Lamenting Winter

The winter solstice was yesterday.  Theoretically that means that the days will now start getting longer again, but in practice I still can't take advantage of the extra daylight.  Since the Autumnal Equinox we have been losing 4 minutes of daylight each day.  Maybe it started earlier, but I only started noticing it when mountain biking after work ceased to be an option.  I think it was in September.  If we start gaining daylight minutes at the same rate at which we lost them - 4 minutes a day - that only means that soon enough I won't be leaving the office in the dark.  That's not much to work with.  Furthermore, we can now look forward to getting snow and slush and ice and all the things that make winter driving such a pleasure.  They will stick around until late March, and then everything will just be wet and rotten for another month.  No, I don't like winter.  As I curse the winter all winter long, in my mind I'll still be living in last summer, on the one hand digging my car out of the driveway at work, on the other hand remembering the afternoon at Hilton Falls when my friend and I ditched our bikes for long enough to crawl through a river and creep over and under rocks and in behind a waterfall, speculating how heavy the falling water must be and wishing I had brought my camera.  While peeling myself off the icy sidewalk again and hoping to have yet again dodged a broken hip, I'll remember the giant beetle my boyfriend and I found while throwing a tarp over our tent in the midst of an early-morning rainstorm, camping at Awenda.  By February, as cabin fever starts setting in and getting to me, I'll be off in another land, drinking imported beer and playing Scrabble on the front porch at the cottage while my father plays his saxophone to anyone within earshot.  Somewhere around that time the nostalgia will hit and I'll go out and buy a pair of sandals in March, not because I can wear them but because I simply need to convince myself that the warmer weather is coming back, that I won't be constricted by snow and ice and walls much longer.  Right now it's only December, though.  And just the thought of having passed the solstice gives me goosebumps and shivers.

Mnemonic Devices

My camera died on me last week.  I don't know... charged the battery up and when I tried to turn it on again, nothing.  Got it checked with different batteries, nothing.  The camera's a couple of years old, so that it should just up and die didn't surprise me all that much.  However, it surprises me how strange I feel without it.  My camera is something I always carry with me, but rarely pull out.  Almost like a security blanket.  Actually, very much like a security blanket, now that I think of it.  I love photographs.  The only reason I post so many on my facebook page is so that I can flip through them from any computer I happen to be sitting at and relive my happiest moments or escape to my happy place.  In such a light, the camera is an amazing mnemonic device.  Yesterday night I was at a friend's Christmas party/concert in town, one not entirely unlike every other show I've seen him perform.  Great show, great crowd, great time.  No camera.  I actually borrowed someone else's camera several times throughout the evening to take pictures.  I'll be able to flip through them later.  I can't help but wonder, though, with so many good times in my life, so many great parties and happy situations and peaceful locales, and no shortage of memories to flip through, what is it I'm so worried about forgetting?

"Twilight of the Idols"... a personal interpretation

Blood runs thick.

I opened the ski season this past weekend with my Uncle. There were only two runs open with one lift, but the conditions were great all things considered. The sun was out, the temperature clung to zero, and the snow was a nice, thick powder. My uncle and I got separated for a couple of runs, which I wasn’t too worried about. In such a small area, we were bound to find each other again, and as a last resort we had a plan to meet for lunch at 1:00. It didn’t work out that way. After a few runs without seeing my uncle, I opted to wait at the bottom of the hill for 5-10 minutes, thinking it would give him time to finish a complete run if he were on the lift at that exact minute. After about ten minutes of waiting, a skier was brought down to the first aid station on a sled. I watched the hustle and bustle from a distance for awhile. The fallen skier’s green jacket worried me, as my uncle had been wearing a green jacket, but I talked myself out of it several times… the guy’s a strong skier, and I can’t remember ever having seen him fall in my life. He was faster than me, stronger than me, more controlled on the hills than I was. The hills we were on were child’s play for a man planning to ski in Europe for three months this winter. I watched for what felt like a really long time, trying hard not to stare at the fallen skier on the sled (I don’t want to be taken as rude), trying to convince myself that the man wasn’t wearing glasses under the red ski goggles, trying to convince myself it was a terrible coincidence, and then every so often looking up at the hill, hoping to see my uncle skiing over to the lift. I didn’t want to just go up to the sled and look. If it wasn’t my uncle, some poor guy might be even more embarrassed at his ill fortune, having become a spectacle. When the ski patrol brought the fallen skier’s skis down and planted them in the snow, there was no more fooling myself and I approached the first aid station, nervous about what I would find. I found my uncle with what turned out to be a compound fracture in his leg. No drama, no missteps, the binding on his ski broke off, he lost his ski, he felt something inside his boot, thought “That’s interesting”, and fell. Once we got to the hospital and the boot came off, he was asked about how much pain he felt on a scale of one to ten, and he answered three, maybe four. He mused that he always thought a broken bone would hurt a lot more. Adrenaline is a wonderful thing. It’s such a shame it wears off eventually.

