Discretion

I have four unpublished posts hiding away in my blogger profile. But...I have been thinking about discretion for the past couple of days, how I protect people, how I protect myself when I talk about people. I realize I am not Hercule Poirot (though I want to be him for Halloween), I am not discretion personified. I read Bby's post and it made me realize that I really don't care about things like that - it serves a purpose. When I moan and gripe about the Russian to anyone who will listen, I don't feel guilty. But the other day, I caught myself saying something that was harmless, but really unfair about him. And I said it to strengthen an image about us that I have in my head, with me as the tolerant tower, and him as a stray, someone I have pulled towards me. That's not really how we are at all.

Just to set the record straight.

I am at work right. Everyone is quiet. One too quiet, but I can't seem to pry her open. I went for my government French tests today, and through a copy and paste error in an email (not my fault!), missed the first exam. The second could have been a success and might have been a disaster, I'll only know when I get the results. My French is really abominable. Have to do an oral test next Monday morning. And then I am set up to become I'm not sure what. Eligible, I guess. It was mostly women doing these tests. I wonder why that is. Women, determined to move up the ranks, slowly, the right way, no cheating, no jumping the line. One woman told me smugly that she left comments on three questions she thought were questionably written. It was a weird experience, anyway. I had to get a security pass to go to the 3rd floor, where I got another pass, and then went to 8th floor, but then it turned out I should have been on another 8th floor. Like being in a short story by Kafka.

I need to focus on myself. Figure out something I want to do and begin doing it. My burlesque class was supposed to be that, but it seems that it was not meant to be. I hope there is room in the November session, so I don't lose my money. But I am slowly, so slowly, getting adjusted to being in a couple, and I feel a bit lost in it. Not unhappily so (thought I have a way better handle on the expression -like cats and dogs-) but I need to identify me.

Sabina is in town!

You can watch everything on YouTube. It's amazing. The Russian is going to be a great Hastings.

Pie Lord

NIGHT- Ext.

ME

(run to the edge of a body of water, moonlit, and toss my phone into the dark)

*********************************

I have to get ready for work soon, and I am also putting off cleaning, because I don't feel like it. I feel like eating the blueberry and peach pie the Russian made yesterday and curling up with a book or a movie. But I like my job, and I like a clean apartment, so you see, I am at an impass. I have to start making lists again, and sticking to them. I feel off kilter, and I know it is from having my daily movements and routines dictated or commented on by someone else. Not that the Russian forces me to change, but everything is just less instinctual.

I miss my friends. I miss being the fifth wheel sometimes.

Sexssay

I have been reading a book by Catherine MacKinnon called Feminism Unmodified. It is the first feminist literature that has really made me think that perhaps my attitudes toward feminism are destructive, or at least passive in a way that makes me uncomfortable. It has convinced me solidarity, or a sisterhood of sorts, is important. I used to feel that how every woman constructs her sense of personhood, their sense of their own identity and her claim to dignity and respect from others is personal and private process. I am not sure if I feel this way anymore. I think that this is how it should be, but I am no longer sure if to just plunge ahead and live your life with no thought to how the world actually is, to how it has been, is the right thing to do.

I got to thinking about this because I was thinking about whether sex is a private or public thing, or both, and if it is both, how it works. On a personal level, I was wondering how it is that I can role play, and submit, and get to a place that is impossible for me to get to in a non sexual context because it would be harmful to my sense of self and downright degrading. I would never allow myself to be slapped or spanked or bitten or bound. I would have to be coerced. But if I put it away in a box labeled SEX in my brain, an entirely different set of feelings is provoked by those kinds of acts. Great feelings. So that exists. I exist and I do these things and feel the way I feel about them. I am one woman. There are others like me, and there are many more that are not like me. What we do in bed is really a private thing, and individual thing.

So, there’s that. But I also think that there are important connections between sex and dignity, sex and respect, sex and identity, sex and economics, sex and entertainment… and that these connections exist in a more direct way for women. I say this because there are far more women in sex work than men and because there are sluts and ho’s and the equivalent term for men either doesn’t exist or comes with a different set of baggage. I say this because the personal and individual act of sex speaks to a women’s sense of self respect, and respect from her partner, to her sense of dignity, to her identity in a pretty important way.

