Dear Diary,
Well, it's been 3 months since the shipwreck and still no sign of rescue. What's that blog I read so long ago? If only I could be anywhere but here...
God I'm hungry. If I have to eat tuna sushi one more time I will go crazy. It's enough to turn me into a hunter. That wild turkey is looking mighty mouth-watering right now. What's that old saying? "if you teach a man to fish..." Damn you and your proverbs Nick Moroz!
What I could really go for is one of those Boston Cream donuts from Tim Horton's. I'm so desperate, I would even settle for the strawberry flavour. Well, all I can do is fantasize. At least my French Laundry Cookbook survived the disaster. Let's see: Salad of Globe Artichokes with Garden Herbs and Gazpacho, Roasted Rib Steak with Chanterelles, Pecorino Toscano with Roasted Sweet Peppers and Arugula Coulis, Chocolate Fondant with Coffee Cream, Velouté of Bittersweet Chocolate with Cinnamon-Stick Ice Cream....ah, I can only dream.
I have discovered ways to relieve the tedium of staring into the turquoise water all day long. A useless pocket-full of soggy as-yet-to-be-used Dooly's tickets inspired me to devise a variation on pool which involves coconuts and bamboo. And just for fun I am making up my own language .What I really miss is music. If only could listen to The Clash (London Calling), or Tom Waits (The Early Years) or Bach's Cello suites (Anner Bylsma) or even The Scorpions, the time would pass more quickly. Instead, the other day, a pristine copy of Super-Mega-Dance-Party Hits 2011 washed up on shore. What the---?
Am I hallucinating? Is that a viking ship I see on the horizon? No, too many sails. Now see a dude on board. He's got dreads, he's carrying a sword...it's...no, it couldn't be..yes, it's him, it's really him, it's
Jack Sparrow! Yo ho and a barrel full of rum! I guess someone really did receive my message in a bottle. Jack! Over here! Help, get me off of this island! Teach me how to wield a sword, to outsmart villains and make them walk the plank, to outwit my enemies. Oh, Jack take me on a pirate escapade!
You know, I think I'll miss my little island.
Well, Jack and the Black Pearl beckon. Farewell island, you've taught me so much. Another adventure awaits.
Thursday, April 28, 2011
Saturday, March 19, 2011
It's the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine
Last month, when I opened my RRSP statement, I was quite pleased to note a 9% increase in my Global Energy Fund. On the other hand, when I fill up my gas tank twice a week at $126.4/litre I feel a lot of pain. And when I see images of unrest in the Middle East, I cheer for the victory of the people over the forces of oppression and cringe as pro-regime forces attempt to crush the popular movements and I am forced to admit to myself, as if I didn't already know already, that it's all interrelated. My mutual funds, my car, my CNN, my MTV, my iPhone, my grocery cart are all links in a chain that bind us from our safe -haven of insouciance to the rest of the world. My conscience has known this for a long long time but the recent world events that are turning me into a news junkie have made me conscious of my conscience. I can no longer look away. I can't go on living as if my actions have no impact on the world.
The paradigm is shifting. I am struggling with the following question: how can I continue to live my life as if I am not concerned when the world is in such upheaval? Are you familiar with the old R.E.M. lyrics? It's the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine.
-
But...I. don't. feel. fine.
I watch in awe and despair as the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear crisis transform parts of Japan into an apocolyptic ground zero. And yet, life goes on here. For example, the night after the earthquake, I watched the news in horror and then stayed up until midnight filled with guilty pleasure, licking the dregs of leftover chocolate fondue while watching Sex and the City: The Movie and revelling in its irreverent silliness. I am a terrible, frivolous person!
The other day, my kids were incessantly bickering over ipods, iphones ,the Wii and the laptop. I couldn't take the spoiled sense of entitlement any longer so I sat them in front of CNN, made them look at the images of devastation from Japan and lectured them: "You cannot fight over your personal entertainment choices when there is a nuclear meltdown on the other side of the world. Banality is immoral boys!" Its the post-apocalyptic parenting equivalent of the old standby: "Eat all the food on your plate--don't you know there are children starving in Africa?"
I believe in resilience, in social justice, in the victory of the good over the forces of evil. But today I feel like a helpless spectator with the uneasy knowledge that I am, in some small way, involved in the world. And as R.E.M. plays in an endless loop at the back of my mind, a line from the prophetic William Butler Yeats (Ireland) poem The Second Coming emerges to the forefront: "Things fall apart, the center cannot hold."
