patience

I am not very good at patience. I never have been, and I am trying hard to learn how to be patient, but I am not very good at it at all. I am a creature of impulse. Most of my purchases are made that way, most of my decisions get made on a snap, and I live with whatever consequences may occur from those decisions. I like the information age. I like being able to watch TV series on DVD, so I don't have to wait for the next weekly installment. I prefer to buy books in sets for that self same reason. So it goes without saying that I struggle with waiting. What am I waiting for, you may ask? I am waiting for the government to let me know whether or not I have a job. I have been involved in the process now for almost two years. I still do not have a job. I have had a couple of successful interviews (though the total amount of that success is yet to be seen) but I still have no idea if I am going to have a job or not. Apparently they have asked all the right questions, requested all the right information, and I should be on a short list for hiring. Yet, there is still no word forthcoming. The last of the interviews was over a month ago, at this point. I wrote another exam last week, for which I should hear about an interview sometime in the immediate future, though the word immediate, in conjunction with government is somewhat of a misnomer.

What this lack of patience has meant is that ultimately I am stalling. I keep hoping everyday for word to come, and this word would lift me out of the PhD program that I am not yet settled into, but as each day passes and I do not hear from my prospective employers, it means I actually have to get my ass in gear and do the school-work I have been so deftly avoiding. It is much more difficult because my heart is nowhere near as involved in this process as it should be. I am without drive and spark... and that makes getting motivated extremely difficult. It also means that I am much less creative than I should be. Perhaps, though, this is a good thing when it comes to academia. I have to write a paper, for which I have two weeks to get a proposal together, with an annotated bibliography. I have no idea what to write on, as this course is somewhat outside of my area of expertise. In that same two weeks, I have to finish grading the mountain of exams I have in front of me, research and present my part of a 3 hour group presentation, and get the house ready for a very special guest! Add to that a fairly full social calendar between now and then, and the sickness that has not yet gone away, but is being at least manageable with the right medications.

I know that all I really have to do is be patient. To just wait it out, and eventually my file will land on some managers desk, and I should receive that phone call that I have been ever so anxiously awaiting. And I know that all I really have to do is sit down and start doing all this work that lies in front of me, and yet I find it harder and harder every day to make it happen. I have spurts of activity,where I get what I need to get accomplished done, but the very next day, when I am supposed to pick up where I left off, I find I am almost physically unable to make it happen... it takes supreme effort... why isn't patience like the card game? I am good at that.

Of Excrement and Men

First, let me qualify this by saying I am all hopped up on muscle relaxants right now, so my coherence may not be the best. Second, let me add that this may be the best way to read Zizek!

Ok, so Tibet represents our hidden Western desire to colonize the imaginary. We do not want the Tibet that is actually there, but instead want the idealized version that we dream of in our own imaginations. Shit is a problem for us in the West because it is a reflection of our inner-most selves and once it is out in the open, we become vulnerable. Because being vulnerable is linked, at least in part, to being weak, then our shit makes us weak. Tibet as it actually is does not match our created, imagined version, so we seek to enforce our own view point upon it. The travel diaries are a good reflection of that. The biggest problem with the Tibetans for those early explorers was that they were weak. We wanted their secrets, but we also wanted them to be just like us. Because they were weak, they reminded us of our own vulnerabilities, our own weakness, our own shit.

Tibet also acts as a sounding board for our own insecurities with paradox. Here is the great, imagined mystical land, the paradise we all have been dreaming of, and yet it is populated by people who are supposed to be (in our imaginations) spiritually pure, at peace and ease with the universe, and in full acceptance of the lot they have in life. Yet these spiritually pure people accommodate magic, and strange sexual practices into their religious lives (again, in our imagined view of them). Due to the Christian / Gnostic separation between pure spirit and the dirty body, this paradox becomes something the Western mindset has trouble reconciling. How can something be spiritually pure, and at the same time, involve practices of the body, in particular carnal practices? How can we venerate these spiritually pure people when they resort to superstition in their practice of worship, when we have set our benchmark upon the altar of rationality?

To fix this paradox, to make it work inside our imaginations, we move the fixation of purity from the people to the idealized place. We treat the citizens as second class, we ignore their ‘strange and backward ways’ and instead place the emphasis on a sacred location. Thereby we correct the paradox that we have trouble reconciling. That paradise we envision becomes a part of our inner-most desires, our inner-most selves, it therefore becomes sacred. In a way, then, our shit, which is a reflection of our innermost selves, also becomes sacred, and untouchable. Shit then becomes, by way of Zizek’s thinking – if I am interpreting it correctly – something we are in awe of, and I mean awe in the ‘terrifying, afraid of’ sense. We remove this sacred part of ourselves and flush it away so that we may not appear to be weak, in the same way that we remove the weakness from our conception of paradise, reflected in our imaginary views of Tibet!

