Me: I wish there was a parent type figure, who wasn't a parent, and who wouldn't judge us and be able to drop us off and pick us up whenever without being a bother.
Roch: You mean a boyfriend?
Me: Oh....yeah that...
Happy New Year. May God bless you whoever and wherever you are in the coming year.
Presupposition: Your family has already decorated the tree before you have come home. Usually such assumptions are wrong.
Methods:
Step 1: Don’t.
Step 2: If you have to, get your sister to do it and make her think that it’s her idea. If she does a crappy job, tell her it’s a crappy job and it’s her fault. Everyone else will too.
Step 3: Ask your mom to find you all the missing decoration, which she promptly will.
Step 4: Get your mom to do it while making her think it’s her idea.
Step 5: When your mom doesn’t do it, on Christmas Eve precisely 10 minutes after you wake up, take a boatload of whatever decorations are remaining in the box and throw them on the tree. Take a really long time to do this so you don’t have to do other things like clean the house (but eventually you will have to anyway).
Step 6: Make a few snide remarks while yelling at your sister to practice her singing lesson.
Step 7: Mutter to yourself.
Step 8: Wrap the tree in gold and silver ribbon.
Step 9: Take a couple pictures to remember the tree by.
End result: You still have a sucky tree.
Post-hoc: Your mom will end up redecorating the tree nicely. Steps 1 to 9 were a waste of time.
Future Directions: Wish yourself a Merry Christmas as no one else will because you are officially the Grinch.
Merry Christmas foo’
Cheers!
ps. I was going to post pictures, but I'm too lazy to upload them. Also the tree is terrible.
Clearly being at home has increased my sleep/social life schedule, not to mention family, so my blogging has fallen behind, as has my writing, but I suppose my blogging is on top of my writing, neither of which is finished particularly well anyway. Being at home has induced this mental zombified state where time passes by remarkably quickly, and by time, I mean waking up past 10 am and trying to pretend you were up before 9:30 wastes an hour, by the time you’re done feeding yourself and other siblings, wait is it already lunchtime? Oh wait no, daily Mass at Sts. Peter and Paul, or other commitments, and before you know it its 4 pm, and that’s when mom comes home. But mom’s been working late, so you push that another couple hours, and hey it’s already 6 pm. Given the tone of the past few days, I haven’t been home after 6 pm, so by the time I come home, check emails, talk on msn, and crash its usually past 1:30 am, and the whole thing kickstarts again the next morning.
It is insane to believe that Christmas is in 1 or 2 days (depending on if you begin to celebrate it on Christmas Eve or Christmas day). Last Christmas, I just started becoming obsessed with the Internet. This Christmas, I realize that some things don’t last.
Last Christmas, I was sneaking around staying up till 3 am under the guise of working on my thesis literature review (which I was doing, kinda). This Christmas, it’s Acoustic Physics (which I am doing, kinda). Some things never change. Like home, home never changes. I forget that it doesn’t, and that I have, and so sometimes I assume things, but mostly I remember in time and realize that I cannot assume those things in this current setting.
I just hung out with more friends. I think it makes me nostalgic, even at the moments I’m among them. These memories are the only ones I have to hold onto when I’m hundreds of miles away, alone in my warm room. When I’m here it was like I had never been away.
After not seeing Roch and Christine for 4 months, seeing them a few nights ago felt like no time had gone by. Funny how it works. Same thing happened with Greg, except it was over a year of not seeing him. And again the same with Jerin, Sebin, and Margaret earlier today. You spend all this time missing them and thinking about how exciting the reunion would be, and once you’re there, it’s all the same once again. You slip into old patterns of thoughts and laughter, and the world is once again comfortable. Maybe that is the beauty in old friendships, and in true friendships, that when you are apart all you want to do (at least on my end, can’t speak for Paul :P) is go back to old times or times you spend in their company. But when you reunite, it’s almost anticlimactic because nothing feels like it’s changed. Perhaps that is what we have to be grateful for – that even after months or years go by, no matter how many things and circumstances and issues have arisen and changed, the relationship still remains the same.
