The Idea Girl

It is finished

2011-03-11T00:38:00.000-08:00

another 235 pages under my belt, under the bridge, safely tucked into my noggen, the old brain box. and that makes it done. i think i know enough to write these papers with what i've read. if i don't, that makes me a dummy, then i will keep revising my paper topics until i do. the topic will become smaller and smaller until i end up writing a list of things i ate today. with extensive footnotes.

is it sacreligious that i like using the phrase "it is finished" as often as I can? and when i type it, i like to say it out loud, just under my breath, and i add, "and with that, he breathed his last and gave up his spirit," even though those exact words are not in the Bible but are, rather, an amalgamation of multiple gospel-accounts of Jesus' death? so? is it sacrelig?

it's interesting to me how these words have become wrapped up in my way of being in the world. i can't escape the fact that my life has been soaked in words from the bible. i'm not trying to escape, but i think it's interesting to realize i couldn't even if i wanted to.

where've you been, Kirsten?

2011-03-10T00:14:00.002-08:00

i have, as of today, one book left to read for the two courses i am taking this semester apart from writing my thesis. I have read 10 books for one class, and 11 books for the other class, two of which were over 500 pages. I also read 7 journal articles which together are the page-number equivalent of one more book. Tomorrow, I will read the last one, making a total of 23 books. I have personal reading notes and critical analyses of each one of these books as a record of my toil.

23 books

Then there are the ~ 25 books I decimated - at least in part - during the second two weeks of January as part of my thesis work (something I've been neglecting shamefully of late).

25 books

My math skills aren't hot, but I think that's 48 books in 8.5 weeks which, according to my iphone, is 5.3 books per week.

48 books in 8.5 weeks

5.3 books per week

(Why does it feel like I read more than that? Maybe it feels like more than 5.3 books per week because reading Paul Ricoeur's Memory, History, Forgetting almost made me lose hope that a day would dawn when I would not be reading this book. Finishing it, handing in my reading notes and blessed critical analysis - 40 pages of sheer agony - was a moment of catharsis, before which moment I had almost lost belief in my own ability to comprehend the English language. The day I shut that book for the last time, they should have rung the church bells out in the valley, but no one told them what was happening and so the world spun madly, silently on.)

Oh there must be a point to all this.

yesterday i picked up the third last book from the library: Life Lived Like A Story. I read for the afternoon. I stopped and made supper. I picked up my brother and his gf and we all went to a coffee shop. I opened the book and had an almost visceral reaction. I think my body was rejecting the book. it would not read it. It just said, "No!" and tried to walk out the door before I ran and tackled it to the ground and wrestled it back into the chair. Mind over matter. Or will over mind and matter.

Continuing our journey back in time: the day before yesterday, I think I experienced eye strain for the first time in my life. The small muscles all around my eyes started to hurt. I couldn't focus them properly or find anything to look at where they didn't feel tired. I spent most of the evening talking to Esther with my eyes closed while simultaneously imagining what my life would be like if I went blind. In absence of other, sight-based, options, I decided I would be a modern day Milton. I'd have two daughters and attempt to keep them from living their own lives so that they could transcribe my words by candlelight while I dictated the twenty-first century equivalent of Paradise Lost, or something of the sort. Sounds fair, right? Young life sacrificed nobly for the arts?

only two days remain

2010-12-26T18:27:00.001-08:00

only two days remain before i change numbers again. i don't know if i care this year. thirty threw me. thirty-one threw me for a while too, but i've found other things to occupy my brain of late.
still, it's kind of a big deal to me. i'm not sure what type of big deal yet.

anyway, i'll have to figure out some way of marking it when it actually happens.
for now, i'll borrow someone else's words.

On Turning Ten - Billy Collins

The whole idea of it makes me feel
like I'm coming down with something,
something worse than any stomach ache
or the headaches I get from reading in bad light--
a kind of measles of the spirit,
a mumps of the psyche,
a disfiguring chicken pox of the soul.

You tell me it is too early to be looking back,
but that is because you have forgotten
the perfect simplicity of being one
and the beautiful complexity introduced by two.
But I can lie on my bed and remember every digit.
At four I was an Arabian wizard.
I could make myself invisible
by drinking a glass of milk a certain way.
At seven I was a soldier, at nine a prince.

But now I am mostly at the window
watching the late afternoon light.
Back then it never fell so solemnly
against the side of my tree house,
and my bicycle never leaned against the garage
as it does today,
all the dark blue speed drained out of it.

This is the beginning of sadness, I say to myself,
as I walk through the universe in my sneakers.
It is time to say good-bye to my imaginary friends,
time to turn the first big number.

It seems only yesterday I used to believe
there was nothing under my skin but light.
If you cut me I could shine.
But now when I fall upon the sidewalks of life,
I skin my knees. I bleed.

points.

2010-12-23T22:48:00.000-08:00

i don't know what to write here these days. here's some random stuff:
- the woman working security at the vancouver airport when i flew home was named dragana. her name suited her. she took away my yogurt after we had a brief (very brief) discussion about whether yogurt was a liquid or a gel (i deemed it neither, but how am i supposed to be able to argue effectively in that situation?) anyway, she could have been less of a beeotch about it.
- saskatoon is cold. i didn't leave the house for two and a half days after landing here, but i started to get prison pallor, so i ended up getting a ride from the house to a coffee shop.
- i have one semester left to complete of my masters. i think it will feel strange to finish. the past year and a half have gone so quickly but have been so intense.
- i am going to get an ordinary job next year. i don't know yet what i'll do. one thought that has occurred to me is bartending. it suits my regular 'awake' hours and i like chatting with people. but i'd want to work somewhere funky, so i think i'd need to go to school for that. the idea of taking a year off is to NOT do school. perhaps i am one of those perpetual students.
- christmas eve tomorrow. i don't feel very christmas-y yet. i've got about 16 hours to get in the mood.

hair

2010-12-06T14:03:00.001-08:00

my hair is shorter than it has ever been and i think i love it. i can hardly pinch any hair on the sides of my head. it's about a 3/4 of an inch at the front (only in order to allow my widow's peak to blend in instead of sticking up and out as grows)
the day after i got my hair cut, i worked on a paper at the library with a couple of classmates.
when one of the classmates arrived, she said, "i love your hair! you look like an 80s rocker."
i think, "80s rocker? excellent!"
then she goes on, "and a feminist."
i laugh.
she says, "that's not a bad thing."
and i said, "well, i guess i am a feminist in many ways. i just don't want to look 'butch.'"
"you don't look butch."
"well, good."

it was funny.
but i'm feeling the urge to go put on more makeup.

more moustache madness

2010-11-28T01:07:00.002-08:00

The time? 10:50 pm
The place? Dairy Queen on Denman.
The moustache? Dark brown pushbroom
The man behind the moustache? A gentleman of approximately 25 years of age.
The comment? "Hey beautiful."
The accompanying nonverbals? Eyebrow raise and ongoing nodding of the head.
The response? "Hey."
The accompanying nonverbal response? slightly furrowed brow while seeking to ascertain whether November 27s moustache man's comment was a response to a baseless belief in prior acquaintance. Absence of 'o-shit!-you're-not-who-i-thought-you-were' facial expression causes morphing of nonverbals into slight smile in response to the thought of having more supporting data for moustache theory.
The prognosis for the gentleman's full recovery following the conclusion of Movember? Doubtful.

The Side-effects of Movember

2010-11-26T23:24:00.003-08:00

It's been 26 days of concentration on above-the-lip facial hair for many males. I'm counting down until it's over. Four more days. I think I can make it.

I'm not opposed to moustaches. Indeed, they can be quite dapper (i think that's the perfect word to describe a moustache, and it most certainly should be since it was created specifically to describe moustaches. this is probably news to you, but the root word of dapper is dappled - this won't show up in your dictionary, though, because there's a conspiracy to hide this information. merriam-webster's online dictionary tells me dappled means "marked with small spots or patches contrasting with the background." As you see, a moustached face is a dappled face, but, obviously no man would stand to have his moustache compared with a small spot or patch. So the powers that be decided to just dump the l and replace the d with an r (as a silent homage to the word ridiculous which is a close relative of the word moustache. again, don't look for this in your regular dictionary) and there you have it: dapper and bob's also your uncle. fin)

the reason i can't wait for movember to end is because i think moustaches have a mysterious power over the men sporting them to modify regular behavior and make it something weird. it seems that, among some men, there's an assumption that a moustache makes them irresistible to women. perhaps this is what happened with someone like burt reynolds. could it be that the hair grows backwards as well as forwards, interfering with regular brain function and causing ordinary men to act in strange and unusual ways? i have data which suggests this may be the case.

wednesday: i'm sitting in on a class for undergrads being taught by one of my profs. it's a 200/300 level class, which means the students in it are likely 19 or 20. at one point, i accidentally met the eyes of a very young but amply moustachioed male member of the class and he winked at me and gave me a sly grin. what kind of grin? a sly grin. i look away thinking, first, he has no idea how much older i am than him and, second, that he is a truly unfortunate boy. his moustache has twirled its hair around his brain stem. how he must be suffering.

yesterday: i'm walking down mainstreet in the s.n.o.w. (why does winter have to come every year?) approaching fourteenth street, i hear the sound of a male voice saying, "gi-rr-lll." (i can't figure out how to render the sound in text. it was a verbal/oral equivalent of a whistle. should it be g-errr-lll?) i look to my left and the first thing i see is a thick moustache and i know i need look no further. he can not be held responsible for his actions (i didn't mind what he did, either, just to be clear. it's not insulting or invasive, just. . . perplexing. what did he think was going to happen? perhaps he was just practicing identifying individual's genders. or maybe g-errr-lll is the only word he knows. if it isn't the only word he knows, and supposing he was actually trying to attract my attention for realsies, he might want to consider choosing a few other words to pair with g-errr-lll and stringing them together into something like "g-errr-lll, you look like you're going to j.j. bean. can i buy you a coffee?" Is a sentence is too much? try a sentence fragment or two: "g-err-lll go j.j. bean? we go together?" if even a fragment is too much, two nouns would suffice to convey his essential meaning: "g-err-lll! j.j.bean! coffee?" of course, people say all kinds of things to people they're actually not interested in. i propose that, if your approval of someone's looks is unaccompanied by any desire to get to know them, you should just applaud.)

i digress. i suspect g-errr-lll-man is likely not even aware of what's happening to him right now. the mosutache is making all of his decisions at this point. the good news is that, in four more days, his friends and family will know if he's lost forever, or if he has a chance of recovery.

dear google readers

2010-11-24T16:44:00.000-08:00

oh the internet. i posted some earlier that was meant to go on a private blog. i think it was called 'reflections from wednesday's counselling appointment.' if you haven't read it, perhaps you might choose not to.
it's not horrible, but i didn't mean for it to be public knowledge.
here's to learning lessons!

ears

2010-11-24T15:50:00.001-08:00

i am working on a paper right now and listening to sufjan stevens' 'o come o come emmanuel' from volume 1 of his songs for christmas.
as i was typing, i had a flash of realization that this song actually feels good in my ears in a way that must be understood sensually. i'm not saying i 'like' the song, although i do, nor am i saying my earphones are comfortable, although they are. neither am i sliding over the edge of sanity into the abyss, in case you were wondering. what i'm saying is that the tones, the sounds of the song actually feel good. it's the weirdest feeling i've ever had in my ears.

my brother writes poetry

2010-11-23T21:42:00.000-08:00

you can check a couple of his poems here.

i am amazed by the number of quiet poets that weave their lives around mine. of course, i should acknowledge it is also possible they are not quiet, but i couldn't hear them until life pulled a pair of metaphysical earplugs from my ears.

church

2010-11-23T20:00:00.003-08:00

i went to church last night. it was not great. i went to what was described as a prayer service in the taize-style. i think taize-style at this church means lighting some candles. the rest of it was a typical anglican service. i like anglican services, so i was prepared to enjoy this even though it wasn't what i was expecting, but things started to spin off the axis from the get-go. first off, there were only four of us there. like stumbling into a regular anglican church service, this is not in itself a problem. it becomes problematic when you see there are two hymns in the service and four people present and you start anticipating how awkward it could be. when we got to the point of the first one, the person leading the service hit play on a cd player then began leading us in singing along to a cd (or, i should say, leading the other three people in singing along to a cd. i sat there and reflected on the decisions which led us all to that particular moment and place in history). things got worse when the cd started to skip and kept skipping until it stopped. the leader restarted it (horror!) and we, or rather they, began again only to repeat the same process. at this point, the leader suggested we just read the words of the hymn and my skin stopped crawling.

when we got to the second hymn, i thought maybe she'd be gun-shy and forgo trying to lead us in singing, but she didn't. it was an adapted version of "great is they faithfulness." i'm not anti-adaptation by any means, but this person had really gone to town with the melody and rhythm of the song. nice as a performance piece, but more awkward when someone attempts to use it as a musical base for a teeny-tiny, shy choir. needless to say, it was awkward but i survived and concluded that empirical data indicates i maintain a sensitivity to bad musical experiences. i can assume that only a powerful encounter with something transcendent could have overcome that sensitivity in that moment.

Bialoszewski

2010-11-18T00:28:00.000-08:00

Polish poetry following WWII was marked by a search for something, anything, stable after an experience of profound disintegration. This poem brought a tear to my left eye (of the two, ever the tearier).

