So I've been feeling blah. January 2009 has been one of the most tumultous months of my as-yet young life, and despite all the stress and excitement (mostly of the negative kind) I can't help but feel as though my life has turned grey. I don't study enough, but I don't seem to do anything else with myself. I'm tired. I'm sick of cafeteria food. I see people less than I would like. When I go out part of me observes and I wonder what the point of going out is. I lack discipline, and only my unwavering commitment to go skiing every single day (barring deceitful plots involving alleged food poisoning, but we will get to that at a later date) seems to be keeping me from becoming an absolute vegetable. When I look back on this month, there are few things that I will remember down the line (at least, those that I would want to).
Here I am - young, unencumbered and fortunate, and yet my life is shades of gray. It doesn't help that Montreal is shades of gray these days. To combat this horrible lethargy, I've made a decision:
I will have an adventure every day of February.
This seems at first glance like a forced resolution because the thing about adventures is that they can't be planned. They just happen. I have a few sunlit days hidden away in my eternal internal memory - campfire guitar dylan songs, omelette cuddlefests, climbing sessions, beautiful drunken ebullience, night bikerides, deep conversations, mornings on mountains - and none of them were necessarily intentional. The clarifier here is that by adventures I don't mean crazy things or life changing moments. Nothing will be forced - for instance, I won't accept my friend's offer to hitchhike through the deep south to Mardi Gras over reading week, although I look forward to his stories. I mean memorable experiences, things that make it worthwhile to live. Small things - any little teeny thing out of the ordinary. I've always wanted to spend a day not speaking, for example, and I want to go hang out in Old Port or visit used book stores, go skating in the middle of the night, see all the free film screenings I've been meaning to go to (I have three next week alone). I'll post my adventure every day, I hope.
Do you have 7 minutes 35 seconds? If so, this is more worth it than any other way to spend 7 minutes and 35 seconds that doesn't involve removing apparel:
31.1.09
27.1.09
26.1.09
Things to be happy about
-smoothies: I stole one today from caf because I didn't have enough meal credits to take it legally. nom nom delicious nom.
-the Birks reading room: hardwood floors, stained glass windows, dead silence, reading laps, dusty tomes about the religions of the world
-the girl I passed on the way to school: was wearing red lipstick, a trench coat flipped up to hide the lower half of her face, and a private-eye style brimmed hat. Total badass.
-scraping wax off skis: I had to remove about twenty layers of wax off my skis. you know how picking your nose and scratching scabs is secretly really fun but you can't do it because it's gross? removing wax is kind of like that. except so much more satisfying and socially acceptable.
-amazing, cute chic practical badass comfortable knee-high leather boots for $0: I found them abandoned on the street next to a trash can, washed and cleaned them, and wear them with no shame.
-hipster parties
-Hungarian butcher shops
-tall boys who wear flannel shirts to cover their rather nice abs
-spectacularly losing Settlers of Catan
-toques and grandfather sweaters and spandex
-becoming a fan of one's great grandfather on Facebook
-Phil Ochs
-sunlight
-girl talk
-the sounds of guitar strumming down the hall
-being held by the waist
-the idea of sheep
-howling wind and hot chocolate
-Montreal Metro: (37 dollars a month for access to the ENTIRE TRANSIT SYSTEM!)
-the cover of darkness and the brightness of day.
Howgh.
-the Birks reading room: hardwood floors, stained glass windows, dead silence, reading laps, dusty tomes about the religions of the world
-the girl I passed on the way to school: was wearing red lipstick, a trench coat flipped up to hide the lower half of her face, and a private-eye style brimmed hat. Total badass.
-scraping wax off skis: I had to remove about twenty layers of wax off my skis. you know how picking your nose and scratching scabs is secretly really fun but you can't do it because it's gross? removing wax is kind of like that. except so much more satisfying and socially acceptable.
-amazing, cute chic practical badass comfortable knee-high leather boots for $0: I found them abandoned on the street next to a trash can, washed and cleaned them, and wear them with no shame.
-hipster parties
-Hungarian butcher shops
-tall boys who wear flannel shirts to cover their rather nice abs
-spectacularly losing Settlers of Catan
-toques and grandfather sweaters and spandex
-becoming a fan of one's great grandfather on Facebook
-Phil Ochs
-sunlight
-girl talk
-the sounds of guitar strumming down the hall
-being held by the waist
-the idea of sheep
-howling wind and hot chocolate
-Montreal Metro: (37 dollars a month for access to the ENTIRE TRANSIT SYSTEM!)