Sometimes nothing changes. Not having been home for 4 months, which, granted, isn’t that extensive of a time but long enough to notice a difference, nothing much had really changed. I don’t know what I was expecting I guess, but definitely not this. It was like time had reversed itself back to the summer and I was being given ... well not given anything really. I mean, it’s not bad this, the sameness of this life. My mom never changes – saying this and saying that, busy busy, veggies, God. I had forgotten how much our life centered around Church at home. I had forgotten that my house was cold, as always, space heaters in a couple rooms but mostly, resorting back to wearing sweaters on a regular basis. Old sweaters, that is, as I neglected to bring back any. I passed out last night at 7 pm, but when I woke up at 4 am, it was funny how quiet the house was, and I recall back to my summer days trying to be sneaky while staying up that late at night.
This is not bad. This routine, this sameness, this consistency. It is definitely not bad, and one day I might even crave it. But for now, it feels claustrophobic. Some part of me doesn’t want to get caught up in this trap, although it is hardly a trap, it is a good way of life. I know it’s the “youth” part of me but at the same time, I mean, should I have to reconcile myself to a life of commitment at this age? I think by the time I’ll be ready, it shouldn’t be “have to” and hopefully will be a “want to”. I mean, coming back home, I felt again like a 12 year old 21 year old (or so how my parents treated me this summer) and I’m trying to push those boundaries, but I think a part of me doesn’t want to. My sister definitely will when the time comes, I believe, or she won’t have to for my parents will have grown up mentally by that period of time.
I think more than anything, I feel isolated. Caught between two worlds – the one that I used to live, and the one that I am and want to be living. The tradition and the now. I mean, my dad assumed in his tone of voice that I would take my 8 year old sister to hockey this evening – she’s playing goalie. I wonder how long it will be until they assume that I will be cooking again. But that is just not me. Not that staying up till 4 am and eating MnMs by the handful is me either. I guess I’m just confused, or still tired, or trying to justify stuff that just is. I’m constantly thirsty, my hair refuses to cooperate, and there are no locks on doors. The streets are shovelled, there’s barely any snow on the ground, and wearing winter boots make your feet hot.
You always want your life to be like a movie, dramatic and theatrical with the perfect background music playing at that very moment to enhance the mood. The angles, the close-up, the sheer novelty of it all. Do you think we ever downplay events that actually happen to us as movie unworthy just because we are so blinded to ourselves and our normality?
Sometimes events that happen in the middle of the night are so surreal you have to convince yourself they are real and not something you dreamed up. Sometimes, I’m still left wondering if there was some alternate dimension those things happened to me in because surely, in my real life, I would never have let myself go there. Surely, I’m not that stupid as to be in that position. But I am? This is real?
At the end, most of the great movies almost always have a moment of silence somewhere in between the great slaughter or the great kiss. It’s funny because in one of the plays I had to memorize for Hartley’s class last year, my character was supposed to mock T.S. Elliot and his line “This is the way the world ends, not with a bang but with a whimper.” Funny the things you recall in a moment, seemingly unrelated yet wholly appropriate. The leading up to death of anything can be loud and messy and torturous but the moment itself isn’t yours or mine or anybody’s. Oftentimes the moment escapes from you because no one knows when death comes, it just happens, and whoever is left behind both gets closure but finds that there is this thread of thought left hanging, never to not only be said, but also be heard by the people supposed to hear it.
Funny how sometimes the passage of something makes you feel happy. Like when the ring fell with Smeagol and Frodo was outside on the rock, and he said, “It’s gone, it’s done.” The memory never leaves but the experience is over. We've all been there. And to think that you thought your life was not like a movie...
Today was one of those days. I went to bed at 9 am (yes you read that right) after some wacked out experience etc etc blah blah. I’m still sick and my body’s achy. I watched a bit of “All about Steve” during lunch while eating some Pizza Pockets that I don’t really love but have in the fridge. The day was shit, the month was shit, the term felt like shit, I felt like shit. All in all, if you don't get the idea, I felt like a brown piece of fecal matter crapped out by some roadside cow in India, to be driven over by auto-rickshaws and men in faulty bikes with red-tinged lips from chewing paan.
