27.12.09
20.12.09
The BBC is amazing
I'm stressed as all get out (as my good friend, who unrelatedly happens to be a direct descendant of Robert the Bruce would say), but I can't help but take study breaks using the Internet.
One of my less guilty pleasures is the BBC, which is also my main source of news these days. CNN is very US-centric, I find, and Czech Republic's economic paper, though worth reading for the brilliant commentary pieces from a family friend, usually runs headlines like "Our parliament is doing silly things again, make it stop" and "It might be a bit cold tommorrow, wear a hat" and so is more of a way to feel connected to home than a news source.
The BBC, however, has:
-An Ian McKellen hiphop video involving shakespeare
-Stalin's (?) lewd comments on various form sketches
-the most amazing octopus video you will ever see
As well as real news from parts of the world other than New England and the Middle East!
(I recognize that this makes me sound like a pretentious news snob. This is not the case. I am not nearly as articulate about modern policy and issues as I would like to be, so I'm trying to use the BBC to catch up to the rest of the world. So in fact, it is I who is behind.)
One of my less guilty pleasures is the BBC, which is also my main source of news these days. CNN is very US-centric, I find, and Czech Republic's economic paper, though worth reading for the brilliant commentary pieces from a family friend, usually runs headlines like "Our parliament is doing silly things again, make it stop" and "It might be a bit cold tommorrow, wear a hat" and so is more of a way to feel connected to home than a news source.
The BBC, however, has:
-An Ian McKellen hiphop video involving shakespeare
-Stalin's (?) lewd comments on various form sketches
-the most amazing octopus video you will ever see
As well as real news from parts of the world other than New England and the Middle East!
(I recognize that this makes me sound like a pretentious news snob. This is not the case. I am not nearly as articulate about modern policy and issues as I would like to be, so I'm trying to use the BBC to catch up to the rest of the world. So in fact, it is I who is behind.)
18.12.09
Small shapes interact within. They bind and unbind, they chemically form and reform and deform, suppress, promote, activate. Entities without thought or knowledge of their own significance, known only by an alphabet soup of numbers and letters and names like polycomb and holoenzyme. Their complexity is beyond any imagining and yet all of them are neccessary for the most basic existence of that which we know as humanity. We discovered one of the most crucial regulating mechanisms in 2001. This is a discovery akin to looking at the colour wheel and just now noticing purple.
Nothing is known, the potential is infinite.
This shit is trippy, man.
You know what else is trippy (and looks excellent?)
This:
Terry Gilliam! Overblown magnificence!
Nothing is known, the potential is infinite.
This shit is trippy, man.
You know what else is trippy (and looks excellent?)
This:
Terry Gilliam! Overblown magnificence!
16.12.09
We were home.
We played the Fillmore for the first time the weekend before the Human Be-In. It was the Young Rascals, Sopwith Camel and that group from LA that nobody knows... - The Doors. The place was packed. We went onstage and opened with 'When the Music's Over.' I had my left and right hands playing contrapuntal melodies against one another on the keyboard. San francisco had never heard this kind of music before... having taken a little toke of a joint before going on, I of course had the power of the universe in my right hand. I was at once the god of love and the god of destruction... I played and played and played and Jim started screaming into the microphone and the rest of hte band kicked in and the audience let out this simultaneous roar of approval. The Doors and San Francisco had a love affair from that moment on. We were home.
Ray Manzarek
Ray Manzarek
14.12.09
Coeur de Pirate
Mais il m'aime encore, et je t'aime un peu plus fort...
The official clip is a bit better.
To alleviate finals, I've been listening to Coeur de Pirate instead of studying - what was it? (checks slide). Ah, yes, spliceosome activity in intron excision and posttranscriptional modification of eukaryotic mRNA. That was what it was.
Man, what's with the chick music?
First Regina Spektor.
Then Emmy the Great.
Now this.
What next?
The official clip is a bit better.
To alleviate finals, I've been listening to Coeur de Pirate instead of studying - what was it? (checks slide). Ah, yes, spliceosome activity in intron excision and posttranscriptional modification of eukaryotic mRNA. That was what it was.
Man, what's with the chick music?
First Regina Spektor.
Then Emmy the Great.
Now this.
What next?
12.12.09
If you like words you may like
this site.
If you like photos of old rock stars, people, lovers, and friends you may like
this site
If you like math you may like
this site
If you like positive people you may like
this
If you like cute little animals you may like
this site
If you like books you may like
this site
If you like music you may like
this site
And if you like me, then I like you.
If you like photos of old rock stars, people, lovers, and friends you may like
this site
If you like math you may like
this site
If you like positive people you may like
this
If you like cute little animals you may like
this site
If you like books you may like
this site
If you like music you may like
this site
And if you like me, then I like you.
9.12.09
Today I met a baby girl named Alaska
and skied through the streets and drank wine out of Mason jars.
(I also did multivariate calculus for 11 hours.)
(I also did multivariate calculus for 11 hours.)
6.12.09
aprikat
Silliness to alleviate exam period stress.
SILLY!
Cat Empire was pretty wonderful. The morning 7 mile run to alleviate the effects of Cat Empire was also pretty wonderful.
4.12.09
26.11.09
Trot dot dot dot
In place of turkey:
My mother doesn't like making turkey because it takes forever and leaves no time for anything else. She was always distraught when my brother and I won the local Turkey Trot (this really wasn't much of a feat - few middleschoolers want to run around cornfields and up muddy hills, so those of us who saw the opportunity for food cashed in) because it meant she had a giant turkey foisted upon her. Since they don't give out free turkeys at university, tonight I'm having delicious chicken, drinking champagne, and watching Little Big Man and MIT open lecture matrix algebra. Life is grand.
My mother doesn't like making turkey because it takes forever and leaves no time for anything else. She was always distraught when my brother and I won the local Turkey Trot (this really wasn't much of a feat - few middleschoolers want to run around cornfields and up muddy hills, so those of us who saw the opportunity for food cashed in) because it meant she had a giant turkey foisted upon her. Since they don't give out free turkeys at university, tonight I'm having delicious chicken, drinking champagne, and watching Little Big Man and MIT open lecture matrix algebra. Life is grand.
23.11.09
In place of (pro)creation, procrastination
is what I've been doing lately.
Expect posts eventually, my few devoted readers.
In the meantime witness a blurry catfight:
and in it an uncharacteristic declaration of sentiment.
He had a pair of shaggy eyebrows which gave his eyes a piercing look which was not at all the sort of thing a fellow wanted to encounter on an empty stomach.
-P.G. Wodehouse
Expect posts eventually, my few devoted readers.
In the meantime witness a blurry catfight:
and in it an uncharacteristic declaration of sentiment.
He had a pair of shaggy eyebrows which gave his eyes a piercing look which was not at all the sort of thing a fellow wanted to encounter on an empty stomach.
-P.G. Wodehouse
11.11.09
Betting on a three-legged horse with a beautiful name
The longer he wrote the faster the complexes and illnesses subsided, and when at last he finally screamed his primal victorious laugh into the night -haHA!- the tense wrinkles relaxed, the maniac sparks subsided and the working day came to a close only to continue in other planes of delirious sleep and larger than life dreams.
-Bohumil Hrabal
(translation: me)
9.11.09
Klein for your little guy
So outside of the gates to my venerable institution of higher education is an ad. It features two airbrushed beauties in jeans and what appears to be Crisco locked in a passionate, if strangely agressive, embrace. If we ignore all the standard neofeminism about body image and subconsciously fuckedup sexuality, which I do, because to be honest if one was to protest every distorted image that bombards the senses through advertising in public space we'd never get anywhere, there remains the fact that usually when I see this ad, it's 8 am, freezing, I haven't had coffee but have had calculus and the last thing I want to do is put on jeans and Crisco and pose awkwardly with a guy with gelled hair and a I-could-be-looking-sexily-resolute-or-I-could-just-be-pissed-off expression. I don't particularly want to see other people doing the aforementioned, but whatever, and I always enjoy the dichotomy of the down-jacketed Montrealers and the crisco-wearing Eva Mendez on a billboard outside the bike station. Witness an element of my morning:
However, when I was researching the topic (read: finding a photo of said ad online), I discovered this article about the product being sold (jeans, not crisco). The premise of these jeans, apparently, is to add sexy curves to your presumably unsexy body. For women, this means a padded butt, which has been done before, but for men, apparently, it means a padded crotch in case one needs help in that department.
So, apparently, we now live in a society which feels the need to subtly enhance male junk size using designer jeans. Pretention and pretending and pose have always been a part of our world, but, seriously? To me this is both frightening and fairly funny.
No word yet on how all this relates to Crisco.
However, when I was researching the topic (read: finding a photo of said ad online), I discovered this article about the product being sold (jeans, not crisco). The premise of these jeans, apparently, is to add sexy curves to your presumably unsexy body. For women, this means a padded butt, which has been done before, but for men, apparently, it means a padded crotch in case one needs help in that department.
So, apparently, we now live in a society which feels the need to subtly enhance male junk size using designer jeans. Pretention and pretending and pose have always been a part of our world, but, seriously? To me this is both frightening and fairly funny.
No word yet on how all this relates to Crisco.
26.10.09
A Poem About Werewolves
My day today started with spilled compost and multivariate calculus and sharply improved from there. Here's a poem about werewolves.
Richard Brautigan, yo.
Richard Brautigan, yo.
19.10.09
Cop out - coming into LA
So these "shit I like" posts are a total cop-out - cut, paste, comment - but here's my favourite Arlo Guthrie song, with footage of Woodstock-goers blowing their minds, man:
18.10.09
Notes from the Greyhound - Missouri
This summer, and for that matter throughout my life, for whatever reason, I've spent a lot of time on public transit, in the plastic seats of various waiting rooms, watching the people around me eat burger king, rolling through the night having eaten nothing but overly packaged and somehow unsatisfying 100% orange juice. There is a various viral search for America in these long treks from A to B, I guess, a search that has been undertaken one too many times at this point and which for me anyway has traditionally ended disconsolately. Anyway, here are my notes from the Greyhound, aboveground, from the ground, fairgrounds.