-the cover of darkness and the brightness of day.
Howgh.
15.1.09
The first snowfall
It is over a month since the first snowfall, but it is bitterly cold. So bitterly cold, in fact, that I waxed my skis today with polar wax - for the first time ever, hence quite the milestone. Polar wax is the lowest temperature rated wax available on the market - a market, you will note, aimed at crazy cold intense explorer people and all of Finland. It's minus twentyfive centigrade out right now. Pretty exciting stuff. We're all wearing intense equipment. In Philadelphia, where I spent part of my adolescent years, I was the only one with intense equipment. Now the streets are filled with people in intense down, boots, and that everpresent Canadian specialty, the toque.
The toque (mine's a bit less bright):
The coldest wax on the market:
George Clinton, 'cause funk ain't cold:
And finally, in sharp contrast to Parliament Funkadelic but no less awesome, the last stanza of "The first snowfall" by James Russell Lowell. You can find the rest of the poem here, but really, the last four lines are by far the best.
Then, with eyes that saw not, I kissed her;
And she, kissing back, could not know
That my kiss was given to her sister,
Folded close under deepening snow.
The toque (mine's a bit less bright):
The coldest wax on the market:
George Clinton, 'cause funk ain't cold:
And finally, in sharp contrast to Parliament Funkadelic but no less awesome, the last stanza of "The first snowfall" by James Russell Lowell. You can find the rest of the poem here, but really, the last four lines are by far the best.
Then, with eyes that saw not, I kissed her;
And she, kissing back, could not know
That my kiss was given to her sister,
Folded close under deepening snow.
9.1.09
Just purse your lips and whistle - that's the thing.
I can't whistle. But you've got a point, Monty Python. Nothing is as bad as it seems. This past week has not been that great - I got slapped in the face by two rather large obstacles and didn't overcome either of them - in fact reacted horribly and had a hell of a week of it. I had a short period of crappiness of character, but I think I'm over it and myself. This blog isn't meant to be a fifteen year old girl's LiveJournal of her insecurities, so I'm not going to elaborate on my woes. In fact, I'm just not going to elaborate on my woes at all, here or elsewhere. Instead, I'm going to watch this video:
And read Maggie's Letter to a Hysterical Self (in case of relapse)
and list ten things I'm thankful for (GOD. THIS IS AN AFTERSCHOOL SPECIAL WAITING TO HAPPEN):
1. I have access to hot water and soap.
2. I live in a city that seems to love me and cater to my needs and such.
3. I can surround myself with poetry and books and be completely happy on my own.
4. My roommate could have really sucked. Instead she became one of my best friends in this place.
5. My family brought me up well, I think, and they are there for me.
6. Leonard Cohen isn't dead yet, so my chances of shagging him are slightly above zero in time of this writing.
7. I don't have acne. In fact, except for the random fun poppable zit here and there, I have awesomely clear skin. This is admittedly shallow, but I'm counting my blessings, k?
8. I get two cultures. They fight sometimes, but I am richer to have two than to have either alone.
9. The communists have yet to completely take over my country again, although that's not looking so hot, because people are fucking stupid.
10. I'm warm and well-fed. Oh, and I have a bed. An AWESOME bed. With a DOWN QUILT FROM THE MOTHERLAND. Your bed cannot be better.
And read Maggie's Letter to a Hysterical Self (in case of relapse)
and list ten things I'm thankful for (GOD. THIS IS AN AFTERSCHOOL SPECIAL WAITING TO HAPPEN):
1. I have access to hot water and soap.
2. I live in a city that seems to love me and cater to my needs and such.
3. I can surround myself with poetry and books and be completely happy on my own.
4. My roommate could have really sucked. Instead she became one of my best friends in this place.
5. My family brought me up well, I think, and they are there for me.
6. Leonard Cohen isn't dead yet, so my chances of shagging him are slightly above zero in time of this writing.
7. I don't have acne. In fact, except for the random fun poppable zit here and there, I have awesomely clear skin. This is admittedly shallow, but I'm counting my blessings, k?