If you are in a doom and gloom mood like me, I invite you to ponder the entire poem, written in 1919, in the disillusioned aftermath of WWI.
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer,
Things fall apart, the center cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed in the world
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned.
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Wind shadows of the indignant birds.
The darkness drops again but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocky cradle,
And what rough beast, its now come round at last,
Slouches toward Bethlehem to be born?
The paradigm is shifting. I am struggling with the following question: how can I continue to live my life as if I am not concerned when the world is in such upheaval? Are you familiar with the old R.E.M. lyrics? It's the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine.
-
But...I. don't. feel. fine.
I watch in awe and despair as the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear crisis transform parts of Japan into an apocolyptic ground zero. And yet, life goes on here. For example, the night after the earthquake, I watched the news in horror and then stayed up until midnight filled with guilty pleasure, licking the dregs of leftover chocolate fondue while watching Sex and the City: The Movie and revelling in its irreverent silliness. I am a terrible, frivolous person!
The other day, my kids were incessantly bickering over ipods, iphones ,the Wii and the laptop. I couldn't take the spoiled sense of entitlement any longer so I sat them in front of CNN, made them look at the images of devastation from Japan and lectured them: "You cannot fight over your personal entertainment choices when there is a nuclear meltdown on the other side of the world. Banality is immoral boys!" Its the post-apocalyptic parenting equivalent of the old standby: "Eat all the food on your plate--don't you know there are children starving in Africa?"
I believe in resilience, in social justice, in the victory of the good over the forces of evil. But today I feel like a helpless spectator with the uneasy knowledge that I am, in some small way, involved in the world. And as R.E.M. plays in an endless loop at the back of my mind, a line from the prophetic William Butler Yeats (Ireland) poem The Second Coming emerges to the forefront: "Things fall apart, the center cannot hold."
If you are in a doom and gloom mood like me, I invite you to ponder the entire poem, written in 1919, in the disillusioned aftermath of WWI.
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer,
Things fall apart, the center cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed in the world
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned.
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Wind shadows of the indignant birds.
The darkness drops again but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocky cradle,
And what rough beast, its now come round at last,
Slouches toward Bethlehem to be born?
Tuesday, December 14, 2010
There's a world outside your window
For my last blog post for this course I wanted to write about Christmas but when we started talking about hair last week I thought I might want to write about that too. Amazingly, I have found the perfect intersection of the two subjects!
You all must know my all-time favorite Christmas song Do They Know It's Christmas? by Band Aid. But are you familiar with the context in which it was written?
It is 1984. Internet does not exist yet. Although CDs are becoming popular, most teenagers still buy vinyl records of their favorite bands and those who are really fanatic about their records protect the record covers in plastic sleeves and arrange them on shelves in alphabetical order. Sony is king and all youth walk around with Sony Walkmans and earphones stuck to their ears. Producing and taping customized cassettes is a popular past time. In basements everywhere, adolescents are discovering Atari and playing Pac Man, Space Invaders and Donkey Kong.
On the international front, the Berlin wall still separates East and West and Tiananmen Square is 5 years away. The term genocide is mostly applied to WWII and Rwanda and the ethnic cleansing in Bosnia are horrors that cannot be imagined. No one has heard of CNN, RDS, or other 24-hour news channels. In Ethiopia, famine threatens to decimate the population.
The images from Ethiopia were shocking and, in evolution of the role of the media in ending the Vietnam War in the 70s, the mass media had a large role to play in influencing public opinion on the fmaine issue. In England, Bob Geldof of the Boomtown Rats decided to mobilize his musician colleagues to create a song and dedicate all proceeds to ending the famine. In a flury of urgency, the song was written and recorded within a week and released just in time for Christmas.
I love this song and this video. Although there are elements that merit criticism--the naive,Western-centric, imperialist view of Africa, the conflating of Ethiopia into "Africa" and the claim that it`s "where nothing ever grows, no rain nor rivers flow"--it still represents a turning point for me who was 15 at the time. The line "there`s a world outside your window" sums it up and it represents the beginning of my awareness of international issues that continues to this day.
Watch the video at least twice. First, savour the complicated, edgy, choppy, gel and hairspray overloaded, dyed, shaved and bobbed 80s hairstyles! My own hair look was definitely of the times: a choppy style, long in the front, dyed blond with lots of Sun-In, hairsprayed and underneath the long hair on the right side, a shaved strip that followed the contours of my ear from front to back. Can you spot Sting, George Michael, Phil Collins, Boy George, Simon Lebon and Bono? I love how all of the members of Band Aid look like they just got out of bed! So far from our plastic artificial world in which we live.