A Ballad of Going Down to the Store

First I went down to the store
by means of the stairs,
just imagine it,
by means of the stairs.

Then people known to people unknown
passed me by and I passed them by.
Regret
that you did not see
how people walk,
regret!

I entered a complete store:
lamps of glass were glowing.
I saw somebody -- he sat down --
and what did I hear? What did I hear?
rustling of bags and human talk.

And indeed,
indeed
I returned.

the word 'cacozealous' is just looking for a home

2010-11-13T00:34:00.001-08:00

could there be a more wonderful idea that this?
there's something about this that feels like the cabbage patch kids to me: xavier roberts climbing throgh the bramble bushes. peter pan and the lost boys. david and mephibosheth. annie - although i should confess i've never seen annie. this should come as no surprise to those who know me. it is, after all, a musical.
apparently, words need homes, too.
i am going to be a foster parent to a dozen.

kirsten is in some-nia where arrival at a point of 'some-nia' entails a difficulty with falling asleep, but not a total inability to do so

2010-11-10T16:40:00.005-08:00

i've never been an early-to-bed type, but my days are asking too much of my nights at this point. more specifically, my brain is taking advantage of my body by not shutting off at an appropriate time. or ever. i think it is why i fell down the stairs yesterday: my body's decision to stop listening to my mind's instructions about stair-navigation was its own way of resisting the mind's tyranny of the body. (those two may need a mediator, a person who i imagine would be something like a cross between a yoga instructor and a specialist in postcolonial history)

last night when i was still awake at 230, i had a really hot bath with eucalyptus bathsalts, breathed deeply of the eucalyptus-y fragrance until i got light-headed, and read visions from san francisco bay by czeslaw milosz. and i thought to myself, "kirsten, it could be worse."

i should have listened to my own warning because it did get worse a few hours later. what happened? nothing except what is common to man (where 'man' should be understood to imply 'humans'): some sun took advantage of my open blinds, slipped into my room and slapped my face. hard. then my alarm went off. in that moment of disorientation, with my cheek stinging and the sounds of a harp emanating from my phone telling me another day of dreadful fear and toil had come to Mordor, it would not be inaccurate to say i felt less than at peace in the world.

but the less sleep i'm getting, the more interesting are my thinkings. so there are compensations.

the b-side of the memory

2010-11-08T01:28:00.002-08:00

Someone asked for the other half of the story.
Once upon a time in a hot country called Brazil, a little girl - quite a cute little girl, you should know, who swam so much that her very blonde hair turned green - woke up in the middle of the night in a hotel room to see her dad adding a dresser to a stack of furniture he had already pushed against the door. While watching her paranoid father, the little girl decided everything would be okay because she and her family could escape over the edge of the balcony. Then she went back to sleep. If you asked the adult rendition of that little girl why her dad was stacking furniture against the door, she would say she isn't sure, but she thinks it was because there was a mob in the hallway. She suspects this wasn't the case, but memory is a fuzzy thing, like waking up in a sea of cotton balls.

If you asked her, she might also tell you a few other things about her time in Brazil. She seems to remember seeing rats six feet long running along the fence, having moths the size of dinner plates flapping around her head, and everyone wanting to touch her hair to see if it was real. Walking to the edge of the jungle and looking across a clear-cut area where wild dogs lived. Heavy skies. And watching for the banana man to appear at the bend in the road as he walked early in the morning selling the bananas that he carried on a huge platter on his head. She also remembers listening to a Brazilian woman on a bus tell her if she stuck her hand outside the window, someone would come along and chop it off with an ax, but the little girl didn't believe that and thought if the woman didn't want her to stick her hand out the window, she should give her a more plausible reason than that, although she didn't know the word plausible at the time.

Rocky Mountain Palette

2010-11-03T23:25:00.002-07:00

Winter:
slate gray
dove gray
hunter green
milky turquoise
pale blue
white

I have been thinking about colours, remembering a drive 'home' for Christmas two years ago when my brother and I tackled the mountains. I should say, rather, that my brother tackled the mountains after the mountains kicked my ass. Somewhere along the way, I forgot how to drive with confidence on packed snow, particularly when the packed snow is adjacent to a cliff. Coincidentally, this was a drive when my brother and I realized we both had similar, frequent visions while driving of meeting our doom in a pile of twisted metal, in that case Honda Civic metal, at the bottom of one of those cliffs. It's not a fear thing, necessarily, just a possibility.

Colours, though.

Canada has various palettes. I'm achingly familiar with Saskatchewan Winter Palette. It is: white, pale gold, pale blue. That's it. It's like someone took the world and let all the blood out. It makes me want to drape myself in teal and magenta and sing showtunes while wearing lipstick the colour of cherries. Perhaps familiarity breeds contempt when it comes to colour. My favorite palette is not Saskatchewan Winter; it's Rocky Mountain Winter, even if it comes with the danger of sudden death.

All I want for Christmas

2010-10-28T14:09:00.000-07:00

Future-oriented Kirsten decided about four weeks ago that, if her family and friends express any desire to give her a gift for Christmas or her birthday, perhaps what she should request is cash to help with a somewhat financially daring plan she has in mind for next summer.
Present-oriented Kirsten wants these boots, or something like them. In fact, she can't wait for Christmas. She wants them now and doesn't see how she's going to make it through winter without something like them.
Future-oriented Kirsten reminds Present-oriented Kirsten that she already has a pair of much-loved boots and thinks she should wear those.
What will prove weightier: the future or the present?

a memory

2010-10-27T15:10:00.003-07:00

Before World War II, Czeslaw Milosz belonged to a group of poets called the "Catastrophists." Their poetry contained "visions of destruction" and took, in general, a fairly gloomy view of the future of mankind. After Poland discovered what was lying in wait around the bend, the poetry of the Catastrophists came to be seen as prophetic.

Later in life, Milosz occasionally referred to himself as Catastrophist Emeritus, implying, I assume, that the role of Catastrophist had been relinquished, to a degree, by Milosz, and given to someone else.

When I was studying geology, I remember taking a class from a Willie K. Braun, Professor Emeritus. Professor Braun had been educated in Germany just following World War II. Because many of the universities - and faculties of universities - of Germany were devastated by the war, there was a migration of survivors to the university wherein Professor Braun studied. He was able to study with the best of the best of German geologists, whatever that means. How he ended up in the prairies, he didn't say, but he taught us sedimentology, a class which was about as exciting as a class on sediment can be: not very.

Anyway, here's a moment in time: the syllabus identified the professor of the class as "Willie K. Braun, Professor Emeritus" and, as a group, we allowed one of my classmates to address Willie K. as Dr. Emeritus for about two months because he didn't know what it meant and just assumed it was his last name. Why would we allow a classmate to make that kind of ongoing mistake? Because it was funny, Dr. Braun clearly got a kick out of it, and Germans need an occasional laugh just as much as anyone.

People who look like people and some comments from the shallow end of the pool re: facial hair

2010-10-25T18:51:00.005-07:00

So I've been doing research for a presentation next week and when I got to the 1min 20 seconds mark of this video, I saw a man who could be Adam Sandler, if Adam Sandler had travelled back in time to France to take part in an interview with the poet Czeslaw Milosz.

Some comments:
- 80s television sets were b.l.e.a.k.
- 80s special effects are funny. An example is at 3 minutes 47 seconds.
- I like Milosz's face. It's simultaneously open and closed.

And now, it's time to talk about eyebrows. Considering this man's contribution to the world through his poetry, I am ashamed that I even notice these sort of things when I look at him. Go ahead and judge me. I judge myself.

In case you didn't watch the video, here's a picture of Milosz so you know where this is coming from.

In the far-off, long-ago days of my youth, I used to worry about my eyebrows. Certain members of my family sport (or sported) substantial amounts of eyebrow hair. As a young girl, I could only assume my own eyebrows would develop along these lines as I aged and, I confess, I was horrified. I remember the great relief I felt when I realized that I could wax and trim and pluck my eyebrows into submission. As it turned out, I needn't have worried. My eyebrows have remained faint to this day, so faint, in fact, that I darken them. (Kirsten: Confessions)

I have had some male friends who've waxed their eyebrows. So far, they've all been Arab and it's been done primarily to ensure there are two instead of one. In general, I think men should feel freer than they do to take action about what's happening on the forehead.

Of course, it's possible that men don't care. It's highly likely Milosz didn't. When one has lived through the Nazi occupation of Poland, the systematic murder of millions of his countrymen, the Soviet occupation, exile, intellectual ostracization at the hands of the French, pro-Stalinist intelligentsia of the Paris in the 1950s and the concurrent isolation due to the suspicion of anti-Communist intelligentsia, and lack of recognition for decades until the someone finally decides he deserved the Nobel prize and he was catapulted into an unwelcome fame, perhaps eyebrows don't seem that important.

"Dear God... what he must have gone through."

2010-10-22T12:31:00.001-07:00

Watch this. It'll do you good.
It's inspired me to write my own memoir.

memory

2010-10-17T21:00:00.005-07:00

when it comes to me from a distance, the sound of a dog barking reminds me of brazil. of hot nights in rooms with wide windows. drifting in and out of sleep under a mosquito net, waiting for the disco down the street to close for the night. and the smell of mold. and the roughness of the weave of a hammock on my arms. and the smoothness of tiles under my feet in the morning while i looked for my flip flops (which were worn to keep worms out of my feet and were affectionately known back then as thongs.)
i haven't been there in 18 years but my window is open and there's a dog around here somewhere.

this is also funny

2010-10-16T17:39:00.000-07:00

check this out if you like either fashion or flight of the conchords.

it's funny

2010-10-16T00:16:00.005-07:00

i am looking into buying a domain name to host any of the shiznit i put up on the interwebs. i thought i'd start with the obvious, so i checked to see if anyone had grabbed www.kirsten.com. and then my brain squeezed itself into a smile (leading to a headache of no small proportions)
kirsten.com is the website for a company owned by the kirsten family. they deal and ship dry, edible beans. and, yes! they ship internationally.
imagine how much we could save by getting a group together and ordering a truckload of chickpeas... hummus for all!

now to email and see how attached they are to their domain. . .

"kirsten's taking a fbook break"

2010-10-14T00:01:00.000-07:00

today begins my trial separation from facebook. i want to be off it long enough that i stop organizing my thoughts into potential status updates. for example, as i was packing up my books tonight and walking up the stairs, i thought, "kirsten is tired at an hour in which it is appropriate to be tired. amazing."
no, kirsten, the amazing thing is the fact that you were thinking about yourself in third person. this is not a good sign.

will the absence of exposure to the minutiae of others' lives free up personal mental space?
will anyone remember to email me to invite me to 'events'?
will i feel horribly cut-off, isolated in my own mental world? limited to trolling friends chronically un-updated blogs?

only time will tell.

Over Tempura Udon and Unagi and Alaska Rolls

2010-10-06T23:41:00.003-07:00

Yesterday night, while sharing a meal with me and his lovely girlfriend, my brother presented the argument that, at any given time, any person you are considering dating will have, at most, two of three possible and important characteristics:
1. physical attractiveness
2. emotional stability
3. brilliance

No person will have more than two of these qualities.

True or false?

It was an energetic discussion.

If it's true, I'm a 1-3 combo, as are, we concluded, both my brother and his girlfriend. Some people - my brother - were more resistant to their classification than others. By the process of elimination, I wasn't really left with a choice. My conclusion about myself wasn't based on any particular or unusual penchant to vanity or pride, but mostly on the fact that there aren't many people I know who would allow me to sit and calmly lie to their face by claiming to be emotionally stable.

As the conversation of three 1-3s, our discussion was punctuated by a not a few episodes of intense introspection and recrimination, but at least we looked good.

I've been thinking about the various date-able people I've known over my many years and, interestingly enough, I can actually slide them into this paradigm. I think I'm going to add it to my worldview.

the email I didn't send.

2010-10-05T20:59:00.002-07:00

Dear ______,
My weekend was alright. Thanks for asking!

I’m not going to beat around the bush. I was impressed with the way you asked me out and if I was a dude, I’d try to follow suit. And if you’re interested in disinterestedly financing some - or all - of my education, or giving my brother a job doing design on one of your projects, I won’t say no, but I’m going to have to pass on the ice cream and walk around English Bay.

You seem like a nice enough guy, and I'm sure there's some girl out there who's going to think you're great. For my part, I can't imagine trying to exert myself in conversation with you again. Life is too precious, or so I thought to myself when you were using the washroom and I was thinking about leaving.

Anyway, thanks for buying me lunch. I’m glad you couldn’t tell how bored I was.

Best of luck (just not with me),

Kirsten

p.s. While I’m glad I apparently don’t look my age, I wasn’t super impressed that you, as a 37 year old man, were happily chasing what you thought was a 26 or 27 year old woman. That’s a decade and, rumour has it, Kirsten’s find the decade-mark to be the threshold of weirdness.

p.p.s. Your car is nice but it doesn’t really impress me.

p.p.p.s. Would you mind staying away from my favorite coffee shop for a few weeks?

and some more.

2010-09-30T21:48:00.000-07:00

An Homage

2010-09-27T16:01:00.004-07:00

to my friend Beth.
i have a collection of kirstens-in-the-looking-glass. i would like to attribute this to ennui and a curiosity about physics more than to an on-going state of self-absorption.

one sock on, one sock off

i need my monkeys back

2010-09-17T16:18:00.003-07:00

my brain is going so slowly. i think the monkeys that usually turn the gears in there are lying on a beach somewhere and turning down invitations to play a little beach volleyball so they can drink more pina coladas. wherever they are, they're IGNORING MY TEXTS! i won't say a word about it, though, if they come back soon. they can even walk around in my brain drunk and sandy... for a bit. but then they'll have to sweep up. after all, it is my brain. and sand gets in everything.

come home monkeys! all is forgiven!