8. I get two cultures. They fight sometimes, but I am richer to have two than to have either alone.
9. The communists have yet to completely take over my country again, although that's not looking so hot, because people are fucking stupid.
10. I'm warm and well-fed. Oh, and I have a bed. An AWESOME bed. With a DOWN QUILT FROM THE MOTHERLAND. Your bed cannot be better.
31.12.08
17.12.08
Home, where my love lies waiting silently for me.
I'm home! After 11 hours of transit, I am back in the suburbs that raised me. Everything feels exceedingly familiar and it's very odd. Alone in the house today, I played Leonard Cohen and took a bath and made pea soup, then fell asleep in my airy, well-lit room reading the essays of Vaclav Havel. It's a nice feeling after dorm life, although dorm life has its perks as well.
I suppose now is the time to sort of look back on my first semester in University, although I'm of the opinion that people do too much looking back as it is. I personally am quite guilty of this - at one point I kept a journal, a commonplace book, a photo archive, a recording project and this blog. All of them were used only intermittently, so it's not as though I spent my hours scribbling away in a forgotten nook in the attic. (hello, Emily Dickinson!) I suppose I started this blog as a record of the things I found cool in life, but it eventually got more autobiographical, and consequently less general and probably less interesting. I don't mind that I have few readers - I fully understand that my life isn't actually that interesting to read about, but I still need to write about it. So, in that vein, I suppose I'll look back on my first semester in university:
I was on my own for longer than I'd ever been, and though there were some battles with bureaucracy that I lost spectacularly, I think I fared quite nicely. I joined the nordic ski team, which turned out to be the best decision of my university career so far. I took organic chemistry, which did not. I found out that Advanced Placement tests were actually out to get me. I lived in extremely close proximity to a roommate and found out that I wasn't nearly as insufferable as I thought I was, although I was lucky to room with the chillest person at McGill. I biked around a lot until I broke my bike. I mentally thrashed a bit. I met a person whose name could be pronounced either as a cracker or as a thousandth of the standard unit of mass in the metric system and fell in love with him after a spectacularly ill-advised bike trip. I made friends and acquaintances in a world unlike that of high school cliques. I listened to Leonard Cohen a lot, much to the chagrin of those around me. I missed kayaking. I played considerably less drinking games than is average but still managed to beat boys in them.
I'm glad to be home.
I suppose now is the time to sort of look back on my first semester in University, although I'm of the opinion that people do too much looking back as it is. I personally am quite guilty of this - at one point I kept a journal, a commonplace book, a photo archive, a recording project and this blog. All of them were used only intermittently, so it's not as though I spent my hours scribbling away in a forgotten nook in the attic. (hello, Emily Dickinson!) I suppose I started this blog as a record of the things I found cool in life, but it eventually got more autobiographical, and consequently less general and probably less interesting. I don't mind that I have few readers - I fully understand that my life isn't actually that interesting to read about, but I still need to write about it. So, in that vein, I suppose I'll look back on my first semester in university:
I was on my own for longer than I'd ever been, and though there were some battles with bureaucracy that I lost spectacularly, I think I fared quite nicely. I joined the nordic ski team, which turned out to be the best decision of my university career so far. I took organic chemistry, which did not. I found out that Advanced Placement tests were actually out to get me. I lived in extremely close proximity to a roommate and found out that I wasn't nearly as insufferable as I thought I was, although I was lucky to room with the chillest person at McGill. I biked around a lot until I broke my bike. I mentally thrashed a bit. I met a person whose name could be pronounced either as a cracker or as a thousandth of the standard unit of mass in the metric system and fell in love with him after a spectacularly ill-advised bike trip. I made friends and acquaintances in a world unlike that of high school cliques. I listened to Leonard Cohen a lot, much to the chagrin of those around me. I missed kayaking. I played considerably less drinking games than is average but still managed to beat boys in them.
I'm glad to be home.
12.12.08
Esto es très fun!
Well, my two hardest finals are out of the way. It was a bit of a personal hell - Dante has nothing on organic chemistry. In any case, provided I did not actually fail organic chemistry (despite the fact that the final made my soul bleed), I'm done it and good riddance. This was the course whose coordinator (a four foot tall fat man with round glasses and a nasal, high-pitched voice) made me cry during my first day at McGill when I asked to switch lab sections. This was the course where I was next in the alpahbet to a girl who regularly overdosed on ecstasy and attended all of one lecture during the entire semester, and hence she became my lab partner. This was the course where I spent three hours doing a microscale filtration and then proceeded to evaporate ALL of it in the vacuum. Add to that late-hour study sessions that induced slight delirium and significant panic while the Management students play loud rounds of beer pong below, and needless to say, if I pass the course, I will thank the gods and move on with my life.