There are a mess of issues brought to mind by thinking about sex in this more public and general way. One, that if the connection between sex and all of those other things is more direct for women, they should have power over themselves as workers, over labels or what those labels mean, and over the relationship between sex and dignity and sex and respect. The problem is that they don’t. We don’t. Second, if we don’t have power and if sex is really connected to all of these things, than it is very difficult and very much not a given that women have control over or access to the process of self determination, or the construction of the self. This is not purely because of sex, maybe because of gender, but mostly it pokes holes in my thinking that sex can have its own little box and I can do what I want there and it doesn’t affect anything. Third, and this is a problem that I haven’t quite figured out how to communicate, has to do with the fact that the social world we all participate in changes us and affects how we perceive ourselves and so how we construct that self. Dignity and respect, for example, are not entirely individually determined things, and if sex is linked to them, then there is a public aspect to it as well.

So, as a woman, and an individual, is it problematic for me to think of my sexual activities the way that I do? It’s not as though what I put in one box ever really stays there and don’t inform other aspects of my life. Maybe that is what makes me nervous. I wonder what other people think. I'd like to know.

I have some other questions. Like, for instance, is it inconsistent of me to be grossed out by the Camp Bud advertising campaign but not by a strip club? This weekend, the Russian, his friend Pt from NYC, JL, and I went to a strip club and I was not uncomfortable in the least. I was actually thinking how much fun it would be to have a strip club, run in a non hierarchical way. Your game face would be a smile, because it would be fun to work there, not a pout or whatever it is that the strippers were doing while they were dancing (it was very poorly lit, so it was hard to even make out what they looked like). The Camp Bud advertisement, on the other hand, gives me the willies. The Russian says they both commodify women and women’s sexuality, which is true, but I feel as though there is something disingenuous about the Bud campaign. Obviously, it’s advertising, which is just that... It’s just that women in sex work are selling sex. They use their bodies to sell…their bodies. I guess that is what models do too, and yet, I feel as though a stripper knows what she is selling and the Camp Bud girl might not have gone into modeling thinking she was going to be rubbing herself against a sweating beer bottle. Or that she would be taking part in a subtle and pervasive system of using women’s bodies and sexuality to convince men that they can have access to those bodies if they drink enough Budweiser. Of the million and one problems that I see with that, one is that it removes the woman in question of any autonomy. It seems to say to the men that it is geared towards, this beer will give you permission, just in case you thought you might need it, to touch any titties you want, to access this woman in a red mini skirt or more frightening, any woman. That is what Bud can do for you. I am not saying that men don’t have access to women in strip clubs, or that it is the stripper who gets the majority of the money for that access and that that inequality is okay, but just that the transaction is straightforward, and I am much more comfortable with that.

Just for fun, and to mess up everything I've been talking about by posting a sexy photo:


And because Bby suggested I write a sex blog.

Things to...

not try at home: bikini waxing. Ow.

Baby Talk

NIGHT - Ext.

ME

I think I want to be a baby

YOU

That'd be alright

ME

I'd learn 15 languages but I wouldn't have to use them just because I knew them. I could just cry and gurgle and smile.

YOU

But no one understands that. Why do you think colic is such a headache and rage inducing mystery?

******************************************

What!? Another post? But Vnss, you have so many other things to do. This is true. I made a list of them this morning. But maybe I am not the multi-tasker I always thought I was. I want to think about this problem I have with not talking. Sometimes I don't want to talk, or I don't have anything to say, or I don't want to share what I have to say. I can understand how this can be difficult for people, and by people I mean the Russian. But for anyone. I think my sister finds it hard sometimes too. It must be, to know there is something and then to have it not communicated to you, as if I don't trust you enough, or it was mean, or that I am holding back, or I thought it was too stupid to mention. This must be difficult, namely because the other person doesn't know the reason I am not talking. It is usually as simple as there is nothing to say, or I don't think whatever it was that passed through my mind was worth it, but they don't know that.

In truth, sometimes that isn't true, sometimes I don't think it is worth the hassle of responding to something that I think is going to inspire a conflict that I don't think is worth having. Or if it is worth having, I am not ready to have it because I don't know how I feel about it or what I think of it. Simultaneously, I do feel something else. I don't want to defend how I respond to things. I don't have to talk about everything, or respond to everything just because people expect it or desire it, and I don't have to feel guilty about not meeting those expectations. I do, anyway, but...

