You!!

Okay I want to know who's reading this. Please just leave a comment to say that you read my blog. I do realize that should you want to remain anonymous, there is nothing I can do to find out who you are. But I'm asking you that if you read this, can you please identify yourself. I'd like to know who I'm talking to.

Thank you!

Why do questions always outnumber answers?

Note: Before I begin on this exercise in haphazardness, I'd like to apologize for the randomness of my posts as of late. My mind has been somewhat preoccupied so trying to hold on to some coherent stream of thought is like trying to catch a cloud and pin it down (a penny to anyone who catches that reference). Now, hold on to your pants, becuase here I go...

Who reads this thing? I tried initially to choose who would read it but now I'm not sure who, if anyone, reads this thing. Not knowing the audience makes speaking freely dangerous.

What are you thinking? There is no way to answer that question entirely honestly because by answering you've defined, and therefore, limited your thoughts. Definition gives clarity where it takes away from reality.

What happens to the function as n goes to infinity? It goes to zero.

Is there such a thing as enough sleep? If there is, I certainly will never get it.

Where do dreams come from? Especially when it's not a clear connection to happenings or thoughts from the day.

How does one stay centred? I need to find a way to breathe. I think I need time alone.

How does one find time alone while living in residence?

What will it be like going home for Christmas? I really want to go home and see my family and relax, but after being away for so long, this will likely be very different from any other Christmas I've ever experienced. Or maybe it won't be.

What, if anything, can one be certain of? It seems that just when one is sure of something, it changes.

Why? And if anyone tries to give the response, 'Why not?', just don't. A counter-question proves nothing. I can give plenty of reasons why not.

If you could ask God just one question, what would it be? Granted you'd have to believe (at least momentarily) in a human-like god to even consider this question.

Given the previous senario, would you be able to accept the answer you're given?

Why can we only percieve the world in a sequence dictated by absolute time?

Why bother to question, since the answers are likely beyond our grasp?

Are the answers beyond our grasp?

Why am I writing in my blog right now? To procrastinate on the calc homework that I don't understand. That and philosophical meanderings are much more fun.

Why is it so random? Because if I were willing to work for coherency, I'd put that energy towards my calculus assignment.

How does one un-lazify oneself?

In other words...

Update: Most of last week was spent in intensely focused study of chemistry. It paid off on Friday when I flew through my chem term test. Sweet redemption after failing the first one. It also was my final midterm. For the rest of Friday, I was pretty much floating. I went from floating to absolutely wired after drinking lots of caffeinated tea at dinner and then consuming a large quantity of chocolate that Jon had given me. George and Steve came in the evening (late, as I suppose was to be expected, though had they just followed my directions...) and we (including Tobin, Emily, and Jon) went to see the UW production of The Tempest.

"We are such stuff / As dreams are made on, and our little life / Is rounded with a sleep."
- Shakespeare, The Tempest

It began with 8 or so people dressed in skin-coloured leotards doing some kind of primal dance while a rather large girl (who unfortunately, was also dressed in a skin-coloured leotard) sang. She had an incredible voice but that was one of the few good things about the play. Most of the actors did not know how to read Shakespeare and didn't seem to understand their parts. And the interpretation was just screwy.

"You taught me language and my profit on 't / Is I know how to curse."
- Shakespeare, The Tempest

It was brutal but entertaining nonetheless. Afterwards, we went out for wings and beers. Then we played dirty scrabble and strip high card in the bubble tea cafe. George and Steve crashed at Jon's. I really crashed which was to be expected given the high I'd be riding all day and the caffeine, sugar, and alcohol that I'd consumed. In the morning, we attempted to graph the wedge functions of our breakfasts. I suppose given the group, that was to be expected. As strange as I was being (again the chem test/final midterm/ingested stimulants high that I was riding), I was really happy to see George and Steve. Good times.

"No distance of place or lapse of time can lessen the friendship of those who are thoroughly persuaded of each other's worth."
- Robert Southey

(If you thought that first part didn't make sense, I highly doubt that this next part will. More likely, it will move further from sense.)

Time dilation: Time seems to have new meaning here (here being university). The end of the term is fast approaching. My last exam is exactly a month yesterday. I feel like I'm just settling into the school year but already I'm coming up on exams and then on to a new term. Things that I perceive as having happened recently or being fairly new, happened over a month ago. The last month and a half seems to have gone by in the blink of an eye. This phenomenon of variant time seems to be most easily observed in the relationships I've formed here. Emily would be the most obvious example of this. Only 2 and a half months we've known each other and already we act like sisters (the older one being whoever has consumed less chocolate/sugar). And already, we're looking into getting an apartment for next year, which I'm sure will be upon us all to soon.

"Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute and it seems like an hour. Sit with a pretty girl for an hour and it seems like a minutes. That's relativity."
- Albert Einstein

"I never think of the future - it comes soon enough."
- Albert Einstein

Growing up: This should fall naturally from my last point but that's not how it first struck me. The future seems to drive everything, probably because it comes so quickly. Generally, I feel that in terms of maturity, I've reverted since having come to university. But so many things that I now have to take responsibility for are so grown up. Not that I've never had to put thought into these kinds of things before, but now my considerations of money, residence, relationships, career, and my future seem to have a pertinence they didn't have before. Like a child playing dress-up in adult's clothing, I feel out of place and naive in these grown-up situations. I don't feel grown-up, but I have to make grown-up decisions.

"The day the child realizes that all adults are imperfect he becomes an adolescent; the day he forgives them he becomes them, he becomes and adult; the day he forgives himself he becomes wise."
- Alden Nowlan

"Maturity is a bitter disappointment for which no remedy exists, unless laughter can be said to remedy anything."
- Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Names: My name is very important to me. When I was in grade 4 I read Madeleine L'Engle's, Time Trilogy. The evil character is called "It" and what it does is it makes you nameless like everyone else. That struck a chord with me and ever since, names are important to me. There is something about being nameless, or being referred to by a generic or even derogatory term, that deeply bothers me. Probably because I don't want to be generic or degraded.

"What's in a name? That which we call a rose / by any other name would smell as sweet."
- Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet

Silence:

"The most important things are the hardest to say, because words diminish them."
- Stephen King

Swamped

I need to catch a break. I can see no sign of all this work letting up but I'm getting sick trying to keep up. I am not capable of this kind of workload. I'm going insane trying to do it. I know my perspective is askew becuase I'm stressed and unhealthy but I can't seem to break out of this. There isn't even a breath in the work in order for me to catch my breath and deal with the stress. And worst of all, I'm taking it out on the people around me. I'm snipping at everyone. And I'm angry with myself for all of it; for the snipping; for not being able to work fast enough; for not being smart enough to pick it up faster.

If I could just get one lucky break ...

Lest we remember

I take issue with a number of things regarding Rememberence Day.
1) We seem to have selective memories. It amazes me how there seems to be no mention of the internment camps for Japanese Canadians. I'm not so ignorant as to suggest that that is on the same scale as what the Nazis did to Jewish people, but it all stems from the same kind of ignorance and hatred.
2) There is too much focus on the so-called 'glory of war'. Terms like 'hero', 'scarifice', and 'freedom' are tossed around all too casually. There is nothing good about war. You can be a hero and make sacrifices and fight for freedom without a war. How can basic compassion and respect make someone a hero? It should not even be a question. Compassion, thought, love, respect...these are the things that make us human. And yet, in a situation as devoid of basic human compassion as war, to have any of the basic human qualities, makes someone a hero apparently. War is not in any way an example of the height of the human spirit. It is the ultimate low, humans killing each other en masse, without considering the person being killed as a real person. By real person, I mean someone capable of love, compassion, and thought, with friends and family; someone with a slew of past experiences that have shaped them to be as diverse an idividual as the killer.
3) We think so much of remember that we forget to learn. We think about the horrors, we tell stories of the people that fought, and we remember those that died in the wars. But we don't seem to learn. We don't use those memories to make sure it never happens again. Rememberance day *should* be about recalling just how low we as human being can stoop when hatred and ignorance drive our action and working to prevent it from ever happening again.
4) My last problem with Rememberance day is the poem, In Flander's Fields. For the most part, it has some beautiful ideas and images. Where I take issue is in the last stanza when it says
Take up our quarrel with the foe.
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
Continuing the battle any further is the wrong idea to send. There is no hope for those that are dead and there will be less hope if we continue in the same pattern. If we are to use a poem for Rememberance day, it should be one that expresses the utter hopelessness and disillusionment that so many of the surviving soldiers and people involved in the war dealt with. I would like to suggest that "The Hollow Men" by T.S. Elliot be that poem.

The Hollow Men A penny for the Old Guy

I

We are the hollow men

We are the stuffed men

Leaning together

Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!