For the non-academics out there who have not had to suffer through Zizek, he is a post-modern scholar who seems to enjoy playing games with language, desires and the world as the West sees it. It can be downright painful t read, which I believe is a part of the game for Zizek. This critique comes from his book, On Belief from a chapter entitled "Why you should give a shit!"

I R Ranty

Where do our virtues lie in terms of the post-modern sacred? Are we actors (activists) or responders to the new moral conditions and imperatives? How does Al Gore become the face of environmentalism and as that face, does he have the role of moral saint or moral hero? Is his environmentalism one of life-politics or emancipation politics or both?

These are very interesting times for scholars of nature, scholars of technology and scholars of the sacred, it would seem. You cannot turn on a newscast without hearing about an environmental related story, or some sort of political rhetoric about such. All of the major political parties in Canada have developed a stance as we stream towards the next election. Suddenly nature and its sacredness has come into the forefront of the political agenda. So does that make Stephen Harper a moral saint, does it make Stephan Dion a moral hero or is there a third category missing from this list? Does it make them actors or responders? Is the key difference in their motivations, or does it really matter what their motivations are? Neither politician has made a lifetime’s work of the cause, though they make it seem like they have. And neither of their lives would seem, on the surface, to be extremely arduous. So I guess, according to Giddens’ definitions as told by Szerszynski, they would not fit the saint category. Does that then make them moral heroes, acting on happenstance?

Have we as people then re-sacralized nature to the point that we have made it a political vehicle? If so, then how does this post-modern ordering of the sacred fuel a moral, ethical, social and political agenda? The people who are speaking the loudest about environmental reform today are not doing so out of loyalty to a sacred idea, they are using a sacred idea as a way to influence the voters. Giddens needs a third category, I think, rather than just life-politics or emancipation politics. There should be a category of politics for the sake of politics, where moral rhetoric can be espoused without the fear of having to buy into it, where the usage of a public persona can be used to sell the concept of the sacred to the consumer based society we live in.

A federal election is rapidly approaching in Canada, and the parties will all spout environmental platforms, until the country is tired of hearing about its importance. The campaign will involve many non-biodegradable plastic signs, attached to wooden posts, scattered all over the landscape. Many cross-country jaunts will be taken, and I would be willing to bet, there will not be many of those on the campaign trail driving smart cars, or tour buses fueled by ethanol. And yet they will be campaigning about reducing green-house gases, and teaching us how to save the environment from ourselves. I guess that means that moral hero is out as a category too.

What's your disfunction?

Disorder	Rating
Paranoid Disorder:	Low
Schizoid Disorder:	Low
Schizotypal Disorder:	Moderate
Antisocial Disorder:	Moderate
Borderline Disorder:	Low
Histrionic Disorder:	High
Narcissistic Disorder:	Moderate
Avoidant Disorder:	Moderate
Dependent Disorder:	High
Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder:	Moderate
-- Personality Disorder Test - Take It! -- -- Personality Disorders --

Nature and Such...

The following is a post I had to do for my program but I thought I would through it out there for thoughts and other discussion =) apologies for the length, but since I don't post often, perhaps you will forgive me.