When I was in Spain with my mother, I would often have this little dilemma in my head, about talking or not talking. And I realised over time, and this is what makes me think that I should communicate more, that people around me can sense that I am having this argument with myself, because the tension escapes me and affects them, through my body language, my facial expression and what I do say and how I say it. My mother is the same way, but with less control over her verbalizations. I didn't always want to have a hard conversation with her when we were walking but we would end up behaving as if we had had it anyway, except with no resolution. When you spend that much time with someone, in the end, talking always seems better. I guess it is the same with living with someone.

It's a question of judgment though, I think, and if I don't even have the to talk or not to talk argument in my head, I think I should be able to keep my mouth shut just because I want to.

Why do I occupy the fence all the time? How do I learn how to be bold and right or bold and wrong?

We made hamburgers, or the Russian made hamburgers last night, with Kettle Chips. Delicious. Though we had a lamb, pork, beef mix, and I think all beef would be best. Would have been better without fruit flies everywhere? Is it me that smells like overripe fruit or are there just way more fruit flies than usual? Gross me out. Such a busy weekend coming up. J sent me money for an Osheaga ticket to see Josh Ritter. Wow. Continually overwhelming. The Russian's friend is staying with us this weekend, as well, and it is Bby's birthday. We are having some peeps over on Saturday, as well, to housewarm.

Nice to be busy. But I should get to!

Deadgirl

I spent the day with J today, wandering around, very relaxed, ending up in the Old Port to have coffee with Bby and P. I drank a lot of different things today, finally found an excellent matcha smoothie which satisfied me. Met CM, the head of Forward House, this morning, and it was an excellent meeting. He has such an extraordinary capacity for speaking without expectation, for sharing I guess. I tried to talk about my recent desire to try and communicate on different terms with people, treating logic and reason, and emotion, as if they are equally valid and valuable. Not to say that I think people should run their lives ralphing their emotions onto others with no prep, but I do think it would create a kind of compassion and care for other people that is often lacking when you approach something from a rational and logical perspective only. I think it lends what could be an important and wrenching conversation a sense of detachment that is destructive or at least can obscure.

This didn't come out of nowhere, obviously. I was thinking of a conversation the Russian and I had about this movie we saw on Friday, Deadgirl. The plot is: two teenage boys, outcasts, who find a living, but unkillable nubile and naked girl chained to a table in an abandoned asylum. One wants to use her as a sex slave (and punching bag, as she can't be killed), and the other wants to free her, or save her, but is confused by the fact that this bad guy is his best friend. Goriness, rape, and violence ensue.

Granted, it is an awesome premise, and I liked the movie, I really did. But there was definitely something fundamentally disturbing about it. Beyond the rape, and the violence these boys inflict on this monster, who may or may not be a woman, or was once a woman, what really cut me was the way in which the movie completely silenced the female sex. The undead girl can't speak, she can only growl and hiss and fight back (not enough to free herself, but enough for the movie to have some intense and creative gore), and the only other female characters are a pretty, popular girl with no character except as a fantasy object for the good kid, and a woman the evil kid and another guy try to kidnap to create another deadgirl. The latter's brief appearance is actually awesome, but exists as a kind of aside to the narrative, or maybe, and this is what I hope, as a reminder that not all women are cum repositories or trophies, just in case anyone in the audience was getting the wrong idea.

This silencing made it much easier for me, as the audience, to accept the premise that the deadgirl was a thing, a monster, and not a girl, not a human. And this must have been even easier for male members of the audience. This, in turn, facilitated thinking about all the male oriented aspects of the film, and forgetting that they were all based on the subjugation of women. So I found myself talking about the teenage male social hierarchy and how the deadgirl becomes a means for the outcasts to improve their station, and how her body is a literal representation of teenage male desire/fantasy (or male desire more generally, regardless of age), male friendships, and the importance of power, dominance and ownership to all of these things.

I think the movie was pretty great in that I got a sense of all of those things. And yet, and yet, where are the women in all of this? Women are the people (and can I just emphasize that they are in fact, people, voiceless or not, vacuous or not) that those hierarchies are built on, they are the people being fought over and dominated and owned and fantasized about and desired. And that this does not define them, they are not defined against something else (a male something else). So when I was talking about this movie, I didn't want the Russian to relate to the deadgirl more than the teenage boys, I wanted him to relate to me. I wanted to be able to communicate the feeling of relating to the deadgirl, the fictional undead girl, instead of to the fictional teenage boys, and I wanted him to feel that. I didn't want to talk about it in way writing this demands me to, in a logical and rational way. I wanted to communicate that I didn't think it was right, that it didn't feel right, to talk about this movie the way we were talking about it. I told him that I wished I could slice open part of me and part of him, and press the raw parts together, and transfer the sick feeling the movie and the resulting conversation gave me. It was a feeling of voicelessness, not because I couldn't speak, but because the words were incapable of communicating what I wanted to say. I wanted to speak with something else.