So I had woken up in time for lunch, and then it was 3 p.m. and I decided to go back to sleep. I left my iPod playing some music so maybe I could induce some lucid dreaming. Couldn’t fall asleep until around 4, and my dreams were so intense that I woke up at 4:07, 4:09, 4:10, 4:12, and 4:13. Within each of those times I underwent a different complete dream sequence, and while not all were actually fully lucid, they were still pretty freaking intense...
As a side note, I discovered this technique a few weeks back, and for me, they only work if I’m napping. I basically put my iPod softly on in the background and go to sleep, and this aids in lucid dreaming for whatever reasons that I have looked up but couldn’t be arsed to write here. Try it out, it’s pretty trippy.
I came back to check my email. Oh crap, some of my course marks had been emailed to me. One in particular. Reproduction in mammals – the BANE of my existence. This course I struggled with to catch up. For those of you who don’t know, there’s a lot that goes on in your body to help your reproductive functions to function. A lot. And they’re different in cows and horses and dogs and cats and mice and humans. GAH! I was with people who had been in this field for a year or years and had SOME degree of knowledge. I was just an undergrad. I took theatre and writing and inquiry. I had no ideas about the follicular waves in cows or even what a follicle was. Hell, I think I started off not fully knowing what an ovary was and I took anatomy. So you get that I was completely out of my depth.
Turns out, I ended up getting a 79.33%. Yeah, I know, not the best. But you do not UNDERSTAND how much I DID NOT KNOW. I bombed the final. I mean, honestly, there MUST BE A GOD.
Here’s the kicker though – the prof emailed me with the subject “more on your grade”. Shit, my stomach dropped. This is what it said: “Shani, for your information, you got second highest grade in the class for your term paper, and also tied for the second place for your oral presentation. Good job!”
This was a 20 page review article I had to read like 40 papers for. I didn't know how they could even like it. But second place. Me. Little noob me. In front of those big scary profs. Proof that God loves you even when you ignore Him.
It's been a while since I've been surprised. Thank you Jesus.
Sitting on my bed, hacking away with a magical cough and cold that refuses to go away, I’m clearly at my most attractive. No wonder old people are always cranky - I would be too if every joint ached constantly and the construction workers (as delicious as they are) chose to wield loud instruments at times when I’m right in the midst of my REM sleep.
I put my clothes in the laundry to bring home. I think they’re drying right now. Packing for home is a weird thing. Granted it’s only 2 weeks, but it is 2 weeks of my life that I have to move back home. Clothes are easy to pack but I think I have to bring the acoustic physics binder home with me so I can catch up on module 1 and stuff about sound waves. Isn’t that fun.
I wish everything was as easy as packing clothes. You wash, dry, fold, and put in suitcase. Very simple, very fast, very efficient. But no, life has to be like packing toiletries. There are so many things scattered everywhere that you can’t possibly keep track of all of them, and chances are you forget or misplace one or two things, and before you know it you’re cursing yourself and wandering down the street looking for a 24 hours Shoppers because you messed up.
Yes, I know I’m going home and not backpacking across Europe (although I would much rather road trip across the States than go to Europe). Everything is within walking/driving distance if not already at my place of residence, but that’s not my point. I’m a creature of routine who loves being spontaneous, in moments where spontaneity can be afforded. That means I should be able to reach into my clear plastic pencil case thing (for those from Mac, got it at clubsfest from some dentist...or was it the street sale) and find my tweezers, pencil sharpener, band aid, foundation, or dental floss in an instant. Sounds simple enough, but watch when I go home, I’ll realize I forgot my toothbrush and can’t find any spare ones around the house. Or wait, I didn’t bring any safety pins and damn, that shirt HAD to rip.
Good thing I’m not a worrier (not even being sarcastic), but I need everything I need to be available at that moment. Deodorant. Good another thing to add to the list. Hair straightening cream as well. Hair brush. Yeah that seems to be good. Shoot, cell phone charger. See why I prefer packing clothes? It’s a good thing we humans are resilient creatures that adapt well to stressors.