In 1982, I was twelve years old. I had been admitted to hospital in
order to have my tonsils taken out. I had chronic tonsillitis most of my
adolescent life and they finally decided to remove the offending body
part. I was checked into hospital on February 12th, and would be
released on February 16th. I didn’t know just how much of a life
changing experience this would prove to be. It was, as it turned out, to
be incredibly life changing on many levels. The first level was not
immediately apparent, as I was in too much pain post-surgery to realize
what kind of benefit modern science and medicine had given me, it would
take time for my throat to heal and then time again for me to catch my
next winter cold, in which I was far less miserable than usual to
realize the benefit. However, my life changed in another way when I was
in that hospital. I was sharing a semi-private room with a small girl
who was extremely sick, with what I do not recall, but it was very
serious. Her parents were there almost all the time. Her father worked
on one of the oilrigs off the coast of Newfoundland and was supposed to
have traveled out to the rig on the same day I was admitted, but his
daughter had been so ill that he stayed in town in order to be with her.
That weekend, through to Monday the 15th, there were terrible storms,
both on land and offshore. And in that terrible storm, the oilrig,
called the Ocean Ranger, sank, killing all 84 crew members. It was one
of the worst oil related disasters in Canada’s history. It touched the
lives of just about everyone in Newfoundland in some way or another. It
also really provided me a certain amount of clarity on humanity’s
relationship with nature. It was my first real experience with tragedy,
and I watched it unfold on the face of a man who was supposed to be out
on the rig when it sank, who was alive only because his little girl was
sick. For the first time, I began to think about how nature reacts
against man-made creations. I also began to think about why the
exploratory drilling platform was out in the middle of the North
Atlantic Ocean in the first place.
The first two sections of Donald Worster’s book speak directly to those
thoughts I had so many years ago. The way he presents the formation and
history of ecology, and the view of nature often found in western
science and culture helps explain a lot. The view of nature as something
to be exploited for the benefit of humankind, and the view of nature as
something to be bent and controlled by human beings stand out in
particular. Why was this rig out in the middle of the ocean? To explore
for possible oil fields, so that the resource could be tapped, refined,
and then marketed to the consumer. So that the non-renewable resource
could be exploited in order to maintain the modern lifestyle we have all
become so accustomed to. The Ocean Ranger was one of those technical
marvels, and those involved believed it to be indestructible, just the
same way the Titanic was believed to be. Engineers had weighed out every
contingency plan that they could think of, and had designed a structure
that was supposed to withstand whatever nature could through at it.
Nature, however, upped the ante. Hurricane force winds attacked the rig
and waves as high as a five story building crashed against it. The winds
were too high to allow for helicopter rescue, and those who made it to
the lifeboats did not stand a chance against the brutal conditions.
As human beings, we have placed ourselves in a privileged position over
the rest of the planet. We see the resources as being there to support
and provide for us, and do not necessarily recognize our role in the
ecological system. We have developed technologies to protect us from the
natural elements, even as we were developing technologies to further
exploit the resources to be found within those elements. We fall to
science to answer our questions and solve our problems. Yet when science
believes it has all the angles covered, nature can still strike with
something unexpected. One does not have to look very far to find other
examples. Hurricane Katrina and the city of New Orleans, the tsunami
that hit south-east Asia so ferociously, and the earthquake in Kashmir
in 2005 all are examples of nature trumping technology. And yet, we as
people still persist in the notion that we can overcome the natural
world with the technological one. We believe that the planet is there
for us to exploit, rather than seeing ourselves as an integral part of a
larger system. Even the early theories of ecology that recognized nature
as a complex system that was indeed greater than the sum of its parts,
still placed an emphasis on what utility could be gained from the
resources. Gilbert White recognized the inherent systems but believed
that humans held a privileged position above the systems of nature.
Little thought was given to the ethics of such a position of privilege
as it was deemed, whether through a scientific lens, a naturalist lens,
or a theological lens, that the planet was there to support mankind.
Worster contends that the rise of Christian pastoralism, which
idealized relationships between people rather than relationships between
people and their environment, may have played a large role in the
development of an adversarial attitude towards nature. (p. 26) Instead
of harmonious existence, humanity in the Western Christian context, saw
nature as a hostile force. The continued idea that human beings were the
only living creatures on the planet with an internal soul, as pronounced
by Pope Pius IX, meant that there was no need to feel guilty for the
death or destruction of anything not human. People were not a part of
nature, but instead above it. This anthropocentric view created, in
Worster’s view, at best a calculated indifference, and at worst an
outright antagonism towards nature. (p. 29) By not allowing any but
humans to have the divine spark of a soul, Christianity helped “reduce
man’s perspective of nature to a mechanical contrivance.” (p. 29) This
helped the realm of scientific thought believe that the world, and
nature was founded on a rational set of laws and order, and that
somehow, humankind’s innovations were all a part of the accepted divine
order. It helped create an imperial view of nature that, even when
science removed the supernatural from the picture, persisted in the
rational minds of Western reason. (p. 29)
We seek to dominate the elements, to control them and use them to our
own ends. Yet nature has a way of reminding us that we are not actually
the dominating force we believe ourselves to be. We are still entirely
reliant on the resources of the planet, which we are consuming at
alarming rates, in order to survive, and more so, in order to live the
life we feel we have the right to be accustomed to. I am a child of
modern convenience. I like my toys and gadgets just as much as the next
person, but I am often given pause for thought as I see how far removed
from the natural elements of the planet we have become. We are
proceeding to make ourselves alien to the very planet that sustains us,
and are constantly looking for ways to undo the damage we have done, and
at the same time, looking for more resources to exploit. There is a
strange disconnect between ourselves and the systems of nature that
sustain us and there is some danger in that disconnect. My first real
awakening to that disconnect lies now at the bottom of the North
Atlantic Ocean, in the form a giant concrete platform that serves as
both testament and tombstone.

***information on the Ocean Ranger can be fund at
http://www.releases.gov.nl.ca/releases/2002/mines&en/0215n02.htm
and
http://atlantic-web1.ns.ec.gc.ca/climatecentre/default.asp?lang=En&n=83846147-1#metmoment

The book cited is Nature's Economy, A History of Ecological Ideas 2nd Ediditon.
Donald Worster. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006 [1994].

We return to the scene one month later, where our subject is once again sitting in his apartment in Kingston, and once again burying his face in his books. After three wonderful weeks in Ottawa, the return to the city of his schooling is somewhat stressful, and exhausting. Classes are good, but busy, (as a testament to this, the Xmas tree still stands in the corner, stripped of its ornaments but not yet of its lights) and the apartment is in a state of chaotic organization. It is clear that the hero of this tale is conflicted about some of the aspects of his life. A friend is hurting and there is nothing he can do to help her. He himself is longing to be back in Ottawa, where his heart lies, and where he has friends and a social life that he is missing. Kingston offers casual acquaintances and school-mates, but there has been no strong connection. That connection is something he is used to in his life, he has been very blessed by a close circle of friends, and they are too far away right now.