The Russian said something really interesting, though maybe I am not remembering it correctly. It was about the impossibility of relating to another person or their experience or soemthing close to that. "Except, this movie did that." And it's true, it did, kind of, for both the teenage boys and for the feeling that I have had, sometimes acutely, and sometimes in a more foggy way, that as a woman, I am more accessible to men than men are to each other, as in, they think they have access to me that is their right, because they are male and I am female. Film is amazing that way. Or I guess, art is kind of amazing that way.

Anyway, it was a horror movie, and it scared me. Scared me good. I wonder what other women in the audience felt.

Ehm. Since the last post, I have traveled to Spain, met the Russian's family in Calgary, moved in with said Russian, been funemployed, gotten a job at Forward House, and graduated. Blanks to be filled in.

I have no time for a real post, but I love this video. She is so strong and small. Also reminds me of my sister dancing to The Emperor's New Clothes.

Countdown

YOU

But what about the normals? What about all the people that are just okay and not exceptional. What do they do?

ME

Don't know.

YOU

I guess being exceptional doesn't mean driven. Okay-ness could be coupled with ambition, and you could have exceptional people living in a 2 1/2 with only a blood stained mattress and a three legged chair to call their own, working for Mr. B-.

ME

You shouldn't focus on material possessions. They don't make you happy.

****************************************

Signed a lease with The Russian. It's official, we are moving in together. I know he doesn't have a good track record with the living together, and that I will be broke and jobless when I get back from Spain, and that we will have to live together for a month in his miniature den of filth (I exaggerate, a little), but it still seems like a good idea. And that is a comforting thought. Just have to make it through the five week separation without him, I don't know, not even sure what it is that I am afraid of him doing. But whatever it is, I hope he doesn't do it, because it will be a thing, a hurtful thing that will require reparation.

In other news, going to be a certified archivist in about two weeks, that's pretty exciting. But I am not so excited about it. I don't really feel capable of taking on a professional position. Iapply for them nonetheless, but so far Emory has sent me a polite letter telling me thanks, but no thanks, and I haven't heard from Washington, so I take they are giving their $6000 stipend to someone that is not me. But I will remain hopeful until Monday.

Something that is getting my juices flowing is thinking about opening up my own business. Not in the archiving business, but film distribution. Bby and I talked about it yesterday and it seems like an extraordinary amount of work, but interesting and worth it and something I could feel passionate about. I am going to research it more thoroughly to see if there is space for that kind of business in Montreal. I think the answer is yes, because I am always finding movies that I wish would be here and which never are. And if I like them, there must be other people who would like them too.

Anyway, it is an interesting time right now. Have to move, have to buy a bunch of stuff for Spain, have to finish all my school shit, and really all I want to do is read about film distribution, hang out with my peeps, spend days in bed with The Russian, and celebrate the little dude's birthday on Sunday with my family (The Russian is coming! Meeting the folks! Gah!).

I feel pretty relaxed, although I guess the fact that my eye has been jumping for about a week and I am not sleeping all that well probably means I am just not processing my stress all that well, but...

At least I don't have to think about Electronic Records Systems after next week. That'll be sweet.

I don't really have a good photo to post, but this is something that Bby forwarded to me the other day which tugged at my heart a little: http://www.billythekiddocumentary.com/

Wisdom in a Baggie

DAY- Int.

DENTIST

Oh good, you aren't wearing any nail polish. It interferes.

ME

I feel a little...

(2 hrs later)

DENTIST

You can let her eat anything soft: pudding, yogurt, smoothies, pasta

ME

Emgh...KD!

********************************

I got my three wisdom teeth removed on Friday. I remember very little because of the drugs. I think I may have exaggerated my metabolism or something, because I am pretty sure the surgeon (pointed canines, looks you in the eyes, doesn't know how to not sexualize conversation) overdosed me on sedatives. I was supposed to silly but aware; I was, in fact, basically unconscious. I ralphed chocolate soy milk on the way home (my sister was the best...she picked me up and got me some mac n' cheese, and put me to bed and let me sleep over) somehow mostly into a bag, though also on my jeans and a bit on the car seat. It is very strange to think I could lose actual hours. As if they never existed.