It's 12:07 am and we're at some small stop in Missouri, U.S. of A. The seat next to me is open and the line is long, so I know I won't be alone for long. The man who ends up sitting next to me is Amish. He is tall, a pillar of a man, with a bright red beard and straw hat and piercing eyes. He looks like a figure from a book, almost too real to be real. He looks completely like the Honest Abe who you learnt about in your 4th grade history class, back when history was cool hats and good guys and bad guys. He smells strongly of pipe tobacco and he's going to visit his brother-in-law in Arkansas. He eats some crackers and we talk about his carpentry and the travel restrictions imposed on the Amish, - they can take the train or the bus but they can't fly. I want to be able to really talk to him but it's as though something's preventing me - I feel almost awkward and I can't for whatever reason transcend the bridge, and then I feel awkward for feeling awkward, for allowing this man's lifestyle to obstruct his fundamental humanity - our human experiences have little in common taken generally but everything elementally, yet my fear of seeming rude prevails. And the bus rolls on across the state line.
It's 12:07 am and we're at some small stop in Missouri, U.S. of A. The seat next to me is open and the line is long, so I know I won't be alone for long. The man who ends up sitting next to me is Amish. He is tall, a pillar of a man, with a bright red beard and straw hat and piercing eyes. He looks like a figure from a book, almost too real to be real. He looks completely like the Honest Abe who you learnt about in your 4th grade history class, back when history was cool hats and good guys and bad guys. He smells strongly of pipe tobacco and he's going to visit his brother-in-law in Arkansas. He eats some crackers and we talk about his carpentry and the travel restrictions imposed on the Amish, - they can take the train or the bus but they can't fly. I want to be able to really talk to him but it's as though something's preventing me - I feel almost awkward and I can't for whatever reason transcend the bridge, and then I feel awkward for feeling awkward, for allowing this man's lifestyle to obstruct his fundamental humanity - our human experiences have little in common taken generally but everything elementally, yet my fear of seeming rude prevails. And the bus rolls on across the state line.
16.10.09
A supermarket in California-A. Ginsberg
What thoughts I have of you tonight, Walt Whitman, for
I walked down the sidestreets under the trees with a headache
self-conscious looking at the full moon.
In my hungry fatigue, and shopping for images, I went
into the neon fruit supermarket, dreaming of your enumerations!
What peaches and what penumbras! Whole families
shopping at night! Aisles full of husbands! Wives in the
avocados, babies in the tomatoes!--and you, Garcia Lorca, what
were you doing down by the watermelons?
I saw you, Walt Whitman, childless, lonely old grubber,
poking among the meats in the refrigerator and eyeing the grocery
boys.
I heard you asking questions of each: Who killed the
pork chops? What price bananas? Are you my Angel?
I wandered in and out of the brilliant stacks of cans
following you, and followed in my imagination by the store
detective.
We strode down the open corridors together in our
solitary fancy tasting artichokes, possessing every frozen
delicacy, and never passing the cashier.
Where are we going, Walt Whitman? The doors close in
an hour. Which way does your beard point tonight?
(I touch your book and dream of our odyssey in the
supermarket and feel absurd.)
Will we walk all night through solitary streets? The
trees add shade to shade, lights out in the houses, we'll both be
lonely.
Will we stroll dreaming of the lost America of love
past blue automobiles in driveways, home to our silent cottage?
Ah, dear father, graybeard, lonely old courage-teacher,
what America did you have when Charon quit poling his ferry and
you got out on a smoking bank and stood watching the boat
disappear on the black waters of Lethe?
This was my first performance piece ever. I love the overly vibrant imagery junxtaposed with the air of faint disappointment. An acquaintance of mine once wrote an inspired piece called "A supermarket in Pennsylvania" which distinctly lacked the artichokes of the original.
I walked down the sidestreets under the trees with a headache
self-conscious looking at the full moon.
In my hungry fatigue, and shopping for images, I went
into the neon fruit supermarket, dreaming of your enumerations!
What peaches and what penumbras! Whole families
shopping at night! Aisles full of husbands! Wives in the
avocados, babies in the tomatoes!--and you, Garcia Lorca, what
were you doing down by the watermelons?
I saw you, Walt Whitman, childless, lonely old grubber,
poking among the meats in the refrigerator and eyeing the grocery
boys.
I heard you asking questions of each: Who killed the
pork chops? What price bananas? Are you my Angel?
I wandered in and out of the brilliant stacks of cans
following you, and followed in my imagination by the store
detective.
We strode down the open corridors together in our
solitary fancy tasting artichokes, possessing every frozen
delicacy, and never passing the cashier.
Where are we going, Walt Whitman? The doors close in
an hour. Which way does your beard point tonight?
(I touch your book and dream of our odyssey in the
supermarket and feel absurd.)
Will we walk all night through solitary streets? The
trees add shade to shade, lights out in the houses, we'll both be
lonely.
Will we stroll dreaming of the lost America of love
past blue automobiles in driveways, home to our silent cottage?
Ah, dear father, graybeard, lonely old courage-teacher,
what America did you have when Charon quit poling his ferry and
you got out on a smoking bank and stood watching the boat
disappear on the black waters of Lethe?
This was my first performance piece ever. I love the overly vibrant imagery junxtaposed with the air of faint disappointment. An acquaintance of mine once wrote an inspired piece called "A supermarket in Pennsylvania" which distinctly lacked the artichokes of the original.
13.10.09
11.10.09
Then comes the flood:
You good lads who went to destroy
With defiance in your hearts and fists raised high
Wishing to create for men worlds of joy
It is to you I sing this last goodbye.
My defiance has been tempered by the sands of time,
Rust has eaten both the sword and the sheath.
But the brutal, singing brave mobs of grime
Are those whom I love and this I bequeath.
My friends in symposiums today discourse
While tomorrow they may fall into perfidy.
At night they look from the balcony, voices hoarse
And smile and remind themselves: Diem perdidi.
They are not those who with respect kiss the maiden;
They see no interest in the childbearing hips.
At night near the tables that with wine are laden
They are the knights of the cocotte who strips.
I have friends in these bohemian men;
For a short time our veins course with blood.
In our hair is braided the rose from the glen,
And after us, well, then comes the flood.
Po nás potopa
Vy dobří hoši, co jste vyšli bořit
se vzdorem v srdcích, s pěstí sevřenou,
co lidstvu nové ráje chcete stvořit,
vám zpívám píseň na rozloučenou.
Můj vzdor se zchladil volnou sprchou času,
rez s pochvou srostil meče rukojeť.
Brutální, zpěvnou, lehkovážnou chasu
v svém srdci jsem si zamiloval teď.
Mí přátelé se v symposiích baví,
by zase zítra klesli do bídy.
Navečer z loží zvedajíce hlavy
se v duchu těší: Diem perdidi.
Se zbožnou úctou nelíbají holku,
je nevábí zpěv plodných samiček.
V kavárnách nočních u politých stolků
jsou rytíři pochybných dámiček.
Mám za přátele marnotratné muže.
Z nás každý rád svou hřivnu zakopá.
My do svých vlasů vplétáme si růže,
a po nás, což - ať přijde potopa!
Original: František Gellner, 1901
Translation: myself, 2008
With defiance in your hearts and fists raised high
Wishing to create for men worlds of joy
It is to you I sing this last goodbye.
My defiance has been tempered by the sands of time,
Rust has eaten both the sword and the sheath.
But the brutal, singing brave mobs of grime
Are those whom I love and this I bequeath.
My friends in symposiums today discourse
While tomorrow they may fall into perfidy.
At night they look from the balcony, voices hoarse
And smile and remind themselves: Diem perdidi.
They are not those who with respect kiss the maiden;
They see no interest in the childbearing hips.
At night near the tables that with wine are laden
They are the knights of the cocotte who strips.
I have friends in these bohemian men;
For a short time our veins course with blood.
In our hair is braided the rose from the glen,
And after us, well, then comes the flood.
Po nás potopa
Vy dobří hoši, co jste vyšli bořit
se vzdorem v srdcích, s pěstí sevřenou,
co lidstvu nové ráje chcete stvořit,
vám zpívám píseň na rozloučenou.
Můj vzdor se zchladil volnou sprchou času,
rez s pochvou srostil meče rukojeť.
Brutální, zpěvnou, lehkovážnou chasu
v svém srdci jsem si zamiloval teď.
Mí přátelé se v symposiích baví,
by zase zítra klesli do bídy.
Navečer z loží zvedajíce hlavy
se v duchu těší: Diem perdidi.
Se zbožnou úctou nelíbají holku,
je nevábí zpěv plodných samiček.
V kavárnách nočních u politých stolků
jsou rytíři pochybných dámiček.
Mám za přátele marnotratné muže.
Z nás každý rád svou hřivnu zakopá.
My do svých vlasů vplétáme si růže,
a po nás, což - ať přijde potopa!
Original: František Gellner, 1901
Translation: myself, 2008
5.10.09
a conversation about math and your mom
-Yo, you look like a space cadet!
-That's cause I am in space.
-Euclidian 3-space, what?
pause
-That was terrible.
-I know.
-I can be in any space I wanna be.
-So n-space, n subset all integers (-infinity,infinity)?
-I love integer math. It's so pointless.
pause
-Your mom's pointless.
Good old Euclid.
-That's cause I am in space.
-Euclidian 3-space, what?
pause
-That was terrible.
-I know.
-I can be in any space I wanna be.
-So n-space, n subset all integers (-infinity,infinity)?
-I love integer math. It's so pointless.
pause
-Your mom's pointless.
Good old Euclid.
But I'm gonna try for the kingdom if I can
Night bikes and breweries and badly brewed coffee in a jar from what seems like long ago.
4.10.09
I like my balcony
It harmonizes at resonant frequency with the tree whose branches encroach harmonically, in all good intentions. There are little bundles of helicopter-seeds weighing down the boughs. When we were little we used to put them on our noses - the sap made them stick and for a while there in 1995 everyone was Pinnochio.