Geoffymas!

Two papers down, all the grading done, one more well under way, a site visit to finish up that requirement tomorrow. The tree is up and decorated. I had a wonderful weekend with Nikki and Scootah and Skeptigal. Nikki unfortunately managed to poison herself with food in Toronto before she came here, so her visit was abreviated and a little subdued but it was lovely all the same. It has been a couple of years since I have seen her and I do miss her an awful lot. Her hubby is pretty cool and I was really glad to meet him. It is quite obvious that he is completely smitten with her, and she with him, so I am really happy for them both. It was also excellent that Skepti got to meet them, as Nikki is a pretty important part of my life.
We all went out for mediocre breakfast on Sunday and then saw the happy couple off to the train. Then came back to unwind some. Sadly then it was time to say goodbye to Skepti as she headed back to Ottawa. it gets a little more difficult each time she has to go back, or I have to come back, however you want to put it, but a few more months and it will be a full-time gig =) The end of May is really not so long... and if the next semester moves as fast as this one did, I will be living in the big O in a blink of an eye. And coming up is Xmas! 2 full weeks in the big city, filled with xmas cheer! I head in next Monday, and will hopefully have all my work completed by that time. It will be nice to have a break, though xmas does not offer much rest time, but it at least will be a brain break.
I think I shall return to the football, but a merry mid-winter to one and all!

Winding down and ramping up

So, One course is complete, the TA work is done with all exams graded and marks submitted, the major paper proposal has been handed in, the interview for the paper on Unitarianism is done. I have to finish writing one more paper, today, invigilate an exam tonight, then Nikki, Scootah and Krista all arrive tomorrow at varying times. A weekend of good friends, love and xmas cheer and then a return to finishing the paper I will work on today. Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday I supervise three more exam time slots, and work on the Unitarian paper (transcribe the interview, find more sources and maybe even start to write. Work Friday, Saturday and Sunday, and then off to Ottawa on the following Monday for two weeks of xmas, which will hopefully involve some rest. With any luck, I will have the Unitarian paper finished before I leave for the big O, but if not, I will have a week at the other end to finish it up.
Xmas not at home is becoming something I am getting used to, not necessarily happy about but getting used to at least. I was in Calgary for Xmas 2001, Triton for Xmas 2002, Ottawa Xmas 2004 and now Ottawa again for Xmas 2006. I am going to be in excellent company this xmas, I will be with my partner and some of my family, but I most assuredly am going to miss home, Xmas eve with Pat and LA, my annual (sort of) Boxing Day gig, and the traditional New Year's dinner with the whole crew. I will also miss getting to see everyone who has been living away, which is one of the great joys of xmas in NL... but I am not so melancholy about it. I am really looking forward to the Ottawa excursion =) but know, all of you who I will not see, that I will be thinking of you, and often.

Take care and be well friends
G

Seduction? What me?

I die from tired!

Ok, this week has been about as unproductive as I can have been. I did not manage to finish the paper I hoped to finish, I did not manage to get the interview done for another paper, though I did manage to set a date, and I did not get research going on the third paper. I did manage to get the apartment cleaned and the laundry done, I did manage to tell the landlord that my heaters don't seem to function and the toilet tank is running, and I did manage to get out of bed everyday and go to school and work. However, the papers have now become looming distractions that are bearing down on me and my mental well-being. I know I will manage to get them done, but I am having trouble getting motivated, and when I do get motivated, I am having trouble maintaining the concentration necessary to put my thoughts together. Sleep comes in fits and starts right now, usually by 10:00pm I am wiped out and ready for sleep, and I wake several times through the night with my brain alight with all that needs to be accomplished, and then 7:00 - 7:30am every morning I wake up whether I want to or not. I need a week of nothingness, and though I have done almost nothing this week, it still feels like I have had to do many things. I guess I have done a lot, but not of the right things.
Tonight I head to Ottawa for the weekend, and I am muchly looking forward to it. Social contact is something that is sorely lacking in my Kingston existence. I basically go to work, or go to school and that is all I do. Someone asked me the other day what time the bars close in Kingston, and I was unable to answer because I have not been out later than 10:00pm since I moved here. In order to try and rectify the fact that my classmates and I do not do any of the social things together, I have decided to host a potluck next week, and that will hopefully provide a much needed outlet for social interaction in the city. This weekend, I will get to spend with Sceptigal, and have dinner Saturday night with some of her good friends and I am very much looking forward to both. It is funny, in a disturbing sort of way, the less social interaction I have, the more I take on the introvert persona. I crave the interaction, and yet I find it harder and harder to leave the house when I know I have to go into a social environment. It could be that winter is upon us and the lessening amounts of daylight are coming into play, but it feels more than just the usual bout of SADS. I just have to focus on the light at the end of the tunnel. May is not so far away, there is much to be done in that time, but ultimately it is only 6 months, and hell I have certainly lived through worse senarios than the one I am currently living in =) I am emotionally happy in most respects, and contrary to the whining, I am enjoying my program.
I guess I just am lonely. I want to have a poker night with the boys, or the international flavours and games nights with Pat and LA, and mostly I want to live in the same city as my partner =)Only 6 months for the latter at least, and two full weeks over xmas will be spent in the nation's capital, which will be wonderful.