Sometimes we fail.

2010-09-14T00:17:00.005-07:00

The first thing I remember failing was my road test to get my driver's license. I didn't handle it well. Read: instead of triumphantly taking the wheel to drive my mom home, I ended up sobbing uncontrollably in the passenger's seat while she tried to console me. I wish I could blame the sobbing on the fact that I was sixteen, but that wouldn't account for the sobbing that's taken place since then. That being said, as time has passed, I have increasingly found that my sobbing is limited to appropriate situations. And uncontrollable sobbing is very rare. That's progress!

I passed the road test the next time I took it. The examiner was a man, likely in his late fifties or early sixties, who spoke with hint of a Scottish accent and had the biggest lips I've ever seen. They were enormous, fleshy masses barely clinging to his face. I think they probably should have had their own seatbelt.

I've never forgotten the moment when he was reviewing my performance on the test. I sat in the driver's seat and struggled to listen to his comments instead of staring at those giant lips and watching them flap around words like, "You can't expect cars to part like the Red Sea before you!" (I think he was wrong about that)

Nine, Neuf, Jiu, Nueve, Ni, Novem

2010-09-10T00:32:00.003-07:00

After nine years, I am (voluntarily) down one job. That leaves me with a total of zero paying jobs, but, with school beginning, no shortage of work to do.
I'm not sure how to commemorate a day like today, but I think this might be a good place to, at the very least, make note of it.
One thing I think I did not learn well, or maybe even at all, over these nine years was how to celebrate. If you have any suggestions, pass them on! I've got 23 hours to make this happen!

varieties of middle-aged men

2010-09-09T01:45:00.006-07:00

i was gifted a helmet - or perhaps semi-permanently loaned a helmet - and so, with great satisfaction, i made my bike my main mode of transportation today.

i like riding my bike.

when i went to unlock my bike at one place, i saw a sixty-ish year old man pulling up to the other side of the bar where i had left my bike. i hurried over and told him i was leaving and, if he gave me a minute, i'd move my bike and he'd have more room.

and he said, "oh! your bike is so much more beautiful than mine!"

and i said, "thank you. i'm rather fond of it." then i put on my helmet.

he looked at me and said, "oh! so classy!"

and i said, "really? well thank you! i think i look like a german paratrooper circa 1943!"

and then we both laughed, and i punched him lightly in the shoulder. then we high-fived before we threw our arms around each other and sang auld lang syne while the sun shone and the birds chirped and, eventually, i rode off feeling, well... classy!
(in the interests of honesty: i didn't actually punch him lightly in the shoulder, and we didn't really high five, and there was no curbside singing. that would have been great, though. that's the way i'm going to remember it in my head.)
the point is that he was such a nice old man who genuinely liked my helmet! thumbs up to him AND my helmet!

three hours later...

i was walking south from burrard station heading for the scotiabank theatres to watch a movie with my cousins.

as i approached west georgia, i noticed a middle-aged man standing on the street corner and staring right at me. that on its own isn't necessarily anything to write about. some people stare. it's unfortunate, but true. but this particular middle-aged man was staring at me while lowering a digital camera from his eye level. in a split second, it dawned on me that the weirdo had taken a picture of me, bold as brass!

i thought about just walking on, but instead veered to the right, walked right up to the dude and asked, "did you just take a picture of me?"
he just stood there, slightly shamefaced, and giggled.
so i asked again, "did you just take a picture of me?"
and he said, "you're such a beautiful woman!" in an italian accent. (was it fake? i wondered during and after the fact, but if you were taking pictures of people walking down the street, which i think is illegal, and someone walked up to confront you, would you think to speak in a fake italian accent? i'm not sure it'd be the first thing on my mind...)
"thank you," i said, "but i asked you: did you take a picture of me."
"so beautiful!"
"did . you . take . a . picture . of . me? show me what's on your camera."
"it's just a picture! you're so beautiful!"
but then he finally showed me, and there i was, just as i suspected!
"what are you going to do with that picture?" i asked but quickly decided i had no desire to know and instead told him i would not leave until he deleted it. he protested for a minute or two, but i stood there until he did it.

WHAT KIND OF PERSON DOES THAT?! he didn't seem mentally ill...

i crossed the street so i wouldn't have to stand beside him while i waited for the light to change and then i laughed long, although not particularly hard. it's hard to laugh hard while you're walking by yourself down burrard surrounded by vancouver-brand yuppies all heading out for after-work drinks. so i settled for the occasional chortle until i got to the theatre.

anyway, here's the take-away: there are many different kinds of people in the world.

time

2010-09-08T17:13:00.002-07:00

emit
item
mite
met
me
tie
it

if plans had proceeded as they were originally laid down, i would have moved one week ago today. instead, new tracks were gouged out for different plans and i moved eleven days ago. so, not seven, eleven.

my point: i can't believe the first was but one week ago, that the 28th is but eleven days ago. the day i moved feels so lost in the past that i can't even say with certainty that this kirsten lived it. each one of the days following it has felt full and long, has offered so much figurative and literal resistance, taken so much energy. they do not feel like periods of twenty-four hours.

i think times of change or uncertainty are similar to navigating rapids. in rapids, as you may have experienced yourself, it's best to choose your line before you get into them because, once you're in them, you will not have time to plan. all your concentration will be taken up in responding. and that's ok. it's just the nature of things (with david suzuki).

at the same time, the nature of the thing means that planning your line is almost a waste of time - except, perhaps, as an act of personal centering. the reality of the situation is too complex, the unknowns too many and entirely unforseeable (thereby justifying the label of 'unknown'), the circumstances changing too rapidly. as it turns out, what you thought you could predict is, in fact, unpredictable. perhaps this is chaos theory a la jurassic park's dr. ian malcolm?

i think that's one way of looking at it.

paradoxically, i think times of change or uncertainty are also similar to paddling against a strong current. and when you're in that situation, there's nothing for it but to put your head down and paddle. it's as tiring as anything and entirely unexciting, but there's no other way out of the situation.

because i want to

2010-09-03T01:17:00.004-07:00

i can't remember how it came to be that i first read this blog, but i wander over to it from time to time for refreshing. it's inspired me to expose a bit of my own thankfulness this late night.
so, in the style of whatever her name is, here i go...

dear dude at the bike doctor,
thanks for being willing to order that purple helmet so i could try it on even though i told you i wouldn't promise to buy it. if i can wear it without looking like a dozer from fraggle rock i will give you my business.

and because i'm not her, i'm going to mention more than one thing!

dear malcolm gladwell,
thanks for building books around theories that can't be proved one way or another. your books are thought-provoking and help me to entertain ideas i would ordinarily dismiss. also, thanks for wrapping everything up in stories. it makes it all so much more interesting.

dear new neighborhood,
thanks for having so many beautiful nooks. i wasn't expecting so much loveliness, but i'm happy to find it.

dear brother's girlfriend,
thanks for texting me today to hang out while my brother was working. it means a lot to me when people initiate spending time with me.

dear stomach,
thanks for not violently rejecting your contents this afternoon like i thought you were going to between 3:30 and 5:00. you are a trooper! i'm not exactly sure what i did wrong, but i'm sorry if it was the pudding i ate at lunch. i will try to listen to you more closely tomorrow.

wherein the excessive use of hyphens and subclauses "just felt right" (quote from the author).

2010-08-25T18:24:00.003-07:00

hell-o.

so, to date, i have yet to receive a ticket for any of my (numerous) traffic vi-o-lations.

today, as i blew through an amber light that had a distinctly reddish hue, i thought to myself, "Well, ____ (insert my last name here if you know it. i've come into the habit of referring to myself as such in my internal monologue. there are two reasons: firstly, i am impressionable, almost a tabula rasa, if you will, and some people around me have started calling me by it. secondly, it is, as it turns out, a nice quick little name. not particularly easy to say, but still all said and done in a syllable. honestly, though, i feel a bit mannish referring to myself by my last name, as though i should be on a football team or something. of course, before i could join one of those, i'd have to learn how to throw. no one would confuse me for a man after they saw that spectacle.), someday this is gonna catch up to you, and it won't be pretty."

then i asked myself, "what would you say if you had been pulled over there?"
the first answer that came back, "i was speeding so i couldn't stop in time."
perhaps honesty would be rewarded?

now for supper!

Drafts

2010-07-07T23:03:00.004-07:00

I was looking through my drafts and came across one which contained only one line:

If you're a non-conformist, raise your hand.

I myself chucked a little chuckle reading that! Oh for a lost jolly riot...

However, if I do recall, and I think I do, I was about to launch into a rant about church culture. I'm kind of glad those thoughts - at least in the form they took in June 2009 - didn't find their way up here at that point.

On Weather

2010-07-03T17:58:00.001-07:00

I just read this. As a Canadian who, while making fun of this same thing in her parents, finds herself compelled to ask the question, "what's the weather doing?" I find this thought-provoking, and curiously satisfying.

"February 26, 1963. Ash Wednesday
Our mentioning of the weather - our perfunctory observatinos on what kind of day it is - are perhaps not idle. Perhaps we have a deep and legitimate need to know in our entire being what the day is like, to see it and feel it, to know how the sky is gray, paler in the south, with patches of blue in the southwest, with snow on the ground, the thermometer at 18, and cold wind making your ears ache. I have a real need to know these things, because I myself am part of the weather and part of the climate and part of the place. A day in which I have no shared truly in all this is no day at all. It is certainly part of my life of prayer."

From The Intimate Merton

Words

2010-07-03T16:54:00.002-07:00

I continue to drift on unnamed currents through the wide sea of writing by and about Thomas Merton. Every once in a while I pick up my paddle, but since I lack a clear sense of where I want to go, I have mostly been leaning back in my boat and trailing my fingers in the water while the tides takes me where it will. Maybe this is just how summer Kirsten works. I have had a gut feeling I'll end up somewhere good.. Hopefully that will happen in time for this paper/presentation.

In the process, I've been writing down words that I a) didn't know or b) couldn't define with confidence.
Here's a list:

aphorism
logocentrism (I must confess I think I may have used this word without properly knowing what it meant.)
gnosis
mandala
concomitantly
ontology (i have to look this word up every time i read it, a sad truth, really. i think i get it mixed up with oncology, which is something quite different)
poesis (once again, there's something about this word that simply will not stick in my brain)
ousia
fatuous (I'm quite delighted to add this word to my vocabulary)
prurient
hieratic
iconoclastic
solipsism
cenobite
eremetical (i'm proud to say i correctly guessed the meaning of this word)
latreutic

I am enjoying this reading. I am particularly appreciative of the fact that TM is becoming himself in my understanding, or infinitely more himself than he was in the image of him I created for myself when I first read his writing in the winter of 2007. A couple thousand pages or reading certainly have helped me evaluate which of my preconceived notions were false. I think I like this Thomas Merton better than the person I originally thought he was. He's more human.

then again

2010-07-01T23:31:00.000-07:00

I'm reading The Seven Mountain of Thomas Merton right now in preparation for a presentation week. Actually, the term 'reading' might give the impression of a passtime more placid than the very active desolation I am wreaking on this book in order to gut it for that which is pertinent to my, as yet ethereal, topic.
But the book includes the following words translated from the Revelation of Divine Love written by Julian of Norwich. They encouraged me and, in light of my previous post, I thought I'd add them to this history.

But before I do, let me say I'm glad there are mystics and contemplatives in the world. May their number increase.

"The worst conceivable thing has happened, and it has been mended . . . So that the end of everything shall be well. I say again, all manner of things shall end well."

or, as Clifton Wolter translated these lines:

"But Jesus... answered, 'Sin was necessary - but it is all going to be all right; it is all going to be all right; everything is going to be all right...' "

I believe it. I just wonder when.

a question from a temporarily petulant kirsten

2010-06-30T15:44:00.007-07:00

why is the universe resisting me? i have excellent intentions.
it's been a week filled with: the beautiful conchoidal fracture of broken glass, loonies that leap from my ship into a tossing sea where every wave is a mechanic's hand, late parts, missings parts, a head that won't stop spinning, a brain that won't stop thinking except when it's time to work and too many emails with the subject line: "you're not going to believe this".
there's nothing for it now but to say my uncles, put norwegian wood on repeat, lie on the floor, and have a g&t or three.

CH and the 10Cs

2010-06-25T18:36:00.020-07:00

Maybe it was all the deep breathing, or maybe it`s my low blood pressure. (I just found out yesterday it's 90/60, and this was even taken just prior to the naturopath i am visiting pushing a bunch of needles into my back for the first time... talk about stress! anyway, the low bp explains the fact that i've been cold since august 2009. where was i going with this? (mental confusion! another symptom! as is a feeling of impending doom. i had to laugh at that. i think i've had that symptom for way longer than my blood pressure's been low.) and, with that, i am officially lost again. oh yes, here we go.) Last night I had to conclude the ductwork and lights on the ceiling of the room in which I was practicing yoga bore an uncanny resemblance to Charlton Heston as he descended from Mount Sinai carrying the ten commandments on two tablets. I am not even kidding. I was mesmerized. I invite the curious to come see.