I’m sitting here listening to this addictive dubstep mix, and yes, the song is floozy but there’s something about it, like when you open up a big bag of chips when you’re not hungry, and you fall into that obsessive hand-to-mouth routine. That’s what it’s like. Don’t care much for the original, but this mix is dirty.
So I was talking to Leanne about not knowing what to write about, and then she said she wasn’t feeling the mix. That got me to thinking where I was at musically about a year ago. While most people chart their life by dates and times and memories, I find that I often label periods of my life by music. By December 2009, I had started my first leg of the journey into indie/fuzz folk/underground but not really type music. I had at that time discovered “Blue Ridge Mountains” by the Fleet Foxes and “Skinny Love” by Bon Iver, well into Death Cab being old but good news, discovering random Iron and Wine songs, such as “Boy with a Coin”. But I was just getting started in this area of this genre of music.
To be fair, I met a music mentor in late December. He introduced me to Mumford and Sons back then, although I didn’t fully appreciate them until a couple months later, and now they’re all over the radio and are up for a Grammy. He was better with individual songs though, such as “Candy” by Paolo Nutini and such, so that was nice. I remember on the 28th or 29th curling up by the fireplace and listening to Bon Iver on repeat while staring up at the full moon and the clouds, hearing the adults murmuring in the background. It was a nice night. Such was the musical vein of January.
Now it must be said that I don’t like discovering too many new bands at once. It overwhelms me because I need to sit down and fall in love with the band on my own time. I need to dissect each song after a lot of careful listens, pick up the little details here and there that make their song my own. So while the list may not be extensive, my knowledge of the songs of these bands grew and still continues to grow.
In February, another kindred soul introduced me to Neutral Milk Hotel. Now let me tell you something about NMH – I feel like it’s a musical interpretation of everything I want to be as a person. The lyrics are out there, if you look at it objectively, but for me they seemed so natural. The chords are simple but the melodies are hauntingly beautiful. In fact, this band brought me to my knees so often, I was emotionally incapacitated. I couldn’t function emotionally for so long but I couldn’t stop listening. I could go on forever about every one of their songs, and one day I might, but I won’t for now. Just remember to check them out. You will thank me, if not now, one day. The same soul gave me the Avett Brothers, GYBE! (who I still have yet to explore), among other things. Besides, if it wasn’t for NMH, Roch and I wouldn’t have gone to seen Neutral Uke Hotel during NXNE and have one of the most epic nights of our lives ever.
So these bands made up the bulk of the spring. I saw Said the Whale and In-flight Safety at the Casbah with Jess, and that was a mindblowing show. I still have yet to explore them more fully but definitely on my to do list. So spring became summer, and having a lot of chauffeuring duties I ended up finally being able to listen to the radio, where I became familiar with the top 40 stuff (Usher's “OMG” anyone?). Fist pumping in cars became the norm.
However, reading the Star one day, I read a review of this band called “The National”. They looked interesting, so Youtube led me to “Bloodbuzz Ohio”, and by God I had fallen in love again. Still am in fact. Discovering their new album and their older songs (“Slow Show”, “Baby We’ll be Fine”, “Apartment Story”, “Geese of Beverly Road”, etc...) was magical. I would take long walks during the summer, so Mumford and Sons, the National, Iron and Wine, Arctic Monkeys, Fleet Foxes, Postal Service, Calexico, NMH, Bon Iver, Tokyo Police, and other such bands became staple in my ear diet and exercise intervention.
A certain Nova Scotian also introduced me to dubstep over the summer. It was this one summer night and I actually listened to the videos he played, and then I was hooked. Even now, I curse him (in a good way) for being able to distract me in a second with such kind of music, loaded with heavy bass and drops so big and dirty that your mind explodes into little tendrils of pleasure and adrenaline, causing your blood pressure to rise and your moral conscience to disappear.