Marriaaaaaaage is what bwings us hewre together today!

So, I have not posted in a while. my life has been a whirlwind that does not seem to slow down any at all. School ties up 90% of my time, work consumes another 25%, and then my newly renewed relationship eases out the fact that my time is committed for more time than exists =). Life, it has been said, is a funny thing. And I would have to agree with that. When I left Newfoundland at the beginning of the summer, I had very different goals and viewpoints in mind, in every sense of the word. I saw a long-term future with Jill, and a continued career in the academic world. Sadly, the move, which we had hoped would help fix the issues she and I faced, only caused them to grow and ultimately led to the demise of the realtionship, and my severe need of an acadmic break caused a rethinking of my career moves.
In the wake of that ending a new beginning arose; one that I was not suspecting. A refound friendship with Skeptigal, who also was just out of a relationship blossomed quickly back into the state of being we had obtained before her original move to Ottawa four years ago. Except this time, there was a deeper connection than before. Something was just.... so completely right about the situation. It seemed that we had not really been apart, even though we had for several years. This connection... well the long and short of it, has led me to propose. She has accepted and we are to be married next year, on September 8th in Ottawa. It seems fast sometimes, and perfectly right at the same time. It is truly a wonderful thing. We fit together in ways I couldn't really have imagined. It lends credence to the concept of fate for me, that somehow, this was just meant to be.
I hope everyone is as happy as I am right now, and I hope that you are happy for me as well =)

Busy as the day is long....

Bike riding is no longer a pleasureable way to travel. The temperature has finally dipped and stayed below 10 degrees, we have had snow warnings the past two nights, and some brief flurry activity last night on the bike ride home. I am supposed to be in the downtown location by now, but that has yet to happen. Apparently the next weekend I work, three weeks from now will see me out in the mall for Friday's shift, sat and sun downtown and Monday back out at the mall, and then that is supposed to be the norm until xmas comes.There have been major life changes, some sad, some good, some amazing. School is incredible, and frustrating, and exciting and dull and... well you name it... mostly exhausting. Trying to support myself by work outside of the program is taking its toll and we are only a month and a half in. I feel very connected to others on a personal level, I feel aliented from others on a wider level, and I miss my friends from home every now and then. Oddly enough, though, I don't miss home itself. A week today I am in Ottawa again to write the civil service exams, and to spend time with Skeptigal which I am very much looking forward to. After the exams there will be a trip to Pub Italia to continue my quest to drink my way around the world via their beer menu, and to meet up with Jeff and Brenda. After that a day of relaxation and cuddling, and then back to Kingston to being an insane schedule of marking, paper writing, presentaion preparing, exam invijilating and work. Back to Ottawa the following weekend to scout locations with skeptigal etc and visit the family. The back again to Kingston to present the aforementioned presentation, work some more and research research research. Perhaps there will be some sleeping somewhere alogn the way. Jill will be coming in the first week of November to collect the remainder of her things, and it will be nice to see her and see how she is doing, and maybe meet the mysterious friend of hers.I am loving the fall here, though it is damper than I thought it would be, and I am loving the grad program though it is making my head hurt more than I thought it would and I am in love which carries me through the darkest times... Life is good =) Now if we can eliminate the bike ride, and cut down the external work hours, everything will be perfect =)

Frustrated Inc

Frustrated, Incorporated
Well I know just what you need
I might just have the thing
I know what you'd pay to see

Wow,it is amazing how things can quickly be set off-kilter. Today started as any other day, well not just any other day, but a fairly standard day. Rousing myself into the morning, coffee made, quick phone call to help keep the day happy, and then into both school-like productiveness, and household productiveness. I accomplished much. Dishes are done, this weeks web postings for school are 3/4's complete, I am ahead in my readings. I check the mail and in it there is notification that for my last year of my BA I wsa again appointed to the Dean's List. The extra groud beef is browning as I type. The weekends lasagna is portioned and wrapped and freezing, and I made it to the bank to deposit my check.
When I did so, however, I noticed that I was short, by an amount of $220.70, form my account. This is.... problematic... as rent will be coming out any day now.
So I rushed myself back home (I know my tenses are all screwed up here) and discovered upon phoning my bank that my previous paycheck (not the one I just deposited, but the one before) was returned because my employer's account was NSF. This... concerns me and of course, I cannot find my employer to ask about it, he is apparently inbetween locations. What concerns me more is that it is now too late to apply for any of the on-campus jobs, I have missed the deadline by one week. So if it turns out that my current employers finances are such that I have to worry about every paycheck and I should find a new job, I have missed the window of opportunity because I opted to stay with this employer out of loyalty, then things are about to get very tight.
I feel angry, I feel a little betrayed, and I feel a lot worried. One should not have to wonder if one's paycheck is going to bounce. A phone call right now from my employer would go a really long way to fixing this mood. Hopefully the phone will ring before I head off to work a shift for him this evening.