On the way home I got to wondering: which Cosby Kid do I most resemble, personality-wise? I have a suspicion - a feeling of impending doom really - that some would say Vanessa, but I can only hope it's my low blood pressure talking because has there ever been a more annoying Cosby kid? No, there has not. I just want someone to call me Rudy - I'm not flaky enough to be a Denise, although after this some might wonder, nor am I sincere enough to pass for a Sandra-type... could I be a Theo (gender-aside)?- before I pass out...

Found

2010-06-17T08:52:00.000-07:00

I've been sorting through the stuff that has been lurking under my bed. So far I've either thrown out, recycled, or donated to charity the contents of one banker's box and one plastic tote. It's been an amusing process.
Amid the piles of stuff, I found a cue card holding the following words of wisdom laid down in my dad's handwriting:
Gossen's Law of Philosophical Debate: Anything is Possible if you don't know what you're talking about but you present it enthusiastically.
Gossen's Corollary in Answering in Class: "When in doubt, mumble."
Olson's Law of Location: No matter where you go, there you are, so let's be enthusiastic about it.

I can't think of a person who embodies Olson's Law of Location better than my dad, with the possible exception of those occasions when he visits the dentist, although since he's started going more often than once a decade, he seems to be able to approach even that dreaded cavern with a degree of personal buoyancy.

January 27

2010-06-16T16:15:00.002-07:00

I went to a concert on Saturday. It was outdoors and I was concerned about being cold, of course, because this is Vancouver in June. NATURALLY, I'd have to take precautions against hypothermia. Why would summer be nice?

And, while I'm on the topic, if I hear one more person say, "We're just paying for that beautiful weather in February," I will do the worm. Unlike these "we've-had-our-moment-in-the-sun"-type British Columbians, I watched the cherry trees on Robson bloom on a 21" t.v. in my brother's living room in Calgary, where I tried to sit in patches of prairie sun to build up a reserve of warmth so I wouldn't freeze when I left the house. As far as I can tell, BC still owes me some heat.

Anyway, because I'm old now, I have to think about my back. So, with all the sweaters and long sleeved t-shirts and scarves I was attempting to stuff into my bag so I wouldn't die at that concert on Saturday, I thought I should try to eliminate all other extra weight. In doing so, I ended up taking about five pounds of receipts out of my wallet.

Perhaps I am a nerd, but I had a good time going through them. It was a consumption-oriented trip down memory lane. Among other things, I now have more than anecdotal proof that the caesar has been my drink of choice for 2010.

My favorite receipt (I think this is definitely the first time I have ever written that) was from a meal I purchased on January 27, 8:50 pm at the White Spot on Cambie and 13th. I went there with my brother the night I was told my application for a grant was rejected and before we consumed the better part of a bottle of wine. What a great time wallowing in disappointment! Even our server joined in my sorrow, possibly proving that misery loves company, or maybe that company loves someone else's misery.

January 27! Almost five months ago...

losing concentration

2010-06-10T21:10:00.001-07:00

a woman farted during yoga tonight. loudly. and then she farted again.
and the orifice from whence the farts came was, oh-so-unfortunately, but a meagre three feet from my head.
and our lovely instructor had just reminded us to breathe deeply.
it was the perfect storm.

bits and pieces

2010-06-07T23:10:00.009-07:00

1. This is a question: How is it possible that airplane seats aren't comfortable for any individual? How did designers manage that? I contend this is a Scientific Feat.

Figure 1

When my friend and I were flying back from cuba, I did a quick examination and some calculations, concluding that airplane seats are designed for people who are approximately 6'3", but where just under 2/3 of their height is concentrated in the torso, which would rest beneath an extraordinarily long neck and a short, but wide, noggin best described as an ellipse (see Figure 1).

The dimensional breakdown of this individual is as follows: legs 2'1", torso 2'8", neck 11" + noggin 7" (Lord, have mercy on me, a mathematically challenged individual, but I think that's right).

The relatively short legs allow this individual ample leg room in those cramped seats.
A torso of this length is able to rest comfortably in the alotted space before the weird airplane seat begins curving up and toward the individual, whose long neck easily clears that odd curvature, allowing the short but wide head to nestle comfortably in that awkwardly shaped head-rest.

So, the next time I am trying to get comfy for some long flight in one of those weird seats, head rocking left and right, trying to find a place to land, I can take comfort in knowing that, somewhere in this wide world, there's a group of weirdly proportioned people, sound asleep with fully supported bodies winging their way across the continents. Isn't that a nice thought.

2. This relates to cell phones. What do you think of the idea of calling time-outs during social events to allow everyone to text or check email or facebook or return calls whatever it is we're all trying to do covertly while maintaining conversation? I think it would help everyone relax to know some social ref was going to call time at some point each hour.

3. This is a question to which I think you'll give the ol' affirmative: Don't you think the Olympics seem like forever ago?

Pickiness almost satisfied...

2010-06-04T15:39:00.007-07:00

After twenty years of journaling, I think I've finally decided that I'm going to make the Ecojot ecoWorkbook my notebook of choice from here on.
The notebook is 64, recycled, 9"x5" lined pages saddle-stitched between cardstock that's more than durable enough to last as long as it takes to fill 64 pages. And because it's all paper except the two staples holding it together, it's light enough to carry around all day.
My only complaint is the size and placement of the ecojot logo in the middle of the bottom two lines of each page. I don't think it needs to be as large as it is, and it certainly doesn't need to be on every page. And, this isn't necessarily a complaint, but I'd like to see a version with unlined pages.

But, nothing's perfect.
Overall, well done, ecojot!

Babies Everywhere

2010-06-02T14:05:00.001-07:00

Four of my friends/relatives have given birth in the past week - to children, just to be clear. Far be it from me to leave you thinking they were responsible for something else, like, for example, the seeds of revolutions in small, Latin American countries.

Four births, though. Let’s focus on that for a few minutes. I think that qualifies as a birth explosion. Can you imagine if they’d all given birth in the same room at the same time? That would be a sight to behold. Although, having said that, it might not necessarily be a sight I myself would like to behold, being somewhat weak-stomached and all. I do wonder if anything like that has ever happened before.

I was looking at a picture of my cousin Rachel holding her second child, Alexandra, who was born yesterday. I got to thinking how relieved she must feel now that part of the process – the birth process, to be explicit – is all over. Hopefully she's not too exhausted to revel in the sense of that particular accomplishment.

Rambling

2010-06-02T00:34:00.011-07:00

during the month of may, i think i slept in my own bed nine of the thirty-one nights. i spent the other twenty-two sleeping, or not sleeping, at a monastery, in cuba, and then a few blocks away at a friend's where i worked feverishly to keep their dog alive. i am happy to report that life prevailed over death.

i feel like may's been eventful and has offered a lot to ponder.

one event took place last week when i received a government grant for school. it wasn't something i was expecting and it's precipitated a mild crisis.

here's what's happening (happening! present tense! look, internet! see how vulnerable i'm being? get it while it's hot! this may never happen again!):
the day after i received notification about the grant, i got four congratulatory emails from faculty at the tiny school i attend. two of them made statements to the effect that i am a 'worthy' recipient of this award. i don't know what to do with a statement like that. i don't know that i am particularly 'worthy' of receiving this as the word itself is defined. i don't know that i am particularly more likely to excel academically than the many other students i sit with in classes, or more likely to write an excellent thesis. although, their comments about me being a worthy recipient actually have nothing to do with other students, either. so it's not like they were saying, "you yourself are worthy, in comparison to those others who are not worthy."

although, all that being said, i think the whole idea of competition within academia is one i am struggling to come to terms with. i don't understand how you foster collegiality in an environment that promotes individualism.

anyway, when i think about this award, i think what actually happened is that some past realities combined with some present effort on my part in conjunction with an enormous amount of help from friends and faculty to lead to this moment. i think the issue of 'worthiness' is completely beside the point.

although, then i wonder if i have a problem accepting the fact that i actually do 'excel' in academics. it is one of the areas of life where i am not completely lost at sea. but it's hard to know what the experience is like for other people to have a proper comparison. i've only ever been inside my own head, more's the pity.

(while we're ON this subject: if you were going to get inside someone's head, whose would it be? i can think of a couple people's minds i'd like to take for a spin. but i imagine the experience would be a bit weird, to say the least. i wonder if it would be like trying on someone else's shoes. you can get your foot in there, but it's just not quite right.)

and finally, although i feel like a nutbar, being told i am 'worthy' makes me feel pressure to prove that's true. so i am having the classic, "what if i fail?" moment. oh my... it's time, again, for some cognitive behavioral therapy! (hello again old friend!)

2010-05-20T19:00:00.008-07:00

Well, I went to Cuba. The food was not good, but the beach was.
I ask myself, "Will I post pictures?"
"I don't know," I answer, "Probably not many that include me. I don't want to give anyone the chance to play 'is she wearing a top?' and too many of them leave the answer to that question open to interpretation, which is the fatal flaw of bandeau top swimsuits."
This one can go though:

This was a different type of vacation for me. First off, the LATEST I went to bed was 11:30 pm. This is so highly unusual for me, it is Highly Unusual. "Did you know in the morning they have food, TV, almost everything? It's pretty good."
Secondly, I read quite a bit, but I didn't get lost in any of the books I brought with me. It was disappointing. Of course, it was during my last holiday that I read The Book Thief, and it seems likely that kind of loving absorption is a once in a lifetime kind of event.
Third, I think I only listened to music once. I brought the wrong adapter and couldn't charge any of my electronics. Woe.

And, because everyone likes to hear about other's foolishness, here's a story:
Once upon a time in Cuba, a girl needed to go to the bathroom. She got up from her lounge chair in the sun and started walking back to her room in her bare feet. She hit the ramp that went up to her floor and instantly noticed the difference in temperature between the white-grey limestone deck tiles around the pool and the black slate tiles which comprised the ramp. By the time she was half way up the ramp, she was running. Her feet were on fire. Reaching her room in mild discomfort, she contemplated how she would get back down the ramp. Because she was lazy and didn't want to do up the buckles on the sandals in her room, the girl opted instead to fill a cup with water from the bathroom, thinking she could use it to cool her feet if they got too hot while she trotted down the ramp.

Pitting about 150 mL of liquid against the heat of the Cuban sun, away she went!

Is it possible the ramp was even hotter than it had been only minutes before? It seemed so, or perhaps her feet were already mildy burned. Whatever the reason, she found herself stopping, hopping from one foot to the other, well before she was halfway down the ramp. She poured water on her feet, but it seemed to turn instantly to steam between her feet and those hot tiles. Out of water, she reached the bottom of the ramp in agony and stumbled across the limestone to plunge her feet into the pool.

The end!

You can decide what moral you'd like to take from that.

***warning! the following contains reference to feminine hygiene products. If that makes you uncomfortable, have a nice day! ***

(I'm giving you space to change your mind)

I think my bag got searched at the airport because the person watching the scanner thought the tampons in my backpack were non-regulation Cuban cigars, the likes of which it is illegal to remove from Cuban soil. Watching the light dawn on the face of the person looking through my bag was funny on its own, but what was even FUNNIER was when I said to my travelling buddy as we rode up the escalator to our gate, "Perhaps they thought they were bullets. Yes, female bullets. Or little missiles. Little Cuban missiles. Which would have made this a Cuban Missile Crisis."

CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS!

Just try and tell me that's not hilarious!

Cheese Is Here

2010-05-20T10:33:00.008-07:00

The Superstore (and that would be a registered trademark, my friendlies) close to my house is renovating. Grocery shopping after my return was confusing, time-consuming, hilarious and involved a lot of wandering and wondering.
My favorite sign may have been the aisle marker which read, "Pudding and Paper Towel," but the 8.5"x11" sign you see to the left was a source of amusement as well.

2010-05-10T00:04:00.001-07:00

I am going to be elsewhere for a week. I have sunscreen, a lot of books, my scrabble board, and a friend who also likes books and scrabble, so I think I'm more or less set.
In case you're interested, here are a few of the books I'm bringing:
I'm bringing four books by George Macdonald. This is a bit of a risk because I haven't read anything by this author before, but I heard mention of his writing multiple times last week and so I'm hoping these four books will turn out to be more than ballast for my suitcase. I chose four of the five books that C.S. Lewis recommended as Macdonald's best work in the course of a brief introduction he wrote to one of Macdonald's books. They are: Lilith, Phantastes, The Wise Woman, and The Golden Key. I'm hoping they're good.
I am also going to finish Garrison Keeler's Wobegone Boy.
In addition, I grabbed The Secret Life of Bees. For some reason, I have very low expectations for this book. Perhaps because, when I think of the title, I see fragments of the movie trailer in my head, and nothing in that vision leads me to believe this book is going to be great literature. We shall see, though.

As far as non-fiction, I am bringing a book by Parker Palmer called A Hidden Wholeness that comes highly recommended and another book comprised of letters written between F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald. Don't you think a woman named Zelda would probably write an interesting letter? I suspect this is the case.
Anyway, I'll be away for a while, but then I'll be back. I hope you have a great week!