But I've seen the way the earth throws its aces with a curve,
George Harrison shot by Martin Scorcese - my favourite portrait
1.10.09
e.e. cummings
since feeling is first
who pays any attention
to the syntax of things
will never wholly kiss you;
wholly to be a fool
while Spring is in the world
my blood approves,
and kisses are a better fate
than wisdom
lady i swear by all flowers. Don't cry
--the best gesture of my brain is less than
your eyelids' flutter which says
we are for each other: then
laugh, leaning back in my arms
for life's not a paragraph
And death i think is no parenthesis
17.9.09
Jane Birkin and Serge Gainsbourg
recorded a song in 1969.
It was banned from the radio.
Can you guess why?
I still like it, though.
It was banned from the radio.
Can you guess why?
I still like it, though.
16.9.09
The Panasonic Villager
is a bicycle.
I envision a world of panasonic villagers, biking between the thatched houses of medieval Europe wearing rags and feathers and braids and beads and, of course, iPods. They would carry loaves of barley bread and suckling pigs, going about their daily business in a choreographed dance-cavort routine to a soundtrack of the ubiquitous (even in medieval Europe) MGMT.
Ya dig?
I envision a world of panasonic villagers, biking between the thatched houses of medieval Europe wearing rags and feathers and braids and beads and, of course, iPods. They would carry loaves of barley bread and suckling pigs, going about their daily business in a choreographed dance-cavort routine to a soundtrack of the ubiquitous (even in medieval Europe) MGMT.
Ya dig?
15.9.09
30.8.09
I'm not a vegetarian because I love animals. I'm a vegetarian because I hate plants.
Blogposts have been sporadic of late, mostly because my camera went to The Big Shutter in the Sky, and also because I'm starting to find myself aware that I'm not aware, and that maybe I should spend more time becoming aware, rather than unawarely writing blog posts in which I adopt the pose of awareness. However, I still like to write, perhaps mostly in small sound-bites. Also, lists don't require a camera.
Thus, I present:
Five things that struck me upon return to Montréal:
1. The weather is decidedly autumnal at points. I wore tights out to the bar last night. It's August!
2. The difference between Parisian French and Québecois French is pronounced. This becomes more and more obvious to me as I improve in the language and realize that I still can't understand the shopkeepers, the police, or my classmates from Sherbrooke.
3. The amount of hot girls in Montréal is ridiculous. No, seriously. The slim, beautiful, sartorially perfect girls are everywhere, riding bikes, carrying baguettes, reading books, and in general going about their daily lives with the barely there chic smugness the mademoiselle who knows she's gorgeous.
4. Bixis! They're bikes that can be rented from the city with the swipe of a credit card. They're sleek and grey-red, with a small electromotor that generates light when you pedal. They seem quite popular.
5. Due to the Québec dairy tax, buying cheese feels a bit like assault and muggery.
Lack of cheese notwithstanding, it's lovely to be back, living a few carefree, semi-sunlit days until the return to the academic balls-to-the-wall that is McGill.
Thus, I present:
Five things that struck me upon return to Montréal:
1. The weather is decidedly autumnal at points. I wore tights out to the bar last night. It's August!
2. The difference between Parisian French and Québecois French is pronounced. This becomes more and more obvious to me as I improve in the language and realize that I still can't understand the shopkeepers, the police, or my classmates from Sherbrooke.
3. The amount of hot girls in Montréal is ridiculous. No, seriously. The slim, beautiful, sartorially perfect girls are everywhere, riding bikes, carrying baguettes, reading books, and in general going about their daily lives with the barely there chic smugness the mademoiselle who knows she's gorgeous.
4. Bixis! They're bikes that can be rented from the city with the swipe of a credit card. They're sleek and grey-red, with a small electromotor that generates light when you pedal. They seem quite popular.
5. Due to the Québec dairy tax, buying cheese feels a bit like assault and muggery.
Lack of cheese notwithstanding, it's lovely to be back, living a few carefree, semi-sunlit days until the return to the academic balls-to-the-wall that is McGill.
10.8.09
One of my best friends is having surgery.
I am worried about him- surgery sounds terrible any way you look at it.
A few days ago, I spent an evening moping because I got a shit haircut. (I'm not sure why, but hairstylists in general kind of assume that "I want a haircut" means "I want to look like David Bowie and/or the eighties personified." This happens a lot, and it tends to put a damper on my otherwise obviously stunning appearance...)
Maybe I shouldn't mope about having a shit haircut, then, because at least I'm not getting my knee sawed in half.
Good luck, Nomad Turtle...
A few days ago, I spent an evening moping because I got a shit haircut. (I'm not sure why, but hairstylists in general kind of assume that "I want a haircut" means "I want to look like David Bowie and/or the eighties personified." This happens a lot, and it tends to put a damper on my otherwise obviously stunning appearance...)
Maybe I shouldn't mope about having a shit haircut, then, because at least I'm not getting my knee sawed in half.
Good luck, Nomad Turtle...
5.8.09
Emmy the Great
Wrote a song about first love and blue skies.
Hear it here.
Here she is:
Pretty bard with an acoustic guitar.
Hear it here.
Here she is:
Pretty bard with an acoustic guitar.
I like this poem from Jacques Prévert
Alicante
An orange on the table
Your dress on the rug
And you in my bed
Sweet present of the present
Cool of night
Warmth of my life.
I also like texts from last night.
I don't own a phone, and I've never understood texting, but I like the stupid youthful love of life that seeps through them.
-This is a mass text. Does anyone know where I am?
-I got us kicked out of the bar because the waitress found me in the kitchen trying to make spaghetti
-Also, I may or may not be wearing a cape right now. hint: I am.
An orange on the table
Your dress on the rug
And you in my bed
Sweet present of the present
Cool of night
Warmth of my life.
I also like texts from last night.
I don't own a phone, and I've never understood texting, but I like the stupid youthful love of life that seeps through them.
-This is a mass text. Does anyone know where I am?
-I got us kicked out of the bar because the waitress found me in the kitchen trying to make spaghetti
-Also, I may or may not be wearing a cape right now. hint: I am.
2.8.09
I like early morning thunderstorms
And this photo of Ian McKellen.
what Gandalf would look like if he wore scarves and read poetry manuscripts on staircases.
what Gandalf would look like if he wore scarves and read poetry manuscripts on staircases.
10.5.09
And when it's time for leaving, I hope you'll understand, I was born a rambling man
I'm out, for at least two months.
It's time to abandon the internet.
Write me letters.
The world stretches out ahead, vaguely insecure and menacing, and all I want is to go to sleep.
It's time to abandon the internet.
Write me letters.
The world stretches out ahead, vaguely insecure and menacing, and all I want is to go to sleep.
7.5.09
Evasion
This book I've read intermittently when I had the time. Someday I will get to finishing it.
Download it for free, and read about an angry trainhopping vegan.
I'm headed back up the east coast tonight.
Another adventure with the grey hound yapping at my heels, spiriting me off into the distance for the low price of $78.89, tx included.
I guess sometimes everyone needs a little evasion?
Download it for free, and read about an angry trainhopping vegan.
I'm headed back up the east coast tonight.
Another adventure with the grey hound yapping at my heels, spiriting me off into the distance for the low price of $78.89, tx included.
I guess sometimes everyone needs a little evasion?
6.5.09
Cats and a blackandwhite suicide
I like this picture of Kurt Cobain.
I sometimes wish I liked grunge. I don't, though, and to pretend I do would be silly.
I like Seattle, though.
And my father's flannel shirts.
And rain.
Almost?
On the plains of Morocco
There is a tree called the argan tree.
It bears a fruit that looks like an olive.
Goats like olive-argan fruit.
So they climb the tree.
I refuse to give up on a world in which goats climb trees.
It bears a fruit that looks like an olive.
Goats like olive-argan fruit.
So they climb the tree.
I refuse to give up on a world in which goats climb trees.
5.5.09
J.R.R. Tolkien's Ents, That Girl In My Biology Class, and the nature of labels
When Spring unfolds the beechen leaf, and sap is in the bough;
When light is on the wild-wood stream, and wind is on the brow;
When stride is long, and breath is deep, and keen the mountain-air,
Come back to me! Come back to me, and say my land is fair!
I always liked the Ents. I remember fourth grade, not paying attention to the simple multiplication we were doing for the umpteenth time and reading about Pippin and Merry and Treebeard, wandering through ancient forests and talking to the trees. I like land fighting back against the furnace of industry. I like Tolkien's unattainable ideal and the image of a soft, golden light falling through the cracks in the canopy. I liked the poetry of those books, the trandscendentalism. And besides, I've always liked trees. I like the roaring sequoias and the pines of my mountain home. I like the willow trees by the river in West Virginia and the green leafy canyon walls.
Which kind of brings me to my next point, which is not about trees.
Sometimes, during the course of my general activities, I get labeled a hippie. Perhaps this is because I like trees and bikes and guitars and long, flowy skirts, because I have a lesbian haircut and drink green tea instead of soda. I don't like brands and am pro-queer, pro-choice, and anti-bigotry. But here's the thing - I am not a hippie, whatever that term may entail. I'm fine with acquaintances labeling me as such, because maybe what they think of me represents a point I'm trying to make, but I am not a hippie. I like setting deadlines and meeting my own goals and competing. I drink far less beer and smoke far less weed than is the university average. I'm flamingly straight and don't recognize gay as a political party. The term "anarcho-syndicalist radical organizing" really makes me cringe. I suppose what I am trying to say is that labels are inherently misleading. I can see why they are used - I too am wont, sometimes, to scoff at a person in an Abercrombie sweatshirt or lululemon tights-are-not-pants, because labeling them as ditzy and clueless and consumerist makes things easier; I no longer have to be challenged by them as people and it gives me a nice little superiority thrill. Inherently, though, the indulgent label of "punk", "hippie", "bro", "GTA girl", or "prep" doesn't mean much and kind of obfuscates the whole point of one humanity. I quite like some people who went to prepschool, although their stories of seated dinner and chapel and little green courtyards make me simultaneously scornful and angry. It's been said before, I know, but the artificial boundaries that people create are harmful. How do we expect to reconcile Israel and Palestine, end Darfur, make peace with Russia, if we can't even get on with each other and our own little social groups?
