Daffnee

I think the law of diminishing marginal returns is starting to kick in -- the more hours I'm sticking into studying for this "optional" econ midterm, the less I'm getting out of it. It's probably less me and more than the extremely detailed example they used to teach Chapter 6 involves the fascinating world of bottle manufacturing. They don't even tell us what they're bottling. How are we supposed to get excited about the prospect of producing wealth and the sexy lifestyle of the stock and bond brokerage if we don't even know what we're bottling? The Warren Buffet School of Investing taught me that much, which really does tell you a lot about the Oracle of Omaha because the only quotations of his I know were stuck on our fridge at home by my mother. Now that's disturbing. What's even more disturbing must be the slightly dirty feeling I get creeping under my skin, because I know Carl Marx must be spinning in his grave (and on that figure of speech -- it's probably getting used so much that we could solve the world's energy problems by harnessing these rotating coffins to turbines, but I digress) at how we alienate the means and product of consumption.

Marisa and Calvin asked me today what we study in English, and the only answer I could genuinely give was that we talked a lot about what's wrong with our world and why people were so angry all the time. It sounds like something out of psych or poli sci, and I had to try to frame the entire department in this hokey cross between a moral conduct think-tank and activist training camp. The 'English' label doesn't help much either. I'm thankful English has moved beyond canonical literature -- and literature, period -- and lets me do great stuff like watch Buffy episodes in the name of cultural research, but it's slightly depressing when you listen to perspectives on the world's messed-up-ness without any well-timed breaks for constructive comments. Everyone seems to have forgotten the idea of the happy fiction, for one thing. I'm thinking about doing a paper on what a hermeneutic approach not based on a singular Godterm (like the European tradition) might look like; we had a short seminar on First Nations worldview in Rgla, invocations in Buffy already overstep speech-act conventions and the most recent reading for that class (Chinese Buddhist myth) doesn't seem to lend itself well to Occidental interpretation. Hmm. A lot of random threads, and probably too much for a term paper...

Why do we bother asking these impossible questions of right and wrong, beginnings and endings, when we live and breathe each day without knowing the answer? Hence my need for the happy fiction, the acknowledgement that we don't know everything but that life works despite that. Maybe solving ordinary problems -- getting groceries, making tea, saving the whales -- don't have the same grandness of potential for posterity, but the deeds can be done; half my life, I swear, is making the other half of my life more difficult for me. I should take a poll sometime and ask who feels this way too.

I got a not-so-subtle hint that some people actually read this blog, and have started to give me a bad rep as the girl that never posts.

My orchestra conductor once advised us to never discuss any of three things with people we wanted to stay friends with: money, politics, and religion. I think I failed hugely on all counts, though I didn't start trespassing on the last one until recently. I admit, I've been strangely yuppie lately and researching Eastern religions, but like all nuts with a cause, I've got this somewhat figured out. My biggest concern was that headlines have always and still deal with those three unspeakable things, and religion inevitably becomes the most contentious and awkwardly-reported of the them -- especially here, and now. Don't wait up for me to rant about Arnold in California, same-sex marriage or the 77-cent dollar -- I have Doonesbury to do that for me, and I spend enough breath on it usually anyway -- but I will note that the way religion is reported on is understandably focused within the context of Islam, Judaism and Christianity. The three largest religions in the world are still Christianity, Islam, and Hinduism; what happened to the Buddhists? Seems that they don't get much say unless they're Tibetian or Richard Gere -- that, or they don't have much to say on the matter, which seems pretty clever in retrospect. Opening one's mouth at any point in time only provides an opportunity to later look back with a wry smile (or grimace).

Professor Boccassini postponed my essay deadline one week, so I used it to balance out the spiritual side of my wellness. You can't hang out in the Wellness Centre for 8 hours a week and not absorb some of the stuff they try to teach there; I swear, I dream with a soundtrack of acid jazz and loft music now. The result? Even more stuff for me to read, periodic stretching to get these joints of mine to behave, the ability to take deeper breaths and a social experiment that involves me going lacto-vegetarian and seeing how long it takes for Dan to crack and dump me for a beef-loving Alberta gal. Let's face it, that beef quesidilla I had tonight didn't measure up against lentils.

Only two days in, and this has been arguably the most productive Thanksgiving weekend I've ever had. I've made chocolate pretzel cookies, started an essay on the "life as travel by sea" topos in Dante/Petrarch/Boccaccio, and knitted a ball of chunky yarn into half a scarf. All this comes with a price, though: low shower pressure and house that's half a degree colder than it is outside. We're not at the point where we can see our breath yet -- that comes later, and in the basement -- but I think it's a brilliant move on my parents' part; since the TV is in the basement now, we're only tempted by truly worthwhile shows before we head down there with scarves and mittens.