Mother's Day 2010 and 1986

2010-05-09T21:57:00.005-07:00

Today is mother's day. Happy mother's day, mom!
I love and appreciate my mom. I also appreciated getting to spend mother's day with her on mother's day this year. It is the first time I've been able to do that in a long time.
In 1986, Mother's Day was May 11 and our class gave our mothers recipe books. To the right you will see my gift to my mom sporting a snazzy cloth cover coloured by your's truly. It demonstrates the state of my artistic ability at the time (Sadly, I don't know how much I've progressed past that state) It's faded, so I'll explain it in case you can't tell what's going on. It shows a tree, some flowers, and a figure - which I assume is me - wearing a crown standing under an extremely large bee.

Here's the inscription.

set your countdown clocks

2010-05-03T00:31:00.000-07:00

it's nice, on occasion, to know for what you're waiting and for how long you're going to wait for it. most of the time waiting is more mysterious: sensory deprivation tanks, reception rooms with no clocks, etc.
i don't anticipate this waiting to be too painful, but i won't be updating this until friday at the earliest. i know i've gone longer (much longer) than that with no explanation, but i'm trying to be polite.
so! enjoy your week!

the triumphant returns

2010-04-28T23:23:00.008-07:00

today i returned about fifty pounds of books to one of my professors. walking away from that building with an empty bag flapping in the breeze was glorious. glorious.

tomorrow i am going to make a special trip to ubc and make another triumphant return. that return probably only weighs in at around twenty-five pounds, but i relish the thought of not carrying it anymore.

and then? i actually don't know what i'm going to do. hopefully something rash.

the last triumphant return i'd like to mention (and the one that actually motivated me to write this) happened early this evening. i had just sat down to try and revise my last paper when someone's BASS started thumping. ordinarily i wouldn't... actually, what i was about to write would be a lie. i would ordinarily always find that annoying. i am not paying to live here and listen to someone else's crap taste in music. but perhaps it was especially annoying today because the end of this semester has knocked me down and sat on me.

anyway, i have no more buffer for shitty music. (please excuse my language mom. it probably won't help to hint that i'm already censoring myself.)

so i yelled, "what are those bastards listening to?" (again, sorry mom) and told my housemate i was going to (nicely?) tell them to turn their crap down. and i swung out of the apartment and marched up to the third floor.

when i got there, i couldn't hear anything, even after pressing my ear against our upstairs neighbour's door and hoping that they wouldn't decide at that moment to leave the house. (can you imagine?)

then i went and listened at some other doors. (like i said, i'm losing it these days) nothing.

so i came back to the apartment and told esther i was unable to locate the villain. she asked, "could it be the person underneath us?"

i guess i forgot my physics because it had never once occurred to me, apparently, that sound could travel UP. up.

so i went down there and as soon as i rounded the corner, i was guided to the place by the sound of that bad music like the wise men were guided to bethlehem by that star. and i found a baby lying in the manger, only in this case, he was a twenty-something punk with bad taste in music who was, however, quite accomodating when i asked him to shut up (nicely).

and then i made my triumphant return to the apartment and revised my paper, taking copious facebook breaks.
(i didn't say this was a good story)

Soundtrack

2010-04-24T16:00:00.010-07:00

When I am writing, I choose one or two songs and play them over and over and over and over until the paper is done. In December, I wrote my paper for my Renaissance Europe class to the musical stylings of Shakira in "She-wolf". (I'm aware this is pretty ridiculous, but it helped me get the job done.)
Last week, I went back and forth between "Help I'm Alive" by Metric and "Ambivalence Avenue" by Bibio while typing away at my (Auto)Biography paper. During my Atlantic History paper days, I alternated between "Keep the Car Running" by Arcade Fire and "Periodically Double or Triple" by Yo La Tengo. Currently, I'm writing a philosophy paper and alternating between a MSTRKRFT song and 'Happy Up Here" by Royksopp (which is as relentlessly upbeat as they come).

Random Things

2010-04-23T08:11:00.010-07:00

i arrived yesterday afternoon at around 3:00 at the small university i attend. i decided to try to park as close to the library as possible. when one is hauling about 100 lbs of books, one is wise to seek the minimize the distance between point A (the car) and point B (the library).
as i was driving to the particular spot i had in mind, i passed a gentleman fully rigged out in hip waders, one of those floppy fishing hats, and carrying what seemed to me to be a pole for spear-fishing. it was either that or a bayonet, but attached to a pole, not a gun.

whatever it was, i was not expecting it.

then today, when i arrived at this small university at 7:40 this morning, i skirted the area where two geese were having a full-out fight. hissing, biting, wings flapping, necks and heads twisting through the air like snakes. a terrible sight to behold. i'm just glad they were mad at each other and not me because i was carrying too much stuff to be able to defend myself. and how would one defend oneself against a goose anyway? i'd like to visualize myself grabbing an attacking goose by the neck and swinging it around, but, realistically, that's not happening. i could try and get a good kick in, but i suspect their feathers would prevent my foot from really connecting. no, it's best to hope they don't notice you.

anyway, as i edged my way around their battlefield, i felt like i had stumbled into the end of jurassic park when the paleontologists and the kids are able to escape because the raptors forget about killing them when the tyrannosaurus arrives. yup, it was exactly like that.

2010-04-21T23:38:00.011-07:00

After finishing our last class and having a couple of 'drinks', my prof says to me, "Now, your problem is going to be you have so many interests."

Was a truer word ever spoken? I was going to say, "No, a truer word was never spoken." but now I disagree with that and would like to say, "Yes, probably a truer word has been spoken, but this is also fairly true, if there are degrees of truth, which I think there are in statements of this type."

I like having a lot of interests. I think it's one of the occasionally frustrating things that makes me me. Having a herd of interests running around inside me (tonight I'm picturing zebras) is what gives me bouts of itchy restlessness and keeps my eyes seeing and my ears listening. But I will admit it can be a problem when I am in a place where the norm is to focus, like grad school.

I think part of this is I am new, or I feel new, anyway, and this degree's so short. There's no time to dabble. I love dabbling.

Here's another pithy statement from this evening's dialogue:
"Don't let anyone else hold the yardstick up to your life. You've got to be the one holding the yardstick."
I suppose I'll have to buy my own yardstick, then, which will help me to visualize what a yard actually is. Could my unfamiliarity with the yard as a unit of measurement be the real root of my problems? And what am I supposed to do with the stick while I'm holding it? Swing it? Use it to prod people who are in my way?

But, this is all to say that, while sitting in that pub in the fading light of this cool april evening, I made a decision to learn Spanish this summer. I think I could be reading by the fall. I'm not bad at picking things up.

But, with all my interests, I may change my mind tomorrow. That, apparently, is my problem.

I declare it spring

2010-04-19T10:07:00.004-07:00

I don't know what fool set my alarm (it was me), but it went off at 6:30 this morning. Late-night-Kirsten is so optimistic about early-morning-Kirsten's ability to get out of bed.
When I got up at 8:15, the sun slapped me across the face, that smell of almost-summer was in the air, and even though I knew from the weather network that it is supposed to rain this afternoon, I also knew exactly what I wanted to wear: shorts. and not just any shorts, the pair of shorts that had found their way into my trunk on Saturday, for reasons I won't go into here.
So I got myself all ready to go, wore jeans down into the parking garage and changed beside my car. Now, I don't usually hang around without pants, but is there any feeling more it's-almost-summer-y than trotting around wearing way less than you should? Nope, there isn't.

thoughts and a whole poem, but not my own

2010-04-17T21:07:00.007-07:00

I drove north-west on highway 99 yesterday while the sun was falling. I could almost see the air becoming more full, more saturated with ... i don't even know what it was, until the sun slipped into the clear sky between cloud and ocean and everything caught fire. It was so beautiful I had to hold the steering wheel against a tide that wanted to pull my car across the ditch, through oncoming traffic and into that long, low bay south of tsawwassen. I suppose, at that point, I'd have kicked the door open and started swimming. I'd be gone, lost in light, leaving my car stuck in the muddy flats, and Esther wouldn't have had a ride home from the airport.

On the Road - Anna Akhmatova

Though this land is not my own
I will never forget it,
or the waters of its ocean,
fresh and delicately icy.

Sand on the bottom is whiter than chalk
and the air drunk, like wine.
Late sun lays bare
the rosy limbs of the pine trees.

And the sun goes down in waves of ether
in such a way that I can't tell
if the day is ending, or the world,
or if the secret of secrets is within me again.

Family Values

2010-04-16T10:57:00.009-07:00

If you do recall, the counsellor I'm seeing asked me several weeks ago to think about the family rules/operating principles I grew up with. We haven't talked about it since, but it's prompted some interesting discussions AND the disinterment of the ___ Family Values (you can mentally insert my last name in that blank if you know it.) from my dad's subterranean lair, deep within the bowels of their house. Picture Indiana Jones finding that tomb in the catacombs under the library in Venice...

I'm not sure what prompted my dad, RFA, to put this document together, and I can't remember precisely how old I was when he came out with it (I am thinking around 10 years old) but I do remember that we had the opportunity to get paid cold, hard, cash for memorizing the individual 'values' and then reciting them to him. I think it was $1 for the first recital, $0.50 for the second, and $0.25 for the third, but it might have been $2, $1, and $0.25. RFA was (and remains) a generous man.

There was one 'value' for each letter of the alphabet. They start off short and get progressively longer. (The value for P "Perseverance, Patience, Prudence, Hard Work, Responsibility," for example, is 25 lines in 12 pt. Times New Roman and includes a brief comparison of capitalism and socialism as economic systems.) For those of you who know my dad, this probably not a great shock. Words come easily to some.

So here are a few:

A. ___ (insert last name here) is a village in a mountain meadow near Lillehammer, Norway. Our family came from this mountain meadow in the land of the Vikings. It is an honor to be an ____.

K. Knowledge and Education are important for success in the world. Sutdents from all over the world eagerly do anything they can to win the privilege of studying at our universities and technical colleges. Value the opportunities you have to puruse higher education. Remember, however, "knowledge puffs up, but love edifies." handle your degrees humbly. Most managers are chosen not for their technical knowledge, but for their ability to relate to and motivate people. Remember, too, that degrees do not automatically produce success in life. Many well-educated people are conceited and useless. They have to learn that nothing comes without hard work and cooperation. Knowledge does not produce character. Character comes from applying the principles of the Word of God in the crucible of experience.

I will add more later, but you're probably starting to get the idea.

But first, you're probably wondering, "What did he do for X?" There's enough suffering in life without me adding more to it today, so I'll just tell you now:

X. Exhale the breath of air you just inhaled. Contained in that single breath were at least three nitrogen atoms that were breathed by every human being who ever lived, including Jesus Christ, William Shakespeare, Cleopatra, Winston Churchill, and every Prime Minister in Canada's history. This illustrates the fact that everything we do affects other people, positively and negatively. That's why it is foolish to say, "do your own thing if it doesn't hurt anybody else."

(one thing I'll say: the concepts might be heavy for a ten year old, but at least the agenda was clear)

As I've poked and dived through the document, I've found it interesting to realize there are some with which I disagree, usually not in whole but in part: they are not my values. Or else I agree with the principle but disagree with the specific application of it as expressed in the document. I am not my parents, I suppose.

1/2 a poem

2010-04-13T19:46:00.000-07:00

new leaves
like paper cranes
fly on almost-bare branches
long legs, bent wings
silhouettes against a night sky
gray as doves' feathers

credit

2010-04-07T16:25:00.007-07:00

today i have been working in the library at the university i attend. i think it's important to get your money's worth when you agree to pay through the nose for your education. by using the university's library space i cause wear-and-tear on their desks and chairs rather than my own, use their electricity and bathroom essentials (toilet paper, paper towel, soap, water) instead of mine. in addition, by leaving my apartment and exposing myself to other living, breathing individuals, i avoid giving my neighbours the impression that i am a shut-in. that's a 'win' for me.

while working in the library, i noticed a greater proportion of girls with short (and obviously freshly cut) hair than i have seen before at this university. interesting, and more proof that spring is a great time of year to change your hair. i am not taking credit for the short hair at this tiny university. there were others here before me (e.g. EF), but it got me thinking about something else i would like to take credit for and i want to share it with you:

i would like credit for introducing the denim skirt to china.

or at least popularizing it in the province of 35,000,000 that i lived in. and, just to be clear, i am serious. i have too much work due in the next three weeks to joke about anything.

here's my thought process: i spent two years in china. the first year there, i had a denim skirt and wore it frequently. and, believe me, a tall, white girl, riding a bicycle with another tall, white girl balancing on the bike rack is a spectacle that attracts some attention over yonder. it is highly possible, and i'd like to say, even probable, that among those individuals who watched us ride by and wondered, "what did their mothers feed them to make them grow so tall?" were those who also wondered, "what is that tall, white girl wearing?" and "where can i get one?"

year one, did i ever see anyone else wearing a denim skirt? the answer, sir, is no! then comes year two: denim skirts and chinese people looking fabulous all over the place!

and i think i'd like some credit. if you know who i'd talk to about getting that, let me know.

Family Rules

2010-04-03T13:38:00.013-07:00

I started seeing a counsellor again last week after thinking about doing so for a few months. It's nice to have someone to talk things over with who has no vested interest in seeing my issues/concerns resolved in any particular fashion.

The counsellor gave me three things to do this week. For the life of me, I can't remember what the third thing was, but the second thing was to try to identify some of the broad principles which formed the operating guidelines for my immediate family. I've been ruminating on that over the course of this week and have bizzounced some ideas off of various family members. Now it's Saturday and I'm going to throw some thoughts up into the air and see where the wind takes them.

