Je me souviens.

I remember. Really, I do. I'm not sure what I remember, but whatever it was, it was important.

The tally:
Days in Montreal: 4
Bordellos spotted: 17 (conservative estimate)
Petitions to save the animals signed: 2
Bikes: enough to be comforting
Hippies: enough to be disconcerting in a good way
T-shirts that say "Harvard: The McGill of Canada": enough to be horribly, pretentiously annoying
Interesting people met: 100000000
Stupid people met: less than previous number but substantial
Times snubbed for being "anglo": about 3, so not too bad, and the bird is always an option
Beer: ever-present and absolutely unquantifiable
Times fought with McGill bureaucracy: about 678
Times beaten by McGill bureaucracy: about 678

Montreal is treating me well, on the whole. Entering a new social scene is always interesting - it's a bit like junior high, except without the horrible complexes. The city has a sort of vibe that I recognize from somewhere (probably home), and while frosh week has the vibe of silly-American-frat-drunken-sexual-debauchery that I always tended to avoid in my snobbery, the ebullience of youth is everpresent and thrilling. The joie de vivre is quite apparent - openair markets where the storeowners smoke blunts during cash transactions, the artsy types, the cafes, the film festivals... I have not yet managed to explore the whole city, clearly, but I'm looking forward to it. On the first night, I returned from a farewell dinner with family to a deserted dorm because everyone had gone to dinner as a house, so I found a girl in the same predicament and we grabbed a bottle of wine and wandered the streets in a sort of happy carefree mood.



The view of my dorm and Montreal from Mont Royal (not taken by me), which I ran up with a rather cool girl from Alaska.

They Started a Country and Nobody Came

You know those t-shirts.
You know, those ones about Canada. Although they take a gently mocking tone towards our big friendly neighbour up North, I can't even mock Canada. To me, Canada is awesome. Although I've only lived there briefly, I am now returning after a quite prolonged hiatus to go study university. I could not be more excited. To me, a Czech kid educated in the States, it's a land of liberal politics, laid-back people, moose and confusing things like CEGEP. I am pretty sure all my notions about the place are wrong, but that's okay! This is also the reason why my blogging may be sporadic in the near future.

See you in Montreal.

21.8 1968

In memoriam.

Never get out of bed before noon.

Oh, Charles Bukowski, how I wish I could take your advice. Lately my schedule has been: get up at six to run, spend a day running errands and making social visits, watch Pulp Fiction until one in the morning, decide that going to sleep would be depressing and to that end enlist a friend to come watch the meteor shower with until three, and then do it all again. The reason for this mess is my impending departure towards university, which happens to be in another country, and which is giving me a feeling of looming existential crisis.

Then again, when one gets up early, one gets to see sunrises like this one:

This is how the sun rose over Oxford one morning in 1998, courtesy of National Geographic. While my sunrises are not quite as epic, given my current locale, I overwhelmingly enjoy mornings. The feeling of potential, the feeling of rightness in the world, the silence of a world still asleep... I wrote this two years ago on a particularly memorable lonely dawn.

Good Morning

the stark gray of dawn
so cold anonymous welcoming
(walk the middle of the road)
a yellow line down a gray road over gray fields under gray skies
envelops
the grateful silence - the grateful death
the freedom to throw murky thoughts out
and set them on fire through the morning light
clear-eyed
lie on dew-soaked grass
watch the trees billow in the wind
watch the road
the yellow line that never ends
that goes to everywhere and every soul
watch the figure laying in the clammy grass
and know
that this is what is
and that something will be
and that's not that bad
not bad at all

The Cinema Effect

Oh dear. It's been a while. I've been neglecting my blog to go gallivant in the wilderness with some rather cool people (an entirely blissful, deep, and indescribably brilliant experience - I feel a bit like Gandhi right now, except less skeletal). Before said blissful, deep, and indescribably brilliant experience, I went to Washington D.C. to show a European pseudo-relation the wonders of my adopted country. While of course showcasing the quite impressive might of the American government (every Federal Bureau, Department, Institute, Association and the like has a stone-facaded office in D.C., really driving home the point that this country's government does lots), the capital is also a haven of museums. I love museums. Really. I like the concept of a museum. I like its atmosphere, its venerability, everything. I'd been to most of the D.C. museums, having lived there before, but there was a new one for me - the Hirshhorn. The Hirshhorn is the artsy modernist weird museum. It's D.C's MoMA. The installations are excellent, and for a short period of time right now the museum has an exhibit called the Cinema Effect.