Bones heal, and everything will be fine in the end. I could tell all about the nurses’ ski injury pool, the nurses’ congratulations for the surprising magnitude of the fracture, the orthopedic surgeon with the sharp Scottish accent and my family’s sense of humour… but this is not a news report or a gossip column. As much as I seem to find in the situation that amuses me, this was a wakeup call like no other. In my mind, the day was never supposed to come where I’m driving my elders to the hospital with ski injuries. These things were never supposed to happen. As much as what actually happened out there on the hill was not a reflection of waning ability on my uncle’s part, I realized that I was instantly being launched into a new realm… the generations have passed over, and we, my cousins, my brothers and I, need to prepare ourselves for a new family dynamic, a new set of responsibilities. As much as I know my father and (in time) my uncle will always tell us to depend on them in a time of crisis, we’re reaching the point where we need to be able to ‘take care of things’, to take charge of situations. We need to be able to return the favour, and to let our elders depend on us on the same token. Beyond honour, obligation, filial duty… I’d be lying to deny that it’s scary. Our heroes are becoming human.

But Tell Me... Did I Make You Smile?

I read somewhere that people only laugh out loud (literally) when there are other people around to hear it, and that when they are alone and are presented with something humourous, their reaction is more one of internal acknowledgment.  I can't relate to that.  When I see or hear something funny, I laugh.  Quite loudly.  A lot.  But even still, I feel better to have shared that laughter with someone.  I began an exercise just over a year ago, where whenever I'm presented by something really funny I text the joke or the punchline or the scrap of randomness to several people, just to see the responses I get.  It amuses me to no end, particularly on slow and quiet afternoons.  The downside?  I'm amused by some pretty strange or simple things.  So to those of my friends who have received these random text messages and wondered What's she thinking?, there it is.  And for the rest of the world, here's today's source of amusement, along with the replies.

Armadillos can get leprosy.
(I read it in my office's bathroom reader and nearly dropped the book at the thought of a tail-less armadillo repeatedly walking into the ground until its nose falls off... sick subject, I guess, but the slapstick is golden).

The replies:

"Lol that is one interesting fact.  I had no idea."

"Haha, really?", followed by "How are you?" and "I'm having lunch with my mom."

"What are my chances of running into an armadillo?" followed by "Are we in danger?  How many armadillos are in Ontario?  If I can get a pet armadillo does it have to get vaccinated?  Where can I get an armadillo?"

"What??"

"How does that even come up?"

"I did not know that... it would be hard for them to walk if they did"

"I'm sorry to hear that, but you might have the wrong girl, no?" followed by "Thanks.  In that case, did you know you could get personalized m&m's?"

"There is nothing random about that statement at all"

"Ew.  I just saw hippos kill a croc.  I think hippos are my new fave animal."  (I think this one gets me.)


If there's a point to my little exercise, I haven't found it yet.  Anything to fill out a slow day, I guess.  And in the meantime, did I make you smile?

I Remember It Was Cold That Night

A week ago we stood at the side of the road, watching each other shiver in the dark and gambling on a prayer, stranded with a flat spare tire and a dying cellphone battery. This week he curses as we drive by the gas station we had been trying to reach that night, but didn't. He curses, but I can't be angry. I don't remember being angry last week, and by next spring, the next time we'll drive past this gas station, I likely won't remember the flat tire at all. The skies were clear, the stars were radiant that night.

Attention span? What attention span? We've seen thousands of years of history that we can't remember - couldn't be bothered to remember, tell, and re-tell. Thousands of years of history, and all we really think of is here and now. Where is here? What is now? A week ago it was a piece of limp rubber, a dying cellphone and a prayer, to be forgotten by next spring. I sometimes wish I could be so shallow as to believe these words.