Possible Family Operating Principle: You are gifted, so assume your life will be unique and you could do something great. A corollary of this: It is safe to assume you will succeed at whatever you decide to do.
A Related PFOP, or an RPFOP: You should always do your best because it would be a shame to waste your potential.
PFOP: Try to avoid conflict because constant conflict indicates that your relationships are not good.
PFOP: Think critically.
An RPFOP: Get as much education as you can because it will help you think critically.
PFOP: Be loyal to your family.
PFOP: It's okay to take opportunities to circumvent unnecessary rules.

Those are some of the PFOPs I think I've identified. I don't think they were necessarily verbally communicated to me, although some of them were, but I picked them up somewhere along the way, and maybe not just from my family unit. I may write some thoughts about some of these later.

a T+7 hours addendum: I perhaps should make it clear I am not seeing a counsellor because I feel like I was damaged emotionally by the way I was raised. (and this is not just me manifesting behavior in accordance with the operating principle in which I maintain loyalty to my family, although I suppose I am expressing loyalty to them by adding this addendum...) As you can probably see, most of the things I have mentioned are actually neutral, excepting perhaps the conflict-related one. But we come from a long line of Scandinavians who have been working double-duty to make up for a few things that in which they participated in the past which earned them a bit of a reputation for aggression amongst their neighbours, if you know what I mean.

While talking to one of my siblings I was also interested to find how different our perspectives were on some things, although there were definitely many areas of overlap. Anyway, that conversation left me unsure about how many of my family operating principles are Kirsten-specific. At the same time, I don't think it really matters.

2010-03-31T22:26:00.012-07:00

i don't know if i like this template yet, but i like the change.
i wonder if anyone's missing seeing amelia walking behind that soccer ball.

today was a l o n g day.

while it lasted, i carried a lot of stuff, mostly paper, some groceries (to fend off starvation for another couple of weeks), books, and more books, but i also schlepped around the weight of an academic decision i need to make in the near-ish future. i think it weighed in at about fifty or fifty-five pounds, which is about thirty pounds more than what i should be carrying with a bad back, i think. a ten pound decision is no problem. twenty pounds, fine. even forty, if i don't have to carry it every day, for extended distances, or up stairs. anything over fifty feels pretty heavy. i know this is not the heaviest decision i've made, not by a long shot. but i've had enough of thinking about the future. it makes the hair on the crown of my head unmanageable.

talk me down, roger birkman: "kirsten, you have a greater-than-average ability to see many shades of gray, and to identify the subtle complexities of issues that others may miss. since the easy, surface answer does not satisfy you, you need ample time to examine all the possibilities and consider the consequences of each. you need to feel that you have looked carefully at all aspects of situations before comitting to a decision. being pushed to make a decision can make you feel rushed and hurried, and lead to feelings of insecurity. you may have difficulty coping with a problem in a casual way, since you tend to think of a variety of solutions to a problem."

thank you. i think i'll have a bath and make a flow chart, then.

Jaws

2010-03-26T00:11:00.004-07:00

I've only seen parts of the movie Jaws, but it's got to be better than the book it was based on.

The characters were oh-so flat and I'd love to say that the plot was predictable, but then you might ask what I was expecting when I chose to read a book that was made into one of the most iconic films of the latter half of the twentieth century. So I won't say that. But that doesn't mean I won't think it in my head and feel it in my heart.

Anyway, just to be clear, I'm not recommending Jaws.

It was interesting reading this book this week, actually. In my class on Tuesday we had a discussion about aesthetics and literature. I think Jaws would have been excellent fodder for the professor's canon.

Recommendations

2010-03-21T00:05:00.002-07:00

Books:

Fugitive Pieces by Anne Michaels: Being assigned this book for a class was a gift. I don't think I can express how beautifully heartbreaking this book is, or how beautifully written.
Strangers and Sojourners by Michael D. O'Brien: Another gift. Another beautiful book. I think it captures something of the mystery and... unexpectedness (?) of people, and God, and living. I haven't been able to quite put my finger on how I want to describe it.

These days, I'm spending most of my reading time reading a lot of school-related stuff that I probably won't end up recommending for non-academic consumption, but I did pick up Jaws today. That's right, Jaws (as the cover of this copy said, "Now a major motion picture!"). As if I need more fodder for freaking myself out as I prepare to strike out into the deep in this summer's swimming season.

I'll let you know how this goes.

I Am Not a Crook.

2010-03-20T10:25:00.003-07:00

You may not remember me but my name's Kirsten and this is my blog. I'm tied to the mast of my own ship here trying to survive life, so I haven't had much mental space for this. But I'm still here.

Last night I spent a long time between awake and asleep, listening to the sound of frogs and the faint rattling of dry reeds. And I remembered things in my long half-consciousness.

This is a memory from grade four. It is about a poem and, my mind realized last night, being suspected of plagiarism. Huzzah!

Grade four was the fateful year when my mom cut my hair really short (at my request, I'm sure), which led to the school secretary mistaking me for a boy which led, in turn, to my (not-so) secret life-long paranoia that I do, in fact, look like a boy.

My 8 year old self spent grade four in a class being taught by two women: Mrs. Benson and Mrs. Clark. Mrs. Benson reminds me of Mary Steenburgen, or maybe Lily Tomlin if LT was less funny and had a shorter face. Mrs. Clark doesn't remind me of anyone. I suspected as a grade four student that Mrs. Benson liked me, but Mrs. Clark did not.

I wrote a lot of little poems when I was small, but I don't think I told anyone, probably because it didn't come up. I remember writing one for some kind of poetry "unit" in school. It was inspired by a picture in A Child's Garden of Verses by Robert Louis Stevenson. The picture went with the poem Autumn Fires. In it were two little girls raking leaves and behind them was spread out a valley in fall colours, oranges and reds, with spirals of smoke rising up in places. Seeing it in my mind now, I know that is not a great picture, but it pleased me as an 8 year old and obviously inspired my little self.

I wish I could remember the whole poem. It started with the line "Rising from the forest green" and ended with two lines, "billows of smoke, so tall and serene/ but, oh!, it was only a dream!"

One day Mrs. Clark called me up to her desk and asked me if I had written the poem she was holding and I said yes. and then she asked me to tell her what serene meant. That's when I started to feel there was something weird happening, but I told her it meant calm. And then she simply looked at me for a bit and told me to sit down.

I think she thought I stole that poem.

Spelling Bee

2010-02-26T14:21:00.003-08:00

I hope this makes you laugh as hard as I did when I watched it.
I've always kind of wanted to be in a spelling bee. I think i could do well.

Now that I've broken the ice, let's talk about the olympics.

There's something in the way the media has been going on about how Canadian women are winning more medals than men that has been irksome to me. I think there are two reasons. First of all, we live in a country where girls are encouraged to participate in athletics from an early age. While mens'/boys' athletics is sometimes better funded than womens'/girls', there is at least a general recognition that this is unjust, whether there is any indication of a desire to change it or not. This is not the case in many of the countries that have sent athletes to these winter games. I just read an autobiography for one of my classes by Eva Hoffman, whose parents emigrated from Poland with Eva and her sister in the 50s. At one point, Eva recounts how her mother, while watching Eva's sister run along Kits Beach, commented that she had never run. Never run. Now, Eva's mother grew up in a religiously conservative family in the years before WWII. I am quite certain conditions are radically different in Poland, in fact Communism may have done much to help improve general attitudes about gender equality, but please don't miss the point that there were women born in the twentieth century in Western Europe who lived their entire lives without running. The kind of cultural norms which precipitated these kind of conditions don't just go away. So, while I'm not trying to downplay the athleticism of our Canadian women, I think we should also acknowledge the advantages of living in our country.

Second of all, I wonder if the fact that our media is asking questions about why women are winning more medals than men exposes an underlying assumption that men should win more. I would be curious to figure out where the basis for that assumption lies.

Grave Marker

2010-02-10T13:52:00.004-08:00

Yesterday in class, there was a very brief discussion about grave markers. My friend did a presentation on a book by Charles Bukowski called Notes of a Dirty Old Man. In it, he mentioned that on Bukowski's grave marker were the words 'Don't Try'. Very interesting.
Then our professor mentioned that Dorothy Parker had inscribed on her tombstone the words "If you can read this, you're standing too close." Funny.
It got me thinking a bit about it.
Today I've been reading a book called Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest by Matthew Restall. In one of the chapters, which discusses "the myth of Native desolation", he quotes a French historian named Nathan Wachtel, who studied an Andean lament from the sixteenth century, "in which the sounds of an earthquake become a funeral chant, the foam of river rapids becomes tears, the sun is darkened, the moon shrinks, and All things hide, all vanish / in suffering."

Now wouldn't that- All things hide, all vanish / in suffering. - be an incredible inscription for a tombstone? Not particularly uplifting, but I think it captures the feeling of standing beside one dead.

Of course, there's always the possibility that this inscription might be better applied to the person standing beside the grave, not the person in it. Perhaps a button bearing these words, and worn on the coat - at least until the heart and the soul heal a little - might make better use of them than putting them on a grave marker.

Top x Books, where x= an integer between 1 and 100

2010-01-27T13:26:00.013-08:00

I am Captain Distracted today, so instead of preparing for the presentation I must give in three hours, I am going to make a list.
Last week one of my profs told us she was asked by a publication to contribute a list of her five favorite books with a brief explanation of why she chose those particular works.
I think it's an impossible task to choose five, but here are some that would go on my list:

1. Suite Francaise by Irene Nemirovsky
2. Haroun and the Sea of Stories by Salman Rushdie. Joy in words and every unhappy thing coming undone.
3. Till We Have Faces by C.S. Lewis
4. Tess of the D'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy. I don't know if this is a 'favorite' in the same sense as some of these other choices, but I am amazed each time I read it by my strong responses to the characters. Plus, there is some incomparable imagery in this book.
5. The Gulag Archipelago, volume 1 by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. A part of me, just a little part, died when I finally read volumes 2 and 3. They were something less than I had hoped they'd be. I'm okay now, though.
6. Night, Dawn, and Day by Elie Wiesel- if I had to choose one of these, athough I can't imagine why I would have to, I would choose Day because it broke my heart.
7 (or 9 if you count entry six as 3). The Book Thief by Markus Zusak. I was under this book's spell for days after I finished it in the wee hours of the morning in a flood of tears. I loved it so much I am afraid to read it again.

If I was on a ship on my way to begin a new civilization with only those supplies our small band of adventurers had on board, and it came to my attention that someone had brought The Pillars of the Earth, I would seriously consider dropping it into the ocean (assuming I was in charge of such things). I would also drop The Lovely Bones overboard, not because it's not well-written, but simply because the story is so horrible.

2010-01-26T13:31:00.004-08:00

On Friday I made a drive to London Drugs to buy a new computer. That's right, London Drugs. I bought a new computer at what some people think is a pharmacy.

I have a genetic predisposition to lean on London Drugs for my electronic needs. I also have a genetic predisposition towards feeling guilty. And 'savouring the moment', although that one took a while to manifest itself and probably made my dad wonder if 'stm' was only on the y chromosome. But then, one day, something clicked over and all of a sudden I could be heard to say stuff like, "Could we stop and breathe in the image of the silhouette of that tree against the horizon?" or "I want to sit here and fall into that painting" and another mystery of genetics was solved.

Moving on.

I bought a new computer at London Drugs.

....

For the life of me, I can't remember where I was going with this, but I'm happy with where it's been, so this seems like a good place to stop.
But before I do, and while we're on the topic, I think I am also genetically predisposed to forget where I'm going with stories.
Genetics. Practical for everyday life.

so far

2010-01-11T02:00:00.006-08:00

I have to say that, so far, this year has been pretty stressful, but is there anything like a good waking-up-from-a-dream-confused story to alleviate a bit o' stress? No, there is not. Unless it was a massage. Or a holiday to somewhere else. Or alcohol. Or rubbing a dog's belly.

Since I don't have access to those other things at this exact moment, here comes my friend's second-hand dream story.

SF (waking up from a dead sleep): *gasp*
JF: What's wrong?
SF (still sort of asleep): there's someone in the room, and it's not just anybody.
JF (imagining SF dreamed of Jesus, or some kind of monster): Who is it?
SF: It's the former president of the Czech Republic!
JF (begins laughing uncontrollably): ha ha ha
SF (still in sleep's grip): Why are you laughing? He's a Nobel Prize winner!

I think my friend SF is the only person I know who would dream of the former president of the Czech Republic. It's one of the things I like about her.

2010

2010-01-01T02:53:00.004-08:00

Do you think there's anything significant about the fact that probably at least half of the Western world, or so I imagine, starts each new year exhausted? It's weird if you think about it. Everyone's busy making resolutions about how they're going to spend their time and money, how they're going to care for themselves and the people around them, but then we start it all off by staying out so late, eating and drinking so much that all we can do on the first day of the new year is lie on the couch watching movies and drinking mint tea until we can stand up without feeling nauseous.

If people haven't made resolutions before New Year's Eve, I think it's that gross January 1 feeling that causes them.

Anyway, all this is to say happy new year! I hope yours gets off on a good foot.

30

2009-12-29T00:53:00.010-08:00

I don't know how this happened to me, but an hour ago I turned 30. You probably can't believe it either, but it's true.

