I put on the iPod and trekked through the unplowed sidewalks to Future Shop today, where I grabbed some more items on my Christmas shopping list: Evan Almighty for Adam, gift certificates for Mike and Jay. Only a couple more to grab.

I decided to make the shopping strategy for my dad a little self-serving this year. Every year I buy him something that just sits around or gets buried somewhere: box sets, books, etc. It's through no fault of my own - my dad is just one of those people who doesn't really use anything. He'll buy himself items all the time because he gets a deal on them only to store them away somewhere. He has an extensive collection of movies that he never watches. Some of them aren't even open. So this year, I decided to get him a box set of great old films I've never seen: 12 Angry Men, A Bridge Too Far, Judgment at Nuremberg, and Paths of Glory. Lately when I've gone home to visit, my folks and I take to watching old movies to spend time together. Now I can suggest whipping out the box set. It's win-win.

I finished my critical reflection paper for Bibliography, even working in an old entry I'd written in the blog back in October for its second half (so in a way, I got quite the early start on that one). Tomorrow I'll head to campus to hand it in and hopefully grab research material for the one thing I have left to do. I should also investigate grabbing some Euros at Calforex on Bloor.

On the last day of classes for the fall semester of my Master's degree program, having stayed up all night working on a paper and presentation for subjects in which I never thought I'd find myself involved, something in me switched on.

Over the course of the semester I've been growing more and more apprehensive about my decision to enroll in grad school. I spent half of the time wondering why I bothered with classes at all. It's not that I didn't feel engaged on a certain level with the material. I liked my classes, but consistently felt puzzled as to why I was spending so much time analyzing how a book was made 200 years ago, how tonal combinations indicate an opera character's motivations, what a young boy's experiences in Communist Ethiopia had to do with Canadian identity, and the syntagmatic paradigms of filmic narrative language.

This wasn't what I was expecting. Last fall I sat down in my apartment on O'Connor Street in Ottawa and wrote to organizations and universities about why they should accept me and pay me money to keep studying. I wouldn't set foot in a library for months to come, but I was able to articulate my ambitions based on lingering ideas left over from theses I wrote, arguments that were born from things I felt passionate about in everyday life. Literature. Canadian writing. Film. Multidisciplinary approaches to art and instruction.

Since my first year of University I had my heart and mind set on becoming a professor. It was my plan over the entirety of my undergraduate career, and it was derailed in the year I spent apart from a classroom. I lost the feeling in being away from it. I began to see the potential in other opportunities and even as I accepted U of T's offer and moved to Toronto to continue my education there was a part of me that doubted the direction I had established for myself. Most of the time I engaged only superficially with the material, rarely speaking in class, sharing only brief pleasantries with the people I began seeing on a regular basis because I knew that in a few months time I'd be back in Ottawa, working, doing something else unrelated to the realm of education. In the meantime I would repeatedly stress over what I was actually going to be able to accomplish once I'd achieved my degree and no longer had to think about it. I hadn't fully discounted the idea of going for my PhD, but with my interest in all things academia flagging I didn't see it as something I'd likely pursue in the near future.

This line of thinking led to a disappointment in myself that I didn't immediately recognize - I had decided on some level to abandon what I'd been working so hard at accomplishing for the past few years. My experiences at U of T existed as nothing more than formalities. More than that, they led to a doubt I began to foster in myself about my own abilities, thinking that everyone around me was far more brilliant, more self-assured, and more prepared to see their education through. Without realizing it, I lost faith in myself, and though I've been completing my assignments I haven't been expecting them to garner results that are of any importance to me.

Recently I made the decision to sit down and talk with two people about this problem while I still had the time and my status as one of their students. Last week I talked with George Elliott Clarke about all things CanLit, an opportunity I haven't taken with anyone since I started back at school. Today I sat down with Linda Hutcheon and told her that the Master's program really wasn't what I had been expecting. I told her that I had been a Canadianist and took her course because of the importance of her work in the field. For the first time all semester I was able to hear her talk about CanLit. I asked her about the ramifications of becoming a professor, and whether she had ever experienced doubts. She told me that she'd had doubts right up until she'd actually started the job, and that the job market for professors is going to be very lucrative over the next few years for those who are willing to go where the work takes them.

