My own lack of posting

is discouraging me. I feel I have plenty to say but not enough time or conherence or general organization. Midterms are upon me like a cross between a vulture, an angel of death, and Addis Ababa, and overconsumption of muffins is doing nothing to help anything. In conclusion, posting will be sporadic until life settles in again and I stop eating muffins.

This is where I live. It is a chaotic place.


"I used to be with it, but then they changed what it was."
-my downstairs neighbour, lying on the floor in her pajamas and displaying a considerable lack of consternation over the fact.

In other news, I met David Suzuki the other day (and by met, I mean stared out the window at and wikipeia'd to fill the gaping holes in my Canada knowledge). He came to the football game that rages next to my hall every Sunday afternoon. That in itself is annoying, mostly because my library gets shanghaied so that the VIP club of the Montreal Alouettes can go feel important in it, but I can now say that the greatest living Canadian has been to my house. Success much?

The Laurentians, Nutella and Love

Three hours of sleep, a jar of Nutella, a packet of artificially flavored maple cookies, and climbing shoes. Such were my worldly possessions at seven in the morning on Sunday. Trudging through the student ghetto, bundled up against the cold and shivering slightly, heading to the corner of Milton and St Urbain where, in theory, there might later a car of unknown description and origin whose destination might or might not be some mountains somewhere north of the city, life didn't seem all too rosy. I had signed on to a climbing trip in the Laurentians and was feeling rather apprehensive about my decision. Catastrophic scenarios ranging from mean climbers to not being able to climb anything to getting caught in vicious Quebecois weather ran through my head. Had I owned a phone, I would have probably called my fellow climbers and told them that I had come down with the black death and to go on without me.

Amazingly enough, nothing of the sort happened and what ensued was a day nothing short of magical. Beautiful multipitch routes from which it was possible to stare at the majesty of maple forests whose leaves were just beginning to change colours. Nice, very experienced climber folk who were willing to take pity on someone with limited skill and a lack of gear. French jokes that I couldn't understand. Chocolate bread. The feeling, after months, of crimps beneath my fingers and the slab through the rubber of my mythoses. The sort of graceful vertical ballet that is chimney climbing. The endless below. Good vibes. Strange music. Pleasant tiredness. It was the first time since coming to Canada that I'd been out of the city, and it was a much-needed respite.


It looks like a black widow spider, but it's actually a skinny French girl named Myriam who likes food, cigarettes and, uh, climbing 5.10.


Afternoon delight.


Last send.


Embarking home.

There were stars above us on the ride back. I haven't seen stars, other than one or two that fight through the searchlights of Montreal, for a while. There is something to be said for the vibrant orange glow of Montreal, but I had missed them.

Dobrou noc.

Things I love about my life

Thursday is a good day, usually. Of late, it has been a bad day, as my schedule insists that I wake up at seven, attend my two hardest classes and show up to a rather tedious lab, but on the whole I rather like Thursdays. Thanksgiving (which it looks like I won't be attending, so we'll just have to throw a rather intense, um, sit-down dinner here at Douglas Hall) is classically on a Thursday. I like that. It's a good day. So I decided to make Thursday my "sing life's praises" day. It wasn't actually my own idea, a rather more well-known blogger has been doing it for a while, but in any case, here are the things that make my life ever so worthwhile of late:

H3
I don't know how I managed to be placed in the best floor of the best house at the best residence at McGill. Nothing in my track record indicates such a brilliant amount of luck, but I did. Our floor is quickly becoming quite the institution. It seems to be made up of the perfect combination of kindness, cynicism, guitars, extremely inappropriate humor, banana mush, bad ideas, and gin. Coming to our tiny, postered, duct-taped hovel after a long day is starting to feel like coming home.

The prevalence of bicycles
My little red trash-picked beauty with its milk crate in back is not out of place here in the slightest. The bikes are everywhere. Around campus and Montreal, it is de riguer to see businessmen and little chic French girls and scientists and kids and parents zooming around on their beautiful machines. Coming to class I see bikes chained to all available surfaces and some of the unavailable ones. In a small way, it gives me hope for humanity.