The counterbalance to this hell is nordic skiing. There is absolutely no activity more fun than nordic skiing on a really really good day. There are some pretty bad days too - Klister and laclustre form and overly cold - but on good days it's really good (and on bad days it's still not bad, hehe). I went for the first time two days ago and it was as though the world was fixed. I used to love running, but I'm starting to think that it pales compared to coming to the team room, taking out my ancient combi skis, waxing with whatever comes to mind, and then flying through the deadly still white, the world muffled under my grooves. In the stillness of the smaller paths there is no evidence that the throbbing city has a chokehold on this mountain park. The branches bend under the snow, creating an archway of glory that seems somehow not quite as cold. And the best thing is that it need not end - the mountain is my backyard and playground until the snow thaws in late March.
There are few good ways to describe the weather and I dare not attempt it - in my school's poetry club we used to laugh at the poetry contest entrants who wrote tritely and predictably about things like rain and snow. (To be honest, that was a bit silly, given our respective levels of poetic prowess - i.e. not nearly good enough to be so pretentious.) But come. Find a pair of old skis- they don't have to be the flashy $900 Madshuses that the fat salesman tried to push at me in the ski store- and come to the trails of Mont Royal, to the Vermont backcountry, to the fjords of Norway, to the hills that we call mountains in the Czech Republic. (Don't tell the douchebags of the world, though. Perfection is better uncrowded.) And we'll ski and fall and cover the ground with not even a footprint left to tell the world we were there. Afterwards we can brush the snow off our hats and drink powdered hot chocolate and laugh easily, rejoicing in a world where the bullshit gets left behind and all that is left is the feeling of flight.
This is my backyard. Sure beats suburbia.
As regards the title of this post, it regards the incident where I fell flat on my face in front of the quebecois who was kindly letting me pass. I grinned shamefacedly, and he replied amiably, "C'est bon." As I got up and dusted myself off, I smiled back and said, "Gracias!".
The counterbalance to this hell is nordic skiing. There is absolutely no activity more fun than nordic skiing on a really really good day. There are some pretty bad days too - Klister and laclustre form and overly cold - but on good days it's really good (and on bad days it's still not bad, hehe). I went for the first time two days ago and it was as though the world was fixed. I used to love running, but I'm starting to think that it pales compared to coming to the team room, taking out my ancient combi skis, waxing with whatever comes to mind, and then flying through the deadly still white, the world muffled under my grooves. In the stillness of the smaller paths there is no evidence that the throbbing city has a chokehold on this mountain park. The branches bend under the snow, creating an archway of glory that seems somehow not quite as cold. And the best thing is that it need not end - the mountain is my backyard and playground until the snow thaws in late March.
There are few good ways to describe the weather and I dare not attempt it - in my school's poetry club we used to laugh at the poetry contest entrants who wrote tritely and predictably about things like rain and snow. (To be honest, that was a bit silly, given our respective levels of poetic prowess - i.e. not nearly good enough to be so pretentious.) But come. Find a pair of old skis- they don't have to be the flashy $900 Madshuses that the fat salesman tried to push at me in the ski store- and come to the trails of Mont Royal, to the Vermont backcountry, to the fjords of Norway, to the hills that we call mountains in the Czech Republic. (Don't tell the douchebags of the world, though. Perfection is better uncrowded.) And we'll ski and fall and cover the ground with not even a footprint left to tell the world we were there. Afterwards we can brush the snow off our hats and drink powdered hot chocolate and laugh easily, rejoicing in a world where the bullshit gets left behind and all that is left is the feeling of flight.
This is my backyard. Sure beats suburbia.
As regards the title of this post, it regards the incident where I fell flat on my face in front of the quebecois who was kindly letting me pass. I grinned shamefacedly, and he replied amiably, "C'est bon." As I got up and dusted myself off, I smiled back and said, "Gracias!".
5.12.08
From now on I don't care if my tea leaves spell Die Ron Die, I'm chucking them in the rubbish bin where they belong.