Here are some fun facts about the number 30 (thanks Wikipedia):

30 is a primordial number and the smallest Giuga number. (See? Just when you think all hope is lost, you find a reason to keep on keeping on. Maybe someday, if I apply myself, I might be able to figure out what on earth that sentence means.)
Adding up some subsets of its divisors (e.g., 5, 10 and 15) gives 30, hence 30 is a semiperfect number.
30 is the atomic number of Zinc. Excellent.
30 is the number of days in April, June, September and November and, in unusual circumstances, February.
30 is the code for international direct dial phone calls to Greece.

Wikipedia also informs me 30 is a stage of young adulthood.

If Wikipedia was a man, I'd kiss him on the mouth for placing the adjective young in front of adulthood. Yes, I would. Even if he was totally annoying, which is probable, seeing as you don't become an on-line encyclopedia-ish thing without being a bit of a know-all. But, as Wikipedia has demonstrated tonight, even nerdy, pamphlet types have their redeeming qualities.

home on the range

2009-12-20T20:37:00.005-08:00

I got hit with a lot of peoples' butts and elbowed in the head along the way, but I'm back in SK.

I suppose things change in Saskatoon, but it's hard to tell sometimes, especially when some things always seem to be the same, like my dad heading out to the Co-Op home centre to buy insulation. I feel like that's been happening for time out of mind. Another constant seems to be the licorice all-sorts which seem to attach themselves to the insulation and end up on the kitchen table when my dad gets back. Other constants? The first feeling when I touch the piano, a sensation of being separated from the keys by a light layer of dust. And then there's that special S'toon lethargy that meets me at my parents' door.

I've got nowhere to go with this; I'm just musing here, which (segueway) is a good summary of what I'd like to be doing for the next couple of weeks. I have no school until January 11 and I'm glad.

To those of you who've been reading this over the past weeks of paper writing, I think I have one more post coming to wrap it all up, if I can find the right picture. Until I do, please accept my thanks for your encouragement.

The Paper: Scene X + 2 - So close, yet so far

2009-12-17T13:05:00.005-08:00

In this scene, I am yelling at my paper because, while it is achingly close to being finished, it is not done.

The picture says it all.

Now, please excuse me while I go pick a fight.

The Paper: Scene X+1- Feeling my way out

2009-12-16T19:39:00.007-08:00

This scene finds me, against all odds, at the edge of my known world. Storms- swirling academic papers, jagged bolts of books, and gale-force counter-arguments for every argument - have nearly capsized my little craft and drowned me in information. I have been lost in fogs of apathy and aimless, thesis-lessness.

At 6:45 pm, I realize I have written two pages but have yet to decide what I am going to argue. I leave the library and drive home through darkness, despairing. Just as I think all hope is lost, something vanishes just at the edge of my sight. Is it a thesis? I climb the stairs up the edge of the universe-how'd these stairs get into my stormy sea analogy?- toward it now, feeling my way, bewildered and wondering, but hopeful that better things are coming.

The Paper: Scene X- It's going to be a bloodbath.

2009-12-16T12:22:00.006-08:00

In this scene, I am facing my paper in a garden while snow gently falls (after all, they tell me it's Christmas-time out there). I am tired because I've already had to fight and kill two papers, but my paper does not care. The only thing my paper knows is that one of us is going to die. What it does not yet know is that it will not be me.

3, 2, 1 Go crazy!

2009-12-13T17:15:00.012-08:00

I love a good count-down...

I am running a paper-writing marathon right now. I think, in total, I have about 20 more pages to write before I am completely done. No problem, realistically, but mustering the minute-by-minute discipline necessary to keep going is becoming a minute-by-minute battle. I will win the battle, but I am reserving the right to go crazy in the process.

C

R

A

Z

Y

The sensation of constantly having the weight of a paper pressing down on me is overpowering right now. If you asked me if I remember something from my life prior to this, I would say, like Frodo in The Return of the King, "No, I am afraid not, Sam. At least, I know that such things happened, but I cannot see them. No taste of food, no feel of water, no sound of wind, no memory of tree or grass or flower, no image of moon or star are left to me." Only, in my case, I would (probably) not address you as Sam, neither you nor I would not be a hobbit, and I would not be trying to remember seeing an oliphaunt because you and I have never seen an oliphaunt together, so you wouldn't be trying to bring that experience to my memory. I do think finishing these papers is similar to an epic journey to drop something into the cracks of Mount Doom, though.

I came back to my desk after making tea this afternoon and just stood in front of it for a minute. I really started to notice my chair and how high the back was. As I stood there, I decided to do a high kick over the back of it (is this making sense?) Unfortunately, it was spinning a bit and the timing was such that I clipped the baby toe of my right foot on the slowly rotating seat. The pain reminded me that I am more than a disembodied brain. I should mention that, after dropping a few choice words- actually I said the same choice word repeatedly, but I won't write it here because my mom reads this- I gave it another shot and think I got at least 6" of clearance over the back.

I chose this, right? Yes. I did.

quickly

2009-12-11T14:20:00.010-08:00

I don't have much time, but I wanted to write this out of my head and onto this blog so that I can clear some space for my engendered history paper.

I spent about ten minutes intently watching a group of four guys and two girls last week. They were having a merry time, eating and laughing, laughing, laughing. What I found fascinating, and this became the reason I watched so intently, is that, while the guys threw their heads back and chortled, the girls did not fail once to cover their mouths when they laughed.

I've seen this before in Asian countries, but it hit me hard last week and got me thinking. Where did this pressure to take up less space than we actually need or deserve (yes, I mean deserve)- physically, emotionally, spiritually, intellectually, and 'whatever-else-ally'- come from? Be quieter, demand less, only lead if there's no man,* eat less, weigh less, complain less, don't expose your intelligence, want less, keep your opinions to yourself until you know what others think... whatever, just be less. Shrink and shrink. I want someone to explain it.

I was going to write, "Maybe this is just me." but that is not what I think. I think this is true, and, if not universal, definitely widespread.

What would happen if we all filled up our own space? I'm not saying take others', but what about taking what is yours, what is there, all around you?

I want to fill up ALL my own space. All of it.

And I will only cover my mouth if I need to laugh while eating something like a spinach salad.

* I realize some of you reading this will disagree with this particular item having a place on this list. Isn't it lovely to be able to disagree and still be friends? In case this is bothersome to you, here are some ways to misunderstand me: assume I am saying this is the most significant item on the list; assume that this particular item was an underlying motivation for writing these thoughts; assume that I respect you less, or think you are not 'filling up all your space,' if this is something you adhere to.

Confession

2009-12-08T13:25:00.004-08:00

So, I know I said I wasn't going to read PostSecret anymore, but it turns out my curiosity is stronger than my (occasional) revulsion. It probably doesn't help that the link is still in my bookmarks...
I just wanted you to know.

Jurassic Park Underwater

2009-12-06T01:46:00.005-08:00

Last night I had the opportunity to do one of my favorite things: rant about A League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. I've said it before, and I'll say it again: that movie was HORRIBLE. I want Mr. Sean Connery himself to give me my money back with a personal apology.

I'm not going to go on because the whole point of this is to share an epiphany I had when I moved on from ALOEG to ruminating on the movie Deep Blue Sea.

Deep Blue Sea is perhaps my favorite bad movie. No, I don't hate this movie. However, I'm also happy to say that, thanks to parental cable t.v. access, I've never paid to see it. The first time I watched it, I couldn't believe how bad it was. But, for some reason, when it came on again at a later date, I didn't not watch it. And then the third time, I kind of enjoyed myself. Kind of.

I've always wondered why, and last night, while explaining the plot to friends, I realized it's because Deep Blue Sea is essentially Jurassic Park underwater. All you have to do is replace Jeff Goldblum with LL Cool J, both Sam Neill & Laura Dern with Samuel L. Jackson (who, incidentally, was also in Jurassic Park), replace the velociraptors with genetically modified mako sharks, submerge the whole thing and bob's your uncle! Jurassic Park underwater!

Indulgence

2009-12-02T01:01:00.005-08:00

You know what I've liked about H1N1 so far? It's allowing me to indulge my hypochondria. Oddly enough, I actually haven't been worried about getting H1N1, but with those government posters up everywhere telling you how to prevent the spread of germs, I feel like I've been given free reign to wash my hands a lot, as in to-my-heart's-content, and use paper towel or tissue or my sweater to open doors in the library.

I don't think I am actually a hypochondriac- I think I might just have a good imagination- but I have a pretty good record of thinking I either have something, or am going to get it. In elementary school, I read about Guillain-Barre Syndrome in Reader's Digest and decided to do a 'report' on it for school. Before I was anywhere close to finished, I started manifesting symptoms. My legs felt weak. My feet were tingling. I was sure paralysis was my next stop. (It wasn't, in case you are wondering.)

On the "I can't imagine a reality where this epidemic won't affect me" front, I fully and completely admit I lost it when living in a place infected with SARS in 2003. I'd like to defend myself, though, by pointing out that the health care of this country definitely left something to be desired. One of the main ways hospitals were dealing with the epidemic was by boiling vinegar on the radiators. That's right: vinegar. I am aware it's a mild acid, but really...

Whatever this is, I think I get it from my dad. As a sort-of pastor at my home church, he gets to glad-hand a lot of people after church services. When he gets home, he makes a bee-line for the bathroom to wash his hands. It's fascinating to watch someone lathering up as if they're preparing for surgery and realize you're probably seeing your own future, if it's not already your present.

Because the theme song for Fresh Prince still brings people together

2009-11-26T12:35:00.003-08:00

Video Recaps | Full Episodes | Webisodes

ebay

2009-11-24T22:01:00.004-08:00

Yesterday was monumental. I, Kirsten, won an ebay auction. That's right. I can't tell you what it was because it's a Christmas gift and I think I want this gift to be a surprise. However, I CAN tell you that I, Kirsten, won the bid during a student/faculty social with the help of one of my professors, Dr. Robynne Healey. Robynne Healey, PhD. specializes in: gender; Canadian history; the Atlantic World; Quaker Studies; War and Peace; and ebay.

How did it feel to win? Amazing.

Was I able to celebrate? Not as much as I had planned to celebrate. I won the auction during the ~ three minutes of actual talking done by the dean of my faculty. But I did give it one of these (as captured in the Carden Street Cafe, 2006, I believe... waaaay back when.):

in the doldrums of concentration

2009-11-21T00:13:00.007-08:00

Kirsten: Maybe I should just go to bed.
Esther: You're not able to concentrate?
Kirsten: Well, I haven't really tried.

I feel trapped in an academic equatorial calm. I hope I don't have to start drinking my own urine- metaphorically, of course- to survive while I wait for the wind to pick up.

Awkward family photos

2009-11-19T15:35:00.000-08:00

this is so funny.

primed

2009-11-18T00:33:00.006-08:00

I sat in a lecture given by Ara Norenzayan this evening. In case you don't click that link, I will tell you that he's a social psychologist at UBC. The main idea he explored was how religion is a factor in pro-social behavior.

The kinds of experiments he does as a psychologist to collect 'empirical data' are quite interesting to me, particularly the idea that they can 'prime' people with an idea in their experiments without the participant being consciously aware that this was happening. The value of this, from what I understand, is that it produces a different form of behavior than the researcher would elicit if he/she explained the purpose/goal of the experiement, or if the subject him/herself was aware of what the researcher was testing. One method of 'priming' people with an idea is through using scrambled sentences with sort of embedded concepts. Four or five words are given to the subject, who then unscrambles them to form a sentence. The example that he gave was:

was divine dessert the = the dessert was divine

Since the experiments Norenzayan was conducting were to determine whether religion influences people to behave in prosocial behavior, he and his researchers 'primed' people with ideas of God. They also are able to prime people with impressons of secular legal features- police, courts etc. Very interesting.

I wonder.

I think the concept is really interesting. I also think they're able to do this because of the existence of a much broader social phenomenon which is a part of our life in communities. In our communities, we're communicating all the time. We do this through words written and spoken, and now texted and twittered. We communicate our values to one another through our actions, or passivity, regardless of whether these actions are intended to 'speak' to a specific person in our life or not. I think life in community is actually about being 'primed.' I don't know what we're being primed for, necessarily, and I don't think we consciously prime each other but I think it's happening. I wonder if this idea helps explain some of the ways that we are unconsciously influenced by those with whom we spend time. Is this why we will talk about some subjects with some friends, but not others? Or why we can have an idea of what a friend will think about a subject about which we've never directly asked?

November 15 is

2009-11-15T23:04:00.013-08:00

my dear friend Janette's birthday!

Is there a better way to pay tribute than through haiku? Not today, there isn't!

(I can't remember if haiku usually have titles, but this one does... )

precious

seven years a friend...
heart hears, hands help, blue eyes laugh,
words comfort and bless.

Things that are difficult to massage into a haiku, but came to mind:
- Janette can renovate, and not just easy stuff.
- She's hilariously competitive.
- She can pack a trunk like no one else I know.

Actually, I think I can do this:

Renovate? No prob.
Lots of luggage, little trunk?
She can make it fit.

Before this starts to sound too much like an ad, I'll say:

happy birthday J!

and stop.

Filing under 'violation' and 'things that are intellectually offensive.'

2009-11-14T15:55:00.014-08:00

Usually I enjoy running at the gym. I think it's the tv-watching. It's nice to slip into neutral once in a while mentally.

HOWEVER, every once in a while things get out of hand. Remember this? The mingling of tears and sweat? The difficulty breathing? The trying-to-keep-it-together?