This continued on into the fall. Moving to Saskatoon, I had to hold onto any music memories I could. My music life remained relatively stable, I continued to explore all the bands I mentioned above. Until I discovered Fanfarlo’s cover of “In the Aeroplane Over the sea” by NMH, and what a cover it was. Fanfarlo themselves are a pretty band (“Comets” and “Atlas” are beautiful), and through the Fanfarlo Youtube mix I discovered Beirut. Wow. Beirut. What an eclectic yet beautiful sound do they employ (“Nantes”, “Guyamas Sonora”, “My Night with the Prostitute from Marseille” , “Idle Days”, among others). I love the trumpet and trombones that most of these bands use, makes the sound that much richer and fuller, different yet familiar.
So that brings you to December 2010. Yes I still love System and I’m excited they’re back together (and hopefully will see them if they come to this side of the Atlantic). I mean, along with “Eh Cumpari” and “Amazing Horse” this year was pretty decent musically. Still have some bands to explore in due time (Bowerbirds, Cloud Cult, Arcade Fire, Pavement, Dream City Film Club, etc) and along the way have picked up more than a few music mentors. I mean, there are still so many individual songs to discuss that if I were to start, I wouldn’t finish. I mean, how can you possibly finish talking about music?
I’m sitting here listening Bon Iver and making NYE plans with Roch instead of writing CIHR grant forms (don’t tell my supervisor, I swear I’m trying my best!). The biggest argument I got into the past couple days had to with the tendency of the liberal media/government/education bodies to allow tolerance to be defined by being outwardly (but at the same time unconsciously) anti-Christian. That and the false propaganda associated with global warming. Oh and finally whether the DBZ guys or girls were hotter (definitely the guys, come on...Majin Vegeta and future Trunks do not trump Videl, Bulma, or any other female figure in the DBZ universe). I guess I like arguing. Or not. Actually I don’t like arguing, I just have an opinion and find this uncontrollable need to state it all the time.
Sometimes I wonder if I have too strong a flavour, too strong a presence. I know that sounds conceited, but if you didn’t know, I write. Mostly poetry, some short fiction, but yes I write (as an aside, I’ve been debating getting a writing section up on here but I don’t know how to link a separate section and blah blah. Let me know if I should or shouldn’t, if you will.).
Today is Tuesday, and if I was at home I’d be heading to Denny’s to meet up with the best writer’s crew on this half of the planet (shoutouts to Craig and Donna, especially). Writing is not difficult for me in the sense that I don’t sit down and mull about for words and ensure that every single word on the page was carefully chosen and most correct. When I write, I write fast and hard. Writing is hard for me when it comes to sharing, as I do not censor the emotional truths I write about, especially pertaining to myself. In fact, it is in my writing that you see what in me is most vulnerable but also what is most Shani, at least in that moment. It is a very fragile act, sharing one’s writing. I mean, people have this idea of who I am (or who they suppose I am), and oftentimes it doesn’t match what they read. In fact, my mom said that my stories were way too emotional and that I should stop writing what I wasn’t.
It’s scary sharing my works with people closest to me because maybe what I share is not what they know of me, or have come to believe of me. But what kind of a person doesn’t write the truth? What kind of a writer doesn’t hunger for the truth? If it is truth that sets us free, then no wonder so many of us feel trapped. Our survival is oftentimes based on lies, to ourselves, to others. I’m tempted to say that not all the lies are bad, they are necessary. But with necessity comes compromise and we (or at least I) oftentimes compromise the truth in order to maintain some sort of regularity, normalcy, continuity.
Alas the writer’s world is a complicated one. Not very practical though. It’s 1:30 p.m. and I think I’m off to get some soup.
Ever wonder if Eowyn would have been settling if she ever ended up with Aragorn as she had initially wanted to? Before any of you hound me, I’ve been rewatching the movies on the weekend (at least the first two) so any opinion I have on their relationship is based on the movies and not the books (so shut your whining). Now boys, don’t tell me Aragorn didn’t lead her on because he totally did. He’s not an idiot, with the all the touching and glances and he knew her eyes went all “soft” when she looked at him. Hell he’s Ara-freaking-gorn, who wouldn’t be all over that? With all his 87 year old wisdom, don’t tell me he didn’t play the fool...