The Russian probably has some lost hours as well. He is in New Orleans, helping his old friend to escape Grey's Anatomy nights with his girlfriend and her friends. I think that essentially means a lot of drinking, some drugs and possibly strippers. I hope he didn't cheat on me. I won't be happy and I don't want to ask the question. I don't want to expect that to be the case. I can't imagine being apart for 5 weeks while I am in Spain, with little communication. It is going to be difficult.

I will be finished classes in about a month. It seems like I have a lot do, still. But it will get done. I am feeling kind of calm, even with all the work I have piling up. It will get done. I have learned how to ask for help, from the Russian, from Bby. I never used to. I don't really know how to ask for things.

In other news, I got into a tiff with my landlord, but I posted my apartment for May on craigslist and I already have about ten people interested, so I am not too worried about having to keep this place for May. Screw that guy. It is going to be a different story when I get back from Spain - I wonder if the Russian and I will have found a place and what it will be like. I wanted him close to me so much last night, it was overwhelming. I think about decorating and cooking and choosing between my stuff and his stuff. Salt and pepper shakers in duplicate.

This is the opening paragraph to a story I wrote a week or so ago:

The little boy squats on his haunches, watching the blood squeeze out of the scrape on his knee. He is bird-boned and porridge coloured, even now, during the height of summer. His hair flops in front of his glasses, soft and dirty. He puts a finger to a bead of blood and rolls it like a snot between his fingers until it thins and smears. He likes that it is quickly replaced with a new bead that thickens and darkens, and then he can do it again. He shifts forward into the sand, and squats again, examining the bloody crystals in the depression in his sandbox, and then the sand that his knee has collected. He carefully brushes a sample of the bloody sand into the cargo pocket of his shorts and then flops onto his back, eyes to the sunburned coloured sky. When the Power Rangers watch hanging off his wrist beeps he springs up, runs through the dry yellow grass, to the back veranda, and slips through the screen door and onto his seat before his mother has a chance to call him.

The Russian said it was reminiscent of Flannery O'Connor, which might be true. I have been reading her letters a lot recently. She is a champion letter writer. Living in Milledgeville with her mom because of her lupous forced her to be a good correspondent, but I think it was probably a medium that suited her better than human contact. She was closer to her God than anyone else, I think. She is a warm and caring friend, but she also struggled to communicate her views on the world, especially the borders of the world, that get softened by faith and the unknowable.

I leave you with this:

Plus Equals Minus

DAY- Int.

MOTHER

He's a hell of a kid

FATHER

It's true

MOTHER

I don't think he really needs a babysitter

FATHER

You're right. Let's just go. He probably won't wake up

***************************************

My guest lecturer has just blamed the recession on the immense surplus of information available to industries, the problems in processing this information and the resulting inability to make decisions. The recession, essentially, is the result of the paralysis of business and industry by too much information. Weird. But it makes intuitive sense, in way. On a tiny, personal scale, I am often paralysed when I can't block out incoming crap and focus on what I need to focus on. And in some ways, ionformation is deceptively comforting. Like, I feel on top of things when I have researched a bunch of articles for a paper and printed them out, and prioritized them with coloured paper clips. I haven't read the articles, and I haven't produced a paper, but just having the pile of paper in my hand...Or collecting links to job opportunities - I haven't applied to all of them, but I know they are out there because I have subscribed to the right listservs, etc, etc. As if a plan means something without the execution.

I feel like I am holding things together, but barely. I have applied for some jobs, namely this internship in Washington that I really want, I am handing in my assignments, I am keeping up, but I feel so many things piling up, a little out of control. My finding aid for the Quebec Gay Archives should really be finished up in the next two weeks, and I have to work on the online part of it. Essays, case studies, crap crap crap. And apply apply apply! There is a project archivist job available at Emory, near Miss J! which I applied for. I am not quite qualified, but it would be an incredible opportunity. Of course, convincing the Russian to move to Atlanta for 3 years would be tough beans. I mentioned it half seriously, and he replied quite seriously, 'I could do it for a year.' So, you know, whatever that means (duh, it means he could do it for a year, Sparks).