She assured me that I would get to make the most of my interests at the PhD level. I told her about the declaration of interest and thesis proposal I'd written to get funding for the program, and she told me to bring it in with me after the break so that we could talk about it, outside of the context of a classroom.

Now, I had a feeling she'd say these things. Professor Hutcheon has routinely been a nice woman and great teacher (and I hope this will translate to the pity she takes on the paper I polished off at 6:30 AM). But after I left the office, I had felt that things were different, that I was starting to make my experience at University something personal again. I had started reaffirming my faith in myself. For the first time in months I held the honest opinion that there are real, attainable possibilities in front of me rather than a smattering of vague interests I won't ultimately pursue. I still haven't decided about continuing grad school, but I'm now under the impression that if I ultimately do it won't be out of the desire to retreat to some old pattern of thinking from which I've been disconnected. I'll do it because I've rediscovered that I really want to.

Time will tell. Right now I feel as though I can do anything I set my mind to. I can go anywhere and do anything. It's going to make my next semester so much more rewarding. And when my time in Toronto comes to a close I know I'll have picked my next step carefully and correctly.

As I mentioned, today was the last day of classes. Paul and I knocked our editorial presentation out of the park during a four-hour Bibliography seminar. I spoke up at length in Opera class after a semester of relative silence. My group ended up with a split grade of A/A+ on our presentation. After the meeting with Professor Hutcheon, I returned some books and walked home from Keele station deep in thought.

Updated To-Do List:

Friday, December 14th: Final project - Touch of Evil
Friday, December 21st: Critical reflection paper - Bibliography
Monday, January 7th: Final research paper (max. 14 pages) - African-Canadian Lit

Christmas is only TWO WEEKS away. I need to get to a shopping mall.

This is my first official all-nighter of the school year, and my first in quite some time otherwise. The final word count on my Death in Venice essay is 4780 words, adding up to just over 14 pages in length. I also have my material ready for a Bibliography presentation I have to give in three hours or so (barring the photocopies I have to make at Robarts first).

The shitty part about this is that I'm not going to be home for another 11 hours.

I spent the day working on the essay in chunks, watching box sets and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (Lee Marvin is always drunk and violent). At one point I took a nap because I knew I'd be up late.

Pray that coffee is readily available for me today.

I'm elevating laziness to new, heretofore unreachable plateaus. I spent a good portion of the day on the couch watching episode six of The War, Punch-Drunk Love (which I hadn't seen in awhile but still have a strong affection for), episodes of Seinfeld and The Simpsons. I DID manage to come up with a few notes for the Bibliography presentation I'm making on Red Badge of Courage with this guy Paul on Monday. I'm meeting with him tomorrow to shoot the shit about what we're going to talk about in class. We only have five minutes each to talk, so I have the thing pretty much halfway written anyhow.

I bought a package of mini powdered donuts. I'm going to try very hard to never buy them again.

Tomorrow: essay.

I'm still a bit mad about a situation Andrea was put in today. She's okay but she feels even farther away when I can't be there to look out for her when she needs it.

Bibliography went down in the PIMS (Pontifical Institute for Medieval Studies) library this morning. As usual, a bunch of material was passed around for examination. I asked Professor Robins about what he considers to be the Holy Grail of undiscovered material, and he said it was signature copies of Chaucer and Shakespeare texts. The most rare book he's ever gone in search of is a notebook belonging to Leonardo da Vinci, which he discovered is locked in a vault in a French bank four stories underground and has only ever been removed twice - once to be put on display as part of an exhibit, and once to make facsimile copies for research. Needless to say, he couldn't get at it, but it gives you an idea of how far research can take you depending on what you study.

After class I signed out a copy of Stephen Crane's The Red Badge of Courage for an assignment along with a couple of DVD's from the Kelly library (the fourth library to which I now owe a return of material). I went around the campus and took some pictures. When I got home I watched Ingmar Bergman's Winter Light, a film about a pastor who loses his faith in God. It has this AMAZING scene in which Ingrid Thulin delivers this nearly 5-minute single-take monologue about loving a religious man in spite of her own atheism. Here's a still:


Great stuff. Bergman has to be my favorite filmmaker.