That said, there was a girl in my biology class this year. Her name was Caytee Lush. I quite liked her, and she plays acoustic guitar music. I quite like her music, too. You should check her out:
HERE
4.5.09
Be sure to wear some flowers in your hair
The changing light
at San Francisco
is none of your East Coast light
none of your
pearly light of Paris
The light of San Francisco
is a sea light
an island light
And the light of fog
blanketing the hills
drifting in at night
through the Golden Gate
to lie on the city at dawn
And then the halcyon late mornings
after the fog burns off
and the sun paints white houses
with the sea light of Greece
with sharp clean shadows
making the town look like
it had just been painted
But the wind comes up at four o'clock
sweeping the hills
And then the veil of light of early evening
And then another scrim
when the new night fog
floats in
And in that vale of light
the city drifts
anchorless upon the ocean
— Lawrence Ferlinghetti
(a San Francisco morning, by the internets)
at San Francisco
is none of your East Coast light
none of your
pearly light of Paris
The light of San Francisco
is a sea light
an island light
And the light of fog
blanketing the hills
drifting in at night
through the Golden Gate
to lie on the city at dawn
And then the halcyon late mornings
after the fog burns off
and the sun paints white houses
with the sea light of Greece
with sharp clean shadows
making the town look like
it had just been painted
But the wind comes up at four o'clock
sweeping the hills
And then the veil of light of early evening
And then another scrim
when the new night fog
floats in
And in that vale of light
the city drifts
anchorless upon the ocean
— Lawrence Ferlinghetti
(a San Francisco morning, by the internets)
23.4.09
A gently rounded rant ; Or, a de-posed manifesto
I realize that I don't have time to write Mad North-Northwest anymore. It was conceived in secondary school, when I had comparatively little to do with my life and wanted an outlet for my creative energies. I had the time to try to formulate an opinion - read this book. Look at this photographer. Listen to this song. This is what I think, this is what I find cool. I realize now that as time goes on this blog gets less poetic and more prosaic. It's lacking in mystique, these days.
Especially in University, young, beautiful people specialize in pose. We are a thousand weeks old, you know, but from the way we talk about Derrida and the Middle Eastern Conflict and Andy Warhol (oh, especially Andy Warhol!) we could be a thousand. I guess my fifteen and sixteen year-old anarchopoetic self (indirectly, subconsciously) looked up to these people who could talk eloquently, who could wear their interesting blouse and boots and hat just so, who could sneer with debonair and "seek the essence of art."
They came in all different stripes, because they prized the semblance of individuality above all. They took artsy-looking photographs. They wrote poems. They smoked (sometimes), the boys played guitar (often) and they all pretended to maintain a sort of down-to-earth attitude because of course a balance must be struck between seeming too pretentious and seeming too pedestrian.
I'm kind of done with that. Artsy-looking photos aren't that hard to take with a good enough camera. For someone with even a modicum of talent, some amount of a vocabulary and twelve years of anglophone schooling, it is not very difficult to turn a phrase, to make a sentence beautiful. Coloured tights can be bought from H&M for $3.50, and these days, one doesn't even have to go into one's mother's closet to look for vintage-looking vestments- they're sold at your local department store, looking pretty but really completely defeating the purpose.
It's a beautiful pose. Really it is. But that's all it is - a pose. It's cool to appreciate art, but don't count your appreciation to your credit. The world has got enough of intellectual poseurs mumbling beautiful, empty phrases and extolling the beauty of Edie Sedgwick. Please. Edie Sedgwick was a speed addict who posed for photographs and slept with men for money to buy more speed. Merit? Really? Tights and chandelier earrings do not a worthwhile person make. Let's do something real.
I tried to keep Mad North-Northwest from ever being too pretentious. As a result I think it's objectively boring. Thus, though my readers can be counted on one hand, I 'd like to explain its relative absence of late. It will be back, eventually, and I will keep posting when I find something worth talking about.
In the meantime, kick out the jams!
Especially in University, young, beautiful people specialize in pose. We are a thousand weeks old, you know, but from the way we talk about Derrida and the Middle Eastern Conflict and Andy Warhol (oh, especially Andy Warhol!) we could be a thousand. I guess my fifteen and sixteen year-old anarchopoetic self (indirectly, subconsciously) looked up to these people who could talk eloquently, who could wear their interesting blouse and boots and hat just so, who could sneer with debonair and "seek the essence of art."
They came in all different stripes, because they prized the semblance of individuality above all. They took artsy-looking photographs. They wrote poems. They smoked (sometimes), the boys played guitar (often) and they all pretended to maintain a sort of down-to-earth attitude because of course a balance must be struck between seeming too pretentious and seeming too pedestrian.
I'm kind of done with that. Artsy-looking photos aren't that hard to take with a good enough camera. For someone with even a modicum of talent, some amount of a vocabulary and twelve years of anglophone schooling, it is not very difficult to turn a phrase, to make a sentence beautiful. Coloured tights can be bought from H&M for $3.50, and these days, one doesn't even have to go into one's mother's closet to look for vintage-looking vestments- they're sold at your local department store, looking pretty but really completely defeating the purpose.
It's a beautiful pose. Really it is. But that's all it is - a pose. It's cool to appreciate art, but don't count your appreciation to your credit. The world has got enough of intellectual poseurs mumbling beautiful, empty phrases and extolling the beauty of Edie Sedgwick. Please. Edie Sedgwick was a speed addict who posed for photographs and slept with men for money to buy more speed. Merit? Really? Tights and chandelier earrings do not a worthwhile person make. Let's do something real.
I tried to keep Mad North-Northwest from ever being too pretentious. As a result I think it's objectively boring. Thus, though my readers can be counted on one hand, I 'd like to explain its relative absence of late. It will be back, eventually, and I will keep posting when I find something worth talking about.
In the meantime, kick out the jams!
2.4.09
Here's to you, Japhy Ryder!
I grew up in suburbia. I hated it.
This is not entirely true. I eventually made awesome friends in suburbia, the sun shone brightly, Dorian and I roamed the streets in the face of the SUVs, and school was easy so I was free to read and write idealistic poems and make tea and go to Trader Joe's. I was happy, but the environment was limited. The social ideal was the little Abercrombie moose and a denim miniskirt and Rainbow flipflops for fifty dollars and the biggest, best limousine for prom. When spring came and I disappeared every weekend to go paddle in West Virginia and came back having slept in a pipe, the skinny blonde-with-dark-roots Miss Hollister who sat behind me in U.S. history gaped openly. Almost everyone in my graduating class went to a school somewhere in the area, Naty Ice, fake tans and stripmall trips included. I moved to another country and have yet to look back.
When I came to McGill, this changed. I finally met the people who I knew were out there - people who hitchhiked across countries, who climbed, who planted trees, who took a year off and disappeared into East Asia, who loved the tattered t-shirt and broken-in backpack, who never bought things, who hitchhiked to Mardi Gras, who brewed their own beer, who ice-climbed and rock-climbed and slack-lined, who never seemed to have any money but had everything else in the world in a sun-tanned palm, who carried it easily, knowing they weren't special but that they were lucky. For the first time in my life, I looked up to my peers and tried not to idolize them.
When my mom was twenty or so, she forged her papers and took a broken-down helicopter to climb 7000 metre peaks in Central Asia. I am running out of time and so I'll take the Greyhound trips to everywhere and nowhere and anywhere. They're worth it all.
Spring is here and summer is unfolding and life is and will be fantastic I believe it will.
And then, you know Jack Kerouac somehow somewhere unsustainably crazily was right:
See the whole thing is a world full of rucksack wanderers, Dharma Bums refusing to subscribe to the general demand that they consume production and therefore have to work for the privilege of consuming, all that crap they didn’t really want anyway such as refrigerators, TV sets, cars, …all of them imprisoned in a system of work, produce, consume, work, produce, consume, I see a vision of a great rucksack revolution thousands or even millions of young Americans wandering around with rucksacks, going up to mountains to pray, making children laugh and old men glad, making young girls happy and old girls happier, all of ‘em Zen Lunatics who go about writing poems that happen to appear in their heads for no reason and also by being kind and also by strange unexpected acts keep giving visions of eternal freedom to everybody and to all living creatures.
This is not entirely true. I eventually made awesome friends in suburbia, the sun shone brightly, Dorian and I roamed the streets in the face of the SUVs, and school was easy so I was free to read and write idealistic poems and make tea and go to Trader Joe's. I was happy, but the environment was limited. The social ideal was the little Abercrombie moose and a denim miniskirt and Rainbow flipflops for fifty dollars and the biggest, best limousine for prom. When spring came and I disappeared every weekend to go paddle in West Virginia and came back having slept in a pipe, the skinny blonde-with-dark-roots Miss Hollister who sat behind me in U.S. history gaped openly. Almost everyone in my graduating class went to a school somewhere in the area, Naty Ice, fake tans and stripmall trips included. I moved to another country and have yet to look back.
When I came to McGill, this changed. I finally met the people who I knew were out there - people who hitchhiked across countries, who climbed, who planted trees, who took a year off and disappeared into East Asia, who loved the tattered t-shirt and broken-in backpack, who never bought things, who hitchhiked to Mardi Gras, who brewed their own beer, who ice-climbed and rock-climbed and slack-lined, who never seemed to have any money but had everything else in the world in a sun-tanned palm, who carried it easily, knowing they weren't special but that they were lucky. For the first time in my life, I looked up to my peers and tried not to idolize them.
When my mom was twenty or so, she forged her papers and took a broken-down helicopter to climb 7000 metre peaks in Central Asia. I am running out of time and so I'll take the Greyhound trips to everywhere and nowhere and anywhere. They're worth it all.
Spring is here and summer is unfolding and life is and will be fantastic I believe it will.