We are very happy at the moment. I feel...comfortable and challenged. It is a nice feeling. I like his creative influence on me. I have been writing for the first time in years, and there is some decent stuff coming out of me, I think.

And we had a really good time in Chicago. I like his friends a lot, although Nat was a bit reserved, but in a very sweet, kind way. Except when we went to a trivia night. The animal came out that night, but with reason: he is awesome at trivia. We also has a lot of fun playing balderdash. I bonded with his girlfriend Emmy, as we chose each other's answers and Nat and I both came up with a movie plot line involving an elephant named Twinky. The sleeping arrangements turned out to be totally fine (the Russian and I need an L shaped bed), and Chicago is just a really interesting city. Wide streets and the lake is just remarkable. It really changes the feel and the movement of the city. everything slows and grows as it gets closer to the water, although apparently the only reason there is no serious building on the banks of the lake is because they bulldozed the ruins of the city after the Great Fire towards the lake and couldn't build skyscrapers on a land fill. Dinner with the Jews for Jesus family was totally pleasant and pretty tasty as well, though it was pretty much exclusively Russian. I was too full to talk anyway.

This is the Cloud Gate, which I was like, whatev, what a stupid sculpture, but when you see it, it is really sort of fun and amazing:

Taxidermia: freaked me right out. It's a Hungarian movie about three generations of men each with a special sumpin sumpin. The grandpa has a penchant for inserting his penis into strange places, and sometimes ejaculates fire. After a psychadelic mating a baby with a pig tail is produced who grows up to become an almost champion speed eater, who in turn begets (thanks Pierre) a scrawny, sickly taxidermist. The final stuffing is one of the most insane things I have ever seen on film. It is remarkably well shot, and somehow manages to crawl in your brain and lay something a little fetid, but also unique.

Would You Like To Know More?

YOU

That is so provincial

ME

But I like provincial

YOU

You can't even see a decent opera here.

ME

Yeah. That is a problem.

****************************************

I had my palm read yesterday by a girl at school who is interested in that sort of thing. She was taken aback by the depth, quantity and complicated patterns of my palms. She said I was an old soul, that I have been around for a long time, but that I am also fundamentally unable to get onboard %100 with anything. She also said my I have two heart lines that run parallel but very close to one another, suggestive of my deep but, let's say plentiful?, loves.

I have also been thinking a lot about where I want to live and what I want to do (which my palm reader said will always be a hard decision for me). Things are so good with The Russian that I can't help thinking of the future and how we can manage to be in the same one. Can I really find a reasonably well paying job that I will like, that I will be good at, here in Montreal? I hope so. Sometimes I think that I would have been happier if I had been born a few generations ago. I was processing a box in a fonds I am working on at the Gay Archives, and there were these mock-ups of pamphlets and publications and I thought, I am really more of a cut and paste girl, then someone who has to learn Illustrator or InDesign. But meanwhile, I really want to be able to learn web design and EAD coding because I think online archives and online finding aids are the only way to keep archives relevant.

Bby and I went to Bofinger for pulled pork and bbq chicken last night. Dang, that place is tasty. Bby was so cute: the counterperson asks for your name to keep track of your order, and she replied "I'm Adele, what's your name?" and he said "Steve. I rarely get asked that." I think he was pretty touched.

I'm going to take it easy tonight. Have Valentine's Breakfast (heart shaped eggs!) at Bby's with the Russian and P tomorrow morning, then chillin with la Armenian, and I have had a busy week. The Russian is making dinner, and I just want to have a bath, and read, maybe watch a movie. Though not anything like The Scarlet Empress, which seemed like a farce to me.



Oh, and tried this recipe for the ACA bakesale: Bacon and Chocolate Chip Cookies. It was a hit!

What is the difference between a goal and an objective?

THE ROBOT

But I don't need your goofy 3-D glasses! I'm a robot!

CINEMA EMPLOYEE

It's policy. Management requires it.

THE ROBOT

Let me see your manager, then.

CINEMA EMPLOYEE

I'm sorry, Sir, the managers are in a strategic planning meeting for the next three days.