Sure, we can't remember where we came from or how we got here, but of the prefectly trivial we remember much too much, do we not? I'll concede that not all of the information we retain is completely useless, but surely some memories I could stand to lose. Might I not be a different person if I did not stand on a history of failure and disappointment, if my scraps of success were not peppered with sober missteps and drunken embarrassments and regrettable choices?

I sometimes dream of how things might be if I could drop my guard and simply let myself be read, rather than clutching tightly at my cards and calculating what suit to show. And then I wonder if such a thing as "Daddy's Little Angel" truly exists, if there is any woman out there who has never misstepped or disappointed. It has to be a dream - I could never be she.

Fun with Faust - Intro

"This song is not written for the masses" she said, as she yelled hateful names at the poet. She called him an educated idiot, a pretender, a drunk and she heaved and wailed and made faces and cried - the poet just watched and made not to himself that if hell hath no such fury then hell may not be half bad at all. That the woman wanted praise was made perfectly clear, but for the poet's hard efforts there was little endearing, nothing to honour, nothing to praise, just lists of the hours of most of her days filled with children and laundry and husband and wine and complaints, accusations, frustration and whines, and "Dear Woman," thought the poet, "you pitiful thing, with your vulgar delusions, your jealous allusions, your illusions all swollen and grandiose, please, I beg you, shut up!" How much more must I take? How can I respect such a frivolous flake? Now you want me to sing a song for the masses - I'll sing that song, it will speak to the masses, but heed my fair warning that you may not like what appears in the mirror the song for the masses holds up to your taste, and you'll beg me for metaphors to cover its face."
With such thoughts in his head the poet, enthused, put pen to paper and summoned the muse, and begged her abandon his mind for this song. The masses would love it, then forget it, as they do, and there would be no value in dwelling too long on its artistic merit, and as he composed, the woman stood watching, bitterly, expectantly.

Meet My Avatar

I make no secret of hinging on perpetual geekdom, and anybody who has spoken to me recently knows that I caught the Battlestar Galactica (re-imagined) bug last winter, watched the whole series in a matter of weeks, cried through the series finale in March and bought the prequel, Caprica, the day it came out. And yes, as the closing credits of Caprica rolled I sat at the edge of my seat, my mouth agape, yelling "What? That's the end? That can't be the end!" Geek enough for you? Alas, this has nothing to do with me.
A basic element of the plot of Caprica is that a girl who is a "computer genius" dies. In his mourning, her father discovers that his daughter had created a virtual copy of herself - an avatar, and had somehow programmed that avatar to see and feel what her creator saw and felt out in the real world, in real time. Another element, without giving a spoiler, is that a common trend with teenagers was to live vicariously through their avatars by going to virtual reality nightclubs full of anything hedonistic and entirely depraved. The story in itself leads to the creation of the Cylon, an endeavor that the seasoned geek knows will result in two wars and the end of the world.
This is science fiction at its finest. Or is it? The biggest complaint I hear about science fiction as a genre is that it is just too unbelievable - for for the most part, I would agree. But Battlestar Galactica is slightly different, and Caprica even more so. Ultimately, the reason the Battlestar can survive attacks by highly superior robots through five seasons is quite simply that the commander has not allowed for the ship's computers to operate on a network, because computer networks are too vulnerable to breach. This is not a science-fictional phenomenon - our own computer networks are the reason computer viruses spread as quickly as they can. But this isn't a big stretch to find anywhere in the real world.
The same is true for Caprica's techno-savvy teenagers living vicariously through their avatars. I find it both interesting and slightly terrifying that the video game consoles my generation grew up with have evolved the way they have. Our video game consoles now alllow us to create a cartoon avatar that may or may not look like us. It may not be a mirror image, but we can be represented in the virtual world by a character we essentially create. And gone are the days where our video game opponents sit next to us in the room - we can now interact with people from just about anywhere over a video game. We even communicate through headsets and speakers - just a small jump from the visors used to interface by the Caprica teens. These headsets are commonly used to volley obscenities at opponents, though it most certainly could not have been their intended use.
Further similarities lie in the actual creation of the Cylon - a top-secret project and military contract on the line, coinciding with the dark side of the justice system and the influence of gangsters. I make no allegations by this against the way things actually fall in terms of our political and military systems, but in the media-driven fear that has consumed so many of us since 9/11, there are many rumours and conspiracy theories not entirely dismissable, and not entirely different from Caprica's reality.
The cherry on top in all this is an article I read this morning in the Toronto Star that cites virtual reality sex toys that allow people in front of screens, regardless of where they are, to see, feel, and in essence do things to each other in real time. This is a pretty far jump from the all-talk cyber-sex in chat rooms everywhere when I was growing up. The toys are now letting us, in a way, to reach out and touch someone. So tell me, where do we go from here? How fictional is science fiction? I don't want to be taken as a doomsday prophet, but we're slowly reaching a point where the possibilities will be limitless. Perhaps the time is coming to step back, appreciate the distance we've travelled, and make some conscious decisions and conclusions regarding where our actions can lead us. I'm not saying not to move forward, but rather to do so carefully.