Then, enjoy the video for the message, delivered by all of that extraordinary artistic talent. I still get shivers when I hear it for the first time of the season every December.
You all must know my all-time favorite Christmas song Do They Know It's Christmas? by Band Aid. But are you familiar with the context in which it was written?
It is 1984. Internet does not exist yet. Although CDs are becoming popular, most teenagers still buy vinyl records of their favorite bands and those who are really fanatic about their records protect the record covers in plastic sleeves and arrange them on shelves in alphabetical order. Sony is king and all youth walk around with Sony Walkmans and earphones stuck to their ears. Producing and taping customized cassettes is a popular past time. In basements everywhere, adolescents are discovering Atari and playing Pac Man, Space Invaders and Donkey Kong.
On the international front, the Berlin wall still separates East and West and Tiananmen Square is 5 years away. The term genocide is mostly applied to WWII and Rwanda and the ethnic cleansing in Bosnia are horrors that cannot be imagined. No one has heard of CNN, RDS, or other 24-hour news channels. In Ethiopia, famine threatens to decimate the population.
The images from Ethiopia were shocking and, in evolution of the role of the media in ending the Vietnam War in the 70s, the mass media had a large role to play in influencing public opinion on the fmaine issue. In England, Bob Geldof of the Boomtown Rats decided to mobilize his musician colleagues to create a song and dedicate all proceeds to ending the famine. In a flury of urgency, the song was written and recorded within a week and released just in time for Christmas.
I love this song and this video. Although there are elements that merit criticism--the naive,Western-centric, imperialist view of Africa, the conflating of Ethiopia into "Africa" and the claim that it`s "where nothing ever grows, no rain nor rivers flow"--it still represents a turning point for me who was 15 at the time. The line "there`s a world outside your window" sums it up and it represents the beginning of my awareness of international issues that continues to this day.
Watch the video at least twice. First, savour the complicated, edgy, choppy, gel and hairspray overloaded, dyed, shaved and bobbed 80s hairstyles! My own hair look was definitely of the times: a choppy style, long in the front, dyed blond with lots of Sun-In, hairsprayed and underneath the long hair on the right side, a shaved strip that followed the contours of my ear from front to back. Can you spot Sting, George Michael, Phil Collins, Boy George, Simon Lebon and Bono? I love how all of the members of Band Aid look like they just got out of bed! So far from our plastic artificial world in which we live.
Then, enjoy the video for the message, delivered by all of that extraordinary artistic talent. I still get shivers when I hear it for the first time of the season every December.
Merry Christmas gang and all the best for 2011!
Wednesday, December 1, 2010
One way ticket to here
It's amazing how a seemingly insignificant action can become the catalyst for a life-changing event.
In my case, the action was the first and only time I ever dropped out of a course. It was my first year of my four-year undergraduate degree at the University of Western Ontario. I was majoring in English and had registered for a French course because a second language credit was obligatory for my program. I went to my first class, took an instant dislike to the arrogant, condescending professor, dropped the course and signed up for course on Ancient Greece instead.
Fast forward two more years. I was finishing my third year with one more to go and that French course was still looming in the background. I had one more year to take the course if I wanted to graduate. It so happened that Western is part of the Explore program and has its French Immersion School in Trois-Pistoles. I realized that I could get the credit I needed from Western without having to set foot in the French Department and the government would pay for it too.
So one day in May I hopped on a train with 200 other students and headed east. I got off that train expecting to earn a badly needed credit in French. Little did I know that my life would be transformed too.
How ironic that I live at least half of my life in French now when I had stubbornly resisted that French course throughout my undergraduate years! I graduated with a B.A from Western, went on to travel to Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia, enrolled in a graduate program and completed M.A. in literature at McGill . And here I am now at the Cegep de Rimouski, teaching English to an amazing group of language students!
I never did have a career plan. My plan was just to continue what I loved doing: reading and studying. But life has a way of creating opportunites that you seize because you recognize fateful moments of your destiny. Although I have travelled on many buses, trains and planes since that fateful train ride to Trois-Pistoles, I never did use the return portion of my ticket.
This week we will examine the Maclean's annual university rankings issue. You have already made an important decision when you decided to study Languages at Cégep de Rimouski. In the spring you must make another life decision: do you apply to university? what program? where? do you travel? when? where? with whom? do you work? where? doing what? We will take a close look at what Maclean's has to say about universities but at the same time, I can attest to the fact no matter what road you choose you will meet with twists and turns, obstacles andmost importantly, uncharted surprises.