A few weeks ago I arrived at the gym for a run on a beautiful, sunny Sunday morning. I don't know how this didn't register before, but I was already well on my way when I realized what I was watching Anthony Hopkins as Hannibal Lecter. At first, I tried to watch one of the other t.v.s, but it was like trying to pretend you're not being poked when you ARE. Things got messy, though, when he ate that dude's face. I almost fell off the treadmill. Oh. My. The. Horror. They changed the channel for me, but it was too little, too late. VIOLATION! (in a funny way...but I still wish I hadn't seen that. sick.)

Last Monday I was, once again, running. The history channel was playing a WWII documentary in honor of Remembrance Day. Fine. I can get behind that. What I can't stand, though, is listening to a solder from the former Soviet Union saying that there was NOT massive, violent, wide-spread rape of women in Berlin by Soviet soldiers. THAT IS TOTALLY, COMPLETELY, UTTERLY FALSE AND INTELLECTUALLY OFFENSIVE! I had absolutely nothing to throw at the t.v. so I was forced to respond by running faster and cursing (a lot). I feel worked up just thinking about it.

Although, I'm simultaneously grateful for the freedom of speech we have that enables cracked out ex-soldiers to lie through their teeth in safety. Go freedom!

Well? The commonly held idea that rape is simply a part of warfare is completely UNACCEPTABLE. I reject that absolutely. I wish I had more superlatives to describe how deplorable this idea is. Almost as unacceptable is listening to soldiers lie about it. Stop lying and stop raping.

PostSecret

2009-11-13T22:12:00.002-08:00

Once upon a time, I was spending a lame evening at home. Instead of making my own plans, I chose to lie on the floor and live vicariously by text messaging with a friend who was actually out doing something- I think she was at a baseball game. Perhaps to get me off her back, my friend sent me to postsecret.blogspot.com.

I spent some time that night reading through the secrets. Since then I've periodically gone to check it out. After a few months of that, I've decided to post a secret of my own right here: I don't like that website. I just realized this last night, but I have a weird mix of dread and curiosity when I hit the link. I've realized my curiosity doesn't outweigh the fact that I just simply don't want to be a secret keeper for strangers, some of whom confess horrible things. I probably won't go back.

I am intrigued by this concept, though. I think it is evidence of our desire to be known fully, to hide nothing. What it can't provide, though, is the healing that comes when you're accepted by someone even when he/she knows that *thing* you've buried. Not having a relationship with these individuals, at least not as far as I know, I can't accept them. Then again, maybe people aren't looking for healing or acceptance. Maybe they just want to speak. Who knows?

Snow Flower and the Secret Fan: it's time to rant

2009-11-12T16:50:00.004-08:00

This book is a national bestseller, if we can trust the cover. Over the couple of weeks that have passed since I read this, I've been trying to understand why. Maybe Canadians just like to buy books. Maybe it's a best seller because Canadian's lack discrimination- a great possibility since my brain reminded me that The Pillars of the Earth was also a bestseller. I will never understand that, not if I live to be a hundred years old.

But, Snow Flower and the Secret Fan...the story had potential. Sadly, I think that potential was squandered by See's decision to have her main character narrate from an 'end of life' perspective. By the end of the 'unfolding' in the introductory paragraphs, the story had lost almost all ability to surprise. Add to that the clumsy foreshadowing scattered throughout, and there's almost no reason to actually finish it.

Secondly, the main characters were flat and somewhat unappealing. Unappealing doesn't bother me. Some of my favorite characters have been characters I've disliked or despised- take Angel Clare in Tess of the D'Urbervilles, for example- but I can't decide if See deliberately made them flat or not. I think it's possible that she was attempting to emphasize the degree to which women were limited as those being 'acted on' in the context in which this book was set. However, if that's the case, I don't think she went far enough.

Generally, I'd say the book hovers somewhere around mediocre. I don't regret reading it- unlike The Pillars of the Earth... how I wish I could get those hours back- but I'm also glad that I got it from the library. So, that's what I think of the book as a piece of fiction. But it was not for any of these reasons that I threw the book across the room.

The Rant:

The two main characters in this book, both women, are joined as little girls in a kind of life-long covenant of friendship. I was incredibly disappointed when the author chose to add a sexual component to their relationship. Why, oh why, did she do that? Not every serious friendship between two men or two women is homosexual (in the sense in which we use that word today, not, obviously, in the sense that it is a relationship between two people of the same gender, which, obviously, it is). In the same way, not every serious friendship between a man and a woman is wrapped around sexual desire. How did we come to a point where we are unable to imagine a relationship, a friendship, that is NOT sexual? This is a tragedy, the consequence of which, I think, is shallow relationships or isolation.
Way to go, Lisa See.

While we're on the topic of old movies...

2009-10-30T20:54:00.005-07:00

Mr. Holland's Opus.
I didn't have a blog back when this movie came out. Actually, I don't think I even had an email address. I've been trying to figure this out (instead of writing the paper I'm 'working' on). I know I watched it with some friends in Lindsay Osborn's basement. And I'm pretty sure we rode our bikes to Blockbuster to get it. Actually, it might even have been Jumbo Video. Needless to say, it's been a while. At least a dozen years, as far as I can tell.
So, this has been building up for a while.

I LOATHED this movie. Loathed it.

It's so good to finally get that out there.

Oh my word... it would NOT END.

Thanks, Michael Crichton

2009-10-13T23:03:00.007-07:00

You know that scene in Jurassic Park where the two kids, Tim and Lex, are finally safe back at the visitor centre after a harrowing ordeal in the park? They're basically shovelling food into their mouths, it's all quiet. Lex has some jell-o on a spoon, she smiles at Tim, and then looks off-camera and the jell-o starts to shake. And all of a sudden the camera moves to a view of a velociraptor, the dinosaur they've been holding in reserve for the final spine-chilling conclusion of the movie, lifting with his snouth a veil with a printed image of one of his species to sniff the air of the dining room where the kids have just been. That's a good scene.

I quite enjoy Jurassic Park. I would also like to argue it should not be judged on the basis of any of the sequels which followed it. I'm sad Michael Crichton died last year. If one of them had to go, why couldn't it have been John Grisham? Aren't there enough books in the world about underdog, idealistic southern lawyers?

*next day addendum: I'm not saying I wish John Grisham was dead. I'm just saying enough lawyer books.

Synchronized Reading, Fourth Wheels...

2009-10-10T12:19:00.002-07:00

I am supposed to be reading right now, so I'm going to make this quick.
My friend B came to Saskatoon with me when I went to my parents' place in early September. I really enjoyed having her there. She's a pretty laid back person so I didn't feel compelled to get up and entertain her- a key feature in someone who is going to come with me to my parents place where, for some reason, I struggle to rise and shine before 11:30 or 12:00. B is also a reader: another desirable trait in a vacation buddy. In addition to being capsized in sleep, when I'm on holidays, I prefer to spend many hours of my day submerged in lit, coming up for air when it's time to eat or to exercise or, I suppose, to shop.

I've been mulling over one other thing with regards to that holiday. I like having friends come to my parents' house because I find it opens up new insight for me into my parents. Fresh eyes, fresh questions. I think it helps me to see and appreciate my parents in a different light. I think this is true of anyone that you've known for a long time. Seeing them relate to someone new or different adds depth to my perception of them. It's a good thing.

More on ink and paper

2009-10-06T21:26:00.002-07:00

I am taking a class called Engendered History. It's NOT women's history or feminist history: it's gender history and it's interesting and thought-provoking.

For my class today I read a book called A Midwife's Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard, Based On Her Diary, 1785-1812. The book won a Pulitzer Prize a while back and is quite good. I recommend it.

Martha Ballard kept a diary, making almost daily entries, for 27 years, but there came a day when it just ended. She didn't know, necessarily, that particular entry was going to be the last thing she wrote down, but it was. I can't wrap my mind around it. And maybe by it, I mean death?

She used a phrase about a person who died in her presence over the decades during which she practiced as a midwife that their life went out like a candle. I know she was not the first to use that metaphor, but neither was she a poetic, or even particularly emotive, woman and the visual imagery suggested by the phrase struck me. One minute you are alive, and the next, you are something else. And only very rarely can you guess which day that will be. I wonder what the last thing I write about in my journals will be. Will I be writing thankful words? Expressing frustration? Will I be relating the details and minutiae of my life or puzzling over the more abstract? Will I know my time's almost up, or will that be a surprise?

In our class tonight my prof talked about the work of 'doing history' from old records such as journals. She said it was like walking into a room full of strangers where the historian basically has to reconstruct, in every dimension available, an old community from records of people who already knew who everyone was, so didn't bother to explain. I'd never thought about it before. I have dozens and dozens of journals. I don't know if I've ever introduced 'characters' as they enter. I am hoping no one ever reads them, so I'm not trying to make them usable for posterity, but it is interesting to wonder what the relative difficulty would be for someone trying to use my journals to understand my context.

Waste of Ink and Paper

2009-10-06T14:39:00.005-07:00

While I was waiting for my ride at the airport I read this headline on the back of someone's paper:
"Look to IT sector for future jobs, survey says."
I read this while listening to my MP3 player and in between texting the person picking me up and checking my email/facebook on my iPhone. Unless that article was written in 1990, there's nothing to say. Perhaps, though, a couple of questions might be appropriate: "Should I look to the east for the sunrise? Will rain come from the sky?"

Imitatio Christi

2009-10-01T14:54:00.003-07:00

I have been enjoying studying the Renaissance since starting back to school. I have been contemplating my current financial pressures in light of those studies and have come to a conclusion that, perhaps, the life of graduate student poverty is an opportunity to practice the Imitatio Christi that was such a large part of the numerous religious reforms that swept through European culture in waves.

I'm so poor I'm po'

2009-09-17T23:15:00.005-07:00

So I've decided to do some further education. I'm taking a class called "Reading the Times: Text and Interpretation." I just picked this class up last Saturday, which seems to place me about three months behind the other participants in reading the texts. Overall, though, I think it's going to be fabulous, especially if I can finish the first eight-hundred page book by next Wednesday. If I do, it will be a feat worthy of an epic narrative.

This book, A Secular Age by Charles "Chuck" Taylor, is a tome. Having to support its bulk is aggravating my carpal tunnel syndrome. It's also forced me to read with dictionary.com open on my iphone. Here are some of the words I've learned since Monday: elide, elan, impinging, adumbrated, parousia, mendicant, poiesis. Here are some of the words that neither dictionary.com nor the TWU library dictionaries contained: fusson, nevralgic, kairotic. I think kairotic has something to do with opportunity because Kairos was the Greek god of opportunity, and this seems to make sense in the context in which I read the word. As for the other words... I just hope Chuck Taylor knows. I'd like to get to the point some day when I can make up and include words in my writing with impunity.

Being back in school full time is a transition I am finding taxing, particularly financially and particularly today. I am still working with the organization with which I have been working for the past eight (eight!! can you believe it?) years, but in a more limited capacity, the kind of 'limited capacity' where I don't think I can fully support myself. I received several scholarships which went a long way to helping cover my tuition, but this girl also finds it necessary to eat. And sleep inside. After November I can apply for a grant for people doing research in humanities, but that money won't kick in until next year, if I get it.

I went through school the first time without loans. I had always assumed the next loan I applied for would be to buy my own place, so it was a weird feeling to prostrate myself before the BC government and ask them to help me get an edjimication. However, the distaste of that experience was nothing compared to what I felt today when I received my notice of assessment from them today which informed me that the amount of money they would be loaning me would leave me many thousands of dollars short of what they estimated I would need to live.

Maybe I'm just new to this, but what is the point of getting a loan to cover living expenses if it is actually inadequate to do so? Am I the only one to whom that seems illogical? I'm not an extravagant person. I'm already working part time. Where do they think I'm going to get this money? Is this a joke? Is it revenge? Did I do something to the government? Did I offend it somehow? Was it that time at that place with those people when I said that thing? Just tell me and I'll say I'm sorry!

To add insult to injury, my mom had just flown in from S'toon this morning for some work stuff, so she was with me when I found all this out and I DID cry a little in front of her when I left the post office. And then I DID walk around like a thundercloud for an hour or two this afternoon. It definitely doesn't help promote the idea to my parents that I have my life together. Maybe I don't; the fact that I am living below the poverty line at the age of twenty *ahem* doesn't help either.

And I'm not proud of the fact that I quasi-yelled into the air, "If the government thinks I'm cashing in my RSPs, they're wrong!" This may or may not have been followed up with a rant about how my RSPs are all I am going to have in my old age, and that, even so, my brothers or whoever's responsible for me when I inevitably slip into the mental confusion and breakdown that I was sure this afternoon would accompany my old age, would probably end up taking whatever little money I did manage to accrue and putting me in a Dickensian work-house for senior citizens. And once I was there, I'd be forced to quilt and crochet for export sixteen hours a day under the cruel, watchful eye of some twenty-five year old despot.

My mom says, "It will all work out." Is she right? Only time will tell.

Now that September's here, my summer hiatus is over.

2009-09-02T00:09:00.004-07:00

What happened this summer?
July was one of the most stressful months of my life, making me incredibly grateful that time moves only in one direction. Because of that, I can know that it's all over. No matter what happens in the future, THAT won't happen again.
Because of July, August kind of stunk too. I had six papers to write and then I moved on August 29.
So, summer 2009? Not the best time ever.

And now it's over.

I am getting back on the horse with this blog though.