Our Integrity, Our Defining Quality

Integrity - the keystone of clear conscience. Everybody has some sort of principle, or I'd at least like to think they do. Whether that principle is good or bad is for you and me to decide if we so choose. Having some principle is easy. How hard can it possibly be to instinctively decide that certain things are right and certain other things are wrong, or that rightness and wrongness are purely circumstancial?
Then life throws you a curve ball, or crashes you full force, head first into a concrete wall. When you come to and feel the ache in your head, see the world spinning around you, face the puddle of blood in which you lie and struggle to peel yourself off the ground, how will you react? Things won't look quite as clear as they did before, your surroundings won't look so familiar, and dammit you're bleeding! Is there anyone there to hold your hand? Is anyone going to show you the way? They may very well not. They'll look at you, and they'll panic, and their judgements will only be about as useful as your own. Your principles won't help you.
Or maybe they will. It's all a game in the end, anyhow. You establish principles and values, you hit the wall, and your integrity is put to the test. How do you measure up? Are your principles still in place? Do you act in accordance with them? Does it turn out that you were wrong? Or are you just too weak to finish what you started? Do you persevere?...

Wasn't Western Mississauga Safer Once?

I know I'm not alone in saying I'm saddened by yesterday's stabbings at St. Joseph Catholic Secondary School in Mississauga. For those of us who went there, we remember fights and drugs and prostitution, but it never reached these heights. I hate to say it seems that times are changing, and there was a time when these sorts of things simply did not happen in our backyards. I could sit around and contemplate which precise factors in our neighbourhoods have made this sort of thing possible, but what's the use? What's done is done.
Somebody lashed out at me last week for thinking that Mississauga is some Shangri-La, some amazing city where no wrong ever happens. I found it amusing, mainly because I talk enough about wanting to move to the country, to Peterborough or Port Hope or Acton or Northern Burlington (if I must stay in the city), and in general about wanting to get the hell out of Mississauga. The allegation was entirely misinformed, and I may have been insulted if my accuser was not quite simply ignorant through and through - no better can be expected of such people. Regardless, I could bring on the social commentary in response to the new violence in our neighbourhoods, but I'd rather not. I'd rather leave, and hope that the world doesn't find me wherever I go. I'm sad to say it probably will.

Losing What We Cling To

The Buddha said that we can only lose what we cling to. It seems like such a stretch to not cling to people or things or events, but there is another side to this that changes everything. The other side says that we can't change other people or past events, or sometimes even our own situations. The only thing we can change is ourselves. Our actions, our thoughts, our reactions, our own outlooks, our behaviour. The idea of making the best of a bad situation is entirely possible, but it's internal. Nobody can do this for us, and we need to accept that. Likewise, when the world around us isn't to our liking, we need to realize that if it isn't within our power to influence it for the better, then there is no use in holding onto an ideal that exists in our own minds. When we come to peace with living in the world without affecting it, it becomes easier to accept change. Emotional pain comes from the attachment we have to an ideal that either has never existed or no longer exists. But when we come to the realization that the ideal does not transcend into reality, the pain also becomes illusory, a figment of our own mind. We realize that we haven't lost what we never had in the first place, and leave behind our illusions. By letting go, we find ourselves at peace.

A Quote From Robertson Davies

"Science, which seems to offer certainty, is the superstition of ignorant multitudes, who think it means toothpaste and tampons."

(From "Murther & Walking Spirits")

"Orchestral Zeppelin" June 27 @ Danforth Music Hall!

