It's Kinda Like Waking Up...Or Rather, Finally Being Able To Sleep...

It's done. I got through my first term in grad school and submitted my applications to Concordia - one to the Interdisciplinary Humanities PhD in Society and Culture, and one to the Communications PhD.

Three reference letters (x2), two official transcripts (x2), two long application forms, proof of citizenship, 500 word statement of purpose, and over 20 pages of proposed research...

Olivier and I drove to Montreal yesterday to drop of the application by 7pm at the student services office. I finished the 1o pages of compiled writing samples in the car, and I had to find a copy place to print it off before I submitted it.

I was horribly nauseous in the car the whole way there - I hadn't eaten yet, after all.

We stopped at a Tim Horton's/Esso, and I swear it's never taken so long to get a couple of bagels, a coffee and a tea. The lady was way too relaxed, her lackadaisical manner was like a personal affront ...I developed a bit of a facial tick watching her fiddle around with the coffee lids and take her sweet ass time spreading the cream cheese just so...

On the congested highway to Montreal, we were in the only lane that was at a standstill.

We got to downtown Montreal at 6:30.

By 6:45, I was at the student services office with my cherished applications, quadruple checked before sealing the envelopes, and handing them over to the guy. I asked if there was anything in particular I should write on the envelopes: "grad studies, just so we know what pile to throw them in." Ok then.

And that was that. No fireworks, no balloon-drop, no gong to bang on the way out.
I hate the anti-climactic-ness of this process. Nonetheless, I began to smile involuntarily as we walked down the icy sidewalk. And that was pretty cool.

We passed by all kinds of places I remembered from visiting Sarah there in the summer of 2007, and it was cool to have a sense of familiarity with the city I hope to live in for at least the next 5 years of my life...

So now, I can watch HGTV (Oli has cable!) without the crushing guilt of shirking responsibilities; I can take longer-than-absolutely-necessary baths (Oli has a bathtub!); I can make an actual meal instead of just assembling ingredients, and maybe even use the stove or oven instead of the microwave; and above all, I can sleep as long as I damn well please.
Sweeeet.

Now that I've resurfaced, I'll be calling you back and answering your emails soon enough... after my nap.

I'm Finished! Oh, But Wait... There's More...

Winter! At least now I don't have to feel too bad about staying inside all day... reading and writing... all day...

But at least I get a pretty view - I call this "Winter Scene...With Cat (and counterforce security stickers)"


I am now officially finished the term. The three papers I wrote in the last two weeks:

- The Intersectionality of Diasporic Consciousness: Language and Symbolic Violence in Dionne Brand's "Dialectics"

- Fake News, Real Journalism: Political Satire and the Challenge to Mainstream News Media

- Rendering Horror: Visual Capture and the Anxieties of the Real in "The Ring"

The only thing I have left to do (yeah, it's not over yet) is finish the two proposals for my PhD application, write two statements of purpose and drop off my applications in Montreal on Monday- now that is going to be fun. Hello Montreal!

There have been fun times in the midst of all this insanity though - in place of the last class with Giroux, he invited us to his home for a party! We had a bunch of amazing snacks and drank 'grad student' wine (i.e. surprisingly cheap for how good it is).


Abigail (who makes wicked folksy-mellow music) and Amanda


Shekufeh, Katherine and Vinh


Jenny, Amanda's guy and Amanda

The intrepid Henry Giroux



And the group - not everyone could make it but we'll be getting together again next term, periodically, for an informal reading course on biopolitics, which is gonna be wicked!

For now, more work (so close!) but after Tuesday it's uber-relaxation time...

As Jon Stewart Said (Repeatedly): An Historic Day

Of all the Obama images, this one is by far my favourite:

After a characteristically ridiculous republican campaign, full of racist rhetoric and christian-fundamentalist crazies, what a relief!

In case you haven't heard about this, check out the Masked Avengers (Quebec comedy duo) prank calling Sarah Palin, pretending to be President Nicolas Sarkozy. Perfect.

The Fundamental Irrationality of Grad School:

A faculty member told me the other day (during a committee meeting, when we were discussing how best to help grad students find balance between work and life) that being overwhelmed during grad school is a good thing, a necessary thing, because it prepares you for a life/career in the academy. While I understand the importance of learning how to balance things...

In the words of William Shatner, I just can't get behind that. What is the point of grad school if you barely have time to finish the course readings? How are you supposed to engage all the available resources and get the most out of seminars if you don't have the time to properly prepare? Pardon me, but I thought we were here to become academics or public intellectuals, not to be trained as highly efficient, task-juggling, sleep-deprived machines.