need another 12 hours in each day

Ok so this week I will hve worked 32 hours at the shop, been in classes for 10 hours, and put in 15 hours of study and writing time. Working while going to Grad school is teh suck! It is supposed to balance out now and I will be working 20 hours in one week and then have one week off, and that should continue through the rest of the term, but it has made this week extremely busy and extremely exhausting. The grad school part is amazingly enjoyable, the having to continue to be a poor student is not =( I am a little frayed around the edges this morning as I sit here at work, reading yet another set of articles and contemplating what to write about for my grad studies posting and am having trouble keeping focus. I really want it to be six o'clock so I can go home to my cosy apartment, curl up with a hot toddy, perhaps read for fun for a while or play a computer game and hopefully chat on the phone until I am ready for slumber. I should probably cook something in there too that I can take to work with me tomorrow. With any luck the rain will have stopped for the bike ride home, the ride to work wasn't bad, but it wasn't what I would call fun either. And hopefully the ride to work tomorrow will be less wet as well.
I can;t believe we are approaching the end of September already. If this iis any indication of how the rest of the year is going to go, then I should be living in Ottawa in no time! The big hope is to finish the course work, spend the month of May researching and then move into the big city to finish writing. I hope to have the paper finished in totality by the end of June, which may or may not be reasonable. It is only a fifty page paper and I should be able to tie my program studies into the Master's essay with little difficulty. SO I say now anyway. It would help a whole bunch if I had a concept more than something on New Religious Movements. Hopefully a little more reading next week that is not directly tied to course work will offer a little illumination.
Hmmm I think I need a Buffy fix..

Today was the meet and greet day for the program. We met the head of the department, met with the graduate coordinator, and my fellow students. Following the afternoon's bureaucracy, we all went out to dinner at a lovely Indian restaurant that is very close to my house. The food was nice, though I have certainly had better, but the company was excellent. The class is comprised of a very diverse group of people who hail from Peru to South Carolina to Washington to Egypt to all over Canada. Each has their own individual research areas and class discussions should be quite enjoyable. I am very much looking forward to hearing their views on the subject material, and on offering my own two cents worth. I will be TA'ing one course this semester and one next semester, on top of taking three courses (maybe four if I am required to add a second language in order to meet my program requirements) It is going to be busy, very busy. I am not sure how I will be able to keep my job at the inkjet place, but I definitely have to have that income in order to survive, so I will have to find a way to make it work. I can always sleep next year :p The courses themselves all seem extremely interesting and I am definitely looking forward to sinking my teeth into the material. In fact, I have already started, which based on the kind of schedule I am looking at seems to blessing... The three courses and the job seem to be survivable, adding the language course into the mix seems to make it prohibitively difficult. Maybe I will have already done enough French that the requirement will be met *fingers crossed* though it definitely cannot hurt for me to do more French. At any rate, I should have an answer on that front tomorrow, for now it is late and I am in need of rest...

What's wrong with the world mama?
People living like aint got no mamas
I think the whole worlds addicted to the drama
Only attracted to the things that bring you trauma
Overseas yeah we tryin to stop terrorism
But we still got terrorists here livin
In the USA the big CIA the Bloodz and the Crips and the KKK
But if you only have love for your own race
Then you only leave space to discriminate
And to discriminate only generates hate
And if you hatin you're bound to get irate
Yeah madness is what you demonstrate
And that's exactly how anger works and operates
You gotta have love just to set it straight
Take control of your mind and meditate
Let your soul gravitate to the love y'all



Overseas bombs are exploding in Turkey, in Afghanistan, in Iraq. People are dying by the tens, by the twenties every day. Canadians are fighting in an American style "War on Terror" where they are dying, Afghans are being killed by Canadians, Afghans are being killed by Afghans. Muslims killing Muslims, Muslims killing Christians, Christians killing Muslims. In Palestine, there are Muslims killing Muslims, Muslims killing Jews, Jews killing Muslims and Christians dying in the crossfire. In Iraq, Muslims try to kill each other and try to kill the international forces, and the American and Briish troops. Throughout the Western World people live lives of excess, and ignore the suffering in their own backyards, yet scream sactimoniously about the abuse of human rights and the importance of democracy. Ask those in the Ninth Quarter in New Orleans if they know where the love is. Ask those dying in suicide bombings or those caught in friendly fire if they know...

