just stuff.

even though i’m not graduating, i’m still feeling the heavy pressure (anticipation?) of grad school, acceptance letters, making choices – all that good stuff. i’m accutely aware, with every thing that i produce now, of how the consequences will weigh on later. i think i’m learning to make the right choices, but i know i’m learning to love academia and appreciate the opportunities.

last night at work i met the most interesting woman, who joined me in the hotel lobby after a few glasses of wine. she was waiting for a blind-date and i was, of course, doing next to nothing and we chatted about astrology and dating and, most interestingly, a woman’s right to choose in the realm of career and family. it was funny and strange(!) to have such a candid conversation, but she was a libra after all. she gave up her academic career to marry an unsavoury man and produce a wonderful daughter – whom she described as intelligent beyond her wildest conceptions and hugely talented at playing music and writing (and only eight-years-old!) – and while she never explicity expressed regret, she hinted that she felt that she had missed out on something after not choosing that other path, the ominous and always looming other path.

i’ve already been thinking so much about career and family, the roles we fill and desperately stray from, especially after that last issue of bitch which was so mother-centric. it’s funny to imagine that we are still fighting and trying to scrub away those stigmas of motherhood vs. the other and pitting the two against each other. or else touting that other option of everything all at once which is unrealistic and conforms to a whole other set of ideologies about women. it seems silly that such a pressure, the pressure to choose and make the right choice – according to your social scene, community, family, whatever – is still heavy and out there, affecting women in their late twenties and early thirties. we’re not so enlightened! but at least we’re talking about it and not entirely banishing the creative and unconventional women to obscurity and that has to mean something.

i worry sometimes that we’re regressing to a time i’ve never known in my short life, where women are assumed to take on conventional roles. because for every interesting, crafty, resourceful, intelligent woman or mother or student i meet, there are ten more women right around the corner who still see higher education as the way to, or hinderance of, their mr. right. and there is a generation of girls growing up, only a few years shy of graduating highschool, wearing tee shirts that say blondes have more fun or my boyfriend is out of town and that shifts the debate entirely. i would love to believe that the way of life being sold to the younger generation is just a faze but it has all the markings of a new culture, one to be appropriated by girls and women for years to come. i don’t want my choices or future or femininity, for that matter, sold to me in a glossier package and i definitely don’t want to see a regression for those who come after us.

without trying to plug or push some feminist agenda this: www.themissgproject.org is seeming more and more like the educated choice. to rewrite the structure of and content of education could change the bigger picture! i can’t wait for a time when there are more answers than questions and choices not grounded in ambivalence and dominant ideologies.

“if we don’t respond to half-baked political and cultural arguments with specific reminders of how women in our own country are battling sexism every day, who will? without our voices, the media will simply continue to churn out explanations of our experiences, such as the pitched battle known as ‘mommy wars,’ which pits working women against stay-at-home moms so that women can’t even talk to each other, much less ask why there isn’t more affordable child care or stay-at-home dads.

in this context it does make a difference how single motherhood is depicted on television or what the bitch-on-wheels version of power feminism seen on the apprentice could mean for how the rest of us feminists are treated. if we neglet to point out how culture continues to pit cookie-baking, stay-at-home moms against lean, angry, orthotri-cyclen-popping career women as if they have nothing in common, then we make it easier for people to make value judgments about who ought to have access to birth control and when. if we fight legal encroachments upon our reproductive rights without simultaneously addressing negative cultural representations of women making personal reproductive decisions, we are only fighting half the battle. and then we risk losing the entire struggle. now just as much as ever, all feminists must keep talking and writing about the intersections between culture and politics.”

- frankie gamber, spring 2007 issue of bitch magazine*

*that’s why i read bitch. why i will, forever, proudly name myself as a feminist. it will always be hugely important to have a voice and to utilize it! read, think, write, analyze and deconstruct whenever and wherever possible! be educated, intelligent, relevant, eloquent and fight, fight, fight at all costs. third-wavers unite!

…about ten people who are alive and happening right now!

this is one of those hugely dorky things people post in their blogs about the things they wish they could tell people but can’t. and i happen to be one of those people! if you think one of these is about you, you are most probably right.

1. i have always wanted to know you better and i’m worried that we’re running out of time! nevertheless i count you among my favourite people.
2. even though we argue constantly you’re one of my best friends! don’t ever doubt that.
3. you are the best thing to happen to me in the last four years! you’re one of the smartest people i’ve ever known, thank you for choosing me. you make everything more special and wonderful!
4. it’s taken us two years but i’m so glad that we ended up here.
5. i love you like a friend and a lover and i always will, even if that scares you. i can’t imagine my life without you in it!
6. i will never be able to hate you, despite my best efforts. you’ve always been there when it mattered and i don’t really know how to thank you for the kind of friend you’ve been.
7. you’re the one that got away and i’ll always resent you for leaving.
8. you’re so level-headed and driven, i admire you every day. you are inspiring!
9. i miss you so much that sometimes i ache for you, darling. you make me proud and scared. you are my heart.
10. i don’t want you in my life anymore, sad but true.