So if I haven't been posting lately, please forgive me, but I'm positively overwhelmed and not handling it too well. Actually, let me clarify: I'm handling it fine because I'm working all the time, but I'm really pissed off that I still don't have time to finish all my readings, because this is interesting stuff, and I really really want to get everything I can out of this year.

But, apparently that's not what it's about.

So fuck it.

* * *

I needed a break from course work today and picked up Julia Kristeva's Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection. (Abjection is our reaction, like horror or vomit, to a threatened breakdown in meaning caused by the loss of the distinction between subject and object or between self and other).

Oh, Kristeva ... I love it when ideas grab you and crack your mind open, make you sit up and gawk at the page, marveling at the revelation it incites:

There looms, within objection, one of those violent, dark revolts of being, directed against a threat that seems to emanate from an exorbitant outside or inside, ejected beyond the scope of the possible, the tolerable, the thinkable.  It lies there, quite close, but it cannot be assimilated.  It beseeches, worries and fascinates desire, which, nevertheless, does not let itself be seduced. Apprehensive, desire turns aside; sickened, it rejects.  A certainty protects it from the shameful--a certainty of which it is proud holds on to it.  But simultaneously, just the same, that impetus, that spasm, that leap is drawn toward an elsewhere as tempting as it is condemned.  Unflaggingly, like an inescapable boomerang, a vortex of summons and repulsion places the one haunted by it literally beside himself.

When I am beset by abjection, the twisted braid of affects and thoughts I call by such a name does not have properly speaking, a definable object.  The abject is not an ob-ject facing me, which I name or imagine.  Nor is it an ob-jest, an otherness ceaselessly fleeing in a systematic quest of desire.  What is abject is not my correlative, which, providing me with someone or something else as support, would allow me to be more or less detached and autonomous.  The abject has only one quality of the object - that if being opposed to I.  If the object however, through its opposition, settles me within the fragile texture of a desire for meaning, which, as a matter of fact, makes me ceaselessly and infinitely homologous to it, what is abject, on the contrary, the jettisoned object, is radically excluded and draws me toward the place where meaning collapses.  A certain 'ego' that merged with its master, a superego, has flatly driven it away.  It lies outside, beyond the set, and does not seem to agree to the latter's rules of the game.  And yet, from its place of banishment, the abject does not cease challenging its master.  Without a sign (for him), it beseeches a discharge, a convulsion, a crying out.  To each ego its object, each superego its abject.

It is not the white expanse or slack boredom of repression, not the translations and transformations of desire that wrench bodies, nights and discourse; rather it is a brutish suffering that 'I' puts up with, sublime and devastated, for 'I' deposits it to the father's account [verse au père - père-version]:  I endure it, for I imagine that such is the desire of the other.  A massive and sudden emergence of uncanniness, which, familiar as it might have been in an opaque and forgotten life, now harries me as radically separate, loathsome.  Not me.  Not that.  But not nothing, either.  A 'something' that I do not recognize as a thing.  A weight of meaninglessness, about which there is nothing insignificant, and which crushes me.  On the edge of non-existence and hallucination, of a reality that, if I acknowledge it, annihilates me.

There, abject and abjection are my safeguards.  The primers of my culture.

* * *

Other fun stuff I've been up to lately: late night walks to the Second Cup down the street; reading The Onion; watching my friend Christine on her reality TV show When Women Rule The World, and; free episodes of The Daily Show on the Comedy Central website.

Oh, and Hamilton still blows.

Damn, Grad School Is Hard.

I remember saying once, a while ago, that I hoped grad school would be challenging. Well, kick my ass and call me challenged. So much reading. So much analyzing. Just so much.

Not that I'm complaining. It's amazing to be surrounded by fellow grad students. In seminars, every single comment is well articulated, relevant, interesting, and stimulating. It's fantastic.

Some of the things that have dominated my thoughts every waking hour of the last month:
neoliberal rationality; all forms of capital; visual culture; political philosophy; feminist/queer theory; necropilitics; power; biopolitics and biopower; ideology; hegemony; spectacle; media democracy; globalization; activism and new social movements; identity politics; the nation state; sovereignty; agency; consumerism and commodity; diaspora; literature; the concept of culture...

My profs are all fantastic. And hilarious - big bonus.