It just ain't the same all ways have changed
New days are strange is the world the insane?
If love and peace so strong
Why are there pieces of love that don't belong
Nations dropping bombs
Chemical gases filling lungs of little ones
With ongoing suffering
As the youth die young
So ask yourself is the loving really strong?
So I can ask myself really what is going wrong
With this world that we living in
People keep on giving in
Makin wrong decisions
Only visions of them livin and
Not respecting each other
Deny thy brother
The wars' going on but the reasons' undercover
The truth is kept secret
Swept under the rug
If you never know truth
Then you never know love
Where's the love y'all?(I don't know)
Where's the truth y'all?(I don't know)
Where's the love y'all?




A paedophile was extradited from Thailand because of his supposed involvement in the Jon Benet Ramsey case. DNA evidence clears him of those charges. How come his penchant for child porn, and his residence in a country where such crimes against children are rampant, and where he was a school teacher were not enough to extradite him? How come it took a celebrity murder case?

I feel the weight of the world on my shoulder
As I'm getting older y'all people get colder
Most of us only care about money makin
Selfishness got us followin the wrong direction
Wrong information always shown by the media
Negative images is the main criteria
Infecting their young minds faster than bacteria
Kids wanna act like what the see in the cinema
Whatever happened to the values of humanity
Whatever happened to the fairness and equality
Instead of spreading love, we're spreading anomosity
Lack of understanding, leading us away from unity
That's the reason why sometimes I'm feeling under
That's the reason why sometimes I'm feeling down
It's no wonder why sometimes I'm feeling under
I gotta keep my faith alive, until love is found

In Austria eight years ago, a little girl was abducted. She was ten years old. She was kept in a dungeon by some semblance of a human being. The psychologists are talking Stolkholm Syndrome, CNN's headline reads "Dungeon Girl Defends Captor" This little girl's, now young woman's trauma, is now only sensationalist hard copy. It makes me despair for the world...

People killing people dying
Children hurtin you hear them crying
Can practice what you preach
Would you turn the other cheek?
Father father father help us
Send some guidance from above
Cause people got me got me questioning
Where is the love?(where is the lovex3)(the lovex2)

The biggest news story today on CBC was not any talk of the international situation, but instead of the delayed NASA launch. This huge investment in exploring life beyond our planet, in finding ways to live off of the planet. Would we not be better off spending that money fixing the planet we already live on? Would we not be better off ending hunger, finding a cure for AIDS, for Cancer? Why is it so important to explore the boundaries off planet? So many people suffer here every day and yet the big focus is on how terrible it is for the astronaut who has waited 14 years for a RETURN to space to have to wait maybe a month more. We have some pretty fucked up priorities.

We only got one world, one world.
thats all we got one world, one world.
There's something wrong with it, something wrong with it.
Something's wrong with the world world world...
We only got one world one world
That's all we got,

Seems to me that we need to level it all, drop all foreign debts, and local debts, offer free education to every single person. Teach the ethics of sharing, of caring, of loving, and of respect. Respect for our fellow human beings, respect for our planet, respect for the forces of nature and maybe then we can find that love again... I really do believe we had it once, I really do, and that humanity has lost it somewhere along the way. Maybe if we could just get back to the point before nationhood, before religious differentiation and denomination, before skin colour mattered worth a damn.... before patriarchal societies removed women from their rightful places of power and awe... Maybe we could right this sinking ship...

Sometimes I feel like I need to be more involved in being a part of the solution instead of part of the problem =(

eerily calm

There is a strange quiet in the house and a strange calm that has settled over both Jill and I. We talked and started sorting out who was getting what, what she was selling to me, what she is selling to the public etc. She has an exit date now, she will be leaving the apartment on the weekend of Sept. 10th and heading either to Oakville or KW, situation depending. her sister is going to come down with a truck, so she won;t have to rent one, and she will move off into her new life, wherever that will take her. I wish her well on her journey and I hope she finds happiness in whatever she chooses to do. We both talked today about how weird it seems. We both feel like we should be upset, and yet, neither one of us is. Certainly there have been emotional moments but they largely seem to be behind us and now we are just going through the motions of sorting everything out so that there can be some sort of closure for us both. It is a happy / sad feeling. I am glad she is heading off to pursue her dreams, and I am glad that we are able to part as friends, but it is a sad thing too, we have been living together for the last year and a half or there abouts, and you can;t spend that amount of time with someone without some residual emotions. There will also be an adjustment period, once the house is empty. It will be interesting, somewhat exciting, as it has been a long time since I have lived alone, and it will be lonely, as it has been a long time since I lived alone. The last time, really, was in Calgary and there were so many negative things that happened to me there that it is difficult to guage just how lonely it will be.

I shouldn't complain so much about Calgary. Yes, it was a horrible time in my life, physically, mentally, socially, emotionally... but it lead to two of the very best things to ever have happened to me. It started the pinwheel in motion for me to go back to University, and discover some of my hidden talents, and the other... well the other is deserving of many entries, so I shan't go into it this evening. But I digress...