I also signed out Blade Runner, which I've never seen. I took a nap and then popped it in but the DVD was too damaged to play, so I watched episode five of The War instead. Tomorrow is the dress rehearsal for my Death in Venice presentation. Hopefully I'll be able to take some pictures and finally post some visual proof of my actual everyday life in Toronto (shots of me vegging out on the couch aside).

Holly was in a car accident, but she's okay. She is, however, a bit pissed that the Examiner reported it as damage done to the bridge on which she spun out. Can't say I blame her.

I crawled out of bed after noon and watched The Deer Hunter, which is widely considered a classic, though I found it pretty average and even overlong. De Niro and Christopher Walken play a couple of friend who leave their jobs as steel workers to fight in Vietnam, where they're confronted with completely horrific circumstances that ensure the loss of their old lives. It has incredibly intense, powerful moments, but they don't resonate correctly throughout the last third of the movie. I think it's because that while the characters are given a chance to develop, we don't find out that much about them aside from the fact that they start out relatively sane and are then pushed to lose (or make desparate attempts to hold on to) their sanity. I much preferred Platoon as far as 'Nam movies go, though I will admit that I have yet to see Apocalypse Now.

I went to Adam's and got ahold of the footage I'll need for my final Touch of Evil project. Thank goodness. I walked to his apartment and back, so I definitely fulfilled my exercise quotient of the day. It's getting colder outside and I've been less inclined to walk home lately. After I got back, I finished off a Bibliography assignment. It feels as though this semester has been over for a week, but the actual schedule hasn't caught up with it.

Bedtime.

The Touch of Evil torrent finally ended its seemingly endless download and... it's in Spanish. Hah. Plus, it's the Murch re-edit version, so it's no good to me on two counts. I'll have to try transferring my VHS copy at Adam's.

I watch a lot of Scrubs and Seinfeld today, plus the flick Contact, stills of which I posted on film_stills. In other film news, Seth Rogen and Elizabeth Banks have been cast for Kevin Smith's next movie, Zack & Miri Make a Porno. I had just been watching Banks on Scrubs; she played a girl accidentally knocked up by Zach Braff. There's a connection here to be made involving Seth Rogen, Knocked Up, and two guys with variations on the name Zack, but I'm too tired to make it.

Bibliography was kind of neat today, as we had some hands on training on completing bibliographical descriptions of old texts (how they were folded and bound, their measurements, etc.). I'll need the training for an assignment that's due in the class next week. Tomorrow, though, I'm powerhousing through my Oni presentation. I'm going to get all my research done and most of my paper written. I promised Brooke I'd send here a copy before the weekend is out.

Finally got my Eurail pass from FedEx today. One more step towards Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands!

Today I used a printing press to press text into a quarto. Tristan seemed pissed about the trouble he had with the assignment, and Eileen seemed pissed that he was pissed, but if I cared any less about any of that trouble I'd fall asleep out of sheer boredom.

"Keep a positive attitude," my old man says, "or negativity will consume you." Good advice, that. My dad told me some old stories about being a kid and spending time on his great-grandfather's farm. He really does have an incredible way of describing things.

snow apples
earth beaten red
and pure, white,
the taste of one
after the
other

Oni got back to me with answers already and even suggested she attend a lecture. This has the potential to be the greatest presentation I've ever done.

I watched Citizen Kane with my folks and sister, none of whom knew what Rosebud referred to. What a rare treat that was. Tomorrow I'll be blowing out candles and scarfing down cake.

As I briefly mentioned rather drunkenly in last night's post, I went to C'est What with Adam, Ren and Matt, ate the shepherd's pie, had four pints and shot some pool. A fine night out with some fine folks. Matt and Ren are probably the two people in my life that I can most naturally and freely converse with, and hanging out with them together is always twice the good time. I called my mother when I got home, as she'd left a message on my machine, and an email that said:

"I hope you had a great birthday. My thoughts and all my love are yours. WAIT UNTIL YOU SEE YOUR PRESENT!!!!!!! YOU WILL FRIGGEN CRAP!!"

Must be some gift. I hope it's a new pair of pants.