I even have a kind of academic star-struck-ness: one of my profs actually knows, and is in regular correspondence with, people like Zygmunt Bauman, bell hooks and Jacques Derrida. Jacques Derrida!! jesus christ. Although, despite having known bell hooks for over 20 years, he says they don't talk anymore because she's a bit of diva (!).

On the flip side, I have keys to an office, I hold office hours, and I have a mailbox. I'm (partially) responsible for the education of 36 students. I have 36 essays on my desk to read and mark.

It's really difficult to cultivate a certain professionalism, yet remain accessible and, for lack of a better word, cool. The other TA's and I have shared stories of inappropriate (and entertaining) things said in tutorial, and worries about misinterpretations and misunderstandings. At least we're all figuring out the same stuff together.

It makes me nervous though - you know how sometimes I say things that are deeply ironic or sarcastic, not to mention politically incorrect? Yeah...apparently I can't just turn that off ha.

It's all a work in progress. Things are cool right now (I think) but who knows what will happen when I hand back the first assignment...nothing like a room full of people silently hating you. Should be fun!

Hamilton still blows. 7 months (of incredibly stimulating intellectual activity) to go.

7 1/2 Months To Go...

I'm trying to find the good things about Hamilton. Really, I'm making a concerted effort.

And I haven't come up short: the area around McMaster is kinda nice, as I've heard; people are generally pleasant and well mannered; it's fairly quiet; King Street West seems like the only cool street in this city, but I know there are other cool places that I have yet to check out, like Hess Village. Yeah...that's all I've got right about now.

There are certainly things I hate. Main Street is tops the list.

It took me a while to figure out what it was exactly that I find so utterly horrific about it - aside from the bland scenery, lack of trees, and plethora of fast food joints - but finally I realized, it's the traffic.

Not just the six lanes of traffic, but the fact that when you're walking on the sidewalk, there is absolutely no buffer between you and those wretched six lanes of traffic. The rushing noise, the fumes, the wind: you're completely exposed to all of it. It's horrible.

This is Main Street, object of my revulsion:

Yeah I know it's just a street but it's the worst manifestation of a street in a city that is so clearly meant for drivers. I will take detours to avoid it.

I seem to have acquired a slight city-snobbery...and while I'm not proud of it, I do admit it.

There are, however, some more interesting things about Hamilton that I've noticed. I'll fill you in as neutrally as I can manage and let you draw your own conclusions:

• Outside the NoFrills grocery store, I happened to notice while waiting for a cab, random men lingering for no apparent reason. One guy was talking to people as they passed (he was kind of a down-on-his-luck eccentric) and another guy starting shooing him off, even though he himself was just hangin' out for no apparent reason. It was like a turf war between bored retirees and the socio-economically underprivileged, and No Frills was prime real estate.

• Public transit (i.e. the bus) in Hamilton is an obstacle course of canes, walkers, strollers and basket-carts. You've got to be agile and keenly aware at all times.

• When I enjoy my morning tea out on the front step, I overhear pairs or groups of my neighbours gathered on the sidewalk or the street talking about the late night noise coming from a few student houses. There is a lot of pointing, head-shaking and negative gesturing. I heard the word 'hooligans' on two separate occasions.

• In downtown Hamilton, there is a gun shop: "New & Used Firearms. Professional Repairs. Ammunition Equipment and Supplies." When was the last time you saw an actual gun shop in a city? I can't remember the last time I saw a gun shop period. Just down the block there's a Starbucks and an organic food shop...

I'll stop there, although I'm sure I'll have more quaint little anecdotes for you in the near future.

So on to good things...Here are a few shots of McMaster. It is a really nice campus.

More on the wonderfulness of grad school later, fear not.

I found a tiny little room in a basement that I share with one girl, in a house that we share with 4 boys, who like to play Guitar Hero directly above my room.

At the moment, it's Eye of the Tiger. Oh, now it's Float On by Modest Mouse...with a little karaoke action...

But, everyone is fairly cool and the boys generously let me use their pepper grinder, so it's all good.

This is my tiny room, where the lowest part of the ceiling touches my head if I stand up straight:

I told myself that I would not do anything that required tools or even vaguely resembled remodeling because, let's be honest, I'm outta here May 1st (or even mid-April...).

For those of you who know me well, you know that this is a radical expectation.

So considering that all I did was paint, rip up some abhorrent mac-tac, reinforce the baseboards and remove a closet door, I'd say that's within reason.

About the paint: the colour I was initially enamored with was a nice rich spicy kind of orange, but...I just couldn't bring myself to paint my bedroom walls a colour called Peeping Tom.

