ideas can and will die; people are silenced or killed, or they simply change their minds. Books, pamphlets, newspapers, plays are burned, locked away, or forgotten; people, too, forget, as do ages. Music dies and disintegrates. Art fades. Maybe some future generations happen to chance upon those ideas, but few seriously revive the...

Call me a dirty hippie (actually, on second thoughts, don't - I wash and your insult just makes you look like an idiot), but I love nature, and it is there I feel happiest and most at peace. I remember when I was young my parents and I would frequently go to parks, or, if I'm honest, they would drag me there. There's a park within walking distance of my house, too, where I sometimes go just to take a walk or to lose myself in a book, and where my dad and I used to fly kites when I was a child. Besides, I've never liked pootling around settlements or sunning myself on the beach with other people as much as I've liked pottering around in the middle of nowhere, without a person to be seen. I suppose it was only after trying to kill myself for the second time that I really began to appreciate nature; I would have a stroll in the park and just admire the sun shining through the leaves of a tree or striking the surface of a pond. To me, nature is so much more beauti...