Our dried voices, when

We whisper together

Are quiet and meaningless

As wind in dry grass

Or rats' feet over broken glass

In our dry cellar

Shape without form, shade without colour,

Paralysed force, gesture without motion;

Those who have crossed

With direct eyes, to death's other Kingdom

Remember us-if at all-not as lost

Violent souls, but only

As the hollow men

The stuffed men

II

Eyes I dare not meet in dreams

In death's dream kingdom

These do not appear:

There, the eyes are

Sunlight on a broken column

There, is a tree swinging

And voices are

In the wind's singing

More distant and more solemn

Than a fading star.

Let me be no nearer

In death's dream kingdom

Let me also wear

Such deliberate disguises

Rat's coat, crowskin, crossed staves

In a field

Behaving as the wind behaves

No nearer-

Not that final meeting

In the twilight kingdom

III

This is the dead land

This is cactus land

Here the stone images

Are raised, here they receive

The supplication of a dead man's hand

Under the twinkle of a fading star.

Is it like this

In death's other kingdom

Walking alone

At the hour when we are

Trembling with tenderness

Lips that would kiss

Form prayers to broken stone.

IV

The eyes are not here

There are no eyes here

In this valley of dying stars

In this hollow valley

This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms

In this last of meeting places

We grope together and avoid speech

Gathered on this beach of the tumid river

Sightless, unless

The eyes reappear

As the perpetual star

Multifoliate rose

Of death's twilight kingdom

The hope only

Of empty men

V

Here we go round the prickly pear

Prickly pear prickly pear

Here we go round the prickly pear

At five o'clock in the morning.

Between the idea

And the reality

Between the motion

And the act

Falls the Shadow

For Thine is the Kingdom

Between the conception

And the creation

Between the emotion

And the response

Falls the shadow

Life is very long

Between the desire

And the spasm

Between the potency

And the existence

Between the essence

And the descent

Falls the Shadow

For Thine is the Kingdom

For Thine is

Life is

For thine is the

This is the way the world ends

This is the way the world ends

This is the way the world ends

Not with a bang but a whimper.

Aurora Borealis

For the first time in my life, I saw the northern lights. Ever since I first heard about the northern lights, I promised myself I had to see them at least once in my lifetime. It did not disappoint. Certainly one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen. Just takes your breath away. Not in the cheesy, Hollywood-romance sort of way, but in a humbling, perspective-check way. Then it started snowing. First snowfall of the year. When I got home, Emily and I ran outside and started catching flakes on our tongues and spinning around in the field behind our res.
There was plenty of other excitment this weekend as well. I had my commencement on friday night. The ceremony was incredibly dull. I didn't realize that so many bad cliches could be screwed up and made worse in just 2 hours. But I got to see Kristen after so it made it all worth while. I miss my skating girls. Of course, I must say that leaving complex physics equations on the blackboard in the math classroom was also fun. Line of the night had to be Mr. Stickney > "What you need to do is get yourself set up with a fourth year student."
Saturday night was another experience all together. It can only be described in point form (mainly because that's the way I remember it i.e. I was very drunk)
- Goth bar. It reminded me of the Merovingian's club in Matrix: Revolutions. If only I'd been wearing my pleather cat-suit. =P
- the bumblebee > a really fat girl wearing a tight pink and black striped shirt with matching knee-highs and a leather skirt.
- a lot of 30+ year olds in the crowd.
- an ugly couple making out like mad in the middle of the dance floor. When I say like mad, I mean she had her legs wrapped around his waist. No one wants to see that.
- a really awkward guy in yellow shirt dancing constantly.
- if Celina orders a drink, it'll have more alcohol in it than if a guy orders a drink. If Celina and I both go to order a drink, it'll have even more alcohol than that. ie "I think this vodka might have some traces of sprite."
- no one challenges me to a dance off and wins, even if it is weird trance music.
- I out-nerded Jon by being able to accurately identify which LOTR movie was playing. (It was the first one, during the battle in the Mines of Moria.)
- throwing ice cubes down the back of Celina's shirt in retaliation to the ones she put down my shirt.
Ahh good times.

Mazeltov!

Bat mitzvah was good times. I got through the service without falling asleep or bursting out laughing. And I didn't anger anyone with my ignorance. I'd call that a success.
The party was hilarious. Pre-teen dances are a lot more fun when you're at the "adult" table. Not to mention the amusement watching from the DJ with his fake bling and his hired dancers. It took so much self control not to challenge those girls. But I behaved. Go me!
Ok...ubertired...sleep.