hurray!
i have officially moved into the apartment that will house me for the next four months! and, even though i’ve only been doing it for about 25 hours, living alone is the greatest thing! certainly it will get boring and overwhelming sometimes but right now i’m perfectly content to be able to be seconds away from my best friends in the world.
and, i really don’t want to be one of those people who brags about their great boyfriend/relationship every six seconds but can i, just for a moment, brag about my great boyfriend/relationship?
ry met my parents this weekend and it was the most splendid thing! he was charming and polite and ever-so-helpful and fun to be around, even after a six-hour moving marathon. we’ve spent the last three days eating, sleeping and generally basking in each others company and it’s my own little domestic dream! this morning i woke up early and puttered around the room unpacking and tidying while he slept in, then we went grocery shopping, ate lunch, and he fixed the toilet while i got ready for work. boring, but i think it’s what being married would feel like. i am full of romantic visions of wife-hood! maybe this is silly but i think we’ve both known for so long that if (once?) we really got together it would not be foolish or silly and we wouldn’t bother to play games. it’s just fun and sweet and honest and real all of the time! and it works.
it turns out what i’ve been looking for all along is someone funny and understanding, who sings along loudly to the stereo without an ounce of shame.
considering everything, me leaving with regrets only makes sense.
still, i’m really looking forward to a fresh start. edit: i was feeling very emotional and upset earlier about the move and big changes, but instead i have decided to be excited. ryan and i are going to the market in the morning to pick up supper provisions and relax! and then will spend the whole day packing and doing laundry. domesticity is so incredibly sexy!i am in love with the mundane and intimate moments of couplehood.
in the past 24 hours i have made tons of mistakes and decisions.
like quitting my job! and not spending one second on any of the exams and papers i have due in the next seven days! loving a boy! loving my friends!
i hate how hectic and uprooted i feel in this moment. things won’t be quiet for a long while, with the roommates leaving and changing apartments (packing, packing, packing) and losing a lot of people, and the boy, as soon as may hits. i want things to be quiet but, at the same time, i want things to always feel this cloudy and mixed-up.
i hope we never, ever find reality and always spend the bulk of our lives smoking pot, walking in the park, forgetting meals and appointments, drinking expired milk, staying up until 3am, reading long and windy russian novels and eating breakfast in bed. it’s not always (or ever) glamourous but it’s living life like art.
do your politics fit between the headlines?
are they written in newsprint?
are they distant?
mine are crossing an empty parking lot
they are a woman walking home
at night
alone
they are six strings that sing
and wood that hums against my hipbone.
sometimes i’ll be sitting in a library or riding a bus or rushing across campus and ani difranco will random its way onto my playlist and the song playing will be exactly, completely, wholly the feelings i am feeling at that exact moment. ani difranco will be thinking, writing, singing exactly the words that make up the sum of my self. and that is why i will always love her so much!
she falls in love with women and men and tries to be the best possible feminist but sometimes other people make her doubt herself, sometimes she dilates and gets caught up in destructive love and loves, but in the end she’s always okay and never too melodramatic. and always, always witty and scathing and impossibly intelligent.
in short: when i grow up i want to be ani difranco.
reading chuck klosterman’s killing yourself to live (thanks heather!) and i must say that, not only do i totally appreciate klosterman’s writing style and particular brand of wit, but i also completely buy his whole shtick; “i am a floundering rock-critic, i have tons of failed relationships with interesting and difficult women! i think about death all of the time and i feel the need to both justify and reinvent my career-of-choice every ten seconds! read me, read me!”
i believe you, chuck klosterman. and i think sex, drugs, and cocoa puffs is a pop-culture staple for a reason!
unrelated: this weekend has been completely rad thus far. friday afternoon i bombed an exam, possibly sending my GPA into a deep depression, and then proceeded to blow my paycheck all over toronto on good things like cd’s and american apparel. then! i got drunk and saw the books, which was twice as amazing. it was probably one of the coolest shows i’ve ever been to because it was two really relaxed guys playing instruments, with names i couldn’t remember or pronounce, and synching them with videos of things like little kids playing, african women talking and nature! it sounds totally inane and exactly what you would expect, but it’s cooler than the words i can put it into to!
yesterday was even better! because after we came home and fell into a wonderfully comfortable sleep, we got up early and went out for breakfast with ryan’s roommate sydney (who is nice!) and stitch’n'kitsch’d it up. i love lazy, lounging saturdays! nothing beats breakfast at 1842 (eggs and fruit salad!) followed by a craft show and then window-shopping in uptown! it is not so good for the bank account, but really great for my soul. consumerrrrrrrrism.