Who the hell came up with that name? What kind of shopper/redecorator is that colour designed for? Most importantly, who approved that selection? ("Great job with the new line Henry - very provocative, you rascal!"). Although, if I were a paint-colour-namer I would most definitely test the boundaries of perversion and political incorrectness too.

But the point is, I couldn't be surrounded by Peeping Tom. I went with the much less threatening Warm Autumn. It's lovely. And not at all menacing or perverted.

(Oh, now it's Bon Jovi, Livin' on a Prayer. Sing it Justin!)

This is my hovel for the next 7 1/2 months:

It's quite cozy actually.

Especially with the return of a certain furry creature who gives gentle head-butts and snores:

My Luna! I'm so happy to have her back. She adds a little something special to my day, everyday.

By the way, that orb-paperweight thing is one of two that were made for me in Malta.

Strangely enough, the girl I share the basement with - her name is Luna too. How fun!

Ok, now back to reading the 80 pages of very dense texts that I have to finish tonight...

Hectic Days, Fervid Nights - How Long Has It Been Since...How Long Will It Be Until...?

For the last two weeks I've been GO-training back and forth between Toronto and Hamilton, loving Toronto and hating Hamilton, apartment hunting in Hamilton and couch surfing in Toronto, fondly remembering Toronto and cultivating high hopes for Hamilton, moving from Toronto to Hamilton, being in Hamilton and wishing I was in Toronto, being in Toronto and wanting to go "home" even if it is in Hamilton...

More on my new residence later - first, this is what I've been up to amidst the practicalities of adjusting, familiarizing and reacquainting:

Dana and I went to Buskerfest at Front St W & Church St - there were more promotional tents and kiosks than buskers, but plenty of local artisans with some amazing jewelry and clothing.


The 'Chalkmaster'...



Marie Antoinette checking her phone...


High-flying performances...



It was sweltering that day so we did a quick tour around the St. Lawrence market before leaving, retreating indoors at the height of midday.


* * *


I had to go to Tavistock to pick up some stuff - Eddie was amazingly cool and drove me up there to give me a hand. It was a nice drive. Picturesque.




Corn fields in August always make me think of rural childhood, but not my own - someone else's, or maybe a collective, imaginary, idealized childhood...



* * *


My TTC stop for the five + years I spent in Toronto. Over the course of all that getting on and getting off (how many times?), my entire life changed...


Korea Town (or the Korean Business District) between Christie and Bathurst.


My favourite fruit market, on the north-east corner of Bloor and Manning (my old street).
I went to the house and checked the mailbox. There were two envelopes for me.

The Korean supermarket at the south-west corner of Bloor and Manning, and the Metro Theatre just edged in there on the right - I think it's one of the oldest Theatre's in Toronto, built in the 1940's. All it shows now is porn, maybe the occasional cult film during festivals.


The same men sitting in the same places, as always, (perhaps having the same conversation) at Bloor Sweet Cafe.


A new tea shop in the Annex - I was so excited! They have pumpkin spice tea! The spiced pear is fantastic too, and the honey spice rooibos is soothing.


It's right across from the Tim Horton's, as you can see from the reflection...


* * *

The Counting Crows...always loved them, never saw them live, so what the hell. They played at the Molson Amphitheatre August 19th.

I was chilled out on the lawns watching the sky change colors and darken over Ontario Place as his voice carried over the crowd.

He's very mellow. He says all these groovy things like I hope you feel what I feel and the world is a dream you need to wake up into...

Someone near the front took this video of this very cool acoustic Mr. Jones:



How appropriate that the Exhibition was going on, and our concert tickets included admission.

Circuses and carnivals are kind of a recurring theme in a lot of their music - a sense of transience, of melancholy and quiet conflicts, of facades and the raw humanity underneath...


My camera can't do this view justice. It was actually breathtaking. The CN Tower changes colors in the distance, the noises of the fair get carried away by the breeze. From high up on the ferris wheel, all of it looks so...innocent. But you know it's not, and that's half the fascination.


'The circus is falling down on its knees, the big top is crumbling down...' (Raining in Baltimore)


The street lights are dark, strung with banners or holding ropes and completely neglected for the time being...it feels incongruous; it hints at the temporal, the ephemeral. I love it.



From above you can get the whole picture: the trucks and caravans, the equipment hidden behind temporary steel barriers, the cables and extension cords and ropes...


