12:37 am and I can’t sleep July 20, 2008
Coo coo cachoo!
So I thought I might update you all as to where I am in this wide world and how my summer is a flowin’ with and without my fellow Collective members.
For you who haven’t heard, I have been hired by the RAC to run their outreach program, called the Art Truck. This involves driving a large white van to daycamps all over Richmond and teaching arts and crafts for 1 hour sessions. I am working a ton-load and a half, 6-7 days a week and 40+ hours a week. I like this constantcy, but it’s also wearing me down. I finally understand the bone deep fatigue of an elementary school teacher, the total commitment that is necessary in order to run a successful children’s program of any kind. As much as this job is sucking everything out of me, I love the experience that it is giving me. One day I want to be the one running outreach programs out of some fabulous gallery or museum, so this training is invaluable.
On other fronts, I am constantly looking forward to Toronto and have spent hours and hours tweaking my schedule for the fall and scouring the message boards and forums for additional information and hints of what my life might look like once I am there. I’m enjoying my family for the last couple months and continue to see the amazing people I met this year at UBC through my UCM group. Life marchs on, I wander the streets of Vancouver in a lovestruck stupor and question my sanity on a regular basis. It’s summer and yet I can’t convince myself that it is, choosing instead to think about the city where I will spend my next year.
I can’t seem to make alot of sense at this hour and so I will leave you, my comrades in tea soaked arms.
Meghan
Up. Running. July 13, 2008
Hey, chinchilla-cheeks,
I’ve just posted on my other blog—gosh, that feels insidious—but, and much more importantly, I’ve added a page.
So, this page thingy can be located on the right, at the top of that collumnar htmlness, and it is enlabelled, “Why I Love Words,” or something like that. Basically go there, read-le, and then I left a comment describing what you should ALL do!
Please!
Heart, soul, candycorn,
Mike.
Banff So Far… July 5, 2008
Wow. By early next week, we will be half way through our summer jobs. At this time last year, we were just starting them. I feel as though, with 8 weeks to go, the summer is winding down. I’m filling up the last few “weekends” (I have Wednesday and Thursday off) on my calendar, and am already taking inventory of my groceries so that I won’t have left-overs by September. I’m sure that in the last week of August, my diet will consist of porridge and potatoes. There’s no way that I am going to finish that tube of wasabi.
Since my arrival 8 weeks ago, my frame of mind has been dancing all over the place. I really should have recorded those changes here, but they ended up being translated into neurotic letters (many of which got sent back to me because Canada Post thinks a sheet of legal paper folded into 6 is “too small”).
So, since this post will end up being devastatingly long, I will divide it into categories.
Home
We members of the teacollective tend to be an adventurous bunch, and as a result, most (if not all) of us have more than one place we call “home”, or at least more than one place where we “feel at home.” These places could be where we were born, where we grew up, where our extended family lives, where we go to University, where we vacationed…
So what makes a home? Familiarity? The people? Can any place be a home? Can we have more than one? Is there a limit to how many?
Upon my arrival in Banff, I felt tremendously geographically torn. Here I was, half of my life in the Lower Mainland, half in Toronto. Now I was adding a third Rocky Mountain location. I thought to myself, “What am I doing here?!” I didn’t feel any real sense of belonging. I didn’t feel at home. I vowed to avoid going anywhere on my own for long periods of time ever again. And yet, even through my tears, I was planning my next summer work destination. Ottawa? Newfoundland? Haida Gawaii?
I am a product of my paternal side’s effortless adventurousness and my Mother’s nervous homebody-ness.
Like many issues that roll around in my mind, I have deemed it acceptable to not come to a conclusion. I figure there are a few options that may apply:
- Anywhere can be my home if I spend enough time there.
- I have not yet met my geographic home. Like Georgia O’Keefe in New Mexico or Emily Carr on the West Coast, a home can have nothing to do with where you grew up. A home is a muse?
- There is no such thing?
The Bird Walk and the Banff Centre
Most of us this year, as we were forced into a vortex of meet&greets and never ending handshakes at school or at work, probably realised the curse/burden of having such high standards for friends. And though there is still time, I feel like I haven’t made any very close friends yet. There are a handful of people who I very much enjoy spending time with, though I can’t help the feeling that I am usually inviting myself along on these occasions. Instead, I have felt belonging in the familiar faces I see around town. Some of the people I like bumping into most I met at a fateful Victoria Day bird watching walk and/or at the Banff Centre. These people are mostly at least one decade older than me, but more often two or three. I know that I am building meaningful connections here and that I will see these people in the future. [Those who work at the Banff Centre are already connected to me through Sara Diamond, president at OCAD, formerly an artistic director and director of research at the Centre.]