Perhaps it isn't a good thing that three years after reading Harry Potter, I can remember that quote, but I'm not clear on the facets of the new industrial space of the BMSI, despite having read about it yesterday several times. In any case, I'm done my Economics final and no longer care about rereading what feels like millions of Newspeak acronyms. I'm not an economics person, but I'm glad I took the course. It managed to broaden my horizons in terms of what exactly goes on in the world and why I believe some of the things I do. I think we tend to assume that we all have deep and valid reasons for certain courses of actions, but I was thinking about it lately, and some things have become a knee-jerk reaction for me. "Buy local! Stop buying clothes! Everything "non-mainstream" is automatically better than mass consumption! MNCs are evil! The corporate world is evil! Modern society is screwed up!" I try not to articulate these TOO much to avoid sounding like a self-righteous hippie, but they're - correctly or not - a part of my subconscious. I adopted a lot of these opinions at around the age of twelve, and they stuck with me, but truth be told I didn't really know much about how the world really works - things like WTO, subsidies, environmental bypasses and NGOs were all somewhat new to me. I still don't know much about how the world really works, but it feels simultaneously like a bit of the puzzle fell into place and like I have some sort of basis for reexamining my views on certain things. Hey-ho university disillusionment!
I must say, I've been better. It's a combination of stress, too much time on the computer, not enough time outside, and too much thinking and doubting. Nonetheless the past few weeks have included a trip to the Vermont mountains, a welcome visit from parents, traumatizing my younger brother, a psychoanalysis for which I got fifteen dollars, and my first 2k erg test. I'm going to get through these next few weeks, and then I'm going to go home and run twice a day and read books just because I want to and build fires and abandon the internet and go skiing and climb until my arms fall off and take baths and eat clam chowder and real food and visit trader joes and live in Jenkintown library and learn basic bike maintenance and go drink tea with my friend Brian and see the people I went to high school with and read Pushkin and write for once in my life and play instruments and bake christmas cookies and do household chores while listening to Leonard Cohen and Vangelis and Beethoven and sleep in my own room and trim the Christmas tree and go to winter concerts and speak Czech all the time.
It's going to be great.
My friend, descending from the highs of the Vermont mountains down to the civilized world below. Don't hesitate to climb
up just because you have to go back down.
I must say, I've been better. It's a combination of stress, too much time on the computer, not enough time outside, and too much thinking and doubting. Nonetheless the past few weeks have included a trip to the Vermont mountains, a welcome visit from parents, traumatizing my younger brother, a psychoanalysis for which I got fifteen dollars, and my first 2k erg test. I'm going to get through these next few weeks, and then I'm going to go home and run twice a day and read books just because I want to and build fires and abandon the internet and go skiing and climb until my arms fall off and take baths and eat clam chowder and real food and visit trader joes and live in Jenkintown library and learn basic bike maintenance and go drink tea with my friend Brian and see the people I went to high school with and read Pushkin and write for once in my life and play instruments and bake christmas cookies and do household chores while listening to Leonard Cohen and Vangelis and Beethoven and sleep in my own room and trim the Christmas tree and go to winter concerts and speak Czech all the time.
It's going to be great.
My friend, descending from the highs of the Vermont mountains down to the civilized world below. Don't hesitate to climb
up just because you have to go back down.
16.11.08
Sunday morning, praise the dawning
This morning I woke up at 8:00 to mellow Czech folk music from my iTunes alarm. Unfortunately, at 8:02, the entire residence was woken by the piercing shriek of the fire alarm. I suppose this simply expedites my plans for the day, which are - drumroll please- to spend at least eight hours studying organic chemistry for my last midterm tommorrow. Thus, I urge you: If you have ABSOLUTELY ANYTHING else to do, please do it. I can't bear the thought of the rest of the world being that pathetic.
A Markovnikov addition. I understand it but am none the happier for it.
Also, the Velvet Underground are a good thing to listen to on a Sunday morning.
In physics, you don't have to go around making trouble for yourself - nature does it for you.
-Frank Wilczek
A Markovnikov addition. I understand it but am none the happier for it.
Also, the Velvet Underground are a good thing to listen to on a Sunday morning.
In physics, you don't have to go around making trouble for yourself - nature does it for you.
-Frank Wilczek
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