and all the spilt milk, sex and weight
it all will fall, fall right into place.

like everyone else who is feeling the gravity of april wash over them, i’m incredibly nostalgic. and sad and happy and excited and like i’m crawling right out of my own skin!

i feel like i’ve wasted nearly four years of my life being depressed and living inside of my own head, engaging in mental warfare with friends and lovers and the lovers of friends! and then weeks ago it all came together and priorities made sense and people made sense and i’ve gotten the hang of this and now it’s ending. now that i finally understand it!

but there so many things and people to be thankful for.

i have a boy in my life who is intelligent and wonderful and counteracts my silly idealism about the environment and science, because he actually has a basic understanding of these things! (i.e. why can’t we just make our own water?! because it doesn’t work like that!) he leaves love-notes in my backpack and we go out for breakfast and talk about community and music and our lives back home and it’s more fun and easy than it’s ever been. nothing is wasted anymore, especially not time.

my friends are the greatest people and i’m lucky every day to have them. i was especially lucky on tuesday when we gathered up our things and, laughing, headed to the park in the summer-sun it was best day ever. playing frisbee in the mud and swinging, falling, eating snacks and seeing the animals with my favourite people.

i love, i love!

of books! reading and read in 2007.

eleanor rigby – douglas coupland
fields of plenty – michael ableman
from the good earth – michael ableman
ishmael – daniel quinn
the sweet edge – allison pick
what we talk about when we talk about love – raymond carver
will you please be quiet, please? – raymond carver
the best american non-required reading 2005 – ed. dave eggers
the secret life of bees – sue monk kidd
the autograph man – zadie smith

bad things:

1. having a 10pm panic attack, sobbing and eating mashed potatoes in bed.
2. too many papers and readings to do! or, as heather would put it, 300000 readings and 5000000 papers to do!
3. two jobs too many.
4. crying three times before noon.

good things:

1. eating mashed potatoes in bed!
2. magically getting saturday off work!
3. studying in the library with the best girl.
4. finding things like cute notes hidden in your backpack and getting cuddled

um, i’m pretty sure the good things outweigh the bad things after all!

for the first time, in our whole lives, i feel like we’re all in the same boat.

totally stressed out, unsure about the future, grappling with the big and little ones (decisions!) and trying to figure things out one day at a time.

i have less than six weeks to find a new apartment! and three major projects due in the next seven days! i am negotiating two part-time jobs, a handful of meaningful relationships, and desperately trying to pin down travel-plans. this is all intimidating and overwhelming and exciting but i wish sometimes that i could know, right now, that everything will work out in the end! or even five months from now.

and if you read this blog, and love me, you should check out the interview with ibi kaslik, author and cute indie-band-affiliated girl, at; www.foundinthemargins.com! it’s really wonderful, no joke.

this morning i was having this terrific dream that some wonderful, nameless, faceless person baked me a whole tray of banana-walnut muffins! and baking and being baked for are the single greatest things in the world!

of course i’m only dreaming about food because i realized, very late last night, that i am suddenly very behind in the school-department. obviously huge amounts of carbohydrates is the solution. i’m not kidding, it’s not even 10am and i’ve already eaten two brown eggs, an english muffin, some cheese, a banana and two glasses of juice. after weeks of being ahead i decided to relax! smoke a lot of pot! read for fun! i have four term papers, each worth nearly half my grade, due in the next week. on books i haven’t read! and subjects i haven’t even considered!

HOW DID THIS HAPPEN?

tonight i saw peter mansbridge! (!!!)

he pretty much justified my existence by saying things about how the blogosphere does have a lot to offer, once you wade through the crap, and gave plenty of insight into how newsmedia is changing and evolving. and he was surprisingly candid and funny, but mostly he just tugged on our heartstrings as though the purpose of his lecture was to open up a discourse on what it means to be canadian. jesus, peter, don’t even get me started on the intricacies of the canadian identity! but it was interesting to see the discussion shaped from the p.o.v. of a landmark figure in contemporary culture. and i felt lucky lucky lucky to live in a place that encourages the fluidity that we do, even within our own identity, i think it allows a lot. not to suggest that we are implicitly tolerant, or even good, because we have not defined ourselves in such rigid terms but we make these allowances and that says something big. does any of thise offer some semblance of perspective?

however, i found myself disappointed by an absolute disregard by huge numbers of my peers for common courtesy and respect. there is an appropriate time and manner to leave a lecture and neither of those happens to fall directly in the middle of the Q&A period. i found myself wondering why half of these people even bothered to show up to a voluntary event that occured on a thursday night. i mean, i’m sure there were more stimulating events to attend which would explain their hasty retreats when it bordered on 9pm; a “retro-dance-party” at the turret? a frat party, perhaps? i’m continually surprised and embarrassed by the ways people are active participants in the decline of their culture. is that too much?

sometimes the bubble feels too small and i need, desperately, to be reminded of what else is out there. this is not real life! this is not real life! this is not real life! my new mantra.

from now on i only date distinguished grad students/PhD candidates!