The first time I went to the jazz club at the Banff Centre was the first time that I felt at home here in Banff. Maybe for me, “home is where the Art is!”
Anxiousness
I’m starting to feel like there isn’t enough time for everything that I want to do. There are so many government sponsored programs that I want to take advantage of. There’s all the FSWEP possibilities, and I’m really kean on J’explore. I even considered Katimavik, but I don’t think that I will be able to fit it in before I turn 21 (the age limit). So many of these opportunities are limited by age or by the requirements to be a returning students. And even though I am so desperate to cram new destinations into my summer breaks, I also want to spend time with my family. They are aging quickly and there is so much still to discover. Clocks are ticking!!!
This is my summer of Alberta. I went to Edmonton. Next is Jasper and Drumheller (trying desperately to get someone to drive me because the greyhound out there is super inefficient). I also want to make a second trip to Calgary. And hopefully Lake Louise will work out sometime. I am pretty isolated without a car. It’s frustrating. Damn.
Looking forward to coming home
There’s eight weeks left, but the seventh will be spent in Richmond. I am looking forward to it so much. I left my parents on a good note and I miss them. Suddenly, they feel so much older to me, and I’m desperate to find out as much as I can about them before it’s too late. I’m also looking forward to seeing you guys and to hear about your first extended summers. Especially if you want to eat peanuts or peanut buttery substances with me. You don’t know how badly I’ve been craving them since I found out my roommate was allergic. I saw peanut butter nanaimo bars in the IGA-equivalent here and my salivary glands went out of control.
I also want to have a Whitespot milkshake, eat a slice of sub-dollar pizza, get full at All You Can Eat sushi, go to the beach, cycle or walk the South dike. Please join me!
A Perfect Summer?
All in all, this may be an ideal summer situation. I’m exploring a new province. I’m earning enough that I don’t feel the need to take on a second job. I like my job and I feel good about working for Parks Canada. I have time to go to the Banff Centre, to volunteer, to run along the Bow River, to read. To read. I have really discovered my love of reading, and as a result, of writing. I feel like I lost it after grade 9. Maybe grade 10 enriched math sucked it out of me. From the library I have bought several seasons worth of back issues of The Walrus, a magazine I would highly recommend, especially their June publications. I have had a lot of time to think, to daydream, to self-reflect. I’m growing, I’m evolving.
But it feels really good to be looking forward to next school year. I haven’t looked forward to school in too long. Can’t wait!
fireworks nostalgia July 2, 2008
in the midst of an awkward thirty minute gap left until work, i realized that i hadn’t posted for… a while. so here’s a break to my wordpress hiatus. the summer here in ithaca has been slow… the class that i’m taking is autotutorial physics which involves a study center open daily from 9-12am, and me studying on my own and going in for help/unit testing. i’m usually there in the mornings, then i grab lunch and head off to work. i’m working in this biomedical lab up in our school’s vet college and it’s what usually puts the smiles into my otherwise boring life up here. the professor i work for and the people i work with are pretty awesome. i’ve been set up in particular with a postdoc called amy who is mainly responsible for teaching me how to do things and what to do when i do things wrong. she’s an interesting one… her appearance and laugh reminds me of daniella but her speech reminds me of irene. asides from her there are two lovely chinese ladies (i say ladies because they’re like… in their mid-thirties), a girl named patty who always bakes us cakes/cookies, a girl named alison who owns the most spectacular pair of hot pink jeans (the rest of her is just as delightful too… the pants just really won me over) and finally there’s a guy named ootsoov who is from qatar.
tonight is supposed to be the night when they have the july 4th fireworks downtown. alison and i spent a while ranting about how… if a holiday’s name specifies a certain date, fireworks celebrating that day should NOT be on a different day, especially if it means moving it from a friday night to a wednesday night. so far i am having little luck in finding someone who a) does not have work b) does not have class or c) does not give a shit. i really miss fireworks and i am genuinely heartbroken that i’m missing the english bay ones this summer by being here… as slim as my chances are as of now, wish me luck on the rest of my day’s search in finding a fireworks buddy. much love to you all.