Time spent at home really is a danger zone, when the starving student becomes liberated from the ordinary constraints of money and goes ballistic at the presence of space -- so much space! -- and junk food. (The amount I spend on pears and apples in a week pretty much ensures I don't have cash left over sugar.) We ate so much at all-you-can-eat Japanese yesterday for lunch that the entire family pretty much skipped dinner. That's a liberal Chinese family for you. (Speaking of liberal Chinese family, I should note that they're not so liberal that my boyfriend of a year and a half has an automatic invitation to our Thanksgiving dinner -- but my Chinese Ph.D. roommate does. I'm sorry, hon!)

Have I mentioned that I'm losing interest in school this year? *gasp* Maybe the prospect of having a 'real' vocation or just something resembling a career path produces a kind of apathy I haven't felt since -- Grade 12.

I'm getting the sinking feeling this could end badly, if past precedent has any say in this.

Maybe the reason we live so much longer than animals is because they don't have language to keep them from taking in all of this world's beauty at once.

Two days until the long weekend! About time, too; my laundry hamper is pretty much overflowing and I'm down to my second-last pair of pants I can wear in public without being lynched. Hey, when you have a personality like mine you have to be careful about these things!

If I wasn't already a navel-gazer, being a peer educator has definitely made me stare at my (very round) belly button a whole lot more. Our workshop meeting was 8h30 this morning -- self-esteem and body image! -- it's kind of scary a) how little I get out, b) how badly I respond to criticism (as Dan knows after trying to correct my French) and c) the still-bizarre habits find comfort in. Then again, I'm sure there are other people out there that always have the same oatmeal for breakfast (my yogurt brands change, ok?) and whose assessment of how well the day went can be dictated in good part by whether Blue Chip has day-old raisin bran muffins. Globe and Mail headlines do the trick too, though. Learning the details of how Arnie became the new governor of California does make for an interesting alternation between spluttering oatmeal and choking on tea to get those early-morning gastrointestinal muscles working.

And on the subject of UBC Food Services, the Place Vanier cafeteria is now appropriately called a 'dining room' after they decided to turn the place into a mini-Whistler food outlet once I moved out. This happened in elementary school too; as soon as I would 'graduate' from a grade, the next year's kids would get great stuff like sleepover as the Aquarium or five-day camping trips that were really extended playtime in posh cabins. Maybe someone's trying to tell me that skipping Farley Mowat novels and handwriting in grade three was not a terrific idea.

Happy thanksgiving! We never do this at home, so I guess I should list off what I'm thankful for in some sort of community forum: I'm thankful for the insane priviledges I've been born into, tea, friends and loved ones I don't deserve (especially when we factor in how little time or appreciation I show, usually), my North American buying power, cheap fruits and vegetables, my still-functioning and long-suffering computer, all those campus groups that have 'donated' posters for my wall, good skin, and the kindness of strangers (in a purely non-Blanche DuBois way). Thanks, Mum and Dad, this life thing has been neat so far.

I showed up to the Pacific Realty's annual fundraiser wearing my semi-signature tie-scarf, and was told by my mother that I looked like one of the bartenders. I fixed it, and then she said I reminded her of a Communist schoolgirl. This was, unfortunately, the highlight of the evening.

Galas, and schmoozing in general, make me feel unclean. There's the slow moment of horror that drops like a waterfall, as you step off the escalator in your favourite 'business formal' and realise the hundred tables at the Hyatt are going to be filled with loud, drunken, rich realtors and their Chinese associates (i.e. family). Five bars in the foyer alone, each staffed by 2 bartenders and a girl with a cash box; a silent auction that ranged from 6 nights in Kuala Lumpar to a SFU Pipe Band CD. And many, many people who wouldn't even be quiet to listen to a man talk about his son's battle with cancer, or why raising money for the B.C. Children's Hospital is more than an excuse to get dolled up and oogle Malaysian dancers over Chinese food.

Isn't there something wrong with throwing a huge party for rich people to get them to donate money? There's something counter-intuitive there, right? Counter-intuitive to me, in any case; my sister and I spent the early part of the evening devising efficient ways to intersperse handouts and booklets to avoid having to go back into the ballroom.

I don't know what my point is. I'm not trying to moralize or vilify people who like a good party, I just feel unclean. Maybe I'm just feeling guilty that I didn't personall thank our waitress at the end of the evening -- she did a great job.

It must be October, because responsibility just came knocking at my door this morning and hit me over the head with a sledgehammer when I went to go answer it. After pulling what was essentially at 12-hour day between UBC and Sierra downtown, the last thing I wanted to hear is that my client -- whom I kind of wanted to be done with by the beginning of September -- would like me to redo the entire site because she's decided it's not legible enough. It's in 12-point Tahoma, that's legible in my books!