In my case, the action was the first and only time I ever dropped out of a course. It was my first year of my four-year undergraduate degree at the University of Western Ontario. I was majoring in English and had registered for a French course because a second language credit was obligatory for my program. I went to my first class, took an instant dislike to the arrogant, condescending professor, dropped the course and signed up for course on Ancient Greece instead.
Fast forward two more years. I was finishing my third year with one more to go and that French course was still looming in the background. I had one more year to take the course if I wanted to graduate. It so happened that Western is part of the Explore program and has its French Immersion School in Trois-Pistoles. I realized that I could get the credit I needed from Western without having to set foot in the French Department and the government would pay for it too.
So one day in May I hopped on a train with 200 other students and headed east. I got off that train expecting to earn a badly needed credit in French. Little did I know that my life would be transformed too.
How ironic that I live at least half of my life in French now when I had stubbornly resisted that French course throughout my undergraduate years! I graduated with a B.A from Western, went on to travel to Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia, enrolled in a graduate program and completed M.A. in literature at McGill . And here I am now at the Cegep de Rimouski, teaching English to an amazing group of language students!
I never did have a career plan. My plan was just to continue what I loved doing: reading and studying. But life has a way of creating opportunites that you seize because you recognize fateful moments of your destiny. Although I have travelled on many buses, trains and planes since that fateful train ride to Trois-Pistoles, I never did use the return portion of my ticket.
This week we will examine the Maclean's annual university rankings issue. You have already made an important decision when you decided to study Languages at Cégep de Rimouski. In the spring you must make another life decision: do you apply to university? what program? where? do you travel? when? where? with whom? do you work? where? doing what? We will take a close look at what Maclean's has to say about universities but at the same time, I can attest to the fact no matter what road you choose you will meet with twists and turns, obstacles andmost importantly, uncharted surprises.
Wednesday, November 24, 2010
Ode to Frost
It's 7 am. I pull on my hat, mittens,scarf, coat and rubber boots and we creep put of the house like stealthy thieves.
The world is white with frost. The air is crisp and sharp in my lungs. I must scrape a thick layer of ice crystals off of my windshield in order to drive away.
We hop in the car, shivering. The first rays of the morning illuminate the traces of frost left on the windows, like diamonds glinting in the new sun.
I turn up the volume as Ray Lamontagne laments in his Tennessee mountain twang. We head for the sea, to the summer house on the Grève D'Amours (love shore? seaside of love?) where the garden, now bereft of its beans, carrots and tomatoes, awaits the winter snow.
I open the car door and the dog leaps out and runs ahead of me toward the sand. Boots crunch, the dog's hot breath condensing in white puffs in the cold air. Aside from the duck family paddling close to shore, my dog companion and I are the only beings here.
We are the only travellers in this universe. The dog runs crazily, delirious with joy. I am enraptured by this moment at this place. Every shell, pebble, grain of sand glitters with frost. Its luminous touch traces the intricate outline of feathers, seagrass and stone in delicate lace. The frost magnifies the intertidal life and I can only stand awestruck, the sole witness to this magical world.
We walk on. I am stunned by the clarity of the water and sand. The frost becomes a lense through which to view the world for the first time. I see green and garnet seaweed like other worldy shapeshifters, waiting for the sun to warm them up before they slither back to the sea. Here and there, pieces of worn emerald seaglass glint through the pebbles and I pocket them, my secret talismans.
We make our way to the end of the shore and we have reached the end of the world. One of my favorite Robert Frost poems creeps into my mind as I recall the lines:
So Eden sank to grief
So dawn goes down to day
Nothing gold can stay.
It's time to go home.
The world is white with frost. The air is crisp and sharp in my lungs. I must scrape a thick layer of ice crystals off of my windshield in order to drive away.
We hop in the car, shivering. The first rays of the morning illuminate the traces of frost left on the windows, like diamonds glinting in the new sun.
I turn up the volume as Ray Lamontagne laments in his Tennessee mountain twang. We head for the sea, to the summer house on the Grève D'Amours (love shore? seaside of love?) where the garden, now bereft of its beans, carrots and tomatoes, awaits the winter snow.
I open the car door and the dog leaps out and runs ahead of me toward the sand. Boots crunch, the dog's hot breath condensing in white puffs in the cold air. Aside from the duck family paddling close to shore, my dog companion and I are the only beings here.