The next little while is going to be extremely interesting in my life, and for the most part, I am looking forward to it =)

weight loss and weirdness

Ok, so I have been in Kingston for 2.5 months, and since I started working (read since I started cycling to work) I have lost 18 pounds and counting. The scales read 238 this morning before I left the house. This is the first time since I moved home from Calgary that I have weighed less than 240. My shorts now hang off me in that bad white rapper way. There has been some dietary change, but not a concerted effort to be dieting, just regualr exercise, which is somehting I simply have not been physically capable of in the last few years. I have had to use the cane once or twice since I have started cycling agian but nto very often and only if I know I am going to be walking for an hour plus. It still feels odd to walk without it, like I am forgetting something every time I leave the house. and walking is still awkward, as my body tries to adjust to carrying its own weight again. When I am walking any distance without the cane I feel a little off balance, like I have an inner ear infection. I don't have any such issues on the bike, however.
That being said, the last couple of rides have really physically hurt (especially the ride home last night in the thunderstorm). My back is doing ok, though a little sore, but my legs are bearing the brunt of the punishment. I find if I miss a day riding at all, I really feel it on the next ride and at the same time, after riding three or four days straight, my legs just want to stop. The numbly tinglys in my hands come back by the third or fourth day of riding too and don't go away really until I don't ride for a day. It poses an interesting dilemna, for on the one hand, the weight coming off me is an excellent thing, and I feel better than I have in years. On the other hand, I worry that I might be beating myself up a little. The bike really is the only feasible way to get to and from work. I can ride for the 20 - 30 mins and be there ready to go, or I can walk for twenty minutes, cacth a bus, transfer to another bus after a 7 minute ride and take that bus to work, for another seven minute ride. Or, conversely I can catch one bus down to Princess, transfer to another there, take the transfer to the Kingston Centre and get another transfer to catch the seven minute ride to work. Needless to say I am unimpressed with the bus system here in the friendly town of Kingston.
Home life is odd. That is really the only way to describe it. Jill and I have slid into being reluctant roomates while she looks for a place to live. We are getting along ok but we are definitely wary of infringing on the others territory, and being as it is a one bedroom apartment, that territory is very small. She has the living room and I content myself with living in the bedroom as much as I can. Hopefully she will find a place that she is happy with soon so that we can both move through to the next step in recovery from our ended relationship. It is impossible to do while we are under the same roof. We are friendly and civil to each other, and each of us wants to make sure that the other is doing ok, but it is odd and awkward.
Other than the weirdness, things are ok. I am heading out tomorrow night to meet a friend of Tattoist Krys (http://www.troubleboundtattoos.com) who lives around the corner. it will be my first non-couple social activity in Kingston. He is having me over for dinner and then a bunch of his friends are coming over to watch a movie (Rent, I believe, I am such a sucker for a musical *grin*) I am nervous about it and excited about it too. It will be nice to have some buddies here in the city. Then next week, Pat and Liza-Ann and Mark will be coming for a visit, and I am very excited about that. The week after that will Mom and Dad coming for a visit for a couple of days, and that is excellent as well. Then it is time for orientation and registration and the start of the program, which I am immensely looking forward to, though a little concerned at the prospective workload.
That's all the update news for now...

beginning from the end

So last night we had the talk about who is staying, who is going, who gets what, who needs what. It was a surreally calm affair. No doubt an undercurrent of emotion but mostly we agreed it just felt weird. Mostly I am just glad decisions are being made that will benefit the both of us. I want her to be happy, she is good people. I want her to be healthy, happy, and progressive in her life so she can find something truly rewarding and someone truly deserving.

We both agreed that we had different visions and concepts regarding where this was going and what we wanted and somewhere over the last year we fell not only form the same page, but as it turns out, we were reading different books.

I will be staying in the apartment, she will be looking, she will take whatever it is she needs without leaving me stranded. We decided on what amicably. I will need to get a microwave, a loveseat, and a toaster or toaster oven. I will build her a computer, give her the DVD player, etc. The kitchen stuff will get split down the middle, and she gets the AC unit and well, it goes on... it is all very mundane. It is all material and strangely unimportant and at the same time it is very important to me that she take whatever it is she needs to be comfortable, even if it means sacrificing my own comfort. Part of that is probably guilt, but more so it is because I know I can manage at any comfort level, I have lived at a lot of different stages of comfort and I know I will eventually find peace with whatever I have or don't have.
I could however, use some advice on some spiritual cleansing for both myself and the apartment. Send it my way if you can =)

and now the grande finale

Jill is leaving. Our relationship is done. I won;t get into the details here because I know it upsets her, but the plan as it stands now is for her to find an apartment or maybe move somewhere else, I don't really know, I just know that it she wont be living here anymore and I ache inside, for my pain and for her pain and I am sorry it had to end this way