The tunnel between Stewart and MacIntyre
My favourite library on campus is the Ossler Medical History library - it has really cool architecture and no one goes there because it's filled with books like "La Historia de la Neurologia" (32 volumes in fact, all in Spanish, all lovingly bound and stored away to gather dust.) The tunnel that leads to the MacIntyre (where Ossler is) is a spacy boxy futuristic hollow that is almost always completely deserted. Furthermore, the acoustics of the place mean that if one walks loudly, the halls reverberate with a crazy booming cacophony. If, hypothetically, upon realizing this, one starts stomping up and down, it sounds like all of MacIntyre, nay the world, is crashing down around one's ears.


The nordic team
The nordic team deserves its own post. A member for nary a week, I am already in love with it. We are a varsity sport who, instead of receiving an office like the rest of the varsity sports, resides literally in a broom closet under the stairs (I am, in fact, turning into Harry Potter) with about 30 pairs of sharp bamboo sticks. We bitch about klister and run really fast. There is also the prospect of red spandex in the near future. Love.

Juice boxes
For takeout lunch, we get juice boxes. This completes my morning every morning.

Longboarding
I recently started stealing a friend's longboard out at night and promptly made the decision to not eat, be clothed, or drink for months if necessary in order to procure one. I suck, and I look like a fool, I'm sure, but I don't care. I haven't enjoyed the raw movement of something this much since I started climbing.

Doing shots of Emergen-C with my roommate in order to ward off disease and cold and a familiar throbbing sensation. Emergen-C in general is sometimes pretty foul and only to be drunk on climbing trips and in the rain at Teeter's when it's really the only thing to do other than cry, but my parents accidentally bought me "Lite Emergen-C with joint supplement". It crossed the line from passably foul to epically bad - bitter, sour, sandlike, a distressing colour, in short all the ingredients for a really horrendous time. The sensation itself isn't pleasant, but it really is the single best way to prevent colds and other ailments, so all is for the best, and it's worthwhile just because it's so bad. Especially when the the "Here's to" song is sung while doing so.

Don't be snitchin', yo

I am a nerd. It is useless to deny it. The realization was really driven home when I found myself, on Saturday afternoon, running around a venerable-looking green with thirty other people, playing none other but the greatest imaginary sport ever invented, Quidditch. Despite the sport's unrealistic qualities, however, it was probably the funnest hour and a half of the week. The group of us quickly became a spectacle, attracting amused/bemused faces and more than one envious glance. The thing is, Quidditch is intense. We play contact. We shove and yell. We throw balls at each other. The game was a festival of spirited rivalry and youthful ebullience while at the same time a laid-back bunch of people who knew this was in fact a very silly thing to be doing - and were okay with that.

I think I may actually have outnerded myself beyond the boudary of respectable limits. You see, for the first two games of the afternoon, I was the Snitch. In the college version of Quidditch, the snitch is a person who runs around the entire campus with a sock, chased by two random other people. In practice, this meant I discovered many fun and out-of-the-way nooks, gutters, construction sites, and other off-limits locales while sprinting up Docteur Penfield in a most unnatural manner, chased by two people on brooms.

LARGE GROUP OF WELL-DRESSED GIRLS: Oh, look, they're playing Quidditch! That's so cool!
ME, SPRINTING AROUND THE CORNER: SHIT! I'm the Snitch!
(thirty seconds later, two large guys on brooms come running by)
LARGE GROUP OF WELL-DRESSED GIRLS: Go Snitch go!

McGill's Quidditch team is a fairly new institution, having been started this year by our rez, Douglas Hall. Interest is sky-high, suggesting either a severe case of suspended adolescence for all of us or just awesomely immature fun.


We also have a crest, granting instant credibility to any project we undertake.