'Some of us are dancers on the midway, we roam from town to town...' (Goodnight Elizabeth)


On the Spadina street car, on the way home, we pass by the Skydome (I refuse to call it the Rogers Centre unless absolutely necessary for reasons of clarity. I hate that it's been renamed after the corporation that owns it. How arrogant of Rogers to rename a landmark like the fucking Skydome!).
Anyway...it's beautifully lit, that glowing blue, next to the popsicle-coloured tower.


I love this city. I've realized just how much so many times in the last few weeks. And just when I come to love it, I have to leave it for freakin' Hamilton. More on that later.
At least I'm close. Just a GO train ride away.

Oh Canada...

On the flight from Edinburgh, we passed over Greenland:



It seemed like decades before this plane would land and I couldn't concentrate on reading, couldn't decide what to listen to, couldn't sleep...just couldn't wait.

And then, all of sudden, the Atlantic gave way to Canada:



I was grinning like a fool the whole way down.

* * *

Back in the big T-dot-Oh-dot with a weary body and myriad intentions.

I've spent the week enjoying everything I've missed for the last 7 months - a disparate collection of certain favourites, comforts and points of pride:
- Tim Horton's and Second Cup
- Toronto's vibrant multiculturalism
- Ontario thunderstorms (like nowhere else...)
- Visiting shops I used to frequent; recognizing faces and being recognized myself
- The ease with which you can strike up conversations with strangers
- The best street-meat: spicy italian, mild polish, oktoberfest, grilled and perfectly charred
- Many cheerful you're welcome's for people who say thank you when I hold open a door, or step aside to let them pass, or pick up something they've dropped
- NOW magazine and the Metro newspaper
...and so many other details that let me know I'm home.

I've wandered my old neighbourhood - The Annex - a few times over:

Near Bloor & Spadina (Cobbs bread, on the right: best bakery ever - they give free samples)


The little kiosk at the corner of Bloor & Brunswick, right where it's always been:


Bloor Cinema: my favourite independent cinema in the city - one theatre, one huge balcony, cheap prices, great popcorn...


Ah Second Cup...how I've missed it. Nothing like a Chai Chiller to cool you off (and give you brain freeze) on a humid Toronto day.


Mel's: one of the best breakfast places in T.O., open 24 hours. Killer monte cristo.


Speaking of Montreal...montreal bagels! Cheap thrills I know but they can't be beat.


A goldmine of international and independent films: Suspect Video on Markham:


A new addition: the labyrinth painted on the street in Mirvish Village:


I'm staying in Bloor West until I move to Hamilton (more on that craptastic development later...) and the streets are just as lovely as I remember. So many houses are flying the flag, I assume in support of Team Canada.


I'm told this summer has been nothing but rain and thunderstorms.

For some reason in Ontario the sky just cracks open and drenches us with little-to-no warning. The sound of the rain is deafening; you can feel the cooling release almost right away, and then it's gone just a quickly as it came, with a grumble of thunder in the distance.


Sushi! Brittany and I chow down close to 11 pm at one of the many sushi places in the Annex. Miso soup, green salad, dragon roll, edamame...I almost squealed with pleasure.


The Greenroom is still comfy and chill, the greenroom specialty (glass noodle stir fry) still mouthwateringly delicious.


And the sangria is better than I remember. Good thing Dana suggested it.


After that we wandered 20 feet to Futures Bakery (Bloor & Brunswick) for a late night slice of cheesecake. It was packed full of people engaged in loud conversations, people whispering in corners, and people trying to read amid the clamour. Just like I remember.


The grand spectacle that is Honest Ed's on Bloor & Bathurst is still glittery and overwhelming as ever:

* * *

Yes I'm wrought with excitement to be back in this city - this city which I never really loved until I left. I have a new (and wholly unexpected) appreciation for Toronto after having traveled through Europe, for its similarities and its differences.

I notice things like the sidewalk planters stuffed with trees and flowers, the street sweepers, the magazine and newstands on every corner, the late night convenience stores, and the sheer diversity of everything from people to produce.

This weekend - the last weekend before my banishment to Hamilton - is the buskers festival, and I have yet to make it to the St. Lawrence Market and Queen West...

* * *

A phrase from the back of a book I picked up at Shakespeare's in Paris popped into my head last night as I caught a glimpse of myself passing by a darkened window shop on a quiet street:

I knew the person I was looking at was myself, and yet there was an alien quality to my reflection, an otherness that brought with it a feeling of exuberance and celebration. All at once I was looking at a stranger.