I'm heading home for the weekend tomorrow after class. I finished my annotation work and gave it to Tristan, who put himself in charge of getting everything assembled, but he sent out an email late in the evening sounding very stressed out over losing internet access, having to travel to campus and work on a seminar at the same time. He sounded pissed because Eileen didn't hand over her annotations until pretty late in the day. We'll see what shit goes down tomorrow.

I watched a movie I'd been curious about for awhile entitled Picnic at Hanging Rock, which was apparently a huge hit for Australia in the 1970's. Spoiler Alert: It's about these students of an all-girl school who go on a field trip of sorts to the forests around a formerly active volcano called Hanging Rock. Four of the girls explore the mountain. Only one of them comes back, and one of the supervising teachers goes missing. A week later, one of the girls is found but has no memory of what happened. The movie is famous for two things: it's incredibly atmospheric and surrealistically creepy, and there is no resolution to the narrative's events. I quite enjoyed the first 3/4 of the film, and I was willing to accept that I wouldn't find out what happened to the girls. But what is a narrative supposed to do if it can't close itself? It's left to simply hang there, passing time until an end is finally imposed upon it. And that's a feeling not incredibly akin to quality. Still, I think I'd like to watch it again, because I get the impression there's a level to the film that I don't think one can grasp in a single sitting.

I also watched Fellini's 8 1/2, which was enormously enjoyable even though I couldn't get through it in one piece. Some amazing visual work, really some of the more inventive concepts I've seen, and very self-referential without being arrogant. It's a great movie about directors, and relationships for that matter.

I read Oni's Ghettostocracy and sent off some questions for her perusal. I really have to get started on my final papers and presentations as soon as I get back to Toronto. I applied for a job as a TA for a course in Canadian Short Stories, which would be up my alley and pay well if they find me qualified. I also signed up for a seminar on publishing Canadian journals online; it's taking place at Robarts next Wednesday.

I talked to Andrea yesterday. She's coming home in January. It was a hard decision for her to make. She put together a swell package for me that I received in the mail today, and it contained some great words about simple things she misses about being with me. I miss them, too.

My girlfriend is awesome.

I thought it was way past my bedtime, but the clock has fallen back an hour, so now it's only moderately past my bedtime.

Today I went to the movies. I accidentally bought a ticket for Cronenberg's Eastern Promises and didn't realize it until the title popped up on the screen (I was eased into it a little by the preliminary Telefilm Canada co-production credit). For a minute I thought, "well, okay, I like Cronenberg. Maybe I'll just stay and see it," but five minutes into the film I was presented with bloody vaginal discharge and the most realistic throat-slashing I've ever seen on film. I really wasn't in the mood, especially since I hadn't intended to see THAT film, so I theatre-hopped over to see Gone Baby Gone - Ben Affleck's directorial debut with his brother Casey in the lead. What a fantastic movie. The performances are all top notch, especially Affleck and Amy Ryan, who plays a neglectful Bostonian mother with a mouth like a racist sailor with such centred effect that you'd swear the casting director just picked her up off the street. It's a really intense thriller and one of those great neo-noirs of late that I've been really excited about.

After the flick I grabbed a bagel and coffee and went to Robarts to work on the annotation exercise. My group is looking at the poem "That Nature is a Heraclitean Fire and of the comfort of the Resurrection" by Gerard Manley Hopkins. We have to pick out twenty points for annotation, and I'm looking at extratextual elements. It basically involves researching the etymology of certain terms and expressions via dictionaries, guides and other support materials. After about three hours of research I had picked out seven and decided to call it a night.

I walked home from Keele station and watched some Seinfeld while eating dinner, did laundry, read some more of Notes from the Hyena's Belly, and watched a documentary on the making of Halloween (which primarily features a bunch of people sitting around talking about how great it was to get rich). Think I'll use that extra hour to get some additional sleep.

I've started taking Cold-FX for this cough, based on a recommendation from Kevin Smith in a diary entry he wrote in My Boring-Ass Life. Apparently it's the cold medicine Canadian swear by. It's a three-day process (9 pills the first day, 6 on the second and 3 on the third), so it's just a matter of popping them and waiting.

Bibliography went down in the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library today, an intimidating, dimly-lit, closely-monitored tower that forms the head of the Robarts peacock, where we were given a look at incredibly old books and scrolls. I don't find any of it THAT interesting, but it's unequivocally neat to see anything that's been around for such a long time. I found out that the guys in my group for the annotation exercise both play bass, and one of them plays in the band Malfunktion (it seems as though everyone I've met at U of T is in a band). They were talking equipment and I couldn't even remember what make of bass I own (it's a vintage 'M' series Stagg). Honestly, I've never been interested in that side of playing an instrument. I'm much more concerned with the theatrics of any kind of performance than the specificity of the technical side. Guess that doesn't make me much of a musician. I never claimed to be.

After class I went by Media Commons to find out if I could transfer my VHS copy of Touch of Evil to DVD, and they referred me to the media centre after much hmming and hawing and not agreeing with the principle of what I want to do. Right. I'll figure out a way. I've got a torrent downloading very slowly that may provide me with the footage I need. My goal for my final project is to make comparison clips of the previous cut and the re-edit done by Murch to show exactly what changes were made and how dramatic they are. Could be great if I can pull it off.

When I got home I watched The Truman Show and lounged around being unproductive. I listened to a very good SModcast about Bryan Johnson's chemical imbalance and anxiety - a lot of the stuff he said rang true both of the way I act and the way people I've known have acted. It's beyond interesting to me to hear three intelligent guys sit around talking about that sort of subject matter, especially when one of the guys is Kevin Smith. I know I've mentioned the show before. If you're interested in checking it out, go here.

A date has been set for the new X-Files movie: July 25th of next year. I'm going to line up on Monday.

I started reading "Notes from the Hyena's Belly: An Ethiopian Boyhood" by Nega Mezlekia and I'm about 50 pages in, so I suppose today wasn't completely unproductive. I've made a schedule for myself that stretches into next week and lines up what I want/need to accomplish, starting tomorrow. Here's to hoping I can keep up.

I met up with the folks in my Bibliography group to discuss the annotation assignment and had one of those moments in which I felt completely outclassed intelligence wise. The people I go to school with are so smart. It's going to force me to work that much harder, in the long run. Afterwards I swung by HMV to pick up the new Buck 65 album, and while I was there I grabbed The Truman Show and Shaun of the Dead for cheap.

When I got home I dialed up Andrea and we talked on the phone for about three hours. I hadn't heard her voice since September and it made me feel as though a bird were alive in my chest. Conveniently enough she received the package I sent her ON her birthday, so that worked out nicely. Despite the fact that we talk almost everyday there are certain things that need to be said in person when the opportunity is given. 57 days and I'm Berlin-bound.

I watched Spielberg's adaptation of War of the Worlds, which had great visuals but lacked a bit in the arenas of character and plot. Still, it has scenes that are humbling in their realization - mob rule in the streets, a train passing while completely aflame, and the first appearance of the alien crafts in particular. I'd say it's worth checking out.

After the movie I finished off my latest short story (title: "To Become Immortal, and Then Die") and submitted it to the In/Words crew. I tried getting down to business with a reading, but kept getting sucked into this debate with some people on Facebook about racism. I'm considering it good exercise for my African-Canadian Lit class. Grad school involves a whole new level of rationalization when it comes to goofing off.

I woke up dead tired today, but made it to class where I learned the act of folio folding and leafed through a 1797 second edition copy of Radcliffe's The Italian, a book on which I'd written an essay in fourth year.

After class I picked up Patton and The Trial from Media Commons. I put on Patton when I got home, but I had to pause it halfway through because I was too exhausted to stay awake. I took a nap on the couch and finished it off afterwards. I always enjoy seeing George C. Scott in a movie, and he completely commands the screen in every scene. The film is just gorgeous to look at. I'm starting to build a taste for war movies, and this one did pretty much everything right, portraying Patton as slightly mad yet strangely admirable. The famous opening segment in which he stands in front of a giant American flag telling his men what to expect in war is great to watch even by itself.