ALTERNATIVE ROLE MODELS FOR IMPRESSIONABLE YOUNG GIRLS (ARMFIYG), Installment 2

I like being a girl. Most of the time I sort of feel bad for guys. They seem to have set silly rules for themselves about manliness and credo (Credo. Great name for a horse, by the way) and don't get a full range of opportunities. Girls can do just about anything, really, and they don't have to necessarily beat people up over it. Growing up a child of the post-feminist world, my mommy said I could do anything I wanted, and it's actually true - as a girl you can do quite a lot without ever having to worry about things like masculinity and honor and how to get the girls to like you.

However, I feel that there is one thing worth being that a girl intrinsically can't be - an English gentleman. You see, my biology professor is an English gentleman. His name is Graham Bell, which means that all he's missing to perfection is an Alexander. He's an eminent researcher who treats his undergraduate students with a sort of dismissive distance. He's old. He has a sort of wavy British hairstyle, a khaki suit, and an air of intellectual respectability. He has a cynical sort of dry humour. He was presenting etymological diversity and noted that there were over 300,000 species of beetle in the world.


"Of course, one must question whether there is really a need for 300,000 species of beetle. And the answer of course is that there isn't a need, it just sort of happens that way."

I like that Professor Bell has no need to be accepted or liked by his students. His personality is staid and solid. His familial relations or financial situation could be a total wreck (and I certainly hope it isn't, because that would be a shame), and he would lecture on, unfrazzled and perhaps only slightly more brusque. It's the characteristic stiff upper lip and cynically amused stance towards the world that several of the older men I know posses, and I respect it mightily.

We of the fairer sex can't do the English gentleman thing. I'm currently not legal, let alone eminent, wise, and respectable, and I feel that even when I'm seventy and perhaps a researcher myself, I won't be able to wear a Donegal cap and khaki suit with impunity. It just doesn't fit. That doesn't mean that I can't have Professor Bell as a role model. We can all strive for stoicism, respectability, intellectual achievements, and a dryly good-natured life perspective. Pipe and tweed not required.

Incidentally, when the Germans were bombing the daylights out of London and the world was on the brink of utter destruction, another British gentleman I hold in great regard, Winston Churchill, put the following signs all around London:

Stiff upper lip indeed.

Search not in vain

The nights are not yet cold. They will be soon. The arctic darkness is coming, and I welcome it with open arms, primarily because if I welcomed it with clenched fists and crazed desperation in my eyes, it would make no difference. I would still be but one figure dressed in an expedition parka and purple rubber boots, clutching the railing with a skeletal hand as my own two feet slid out from under me, searching in vain for a docking place in the maelstrom of snow. Resignation and determination are half the battle.

Meanwhile, however, it's lovely out. It's about sixteen degrees today, which isn't bad. The nights are not hot but not cold, a sort of mild clime that allows us to wander for an hour late one night in search of the perfect peace of pie. Pie is peaceful, you see. It represents the home and hearth, indulgence and relaxation. The promise of just a piece of this makes it worth an hour long search. A kind friend with a slight knowledge of Montreal enticed us too look for a very specific pie-vendor named Rockaberry's, and what a hunt it was. We wandered up and down streets, through parks where the complacent hoboes sat and past interesting-looking bars, eschewing these oases in search of a higher, more ethereal experience. It was an hour of meandering north, then south, then west, then north, then south, playing in fountains and meeting significantly inebriated classmates on the way. At one point I gave up all hope of the vision of sweet solace, trying to resign myself to a new, unbaked reality. It was at that moment, at the brink of desperation, just when all hope was lost, that a peculiar sight met my eyes - a round sign, unremarkable among the myriad round signs that line Rue Prince Arthur, except for one magical word. Rockaberry's.

The next ten minutes were a heady rush. Water. Hungry eyes eating the windowpanes of the display case that held treasures with unknown names. Toblerone Cheese Pie. Wildberry Crumble. Truffle. Apple. Rutabaga. Signs in French of unknown origin. Love's labours not, in fact, lost. The tension was palpable.

Everyone says the first bite is the best. Of course it is. It's the classical cliche and it's classically true. Sometimes in an oversatiated world, where everything is so easily accessible, there is a tendency to forget the feeling of want. It's a good experience, I feel, to test an extreme. This is why people climb 5.14, or run naked, or throw paint on canvas in abstract chaos, or design haute couture for $40,000. Wandering around Montreal (clothed, only slightly starving) doesn't seem extreme, but the intensity of the first bite of truffle pie, in the first second, I think, is comparable to falling in love or jumping off a cliff.

So go, starve. Then eat truffle pie.

Ironically enough, the $7 (!) I paid for truffle pie was my greatest food expenditure for the weekend. Other than that, I subsisted mostly on rice, pilfered bagels and yogurt, and various beverages. I could get good at this college thing.

How to deal with university bureaucracy

1. Realize that you don't have courses for the winter semester and that you probably missed the boat on this one as well.
2. Receive concerned sympathy from friends.
3. Get advised by the third year student that McGill assigned you instead of an advisor, who looks at you with impotent consternation and gives you a list of offices where they might also look at you with impotent consternation.
4. Run around campus. Trek to small, ugly, out of the way buildings, most of which are on top of various mountains. Get harrangued by small men who have not enjoyed intimacy with their spouses for at least six months and feel the need to take it out on their young, innocent students. Alternately, get stared at blandly by doe-eyed secretaries who would much rather be reading Cosmo right now.
5. Have it indicated to you that you are an untermensch by a francophone porter. Start responding in French, then realise that you really don't have to stand for this shit and reply "Thank you for your time" in very distinct English with slightly sardonic subtones.
6. Visit the orientation centre. They won't tell you anything but you will receive a cookie. You may still be royally fucked, but you now have a cookie. Look upon this as a marked improvement in your fortunes.
7. Sit for an indeterminate amount of time in a small dingy hallway waiting for an advisor that is at a doctor's appointment and will return on Monday.
8. Run into some anarchist-leftist kids who hand you a handbook-zine that tells you, among other things, when Kaddafi was "democratically elected" in Libya and how to transfer to Concordia, where apparently the level of oppression by capitalists and multi-national corporations is smaller. Consider this briefly out of desperation. Smile politely and resist the urge to tell them to vote for Obama.
9. Panic. This won't help. Do it anyway.
10. Cry. See above.
11. Consider running away to Morocco or lighting something on fire.
12. Come back to dorm and chill with lovely roommate, who doesn't have courses for winter either. Worst comes to worst, you two can hang out with the hobo-climbers on Mont Royal come February.

La Vie en what?

September first was the last night of the Festival Des Films Du Monde. We found this out by accident when running around the city with a few fellow active kids and decided to tell the entire house about it. In no time we had amassed a sizable collection of people who all trooped down the mountain to see the last free outdoor screening of La Vie en Rose. It was a pretty cool concept - so many people crowded in a public space in front of the Hyatt hotel, lounging around on the ground watching a film together. In a typically Quebecois move, however, the organizers decided to omit subtitles, with the credo that subtitles make one weak. (That may not have actually been what they said, but I am allowed to make this up as they did not repeat it in English.) Now, I like subtitles on when I watch a movie in English, despite being quite fluent in the language. In this case, I simply did not understand the plot, and that was excellent! La Vie en Rose is a very powerful movie with amazing scenery, composition, and music. Not being able to listen to the words, I was free to experience it at a lower (?), more imminent level, just enjoying the flow and intent of people I couldn't understand.

Things I got:
-The movie's heroine was Edith Piaf.
-She grew up in a whorehouse.
-She sang chantons.
-She occasionally freaked out.
-At one point she had eye problems.

Things I did not get:
-Edith Piaf had a child.
-This child died.
-Edith Piaf took heroin.
-Edith Piaf died.

Among many others. I feel that I essentially missed the plot, but that's okay. It was a bit surreal, because I was thinking of my own things while watching an intense movie and it all kind of merged. The morning after, I had classes, which were intense. I am caught between panic and euphoria. Last night we sat around the common room playing Leonard Cohen on guitar and singing, just for fun. And it was breathtaking in a completely unassuming way. Last morning I ran around trying to get my paperwork together feeling so stressed I nearly cried. And it was horrible. Life will be good. I hope.



And I take a bow and exit.