And then, you know Jack Kerouac somehow somewhere unsustainably crazily was right:
See the whole thing is a world full of rucksack wanderers, Dharma Bums refusing to subscribe to the general demand that they consume production and therefore have to work for the privilege of consuming, all that crap they didn’t really want anyway such as refrigerators, TV sets, cars, …all of them imprisoned in a system of work, produce, consume, work, produce, consume, I see a vision of a great rucksack revolution thousands or even millions of young Americans wandering around with rucksacks, going up to mountains to pray, making children laugh and old men glad, making young girls happy and old girls happier, all of ‘em Zen Lunatics who go about writing poems that happen to appear in their heads for no reason and also by being kind and also by strange unexpected acts keep giving visions of eternal freedom to everybody and to all living creatures.
27.3.09
More and more things to be happy about!
This blog is turning into one of those really sappy stupid ones that talk about how you are my angel and angels give you wings (or is that redbull?) But anyway, I'm not really a person for whom happiness comes totally naturally, but despite that I am a person who is very, very happy a lot.
Things to be happy about these days:
-the loonie ($1 coin) I found that has TERRY FOX on it!
-Terry Fox
-springtime, of course
-longboards
-monogamy in the face of the college lifestyle
-Quebecois and their laughable, adorable, probably well-meaning insecurity.
-girl talk about vibrators and boys and scarves
-winning an election, even if one was running unopposed
-purple and grey fleeces
-the underlying patterns
-skiwaxing
-birkenstocks
-clean hair
-hugs
-true friends
A friend I know is going through a very cathartic period right now - for the first time in his life, he was dumped by his lover and he's fairly miserable. From the depths of his misery, however, he still speaks really fast and excitedly about the world and the Won Buddhist state of being. Less than 24 hours after being rejected, he said:
"You know, objectively, this is the worst I've ever felt in my life. And you know what? I'm learning. This catharsis is SO WORTH IT."
Impressive.
Things to be happy about these days:
-the loonie ($1 coin) I found that has TERRY FOX on it!
-Terry Fox
-springtime, of course
-longboards
-monogamy in the face of the college lifestyle
-Quebecois and their laughable, adorable, probably well-meaning insecurity.
-girl talk about vibrators and boys and scarves
-winning an election, even if one was running unopposed
-purple and grey fleeces
-the underlying patterns
-skiwaxing
-birkenstocks
-clean hair
-hugs
-true friends
A friend I know is going through a very cathartic period right now - for the first time in his life, he was dumped by his lover and he's fairly miserable. From the depths of his misery, however, he still speaks really fast and excitedly about the world and the Won Buddhist state of being. Less than 24 hours after being rejected, he said:
"You know, objectively, this is the worst I've ever felt in my life. And you know what? I'm learning. This catharsis is SO WORTH IT."
Impressive.
20.3.09
I took a four hour warm-cat curlyhaired nap today
Instead of going for a six mile run and it was beautiful.
There are people out there who have won TWO Nobel prizes. Winning just one seems pretty crazy to me, but the world's a crazy place.
There are people out there who have won TWO Nobel prizes. Winning just one seems pretty crazy to me, but the world's a crazy place.
17.3.09
Dear Google,
These were the sponsored links on the sidebar of my emails:
What Will Make You Happy?
27 Facts You Don't Know About Your Personality and Future. But Should!
www.Numerologist.com/happiness
Happiness Philosophy
Self-help secret formula to objective happiness
ObjectiveHappiness.com
How To Keep A Man In Love
Learn The "Secret Psychology" To Getting A Man Hooked For Good
CatchHimAndKeepHim.com
You've Seen "The Secret"
Now Turn It Into A Huge Income Using Our Simple, Proven System
www.Best-Kind-of-Life.com
How to Be Happy
"How to Be Happy and Have Fun Changing the World" Free e-Book
HowToBeHappy.org
My life, my love, and my small, insignificantly glorious existence is none of your business. But please, nevertheless, ravage my inbox. Read my journals. Track me on Facebook and read this blog. Rape my chat history, my search history, every photo I've ever taken, every iTunes track I've ever listened to and every debit card payment I've ever made. Find them all, study them, and then market to me. Go ahead! Try as you might, your automaton machines can scan everything there is to see or hear or feel about me, and still you won't get it. You can't have me. You can't sell me happiness and you can't take it away. Because I'm happy because the snow is melting and the sun is shining and I'm eighteen years old and in love with life. I win, and I will always win. And with that, I respectfully request that you go fuck yourself.
What Will Make You Happy?
27 Facts You Don't Know About Your Personality and Future. But Should!
www.Numerologist.com/happiness
Happiness Philosophy
Self-help secret formula to objective happiness
ObjectiveHappiness.com
How To Keep A Man In Love
Learn The "Secret Psychology" To Getting A Man Hooked For Good
CatchHimAndKeepHim.com
You've Seen "The Secret"
Now Turn It Into A Huge Income Using Our Simple, Proven System
www.Best-Kind-of-Life.com
How to Be Happy
"How to Be Happy and Have Fun Changing the World" Free e-Book
HowToBeHappy.org
My life, my love, and my small, insignificantly glorious existence is none of your business. But please, nevertheless, ravage my inbox. Read my journals. Track me on Facebook and read this blog. Rape my chat history, my search history, every photo I've ever taken, every iTunes track I've ever listened to and every debit card payment I've ever made. Find them all, study them, and then market to me. Go ahead! Try as you might, your automaton machines can scan everything there is to see or hear or feel about me, and still you won't get it. You can't have me. You can't sell me happiness and you can't take it away. Because I'm happy because the snow is melting and the sun is shining and I'm eighteen years old and in love with life. I win, and I will always win. And with that, I respectfully request that you go fuck yourself.
9.3.09
"An escalator can never break: it can only become stairs.
You would never see an Escalator Temporarily Out Of Order sign, just Escalator Temporarily Stairs. Sorry for the convenience.”
-Mitch Hedberg
I had a wonderful day today, and the best part was that it wasn't extraordinarily wonderful. It was a perfectly ordinary day, yet here I am very happy. Just little things - getting my work done, going for a ski, having pleasant conversations with a cousin who I haven't talked to in some time, enjoying a free vegan meal, watching twenty minutes of star wars, getting the best kind of yogurt in my caf yogurt pack, thinking of the above quote when I saw the building escalator out of order.
I remember a day a year or so ago when I woke up under my quilt to light streaming into my room and an odd song from the college radio station playing on my alarm. It was funny, because I realized that at that moment, despite no victories being won, not being in love, not having done exceptionally well on anything, in fact no great reason to be incandescently happy presenting itself, it was not possible for a human being to be happier than I was at that moment. It went away in about five minutes, and i continued feeling regularly happy for the rest of the morning.
I have chunks of big happiness - paddling waterfalls and finding real friends, falling in love and skiing and seeing the big world and eudaimonia and sitting around fires and listening to old songs and feeling like the whole universe is careening madly toward an e.e. cummings poem. But it's nice to know that there are little happinesses too, and that a simple, routine day can make me happy.
I never found that song. I tried googling the lyric fragments. It didn't work. Maybe that's for the best.
-Mitch Hedberg
I had a wonderful day today, and the best part was that it wasn't extraordinarily wonderful. It was a perfectly ordinary day, yet here I am very happy. Just little things - getting my work done, going for a ski, having pleasant conversations with a cousin who I haven't talked to in some time, enjoying a free vegan meal, watching twenty minutes of star wars, getting the best kind of yogurt in my caf yogurt pack, thinking of the above quote when I saw the building escalator out of order.
I remember a day a year or so ago when I woke up under my quilt to light streaming into my room and an odd song from the college radio station playing on my alarm. It was funny, because I realized that at that moment, despite no victories being won, not being in love, not having done exceptionally well on anything, in fact no great reason to be incandescently happy presenting itself, it was not possible for a human being to be happier than I was at that moment. It went away in about five minutes, and i continued feeling regularly happy for the rest of the morning.
I have chunks of big happiness - paddling waterfalls and finding real friends, falling in love and skiing and seeing the big world and eudaimonia and sitting around fires and listening to old songs and feeling like the whole universe is careening madly toward an e.e. cummings poem. But it's nice to know that there are little happinesses too, and that a simple, routine day can make me happy.
I never found that song. I tried googling the lyric fragments. It didn't work. Maybe that's for the best.
5.3.09
More Things To Be Happy About
-Sunshine
-The reason why the Science Library Building is covered in fancy-looking brick (it has to do with radioactivity and the experiments of Rutherford!)
-A girl's button - Je te dig
-Clean hair
-Dirty hair that sticks up in a mohawk all on its own
-sleeping naked
-situps
-the alphabet
-the general grunginess of the School of Environment and Geography department kids
-Nalgene bottles
-Mountain goats
-Legwarmers
-puppies!
-the view from the geography library
-chocolate chip cookies
-Aztec Two-Step: "The Persecution and Restoration of Dean Moriarity (On the Road)"
-really good apples
-restoration of maritorelational bliss of those in one's immediate vicinity
-really good conversations
-an overuse of your mom jokes
-this website from the US Department of Transportation: http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/infrastructure/roadsong.cfm#l10s005
-Beth Rodden
-girls from Alaska who share a Chris Sharma obsession
-The reason why the Science Library Building is covered in fancy-looking brick (it has to do with radioactivity and the experiments of Rutherford!)
-A girl's button - Je te dig
-Clean hair
-Dirty hair that sticks up in a mohawk all on its own
-sleeping naked
-situps
-the alphabet
-the general grunginess of the School of Environment and Geography department kids
-Nalgene bottles
-Mountain goats
-Legwarmers
-puppies!
-the view from the geography library
-chocolate chip cookies
-Aztec Two-Step: "The Persecution and Restoration of Dean Moriarity (On the Road)"
-really good apples
-restoration of maritorelational bliss of those in one's immediate vicinity
-really good conversations
-an overuse of your mom jokes
-this website from the US Department of Transportation: http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/infrastructure/roadsong.cfm#l10s005
-Beth Rodden
-girls from Alaska who share a Chris Sharma obsession
3.3.09
Coping Mechanisms, LOL
What do you do when you have intimidating liasons with several national governments, an impending glacial hydrology paper that is way out of your league, a startlingly bad grasp of basic physics and residual class-consciousness bullshit frustration?