************************************

So I'm going to Chicago onthe 21st. With The Russian (which ma belle ptite Armenienne told me is how she and Jessica Rabbit referred to him as well). I think it is going to be fun. But also stressful. He seems to have planned every moment of our time, which includes a lot of dinners with people I don't know but who when I google them, turn up a lot of hits. This automatically intimidates me, which is silly, but sometimes I am silly. I am also more of a lone wolf kind of traveler. I like to visit places, not people. Unless I am going to visit people. We also have to sleep on a couch at his friend's apartment which he shares with his girlfriend, so no privacy or alone time for the whole 5 days. But...lots of great art, lots of interesting architecture, the zoo, and we are traveling together! Pretty damn couple-y.

We have also been talking a lot about moving in together, which seems bananas to me. But, like anything, the more I talk about it, the closer and more tangible it becomes. It would be crazy, though. I will just be back form Spain, out of school for the first time in 20 years, looking for job, nowhere to live, and broke, broke, broke. In an economic crisis. Not really the context I imagined when I imagined moving in with someone. Play it, bass playa.

In any case, I should be working on a paper which is due tomorrow and which was the inspiration for the scene above. I have to provide an organization with a strategic plan with goals and objectives which I then translate into operational plans. I am kind of unsure what that means, exactly, but it is depressing to think that I am required to do this. That feeling of not quite getting the question happened to me yesterday when I was writing an online exam for an archivist job at Library and Archives Canada:

Question 1. (Knowledge of the general trends of the evolution of Canadian society). Former Dominion Archivist, Sir Arthur Doughty wrote that "Of all our national assets, Archives are the most precious; they are the gift of one generation to another and the extent of our care of them marks the extent of our civilization."Write a short essay which examines one general theme that you know well in the evolution of Canadian society and explain how your understanding of that theme has been influenced by the preservation of archival records.

What? What is a general theme in the evolution of Canadian society? I stared at the screen for quite some time, wrote the second essay question and stared some more. The Russian, over g-chat, suggested multiculturalism, so I went with it, but...

We'll see.

The Russian also forwarded me this today:

Thursday Report

YOU

I want to go to the zoo.

ME

I see. Are you watching porn?

YOU

I love you. And yes.

*************************************

Although I usually make these little scenes up, this one up here is f'real. Except for the 'and yes' part. The Russian was in actual fact reading Stranger in a Strange Land. It's strange (haha), I lent him that book because I remember liking it so much, but he talks about these parts, and I don't remember any of them. I wonder if your brain just refuses to keep everything after a while. Or you have to train it with new things to take advantage of the unused space. Like, if you make art, you have to start learning bookkeeping, or your brains will atrophy.

It's been a long time since I posted. Mostly because I have been pretty happy, and if there ain't no drama, what the hell is there to write about. But then I thought, that is not the way it should be, and also, boys aren't the be all, end all of everything, I have other things to talk about, don't I? Yet, I think I have to scratch that, because I have had some anxiety laden events whack me over the last couple of weeks, but I don't feel anxious about them. I feel more anxious about not having any money and finding a job when I graduate than anything else.

I had breakfast with my mom yesterday and I voiced some of my insecurities, of which I have many and new ones seem to be cropping up all the time, about my abilities and qualifications. I have this feeling that I am not really all that bad at anything, but I am not really great at anything, and more importantly, not passionate about anything the way I would like to be. That scares me. But I can't let those feeling paralyze me, or sap me either.

I have been seeing the pretty Armenian I spoke of in an earlier post, and I like her very much. So far, this has not affected the Russian and I, even though I keep on asking him, is it ok? does this make you feel strange? how do you feel now? His responses are always encouraging and sometimes kind of gross. We ran into her on the metro the other day and had a pleasantly tension filled ride, the three of us. I like her mobile mouth.

What else? The Russian and I went to the opera last weekend, saw Verdi's Macbeth, was very difficult for me to stay awake. Not because I don't like opera (though I don't like it all that much), but because it was really horrible, all around. Went to a lecture given by John Ralston Saul on Tuesday. I thought he was smarmy, brimming with rhetoric and not much else, but then...I like what he had to say about the value of orality, it is an interesting problem to consider, especially form an archival point of view, which is so reliant on the record. It is difficult to imagine a memory of a voice, or the phenomenon of a voice speaking to open ears listening having more value then the court stenographer's record of it, and yet it should, I think. And inserting this idea into our legal system, for example? What a shift. Also, I should probably have read his books.

Bebito and I had dinner tonight, we have not seen each other in a while. Was overwhelmed by love when she came into the lounge at school. And I think that is a nice place to end off, yes? Yes. And maybe this: