Sorry

[tocryabout]

I just got a shitty Tim Horton's job, I have a bunch of school essays to write that I didn't do during the year, I still don't have a desk, and I think I'm going to have to give up sleep in order to do serious writing this summer. I might get something done, since Lord knows I'm all about putting off real responsibilities in order to write, but I'm up against some stuff. If I do discover that I'm related to the Summerses^* and can timewalk, then I have a Tarot art project that's been bugging me for some time.

I think I was a better artist when I was depressed and unemployed and living alone. Lately I really miss high school and first year, the way I was able to completely envelop myself in ideas and moods because nothing was expected of me. I kept telling myself that I'd be a famous writer by the time I graduated, just because I'd been lucky enough to get a head start: genetics (or whatever makes a person good with verbal stuff) and the most encouraging family you could ask for. Nature and nurture both on my side. I knew what I wanted. The environment was perfect. It never occurred to me that the goal itself just wasn't reasonable.

Anyway. I promise there will be Stuff. Just maybe not a lot of it.

I picked up S6 and S7 of Buffy because there was a sale and hey new job plus I'm a greedy idiot. And because I love Andrew to pieces. Hence I needed an Andrew icon.



____________
^* That would be Scott Summers and not Buffy Summers. Although if those two were related it might explain some things.

Comments

[tigersong.livejournal.com]

Andrew is love.

Curious about the Tarot art project. Off and on, I've been working on designing my own deck, but the fact that I can't draw worth shit kind of puts a damper on things.

[(Anonymous)]

We all have dreams we can't possibly reach when we're young. God knows that I saw myself somewhere very different right now when I was fourteen.

Er.

[youngest-one.livejournal.com]

And that was me, forgetting to log in.

[ex-the-epic80.livejournal.com]

Well, at least you'll be highly caffenated.

[to-cry-about.livejournal.com]

I don't like coffee and Tim Horton's tea is a crime against nature, so no.

[ex-the-epic80.livejournal.com]

Ok...well, um - at least you're going to have some money?

Re: totally OT about absolutely something else

[to-cry-about.livejournal.com]

I dislike it too. I have a hard time talking about racism, because I grew up in Ottawa, which was:
a) very homogeneous -- the white and non-white people act much the same
b) very high-strung on the subject of racism, as befits a government town

I was about nine before I understood that skin colour was inherited, for example. I had been taught that "we're all different" and thought that blackness was just something that could pop up, like musical talent or green eyes. The non-white people I knew were all middle-class like me. And yet I was TERRIFIED of secretly being a racist, because I'd been assured that EVERYBODY WAS, and YOU'RE LYING TO YOURSELF IF YOU THINK YOU AREN'T. Don't think about a hippopotamus. Like that.

We talked a lot about black people in school, and how racism against them was wrong (we had like 6 black students in the school, all of whom had parents who were doctors and engineers). What we didn't talk about was discrimination against Francophones, or South Asians. I knew a lot of people who wouldn't say "nigger" but they would say "paki" or "frog" without blinking.

If the school board had said, "Hey, we're not in Detroit, we're in Ottawa. Blacks and Jews are not really the issue. Let's talk about the French," then we might have learned something, and we would have had a better sense of who WE really were. Daniel Berrigan said, "If we are going to serve love, we need to know who we are, and who we must be."

This may not be a very dramatic racism story, but it's a true one.

Re: totally OT about absolutely something else

[to-cry-about.livejournal.com]

Anne Hébert is wonderful wonderful stuff. My favourite is Am I Disturbing You? (Est-ce que je je dérange?) Saddest short novel in the world, but so beautiful and perfect, even in translation.

Gabrielle Roy's The Tin Flute (Bonheur d'occasion) is a classic. Roch Carrier is also standard: La Guerre, Yes Sir! and Is It the Sun, Philibert? (Il est par là, le soleil) are the "big" ones, but he was very prolific and usually funny and insightful.

For living writers, the only ones I know of are Rejean Ducharme (never read, but I know he's important) and Michel Tremblay, a hugely influential gay playwright/novelist.

There's a ton of other writers that English Canada knows nothing about, and whose books aren't even available outside Quebec and Ottawa. Taras Grescoe's Sacre Blues is a wonderful survey of Quebec culture and history--look for that in the Travel section if you can't find the others.

Re: totally OT about absolutely something else

[to-cry-about.livejournal.com]

I'm in the same boat. I can juuuuuust about read Hebert in French, but I don't really appreciate it. (I love the French expression of "traducion au coup de dictionaire" -- the imagery of thwacking your translation at every word with the dictionary is fabulous. And that is how I read French literature, so I just suck it up and use the translations.)