On June 27, Michael White and The White will be performing the music of Led Zeppelin with a 50-piece youth orchestra at the Music Hall (www. themusichall.ca). Tickets cost $30-$40. Partial proceeds will be donated to the music programs at Father John Redman Catholic Secondary School & Regional Arts Centre and the Sherway Academy of Music.
Yes, the music will be awesome… Michael White and The White have been playing a tribute to Led Zeppelin since the dawn of time, and will not disappoint. I’ll certainly be there. I hope you’ll be there too, and here’s why:
Children and youth need outlets to explore and express themselves. They should have the opportunities to try new things and explore their abilities while they are young. That’s when talent gets discovered and developed. That’s where arts schools come in and do a fantastic job. For artistic youth, the arts aren’t just subjects they study for an hour in school. They become a passion, a way of life. There is no good reason for us not to support them… we, who complain that there isn’t enough for kids to do, there aren’t enough after-school programs to keep kids active, or that kids watch too much television. We need to support the kids who use their talents. We need to support the programs that make it possible. Now, what’s wrong with sitting back and listening to some great music while we do some good in the community?

I deal in an exchange of favours. Not necessarily one for one, but rather if I do something for you today, someone else will help me out when I need a hand, and because I helped you this time, you'll help someone else, and so on, and so forth. Call it what you will. I call it a system that helps everybody get everything done, and none of it gets declared on our taxes. Win - win.

Being Like Mom

The stigma is that no woman wants to become her mother. Telling her she is becoming like her mother, or worse, has become like her mother, is considered one of the harsher truths we ever have to confront.

On Saturday my wonderful boyfriend and I went out to Kelso Conservation Area to do some mountain biking. I planned for it to be a perfect afternoon. I packed a picnic cooler (baskets just don't work anymore), bought sunscreen and bugspray, the morning had been warm and sunny, and it would be just the two of us for the day. We mounted the bikes onto the back of the car and drove out to Milton, paid our entrance fee, and started a rough climb directly up a ski hill, so excited to hit the trails I could taste it!
And then the single storm cloud crept over us. We were 3/4 up the hill, and it was only a single cloud. Thunder started pounding, but the wind was moving pretty fast, and at the moment when we stopped, looked at each other and discussed our options, I was opting to try to make it to the top of the hill, ride out the storm under the trees as it looked as though it would only last about five minutes, and then hit the trails and hope the rain wasn't too strong. His idea was to ride down the hill as quickly and carefully as we could because if we walked, we'd never make it in time. He was pretty sure there were more clouds behind the one above us. We took his advice, rode down the hill as quickly and carefully as we could. The rain went from a light drop here and there to a pretty strong rainfall by the time we reached the bottom, and upgraded to a torrential downpour seconds before we found shelter in a see-through fiberglass-walled covered bridge. We stayed there to watch the storm. We were both right and we were both wrong. The storm was only a few minutes long, but it was as strong as I've seen them. Hail pounded against the walls and the noise was deafeningly loud. We felt for the bikers we had seen on the hill. The storm was so strong that the trails would certainly be too muddy to ride at least for the next few hours. We went back to the car, disappointed.
Trying to make the most of the afternoon and the $11 we spent on admission, we decided to at least sit around and have our picnic, albeit in the car because everything was damp. I pulled out the chicken salad sandwiches I had made, the popcorn, the apples, and the large ziplock I'd brought to use as a garbage bag. And he laughed at me for a second. I told him that I'd had no idea where we'd be eating, but the lunch wasn't exactly "litterless", so I had to be prepared to carry out everything we carried in. And he laughed some more.
"You're just like your mother", he told me. I'm not sure exactly what my face did at that moment, but it couldn't have been good. He quickly backpedalled. Sort of. "Not in a bad way!" Of course not. "I love your mom. She cares about things. She cares about the environment, and recycling and composting and anything to do with that. And she cares about animals. I love that about her! It's so cool! Most people don't pay that much attention to these things!"
I'm not sure what to make of this. If he actually meant it the way he said it, then I guess I'm flattered. If what he admires about my mom is her unending compassion for living things, I couldn't be happier... it's one of my mom's best qualities. But I also know some of her other qualities, and as much as I love her, in some ways, I never want to be like my mom. And I'm sure my dad would love to step in here with a j'accuse!

To a Certain Friend

This is really to a friend who may or may not need a friend today.

It's been a long couple of weeks, hasn't it? It hasn't all been bad, either! You've done yourself a lot of good, but the harder moments were certainly there. Today you make a choice, and I don't for a second doubt that you've given this choice more than enough thought.
I just want you to know that I'm thinking of you today. I'll be here whichever way you choose. I hope we end the day celebrating, but if it doesn't fall out that way, well, you have my cell number. I'll keep the battery juiced.

A Thought on Easy Justice

The problem with Hammurabi's 'eye-for-an-eye' principle is that it quite simply doesn't work. This is not a new idea, that mere vengeance upon those who have wrong us will... well, will what? Take away the sting of having been wronged? Impose a feeling of guilt where there ought to be one? Offer us some sick form of satisfaction that justice has been served? Despite all of the unanswered philosophical questions surrounding justice as a whole, I can still very comfortably say that whatever justice is, it just doesn't work like that.
We sanctimonious North Americans like to smugly call such an attitude "savage", or something of the sort. Our noses fly high about these "primitive" systems of justice as we snidely remark that the only way to peacefully move on is to forgive and forget. Then, in our quieter and more intimate moments, we confide that forgiving is easy, but forgetting is not. Woe to us all who've got it so terribly wrong.
Anyone who has truly had to forgive someone could tell how difficult and painful it is. It is an action driven by love or care or affection, where although someone has harmed us in some way, we feel too strongly towards him to hold his actions against him. It's a call to mercy rather than a call for vengeance, and it does not come easily. It comes with bouts of misdirected anger and hostility and pain and regret. But each of these is smothered with love, and that love keeps everything in check. At least, sort of. It keeps us from doing things we may later regret.
Forgetting, on the other hand, is easy. It's no question that when faced with a problem, it's easier to carry on as if nothing has happened, ignore it, revisit it at a later time. Sure, this is only pretending to forget, but what is so wrong with this? We pretend to forive all the time! The difference is that by pretending to forget, we essentially lie to ourselves until, down the road, we become convinced of our own lie. By pretending to forgive, we find ourselves struggling with passive aggression and resentment. Tell me which is easier. Tell me which is more rewarding.
Another sad truth is that I'm not convinced we've left behind 'eye-for-an-eye' at all. We don't always react violently when we've been wronged, intentionally or not, but the apparent need for vengeance is certainly alive and well. The Evil Eye is still very much among us... people often wish harm upon others, and then turn around and convince themselves that they don't. Karma is a tricky game to master.
We have options. We can try to rise above our "primitive" tendencies, try to become better people, try to find less satisfaction in the misfortunes of our rivals and enemies, but this is unnatural. At the level of human nature, we can't force ourselves to be something we are not. Or, we can embrace these tendencies as tragically human, and find ways not to rise above, but to harness and master them by learning to judge each others' misgivings on a larger scale, and act accordingly. But forgiveness is an experience I personally hope everyone has to go through at some point, because it's humbling. It reminds us of our place in the Kosmos, and when faced with that we find ourselves a step closer to being truly at peace.

The best part about a rainy morning is the smell of worms in the air. There's something way too fresh about it. I don't even know if it's the worms I'm smelling, but I definitely associate the smell with the worms crawling out onto the sidewalks and streets. It's not the worms I like. The smell takes me back to a simpler time. It's a "cottage smell," and every time it rains I think of rainy cottage days, being cooped inside a small house, looking out onto the lake as the droplets drop, drop, drop. When the temperature's right, the doors stay open, and the scent of wet foliage floods the house, and there's nowhere at that moment that anybody needs to be, nothing that needs to be done. When we were children, it was the scent of an afternoon Monopoly marathon, an indoor pool-noodle fight (to my parents chagrin), a chess tournament or a galoshes-and-raincoat-clad trip to the art gallery or the Native Reserve, or Peterborough.
The only real thing that's changed over the years is that all the kids have now grown up. We don't each have our own raincoat and rubber boots anymore and we've lost the patience for Monopoly, but we've developed a taste tolerance for liquor. And so a new family bonding tradition was born. And as I sit in my office in Streetsville looking out at the rain and a full tree of dripping leaves, my heart is in another place, watching droplets drop, drop, drop into a lake, and breathing in the smell of worms.

A Quote from Joseph Conrad

"It is respectable to have no illusions, and safe, and profitable and dull."