The Cinema Effect is indescribable. (Don't you hate that word? Whenever someone is at a loss for words (ehm, Buddhists, I'm looking at you), they just stick on "indescribable" and consider the affair wrapped up. Maddening.) It's an exhibit meant to convey the wonder of cinema. I didn't see all of it, because I spent almost all my time in one room watching Isaac Julien's 2005 documentary Fantôme Créole which showed simultaneously the scenery of Scandinavia and Burkina Faso. No words, just images and some background noise. One one screen there would be the dusty streets of the cities of Burkina Faso and advertisements for Coca Cola in French, and on the other a northern polar wasteland. The characters (random people with no lines) would merge from one screen to the other. The camerawork was magnificent and did a good job of highlighting the entire point of the exhibition, which was about how the art of cinema seduces the viewer into believing that the screen is reality. While of course the screen is constructed, the detail makes the film very true to life while at the same time being larger than life. You seem to be transported to the shot while knowing it's not real.

It's funny where you can find meaning. This weekend, I found meaning in the fake reality of the Cinema Effect, but I also found meaning in the exeperiences of being a camp counselor to small girls and driving on the highway under a red moon listening to David Bowie. I yearn for more of these.

ALTERNATIVE ROLE MODELS FOR IMPRESSIONABLE YOUNG GIRLS (ARMFIYG), Installment 1

I have a friend who has a sister. She's going into seventh grade and seems amazingly nice and levelheaded for going into seventh grade (I hated seventh grade - social awkwardness and trying to fit in among the prostitots was not one of my strong suits). I was over his house the other day when I heard her pick up the phone with a cry of exasperation- Not again! It turned out that Hannah Montana had been calling the house incessantly all day, promoting a line of back-to-school supplies that featured (guess who? you're right!) emblazoned on the covers. This, to the bitchy femminist in me, raised two important questions: A) How low can advertising stoop? To pester defenseless individuals in the throes of puberty and attempt to brainwash them into buying unnecessary and hideous goods made in China OVER THE PHONE? and B) Hannah Montana? Srsly? Do tween girls not deserve a better role model than a plasticky blonde faux-teenager?

In a vehement and far-reaching (read: limited to the very limited audience of this blog) contra-Hannah Montana campaign, I present to you:

ALTERNATIVE ROLE MODELS FOR IMPRESSIONABLE YOUNG GIRLS
Installment 1: Patti Smith

I never was too much of a hero-worshipper in junior high (I am not exactly bragging here, I was simply too clueless to know what was "in" and never really figured it out), but I figure that if you want to worship and revere someone, they had better be bleeding awesome. An excellent role model would be Marie Curie, Jane Goodall, or the female president of Liberia, but I figure it's hard to explain the obvious glamorous mystique of nuclear scientists and primatologists. Patti Smith has mystique to spare. She's a singer, like Hannah Montana, but that's where the similarity ends.

You see, unlike Hannah Montana, Patti Smith invented punk.
Unlike Hannah Montana, Patti Smith came from a poor family, couldn't afford college, started working in a factory assembly line before getting fed up and running away to Paris where she made her living as a street performer.
Unlike Hannah Montana, Patti Smith has been performing since the 60's, writes her own music (obviously) and has become much more famous than most of the rock and punk guys of her day despite existing in an era where women in rock were unusual if not downright rare.

Patti Smith is a legend, and rightfully so - she's talented, she isn't afraid to find the limits of modern music and push them, and she can be very successful in a male-dominated genre of music while remaining feminine and sexy.

You see, Patti Smith is also beautiful.
Don't believe me?
Witness:




versus:



Srsly? Is there even a contest?

A rose by any other name

The Daily Telegraph is quintessentially British and I love it! I was coming back to the states from the Czech Republic via London Heathrow and picked up a complimentary copy. It's amazing. The letters to the editor are full of dryly witty commentary on the various members of Parliament "going to the country", and people write their news providers with droll anecdotes regarding names:

SIR - As a young, newly married, personal assistant in the Ministry of Home Security war room I was greeted by a jovial Army major who said: "Mrs Shimmons, I love your new name. It makes me feel drunk when I'm not."
Rosemary Shimmons
Eastbourne, East Sussex

Sir- Imagine our delight at school near Bristol when our dear Rev Mr Ball was made a Canon
Elanor Norman
Hammoon, Dorset

Sir-Many years ago the telephone rang on Christmas Day in the porters' lodge at JEsus College, Cambridge.
"Hello, is that Jesus?" asked the undergraduates on the line.
"Yes," said the hapless porter.
They started singing "Happy Birthday"

The sports pages of the Daily Telegraph boast the full horse-racing listings. Jockeys are very inventive with their horses' names: there were steeds dubbed Finnegan McCool, In Transit, Charles Dickens, Ykikamoocow, We're Delighted, Can Can Dancer, Censored, Cocktail Party, Mykingdomforahorse, Faintly Hopeful, and, my favourite, Shouldn't Be There. I am tempted to begin a career in the equestrian sphere merely to get to name my horse.

Oh Britain.

I leave you with my absolute favourite quote from Hard Day's Night:

Reporter: What do you call that hairstyle you're wearing?
George: Arthur.


Sexiest eyebrows ever.

(Harrison Quote findage props to Emily. I feel that "Arthur" is the Buddhist koan that exactly explains the meaning of my life in some obscure way.)