Except I’m kinda really glad they didn’t end up together. He would have not been good enough for her. Yes you read that right. Not. Faramir was the better and more suited choice. She would have always been in Aragorn’s shadow had she ended up with him. Arwen – well, the elves are good at being pretty things and everyone always loves pretty things. Besides, if they had ended up together, Tolkien would not have been able to write what I consider one of the most romantic moments in a book ever (one of the other major romantic, melt-my-heart scenes is in Princess Mononoke when she feeds the kid meat by chewing it up and spitting it in his mouth because he couldn’t chew and was really hurt or dying, yes I forget their names, yes I don’t do it nearly enough justice, but you get the point. Watch the movie. It’s awesome.).
Here is the passage from the book:
“’And would you have your proud folk say of you: “There goes a lord who tamed a wild shieldmaiden of the North! Was there no women of the race of Númenor to choose?”
‘I would,’ said Faramir. And he took her in his arms and kissed her under the sunlit sky, and he cared not that they stood high upon the walls in the sight of many. And many indeed saw them and the light that shone about them as they came down from the walls and went hand in hand to the Houses of Healing.”
Would so proud and so humble a question be asked if it was Aragorn? Would so proud and victorious an answer be given? Highly doubt it.
With that being said, if anyone wants to photoshop my face onto any one of the faces that Aragorn touches or kisses, be my guest.
Shan-wise Gamgee awaiting on her Frodina signs out.
‘Tis the season to be jolly. I’m actually not. Shani not jolly? Is there such a thing? Well apparently there is. So deal. I’m not being emo (although many of you would attest to that. Please, all of us carry a little angst in our girly love ridden hearts). I’m supposed to be doing an assignment right now but I’m not really feeling it. Instead I’m sitting here thinking about Christmas, or lack thereof. You know, in all my daydreams, I always envisioned myself being alone like I am now. A strong independent figure that spends all my days solitary and thinking, creating and thriving. Taking long walks in the brisk winter air, stopping by bars to drink a pint or two, professionally, while my eyes gazed off in the distance and beautiful thoughts continued to circulate in my rosy-cheeked peach fuzzy daydream.
Now that I’ve been alone in the middle of nowhere hundreds of miles from home, it isn’t that sweet. No. You get bored of walking in 2 days and hitting up bars by yourself sucks. In fact, watching the Glee Christmas special (yes, I do hate Glee but there’s not a lot of tv on Tuesdays), it made me feel sad. It made me realize how many people I always had around me during the season, and how much that isn’t a reality for so much of the population. Wow. This is sounding more like a life lesson than a self realization. It isn’t meant to be. But really, I mean every time I walk into the freaking Safeway I see these boxes of chocolates meant to be SHARED, or these huge vats of cookies or truffles or cakes and well....they’re all meant to be shared. A walk through the grocery store to pick up chicken (you know how I am about my chicken) listening to some Iron and Wine and the National turns out to be an emotional sobfest that usually results in me running to Maguires to raid through their beer fridges and bring me home some Keith’s (which may or may not involve me sneaking in a pint or three at the bar really fast). By myself. I always said the mark of an alcoholic was if I started drinking at home by myself. I swear I am not an alcoholic. Anyway, it’s not actually about the beer, the beer is a metaphor (a very nice warm metaphor in my gullet, of which I can throw back a lot of in a very short period). It’s about escapism, and I can’t seem to find my niche here yet.
I feel like the Grinch. I never watched the movie but I think he was alone too. Wasn’t that the point of the movie? I’m not sure. All I know was that he was green. So keep your presents and give me your attention. Join me for a walk, a smile, a poem. Watch Avatar (the Last Airbender, obviously) and Princess Mononoke late into the night as once Roch did, even though she hated it. That’s love. The “me” here is generic. Write someone an email. A facebook post. Do it. Make someone smile, especially someone you think that has it all. Turns out, they may need the pick me up more than you realize.