Exam Day

It's 4:42 p.m. Exam Day. Exam starts at 7:00 p.m. I should probably be more nervous. It's not as though I've studied the material diligently every night until my brain turned to mush. I've done my work, but I've also been preoccupied with so many projects over the past three months that I really haven't been able to dedicate myself to my studies the way so many students know they should. And yet I'm not worried. I'll be okay.
I dread showing up early, as I always do, to find a classroom full of students reciting course material to each other, trying to soak up every last detail like a dripping sponge, just in case that dreaded question should come up on the paper. They will be tearing through their textbooks and notes, finding comfort in their common anxiety, though it isn't really comforting. It's never been my style. I finished studying yesterday. I looked over my notes today. I put it all away after lunch. The silence is creepy, the calm before the storm.
Waiting is unbearable. I've never been the patient type. The day before my first exam in this program a year ago, when I had no idea what to expect and no clue whether or not I was ready despite my hours of agonizing, I actually had plans to find a quiet patch of grass on the campus before the exam to do some yoga. It never came to that. I sat in rush hour traffic, listening to music, telling myself that 'hey, I learned how to drive once upon a time! I can do this, too!' That only brought me enough comfort not to faint in the driver's seat in the middle of the highway. I read a magazine in the half hour leading up to the exam, I forget which magazine it was. I was reading an article about how word processors have made us illiterate, and the article made mention of how Nietzsche's writing style changed when he came to own a typewriter. He stopped writing essays and began writing in aphorisms. That I knew exactly what the author was talking about made me feel better still, and I wrote the exam, and proceeded to fight off nervous fits for the next three months waiting for a mark I did not expect to be thrilled about... until I found out that I made honours.
So here I am, filling time before yet another exam. This will be my third in this program. It is 4:54. I've plugged in the kettle, not sure what to think of the fact that in six minutes I'll be leaving the office and hitting the highway. It's become a ritual. A large cup of tea in a travel mug that will stay closed until I reach the school, so that it's still hot when I open it. A book to read in the event I need something to do with my hands; today it's "Occidental Mythology" by Joseph Cambell... completely unrelated to law clerking. My iPod is charged up and waiting for me, and I made sure to throw my earphones in my bag. I've set up a tea date for right after the exam with my best friend to take the edge off. All that's left is to make sure I go to the bathroom before the exam (and avoid making a mistake I've learned from several times over, and probably will again), and finish earlier than I need to. And come out on top.

Finding The Abyss

"And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you."

Friedrich Nietzsche

A wise friend once told me how I'll know who my friends are. I was in my early twenties at the time, half-way through university and silly enough to believe that the friends I'd had since highschool were the people I would grow old with. My friend often laughed at my youthful naivete. He told me that when I find myself in that desperate moment, standing at the edge of the precipice and looking into the abyss, my true friend would be the one who calls me suddenly, unexpectedly, just to ask me how I'm doing because he/she had been thinking about me. Isn't it a rather dreary image? I don't want to think that it's only at my moment of need that I find my true friends. Friends are bound by love and respect, and these things shouldn't be contingent on whether times are good or bad.
So I watched the sunset this past Monday, watched the sky darken and the stars slowly show their faces as I took a longer walk than usual through my favorite part of suburbia. As the hours passed, a revelation came to me. Or something like that. As I stared into the night, lost in my thoughts and the music running through my headphones, I found myself at the edge of the precipice, staring into the abyss. I know it was the abyss, because although we have yet to find the bottomless pit in the ground, I implore you to find me the person who can stare into the sky at night and not suddenly feel small. The image is cliche, and there isn't much to be done about that, but the sky is the only abyss we can know (or not know. I'm sure there are limits to the Universe, but we're nowhere near finding them, so let this one go, please), the closest possible encounter we can have with the infinite, within the physical realm. The bottomless pit does not fall out below us, but rises above! With this in mind I ask you, have you ever lay on the ground in the country looking up at a blanket of stars and not been struck by how small and petty our earthly problems are?
That moment of realization of our significance in the universe, or rather our insignificance... that's the feeling I'm talking about here. That sinking feeling is the abyss looking into you. The odd thing is that where in social situations a feeling of insignificance is a sign of imminent social suicide, when that feeling comes in such moments as gazing into the sky, the feeling of insignificance becomes a source of peace, insight, humility, and, to a certain extent, sheer joy.
So I ask you: As I stand at the edge of the precipice gazing into the only abyss I have ever known, the abyss gazing likewise into me... are you the friend who calls to me, to ask me how I've been?

Who's for breakfast?