i’m psyched to be home for this (better part of the) week but i miss waterloo hugely already. hopefully studying for this awful political philosophy exam will ease, or add to, the pain. can anyone teach me everything about politics and philosophy in six days? if so, apply within – i can pay you in cookies, knitting or mix-cd’s!
two interesting reads caught my eye this morning!
the first one being this headline on msnbc: Duke lacrosse sex case to be dropped.
i don’t know if anyone even remembers this case, in which (purportedly, i should note!) members of the duke lacrosse team were accused of sexually assaulting a stripper at a team party. the investigation for these allegations was plauged with messy work by the local police and the duke administrators have been criticized for their slow-moving response to the situation. essentially, what this says to me, is that three young, white, well-educated and financially secure men can rape and beat a young sex-worker (she was a sex-worker after all, right/ so she was asking for it! whore! slut! it’s part of her job, anyway!) and suffer little to no consequence for their action because of things like shoddy police work and a university institution desperate to protect their own image and the image of the young, white, privileged males who attend it. the victim is also accused of changing her story “several times” after her initial statement to police. with the length and depth of their investigation, it’s pretty obvious that they were biased from the get-go to disbelieve her story, so it’s no surprise that a young woman who was raped by several high-profile members of a high-profile university would step back from her original allegations, even revoking details. the outcome of this “scandal” has been decided from day one. and what a great message! see what a little white-privilege gets you in america? you can rape and attack women as you please, as long as you have that status to preserve your reputation. oh, and make sure you only attack women in the minority! it’s just easier to justify to the police, your institution of learning, your friends, parents, teammates.
and this has been in the newsmedia a little bit, but not nearly enough in my opinion! however, it is getting a lot of attention from feminist bloggers and the like! the university of western ontario’s student newspaper “the gazette” published a “rape spoof” in their annual april fool’s day issue. you can read the whole text here: http://community.livejournal.com/feminist/2865192.html but the gist of it is that an anonymous student published a peice spoofing the take back the night march, here aptly renamed the take back the nightie march, and one female student, who is said to be a parody of an outspoken campus feminist, is taken into a dark alley by a police officer to be taught a lesson! the theme of rape, the stereotypes of both feminists and, frankly, women who just don’t think that it’s okay to be raped are offensive and totally misplaced in this context. the newspaper is maintaining that the article was meant to be a spoof that apparently went awry, but i can’t see how any part of a joke about a police officer raping a woman is ever supposed to be funny. even on a local scale, what about the women who have been sexually assaulted at uwo? is it funny to see your experiences spoofed by your peers when rape is a reality for a lot of women? and for this kind of mentality from a campus newspaper! the more i follow this story, the more enraged i become. this is why women still need to work hard to have their voices heard and their experiences told by them and not to them.
and this is why feminism isn’t dead. in fact, sonal pala (former laurier student) is trying to launch a collection of stories, artworks, etc. on sexual assault called Saturday Night: Untold Stories of Sexual Assault at Laurier and, while the deadline for submissions has passed, i think everyone should pick up a copy when it becomes available on campus! this could be an interesting way to address women’s concerns and fears about rape and sexual assault both on campus and in the community!
and so ends my feminist rant for the day!
my parents called me early this morning to tell me that they put my dog to sleep. i feel like this is one of those stupid things that people aren’t supposed to be upset about over a certain age, but i’m still devestated and so are my parents. they’ve both called since and i’ve consoled them while they’ve cried over the phone.
maybe it is silly, but losing a pet is a hard and sad thing for a family to go through. and if you’ve ever had a pet you would surely understand this! we raised jojo from the very first weeks of his life. i got him when i was ten after a very, very long period of wanting a puppy so much! i got to name him and take him for walks all of the time. he also had a knack for knowing when people were really sad, because dogs can always know, and he would paw at your leg until you picked him up and cuddled him.
he would lick our noses a lot. in the summer he would sit on the back deck with me while i read books and drank lemonade. he would pant because it was so hot but he liked squinting in the sun and barking at squirrels. he was expectionally good company.
he was also the best and nicest dog in the world and i loved him a lot and i never got to say goodbye to him.
note to everyone: half a bottle of tequila does not offer perspective!
however, it does make things messy, over-complicated and really, really fun!
waking up fully dressed, still drunk, on someone’s unbelievably tiny couch is how i would like to remember the past four years. incredibly hazy but inherently good.
now, who wants to take this literary traditions exam for me on monday?