YOU LOOK AT PICTURES OF HEDGEHOGS TAKING BATHS!
Well, I look at pictures of hedgehogs taking baths.
I should be very stressed right now, but I'm actually surprisingly happy. My problems are trivial! And somewhere, in the world, a hedgehog is taking a bath! Lolerskates! Roflcopter! Whee!
No worries, man.
(image courtesy of cuteoverload.com, a great place to look for solace on the web)
YOU LOOK AT PICTURES OF HEDGEHOGS TAKING BATHS!
Well, I look at pictures of hedgehogs taking baths.
I should be very stressed right now, but I'm actually surprisingly happy. My problems are trivial! And somewhere, in the world, a hedgehog is taking a bath! Lolerskates! Roflcopter! Whee!
No worries, man.
(image courtesy of cuteoverload.com, a great place to look for solace on the web)
2.3.09
If somebody yells out "hey, stop, drop, and roll!", say that might save my skin but it won't save my soul
-tattooed on a girl's wrist.
February was adventurous. March will get my act remotely together.
"Imagine winning an artistic revolution on the moon, taking over from Nazis and bringing peace and love and fish to everyone. And then having great sex. That is Mardi Gras."
-my friend, who hitchhiked there against the will of American border security.
February was adventurous. March will get my act remotely together.
"Imagine winning an artistic revolution on the moon, taking over from Nazis and bringing peace and love and fish to everyone. And then having great sex. That is Mardi Gras."
-my friend, who hitchhiked there against the will of American border security.
25.2.09
Living in
Manchester, England England
Across the Atlantic Sea
Sixties England has a strange attraction much talked about. Though I never understood the screaming JohnandPaulandGeorge (because honestly, Ringo?) worshippers in sold out concert halls of days of yore, there is something about those people and that time and older England in general - the Stones, the Beatles, Donovan, the flurry of minidresses and long hair and technicolour and black and white press photos. Many biographers have discussed it better than I can, but I can appreciate its presence.
We live in a time removed from that one in possibility and attitude. We have our own heroes, more individual perhaps but still there - bike messengers and Michael Franti, Kimya Dawson and Chris Sharma. We can't live in the past, but it's still a beautiful refuge.
Over and out.
Across the Atlantic Sea
Sixties England has a strange attraction much talked about. Though I never understood the screaming JohnandPaulandGeorge (because honestly, Ringo?) worshippers in sold out concert halls of days of yore, there is something about those people and that time and older England in general - the Stones, the Beatles, Donovan, the flurry of minidresses and long hair and technicolour and black and white press photos. Many biographers have discussed it better than I can, but I can appreciate its presence.
We live in a time removed from that one in possibility and attitude. We have our own heroes, more individual perhaps but still there - bike messengers and Michael Franti, Kimya Dawson and Chris Sharma. We can't live in the past, but it's still a beautiful refuge.
Over and out.
24.2.09
Homeward Ho!, For it's Warmer than the Yukon
Long bus rides evoke a sense of movement and it doesn't really matter where to. Nighttime spins around and Bob Dylan's offbeat, off-pitch voice seems vaguely, though falsely resonant. I forget my jacket and remember once more not to underestimate Canadian winters. The border control man is suspicious of me. It's his job to be suspicious, even at three in the morning when I am usually absurdist, desperate, gloriously happy or asleep. I try to look non-threatening. When we clamber back on I note that David, the two-year old who already speaks more French than I do ("Quoi, papa?") is being both sticky and loud, but it only subliminally registers. I think drowsily of Sunday night and guitar strums I heard once, long ago, around the fire that I can't go back to. It takes me a long time to notice that the bus isn't moving, but I don't care. Two hours of stop-motion jerkiness and the black New York bus driver with perfectly round John Lennon glasses appraises the situation in a dry drawl. I don't care. I know many people would be nervous or anxious or irritated at this delay. My younger self would, but I don't care. I sleep and dream of Central Asia sand.
It's morning. We've moved a bit. We are now on a desolate and disconsolate shoulder on a stretch of highway and stuck again. The brakes are frozen. I abandon my seat up front with David and his mother and go hang out with the two New Zealand girls I know. We play the "guess the capital" game. I realize how much my geographical knowledge has deteriorated since seventh grade.
Two hours later the bus suddenly unfreezes. With a disaffected shrug, the bus driver fires 'er up and we roll on out to Albany.
From Albany to New York the suburban stripped sprawl hits. The signs advertising a better life through a better car, a better vodka, a better toothpaste, a better condom. The fast-food, quick and easy simple worthless satisfactions, the millions of closeted lives. I feel sick and sad. All of it imposes, impinges, attacks - the surreal airbrushed longhaired figurine woman who represents an ideal I feel wrong for not desiring, the dirtiness of the broken-down station bathroom, the people who just seem so crass and impatient all the time - "I ain't got no change for no twenty." I want to curl up in a corner and block it all out, but a small part of me is glad I can still feel strongly about something.
We roll into Port Authority five hours after schedule and New York hits all of a sudden. It's overwhelming and we try not to act less like tourists and more like cool indie kids from Montreal with giant climber packs. Because that's what we are. Clearly.
We walk forty blocks down to Chinatown. It's a long trek through the sunlight. I'm wearing only a flannel shirt and a short skirt, and my leggings and legwarmers are too warm for this weather. It's an odd feeling - the feeling of being too warm for the weather. The total absence of snow. We stop in a bakery place. It turns to be a goldmine of cheap delights, disguisting pies and almond bubble tea. We arrive in the heart of Chinatown. Everything is very crowded, pressing, confusing. Everyone seems to be advertising everything, including the harried little woman with the sign and unintelligible accent. She demands ten dollars from us and points us around the corner, where a bus lies in waiting discreetly and unpretentiously. Within five minutes it leaves and spirits us to Philadelphia without the merest of hiccups. And then it's the SEPTA home, the same train I always took to shows at the Trocadero or the Art Museum or the Ritz theatre.
I walk down the streets around my house. They're still the same. Nothing has changed here in the little time that I've been gone. I take the key from its spot and unlock the door. The house is cold and clean. It doesn't change either, on the surface. I throw down my pack and make a mess and ravenously consume whatever's in the fridge, knowing I now have all of the time in the world. Fifteen minutes later the phone rings.
"You have a collect call from..."
The next word is said with so much happiness, so much ebullience, so much laughter at the general state of the world that I can't help but smile into the phone. Suddenly there's no time again.
It's morning. We've moved a bit. We are now on a desolate and disconsolate shoulder on a stretch of highway and stuck again. The brakes are frozen. I abandon my seat up front with David and his mother and go hang out with the two New Zealand girls I know. We play the "guess the capital" game. I realize how much my geographical knowledge has deteriorated since seventh grade.
Two hours later the bus suddenly unfreezes. With a disaffected shrug, the bus driver fires 'er up and we roll on out to Albany.
From Albany to New York the suburban stripped sprawl hits. The signs advertising a better life through a better car, a better vodka, a better toothpaste, a better condom. The fast-food, quick and easy simple worthless satisfactions, the millions of closeted lives. I feel sick and sad. All of it imposes, impinges, attacks - the surreal airbrushed longhaired figurine woman who represents an ideal I feel wrong for not desiring, the dirtiness of the broken-down station bathroom, the people who just seem so crass and impatient all the time - "I ain't got no change for no twenty." I want to curl up in a corner and block it all out, but a small part of me is glad I can still feel strongly about something.
We roll into Port Authority five hours after schedule and New York hits all of a sudden. It's overwhelming and we try not to act less like tourists and more like cool indie kids from Montreal with giant climber packs. Because that's what we are. Clearly.
We walk forty blocks down to Chinatown. It's a long trek through the sunlight. I'm wearing only a flannel shirt and a short skirt, and my leggings and legwarmers are too warm for this weather. It's an odd feeling - the feeling of being too warm for the weather. The total absence of snow. We stop in a bakery place. It turns to be a goldmine of cheap delights, disguisting pies and almond bubble tea. We arrive in the heart of Chinatown. Everything is very crowded, pressing, confusing. Everyone seems to be advertising everything, including the harried little woman with the sign and unintelligible accent. She demands ten dollars from us and points us around the corner, where a bus lies in waiting discreetly and unpretentiously. Within five minutes it leaves and spirits us to Philadelphia without the merest of hiccups. And then it's the SEPTA home, the same train I always took to shows at the Trocadero or the Art Museum or the Ritz theatre.
I walk down the streets around my house. They're still the same. Nothing has changed here in the little time that I've been gone. I take the key from its spot and unlock the door. The house is cold and clean. It doesn't change either, on the surface. I throw down my pack and make a mess and ravenously consume whatever's in the fridge, knowing I now have all of the time in the world. Fifteen minutes later the phone rings.
"You have a collect call from..."
The next word is said with so much happiness, so much ebullience, so much laughter at the general state of the world that I can't help but smile into the phone. Suddenly there's no time again.
19.2.09
Post 101! A softer world.
Adventures abound I suppose, but mine have been small of late.
I do laundry.
I try to conjugate the word "faire" in French.
I'm cantankerous.
I read the Czech news and marvel about how little effect it has on my life.
I watch the snow fall and hear it crash off the roofs.
I eat molasses cookies.
I plot with hippies about how to create a humanity that runs on photosynthesis and nutella.
I get strong.
I watch my roommate shake her butt at me.
I pick my nose.
I listen to this song:
and let its ebullience let me fall in love with life
I discover a webcomic called "A softer world" and enjoy with impunity a sort of kitcshiness that was always gently scorned in my direct, pragmatic, dryly witty childhood home.
This is England, this is how we feel.
I do laundry.
I try to conjugate the word "faire" in French.
I'm cantankerous.