We are the only travellers in this universe. The dog runs crazily, delirious with joy. I am enraptured by this moment at this place. Every shell, pebble, grain of sand glitters with frost. Its luminous touch traces the intricate outline of feathers, seagrass and stone in delicate lace. The frost magnifies the intertidal life and I can only stand awestruck, the sole witness to this magical world.
We walk on. I am stunned by the clarity of the water and sand. The frost becomes a lense through which to view the world for the first time. I see green and garnet seaweed like other worldy shapeshifters, waiting for the sun to warm them up before they slither back to the sea. Here and there, pieces of worn emerald seaglass glint through the pebbles and I pocket them, my secret talismans.
We make our way to the end of the shore and we have reached the end of the world. One of my favorite Robert Frost poems creeps into my mind as I recall the lines:
So Eden sank to grief
So dawn goes down to day
Nothing gold can stay.
It's time to go home.
Thursday, November 18, 2010
Blogfest
There are lots of inspiring blogs in the blogosphere where you can read inspiring stories about hope, survival and overcoming great obstacles. The best of these blogs use their circumstances to comment on an aspect of society.
A subgenre of this type of blog, however, is the fabricated personal challenge blog in which bloggers impose artificial limits on themselves and then write about their trails and tribulations, their triumphs and defeats all in order to to have something interesting to write about in which ME is the star. This subgenre reminds me of reality tv because both present a narrative arc that is entirely based on artificial challenges and fake fortuitous circumstances. A classic example of this kind of blog is the Julie/Julia Project.
And so, because I am feeling frivolous and in the hope that one day I too will become famous and have a movie produced based on my blog, here are my suggestions for my ticket to fame:
Incognito: I infiltrate the mafia and write both scathing critiques and lush praise for this deadly yet alluring secret society.
Karaokegirl: I enter karaoke contests throughout Asia in a bid to become a karaoke star.
$%?*(*&? -OFF: I challenge myself to stop swearing in French or in English for an entire six months.
Choxtasy: I eat a chocolate bar a day (not Mars or Caramilk--the good stuff!) and describe the taste sensations in exquisite detail. Perhaps Lindt will sponser me?
Canterbury Tales: I take a year off work in order to write about living like a woman of medieval England. I write about food, health, education, entertainment, work and family life. Nevermind that blogging is certainly anachronistic for the year 1310.
Well, I can go on and on but my eyes are getting blurry. Which one do you vote in? Do you have other suggestions for me? How about you? What's your challenge, real or imaginary?
A subgenre of this type of blog, however, is the fabricated personal challenge blog in which bloggers impose artificial limits on themselves and then write about their trails and tribulations, their triumphs and defeats all in order to to have something interesting to write about in which ME is the star. This subgenre reminds me of reality tv because both present a narrative arc that is entirely based on artificial challenges and fake fortuitous circumstances. A classic example of this kind of blog is the Julie/Julia Project.
And so, because I am feeling frivolous and in the hope that one day I too will become famous and have a movie produced based on my blog, here are my suggestions for my ticket to fame:
Incognito: I infiltrate the mafia and write both scathing critiques and lush praise for this deadly yet alluring secret society.
Karaokegirl: I enter karaoke contests throughout Asia in a bid to become a karaoke star.
$%?*(*&? -OFF: I challenge myself to stop swearing in French or in English for an entire six months.
Choxtasy: I eat a chocolate bar a day (not Mars or Caramilk--the good stuff!) and describe the taste sensations in exquisite detail. Perhaps Lindt will sponser me?
Canterbury Tales: I take a year off work in order to write about living like a woman of medieval England. I write about food, health, education, entertainment, work and family life. Nevermind that blogging is certainly anachronistic for the year 1310.
Well, I can go on and on but my eyes are getting blurry. Which one do you vote in? Do you have other suggestions for me? How about you? What's your challenge, real or imaginary?
Wednesday, November 3, 2010
The Strawman Argument
With a nod to the American midterm elections last night, let's take a look at Grammar Girl and listen to what she has to say about a debating technique dear to the politician's heart. Her tips on this podcast are useful for a critical analysis of Maclean's articles too!
If you enjoyed this podcast, I encourage you to become a fan on Facebook. With charm and humour, Grammar Girl has great writing tips and commentary on grammar faux pas in the media. I am not a geek (or am I ) but I do relish discussions about grammar. Really!
If you enjoyed this podcast, I encourage you to become a fan on Facebook. With charm and humour, Grammar Girl has great writing tips and commentary on grammar faux pas in the media. I am not a geek (or am I ) but I do relish discussions about grammar. Really!
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