Field Trip City

I'm skipping Tragedy and Avant-Garde today. I couldn't track down a reading for the former and thought that rather than sit there with no opinion I'd do everyone a favour and not attend. Nor am I all that interested in sitting around discussing McCaffery. I'm in the middle of another one of my artistic crises and University has been feeling antagonistic to my creativity (though there would probably be another reason if I weren't going to school - ie. too busy living). I haven't missed a class in either all semester anyway, so the way I see it I was due.

I am going to Sullivan's class tonight, however, because I really dug her MacEwen bio. I found out that I pass MacEwen's childhood home pretty much every time I leave the house: it used to stand where the Keele Street subway tunnel stands now, on a hill on the northwest corner of Keele and Bloor. I find that incredibly neat. I can't say that I really identify with MacEwen's interests - she learned Arabic and Greek out of pure fascination and wrote fiction about Egyptian myths - but the poetry I've read of hers in the bio is often quite good. I have to hand it to Sullivan because it seems like a difficult account of a person to write. I wouldn't know the first thing about making MacEwen's life conceivable for a general audience, but she pulls it off.

My artistic crisis. As usual, I can't write. However, yesterday I was considering whether or not it might be time for me to experiment with something else. I've been toying around a bit with graphic art lately, just a little poke here and there. I've never considered myself much of a visual artist. I'm definitely not someone who can sit down with paint and create something amazing on an easel. But I know my way around a computer, so we'll see.

Sometimes I think that feeling you can't go any further means you have to go back and check to see if there's something you've missed along the way, to find that key to unlock the next logical progression of yourself. It can exist at any point in the past: a decision you made in childhood, an unfinished conversation from last year. It can remind you of an important truth about yourself that you may have forgotten. I think I'm on to something with that, since I'm always afraid that I'm forgetting new experiences. I have to investigate things that I've never been able to fully leave behind to see what they've become, if that makes any sense.

Last night I had a strange dream. I was in the backseat of a car holding a baby for a really long time. I don't think I've held a baby since I was a young kid.