I read the Czech news and marvel about how little effect it has on my life.
I watch the snow fall and hear it crash off the roofs.
I eat molasses cookies.
I plot with hippies about how to create a humanity that runs on photosynthesis and nutella.
I get strong.
I watch my roommate shake her butt at me.
I pick my nose.
I listen to this song:
and let its ebullience let me fall in love with life
I discover a webcomic called "A softer world" and enjoy with impunity a sort of kitcshiness that was always gently scorned in my direct, pragmatic, dryly witty childhood home.
This is England, this is how we feel.
17.2.09
On a clear day
happiness can be found in a pair of old skates, a free rink on the mountain where they play old french songs and a mexican-quebecois flirts with you in the cutest way possible, leading to a language barrier as you discover that you no longer speak spanish and never learnt french. In skating alone, remembering the crossover and rediscovering that you have no use for a hockey stop. In watching a long line of hassidic jew children run/march/teeter along the side of the lake, chaperoned by tutors who speak in a very proud anglophone. Sometimes one of the children slips off the edge onto the ice, and even though it's a little mean I grin because they remind me of a line of marching penguins with a clumsy waddler here and there. In understanding snippets of French. In daydreaming as you skate. In a beloved pair of climbing pants worn skating. In running errands literally, dodging the crowds and venturing in climbing pants into stores where it is really not acceptable to wear climbing pants. In the slightly melting snow, saddening but yet somehow joyful.
The past few days have held only benign adventures, but life can't always be a whirlwind of excitement.
The past few days have held only benign adventures, but life can't always be a whirlwind of excitement.
15.2.09
A woman happily in love, she burns the soufflé. A woman unhappily in love, she forgets to turn on the oven.
The bars of Saint-Laurent are teeming with life every night, but Valentine's day is especially popular if one wants either to grope in public or moon on about how said significant other is soo perfect for them, or, if worst comes to worst, go the cheap hookup route that seems to be everpresent in university.
My compatriots and I visited the Jupiter Room with none of the aforementioned aims. The Jupiter Room is a small bar that thrives on being retro, but I quite like it. The music is old, the lightshow is ethereal, and there is a distinct lack of wanton ass-grabbing. Audrey Hepburn's Sabrina is playing silently on the televisions behind the bar. There are only a few patrons, there is a lack of the swelling sweaty crowds that frequent the more popular clubs. The entire place glows with a dim red light. Though the bartenders apparently can't make a proper martini (my Alaskan climber bartender friend was most disappointed), it's the perfect place to go dance to the songs of yesteryear and pretend to be sixies and fabulous.
I don't know why most clubs today don't resonate with me. I don't like bopping sweatily to the lyrics of "bitches in the club" and being mean to the drunken guys who try to grab me. I find the whole scene fake and somehow hollow. I don't know if this inhibits my ability to have a "good time" by conventional standards, but I can't internally justify to myself getting hammered beyond the point of cognition, dressing in the same low top as every other girl in the room, meshing body parts with strangers and hoping to get some. The possibity certainly presents itself that I am a frigid bitch, but that's the thing - I really, really like dancing. Maybe that's why I like funk concerts and half-empty dancefloors instead of the teeming humanity of places like Krush and Metropolis.
I realize now that when my children ask me what it was like in the days of Kanye and Rihanna, I won't be able to tell them. Instead, I'll say, "Well, I climbed a lot and skied a lot and danced to The Who." And maybe they'll do the same.
I also witnessed my good friends Max and Leon get engaged for québecois tax reasos. That story can be read here, for those not faint of heart or tongue.
I rather like life.
My compatriots and I visited the Jupiter Room with none of the aforementioned aims. The Jupiter Room is a small bar that thrives on being retro, but I quite like it. The music is old, the lightshow is ethereal, and there is a distinct lack of wanton ass-grabbing. Audrey Hepburn's Sabrina is playing silently on the televisions behind the bar. There are only a few patrons, there is a lack of the swelling sweaty crowds that frequent the more popular clubs. The entire place glows with a dim red light. Though the bartenders apparently can't make a proper martini (my Alaskan climber bartender friend was most disappointed), it's the perfect place to go dance to the songs of yesteryear and pretend to be sixies and fabulous.
I don't know why most clubs today don't resonate with me. I don't like bopping sweatily to the lyrics of "bitches in the club" and being mean to the drunken guys who try to grab me. I find the whole scene fake and somehow hollow. I don't know if this inhibits my ability to have a "good time" by conventional standards, but I can't internally justify to myself getting hammered beyond the point of cognition, dressing in the same low top as every other girl in the room, meshing body parts with strangers and hoping to get some. The possibity certainly presents itself that I am a frigid bitch, but that's the thing - I really, really like dancing. Maybe that's why I like funk concerts and half-empty dancefloors instead of the teeming humanity of places like Krush and Metropolis.
I realize now that when my children ask me what it was like in the days of Kanye and Rihanna, I won't be able to tell them. Instead, I'll say, "Well, I climbed a lot and skied a lot and danced to The Who." And maybe they'll do the same.
I also witnessed my good friends Max and Leon get engaged for québecois tax reasos. That story can be read here, for those not faint of heart or tongue.
I rather like life.
14.2.09
Adventures, various:
I haven't been a very good adventurer this week. I've been tired and sleepy and impetus-lacking. I've decided that I'm not skiing again until I feel like it, which is a decision I wouldn't make in high school but will make in university because I can.
Pseudo-adventures:
-Wandering around a rainy mountain in complete solitude, discovering a stranger's letter to the universe left on a park bench.
-Attending a friend's Valentine's day jazz band concert at Grumpy's pub and simultaneously developing a girlcrush on both his roommates.
-Giving people lit candles at an impromptu ice cream party.
-Going to the vegan kitchen and eating a delicious tupperware meal in complete darkness.
-Watching my friend's band play Beatles songs at the Engineering Pub and marveling at the number of attractive girls there for Valentine's day (normally the engineering pub is a shithole with a female:male ratio of about 1:9.)
-Completely acing two job interviews in one day, being told I had "exactly the type of background they were looking for"
-Discovering an ice bar - an outdoor bar made of blocks of ice in downtown.
-Being verbally assaulted by a pair of used-looking blond girls in the back of a taxi. (My streak of feeling viciously better, cooler, prettier and generally far more awesome than certain blond girls continues)
-Brilliant flowers on a rainy day in February.
-The disturbing spike in free condom distribution around the fourteenth, and a subsequent story from my friend from ski team who started a condom collection at the age of twelve which grew to around 30 pieces. Several years later, after realizing her collection was expired and generally gross, she blew up all the condoms like balloons and left them around a friend's dorm.
Celebrate love, everyone.
Pseudo-adventures:
-Wandering around a rainy mountain in complete solitude, discovering a stranger's letter to the universe left on a park bench.
-Attending a friend's Valentine's day jazz band concert at Grumpy's pub and simultaneously developing a girlcrush on both his roommates.
-Giving people lit candles at an impromptu ice cream party.
-Going to the vegan kitchen and eating a delicious tupperware meal in complete darkness.
-Watching my friend's band play Beatles songs at the Engineering Pub and marveling at the number of attractive girls there for Valentine's day (normally the engineering pub is a shithole with a female:male ratio of about 1:9.)
-Completely acing two job interviews in one day, being told I had "exactly the type of background they were looking for"
-Discovering an ice bar - an outdoor bar made of blocks of ice in downtown.
-Being verbally assaulted by a pair of used-looking blond girls in the back of a taxi. (My streak of feeling viciously better, cooler, prettier and generally far more awesome than certain blond girls continues)
-Brilliant flowers on a rainy day in February.
-The disturbing spike in free condom distribution around the fourteenth, and a subsequent story from my friend from ski team who started a condom collection at the age of twelve which grew to around 30 pieces. Several years later, after realizing her collection was expired and generally gross, she blew up all the condoms like balloons and left them around a friend's dorm.
Celebrate love, everyone.
11.2.09
Adventure 7: The Odyssey
While waiting around for a job interview in the rain (it rains here sometimes, to add to the lovely weather patterns, and now that I take hydrology I always thing of ) I stumbled into an old used bookstore. I love old used bookstores. I love the informality, the mustiness, the random old photographs, the fact that it's all a mess. I had about thirty minutes to kill, so I browsed aimlessly.
I'm reminded of the days of summer Prague when I had nothing to do but explore the world. I'd go in and out of secondhand book stores and buy up old stories and poetry books and translate lyric poets. I like new books too, but I love the yellow nostalgia of old ones far more. I grew up with stories meant for boys in the 1930's and though it gave me an anachronistic view of life for the first bit, I miss them. When I go home, I'll spend time in front of a fire reading and reminiscing and loving life.
Anyway, these establishments are run by anachronistic people. I could easily see myself being an antique bookstore owner. I bought a book about a guy who did diplomatic and spy work in Central Asia in the thirties and it's the most adventurous, funny, interesting narrative I've ever read. The shop owner talked to me excitedly about how soldiers in India in the 1890s still wore plate armour and carried swords.
Fuck television. Long live old books.
I'm reminded of the days of summer Prague when I had nothing to do but explore the world. I'd go in and out of secondhand book stores and buy up old stories and poetry books and translate lyric poets. I like new books too, but I love the yellow nostalgia of old ones far more. I grew up with stories meant for boys in the 1930's and though it gave me an anachronistic view of life for the first bit, I miss them. When I go home, I'll spend time in front of a fire reading and reminiscing and loving life.
Anyway, these establishments are run by anachronistic people. I could easily see myself being an antique bookstore owner. I bought a book about a guy who did diplomatic and spy work in Central Asia in the thirties and it's the most adventurous, funny, interesting narrative I've ever read. The shop owner talked to me excitedly about how soldiers in India in the 1890s still wore plate armour and carried swords.
Fuck television. Long live old books.
9.2.09
Adventure 6: Canada's really big
The reason I'm behind on adventure posting is an excellent one - I've been having what ended up being one of the bigger adventures of my life to date and consequently can't actually walk.