As if I didn't know this was coming -- I've been overcommitting myself for time immemorial. It's a chronic condition. The more interesting bit of the day came from a 2-hour long conversation with Marisa, however. I idolize that girl, I swear; negative media influences bounces off her, she sticks it out in physics still, and has a perpetually cheerful disposition that pharmaceutical companies would be able to cure this depression epidemic with by distilling it into pills. And she drinks a whole lot of tea, which makes it a winning combination.

I'm a little miffed on the one hand that depression and eating disorders weren't unique to me, but far more concerned now that almost everyone I know in my generation has become hypersensitive to an unrealistic standard of beauty. The feminist arguments -- that as women gain more social power, the ideal female body has become weaker and the ideal stronger -- has some resonance with me, I suppose, but the obsession with thinness (or muscle definition, in guys) strikes me as much a self-destructive behaviour as smoking, drinking, or the casual use of soft drugs; this tendency becomes reinforced at point in life, on TV, as we look in the mirror, or in the words of our friends. How did we ever convince ourself that our worth is tied to a number, any number?

The fog has been rolling in for a full day now, hugging the campus trees and lampposts until all you can see is white and spots of light. From the back seat of a car, the ugliness of human construction has been wiped away with cloud, the broken dirt, bare wood, and swaths of concrete replaced by a primordial mist. Here, in the same place, we see what this place could have been; freed of our own illusions, we come to be aware of how space holds us together, as the streetlights glow its diffuse yellowness. Here, we can be content in time. Here, the beginning comes again, and we still live free.

Will people out there promise not to tell my parents that I'm spending hundreds of dollars this year learning about Christian imagery in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, lesbian performance artists (or alleged pornographers, for those big believers in the American Christian right) and a French lady gets plastic surgery done on her face so she has the facial parts of different icons in Western culture -- including, but not limited to, the Mona Lisa, Venus de Milo, and somebody from Space:1999? That I had never heard of that show before last week only goes to show that the authors of my "Complete History of Science-Fiction Television" should be sued for false advertising. I've got a reputation to upkeep here, and just knowing about Metropolis (the 1928 one!) or Mork and Mindy just doesn't cut it.

Don't get me wrong -- I love school. Enough to make Dan jealous, I'm sure. But I still can't understand how academics can spend their lives thinking, writing, and rehashing _____ without getting out of the asbestos-packed tower of death that is Buchanan Tower, never mind convincing us hapless pions that any of this is relevant; to be true, I have killer speed-reading skills now, but that sinking feeling that tells me I'm not being terribly productive still goes off a few times a day.

That could be a bad reaction to having my resume read over by someone who does that for a living, though; there's still a part of me that is embarassed I haven't been nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize or saved a small nation at the age of 20 -- curse you, Craig Kielburger, for setting the bar so high! I can't explain why selling condoms means so much to me; granted, that's not exactly why I signed up to be a peer educator, but you go with what people know. I can't cram the reasons into three lines, and I'm starting to find that the exponential population growth of the planet has suddenly rendered me a very unimportant commodity. Hence the condoms. And no, I don't know if the flavoured red ones are cherry or strawberry. People tend to ask.

I read Andrew's latest post yesterday, and spent a good bit of time musing about his questions while pumping not-very-much iron at the gym. I'm going to use my incredible plot-summary powers and condense the gist of it into a few questions: What if you lost the person you loved and your family? What would you do if your plan for the future collapsed? Why are you motivated to do what you do?

The last one grabbed me, as big transcendental-like questions tend to for someone who's joined the Arts enemy and dealt with her own share of self-fabricated guilt. Why did I gamble on an English degree, of all things? Why put myself up for another 3 years of academic hell? And why -- I know semi-D asks this all the time -- do I eschew work in favour of doing things for free?

I thought about writing the answer to this using only random motivational quotes, ripped of TV shows, motivational calendars and the like, but I don't have the patience to find that many. For me, it comes down to getting the most bang for the buck I was given when I was born. One motivator's guilt: my grandparents gave up too much so I could have this pampered, upper-middle-class suburban life, and I can't even read and write their language. Shame, shame! There's some part of me -- probably a recessive accountant gene from my mother -- that keeps insisting that I haven't paid my dues to society, and that I need to give back all the priviledge I've been given. I can't forget what's been done for me, and seeing people get trampled while doing the same for their families gets me riled. Understandably, I think.

On a more selfish note, all my family members in my parents' generation are nice, quiet, professional, and utterly uninvolved citizens. There's a certain cachet, a je ne sais quoi, about the prospect of being the first radical social hell-raiser in my family. Well, the second -- I think my grandfather was pretty involved too, which would explain why my mother never got along well with him. That, or it was his smoking, but I prefer the former reason!

Definitely not all the reasons, but more on that later; the Wellness Centre meeting's about to start. That, and this keyboard is a little clammy, which should be disturbing in a place known for its cheap condoms.