This weekend I skied the Canadian Ski Marathon. The Canadian Ski Marathon is a 160.4 kilometer ski over two days. It's a point to point tour over hills and plains and woods and farmland. It's beautiful. It's also cold, hard, and long. Ski conditions were slow and headwinds were high, but forests were still and wild and beautiful and the farmland was picturesque (although at points discouraging when one looked across the expanse of Canada and saw the long line of skiers ahead and behind and realized that there were about 56 more kilometers to ski that day, 43 of which had to be skied at a fast pace to make the time limit).
Highlights of the weekend:
-Waking up at five thirty in the morning in a high school classroom to Albertan country music. Sample lyrics:
The Chev got stuck and the Ford got stuck
But the Chev unstuck when the Dodge showed up
But the Dodge got stuck in the tractor rut,
Which eventually pulled out the Ford
With some difficulty
(Full lyrics here)
-Rest stations. I have never been that excited to see chocolate-covered peanuts in my entire life.
-Having my ski bindings fail 15km into the first day. I hereby raise a hearty middle finger to Salomon, the makers of a ski binding that inevitably always breaks down when exposed to snow and/or cold condtions.
-Being served honey water by the Canadian army. I have a rather high opinion of the Canadian army now.
-Being passed by a team of 55 to 75 year old men (they were really cool, two of them had represented the US at the 1968, 1972 and 1976 Olympics)
-Talking about how Emil Zatopek was our personal hero with one of those old men on section six when wax was failing and it seemed highly unlikely that we'd make time limit.
-The long sections of beauty.
-The brutal five kilometer downhill where I fell three times at high speeds.
-The songs stuck in my head: Canada's Really Big, The Barack Obama song, FC Slavia's anthem, aforementioned Albertan Country, lots and lots of Czech folk, songs from Hair and songs from Rent
-team camaraderie and the friendship shared by people who do things like these
-standing on top of the podium with a bunch of guys as the only girl who finished in the shortened limit time. I shouldn't be cocky, but it was a really nice feeling.
-Seeing all the people who were doing CSM Gold - skiing 160 km with a 20 pound backpack and sleeping outside in the Canadian winter in a bale of hay. A lot of them were about 60. I want to be that cool when I'm 60.
-post-race delirium - I literally didn't know what was going on around me and wanted to melt into solid objects
-the showers running out of hot water, resulting in a cold shower post 80km of skiing in the cold
Right now it's difficult to so much as put on pants, so I'm giving myself a break from adventures until Wednesday. I think adventures were had for the time being. I also pulled an all-nighter last night writing a hydrology analysis. All I want is chocolate and sleep.
This weekend I skied the Canadian Ski Marathon. The Canadian Ski Marathon is a 160.4 kilometer ski over two days. It's a point to point tour over hills and plains and woods and farmland. It's beautiful. It's also cold, hard, and long. Ski conditions were slow and headwinds were high, but forests were still and wild and beautiful and the farmland was picturesque (although at points discouraging when one looked across the expanse of Canada and saw the long line of skiers ahead and behind and realized that there were about 56 more kilometers to ski that day, 43 of which had to be skied at a fast pace to make the time limit).
Highlights of the weekend:
-Waking up at five thirty in the morning in a high school classroom to Albertan country music. Sample lyrics:
The Chev got stuck and the Ford got stuck
But the Chev unstuck when the Dodge showed up
But the Dodge got stuck in the tractor rut,
Which eventually pulled out the Ford
With some difficulty
(Full lyrics here)
-Rest stations. I have never been that excited to see chocolate-covered peanuts in my entire life.
-Having my ski bindings fail 15km into the first day. I hereby raise a hearty middle finger to Salomon, the makers of a ski binding that inevitably always breaks down when exposed to snow and/or cold condtions.
-Being served honey water by the Canadian army. I have a rather high opinion of the Canadian army now.
-Being passed by a team of 55 to 75 year old men (they were really cool, two of them had represented the US at the 1968, 1972 and 1976 Olympics)
-Talking about how Emil Zatopek was our personal hero with one of those old men on section six when wax was failing and it seemed highly unlikely that we'd make time limit.
-The long sections of beauty.
-The brutal five kilometer downhill where I fell three times at high speeds.
-The songs stuck in my head: Canada's Really Big, The Barack Obama song, FC Slavia's anthem, aforementioned Albertan Country, lots and lots of Czech folk, songs from Hair and songs from Rent
-team camaraderie and the friendship shared by people who do things like these
-standing on top of the podium with a bunch of guys as the only girl who finished in the shortened limit time. I shouldn't be cocky, but it was a really nice feeling.
-Seeing all the people who were doing CSM Gold - skiing 160 km with a 20 pound backpack and sleeping outside in the Canadian winter in a bale of hay. A lot of them were about 60. I want to be that cool when I'm 60.
-post-race delirium - I literally didn't know what was going on around me and wanted to melt into solid objects
-the showers running out of hot water, resulting in a cold shower post 80km of skiing in the cold
Right now it's difficult to so much as put on pants, so I'm giving myself a break from adventures until Wednesday. I think adventures were had for the time being. I also pulled an all-nighter last night writing a hydrology analysis. All I want is chocolate and sleep.
5.2.09
Adventure! 5 - Lost in the Village
We were going to a movie premiere of Polytechnique, which I scored free tickets to from a random newspaper reporter while waiting in line for HAIR tickets (HAIR is awesome, by the way, despite or perhaps because of a lacklustre plot and odd songs), but we went the wrong way on the metro and ended up in the Village. The village is colourful, happy, and utterly non-threatening. My (awesome, bisexual, dating a French/British rugby player) roommate and I held hands and wandered through various fetish shops, trying to decide whether or not to get our boyfriends pink sequined man thongs. This impromptu excursion was followed my croissants at a cafebar whose proprietor fixed my french accent and offered us free baklava when we sat there for two hours.
[post a heartfelt and prolonged goodbye from the cafebar owner]
Roommate (who is ridiculously, shockingly, mindnumbingly stunning): I always feel awkward when guys are that nice to me.
Me: Taylor, honestly, no one is hitting on you! They were FLAMINGLY GAY! (loud enough for most of street to hear)
Random short fat black dude: Hey ladies, I'm looking for a girl myself right now. Naw, I'm just playing wit'chall! How ya doin'! You have yourself a good night now!
[post a heartfelt and prolonged goodbye from the cafebar owner]
Roommate (who is ridiculously, shockingly, mindnumbingly stunning): I always feel awkward when guys are that nice to me.
Me: Taylor, honestly, no one is hitting on you! They were FLAMINGLY GAY! (loud enough for most of street to hear)
Random short fat black dude: Hey ladies, I'm looking for a girl myself right now. Naw, I'm just playing wit'chall! How ya doin'! You have yourself a good night now!
4.2.09
Adventure? 4: A Compendium of Details
Again, I found myself hard-pressed to shatter the world with new discoveries today, but it wasn't a waste. Today I found a ginkgo leaf. A single golden uncrumpled leaf, spry as though it was October, lying on the icy pavement. No ginkgo trees grow in downtown campus, and in any case all the trees have been bare for months. It's tempting to make an analogy or write something pithy, but I won't.
I also explored the den of my residence. No one goes there, the place is deserted, and for whatever reason I had never been in it. My residence reminds me of my mental image of Ivy-league or prepschool housing during the fifties, and the den somehow hit me with a wave of nostalgia. There's an old, unused bar, record sleeves strewn about, a few old books, a foosball table, a musty smell. I feel sad and I don't know why. I feel for whatever reason that I was born into a matter-of-fact age.
Post-script.
I also explored the den of my residence. No one goes there, the place is deserted, and for whatever reason I had never been in it. My residence reminds me of my mental image of Ivy-league or prepschool housing during the fifties, and the den somehow hit me with a wave of nostalgia. There's an old, unused bar, record sleeves strewn about, a few old books, a foosball table, a musty smell. I feel sad and I don't know why. I feel for whatever reason that I was born into a matter-of-fact age.
Post-script.
3.2.09
Adventure 3: Interview
My day today was fairly lame, but this week is relatively stressful, and I have a rather scary weekend coming up, so I'm cutting myself some slack as far as fabulous adventures go. I had an interview today for a job I really want and I'm not entirely thrilled with how it turned out. Hopefully I'll get hired anyway, I tend to underestimate myself in these things and my credentials are very good. Either way, stressful. Stress is fun!
Adventure 2: Female to Femme
Last night after my midterm (which went surprisingly uncatastrophically, although I did get yelled at for not keeping my eyes on my own paper, which was because I was staring at the driver's license of the girl next to me and trying to determine what province she was from) I went to a screening of Female to Femme given by Queer McGill. It was an interesting experience - I'm pretty sure I was one of the only straight people in the room, and it was fun to watch my friends hit on each other in a distinctly girly way. The movie itself wasn't actually that good - it highlighted the struggle of femmes, which are lesbians who dress and look like straight girls, which is apparently a problem in the gay community because of a lack of identity and a bias against lesbian feminists who dress in a way that "submits to the patriarchy". Essentially it's a counter-countercultural problem, or a counter-subcultural problem, or a sub-subcultural problem, which is a niche that most people aren't used to thinking about. For someone like me, it seemed to dramatize a problem that was relatively small to begin with, but to be fair I've never really had to worry about this conundrum much. Either way, it was an interesting experience to be around people whose lifestyle and dynamics were so different from mine, and it was definitely less uncomfortable than the time when I went to a foodbank fundraiser with a local Christian group and they told me my acts of kindness were entirely meaningless because I didn't accept Jesus as my Lord and Saviour. Fun times.
1.2.09
Adventure 1: Federalists vs. Separatists
My goal to have an adventure every day was realized today with a decent game of capture the flag in two feet of snow. There were proper flags, Canadian and Quebecois, and lots of running and tackling. The separatists lost a lot, just like in real life! I wore running shoes to attempt to invest in speed by sacrificing warmth, which was a horrible idea because my feet got cold. Either way, memorable experience, success.
31.1.09
On to the unknown
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:
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:
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.
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