The Trial is based on the Kafka story and directed by Orson Welles. It was his personal favorite of all of his films, and it's the most aggressively stylized of the ones I've seen, even more so than Kane and Lady From Shanghai. The movie is nightmarishly constructed from beginning to end and never dull. Anthony Perkins stars in the lead just a couple of years after making Psycho and plays the part of a man accused of an unidentified crime note perfect as he runs through jaggedly lit corridors, up spiral staircases and across enormous rooms and landscapes with a determined panic. A lot of the rhetoric is a bit blinding, but my only real qualm with the movie is the notorious job done with the dialogue overdubbing. Actually, that seems to often be the main problem with Welles' films - it's just downright distracting trying to pay attention to actors when their words don't line up with the movements of their mouths. Still, thematically, The Trial is disturbing and energetic, and unlike any movie I've seen.

I got an email today from SSHRC telling me about some recruitment program the government is running for "policy leaders;" it's geared towards honour students. I worked on an application and polished my resume, but I don't know if I'll apply. I'm still not really sure what I'd be doing. The description of the "program" is vague but it seems to indicate that upon graduation I'd be put into the public service field at an above-entry level, "taking on significant responsibilities in shaping Canadian policies" that match my field of expertise. Okay.

Lots of work to do this weekend. I'd better get a good night's sleep.

It sure got late in a hurry. Speaking of late, I was almost late for the opera tonight due to my foolishness in thinking I could get from my house to Queen Street in 45 minutes during rush hour. I made it with a couple of minutes to spare, but it would have been embarrassing if I'd been any later. Verdi's Don Carlos was a heretic-burning, Oedipus complex-flaunting, revolution-failing good time, though it was a long show at over 4 hours with two intermissions. I wasn't as familiar with it as I was going into Mozart's and I think that affected my opinion of it. The vocalists were better, but I was expecting more of a spectacle given the subject matter. It was still very good, nonetheless. Tomorrow I'm meeting with my group to start talking Death in Venice.

Today I visited the Toronto Public Library's Osbourne Collection of Early Children's Books, where my class looked at a ton of publications of Robinson Crusoe through the years. It's fascinating the kind of things that were used as propaganda for kids (wartime declarations, stories to prepare children for death). I bet there's a whole slew of Oz books in that building. They're currently featuring an extensive Edward Gorey collection in glass cases.

Between the opera and my Bibliography course, I feel so privileged being able to do what I'm doing here. I've been experiencing literature in a way I never thought possible - I'm actually able to engage with texts touched and signed by the people I read. U of T is extraordinarily surreal in a lot of ways due to its size and history. I should take advantage of what it has to offer while I'm here.

I signed out copies of Griffith's Birth of a Nation and Murnau's Faust to watch over the weekend. The Ontario Arts Council emailed me and told me I collated my grant applications wrong, which doesn't sound right because I took painstaking measures to put them in the right order, but I thanked them for correcting the error without forcing me to resubmit. I finally activated my new VISA and have as of yet not used it. Such restraint. Ren's in town and we're hitting up Darjeeling on Monday.

The air is getting colder. I have a lingering cough but it doesn't feel too serious.

I watched Smiles of a Summer Night today and quite enjoyed it. It's a rare comedic effort by Bergman, but he still manages to stick in moments of existential unrest, characters who despise life because they can't communicate directly with God, which seems even unintentionally funny in itself in this context. You know you're watching a Bergman film when a character suddenly faces the camera and delivers a monologue about their perpetual malaise. For the most part, though, he winks at the audience through the treatment of his characters, trying to stumble into the proper slots for happy relationships.

I also watched Wonder Boys, one of my favorite films, while eating some Oven-Baked Eggplant Parmesan and Spaghetti I whipped up for dinner. This past week I've been getting to know eggplant, trying to find some common ground because I want us to get along, and I think we're one step closer.

I finished my bibliography assignment, but I don't really know if it's what the prof wants - a reading list for a proposed research project along with a 300 word max paragraph talking about the books I've selected. I chose Charlotte Lennox as a subject. The thing is, the assignment mentions proper MLA citations for the paragraph. Why would I be citing ANYTHING directly if I only have 300 words to explain the presence of each and every work on the list? Plus, I put all of the works on from doing net research and taking brief looks at some of the material. I don't really know what's in them, so I can't very well cite them. Doesn't strike me as that kind of assignment.

Whatever. It's done. I'm catching Don Carlos at the opera tomorrow, which looks bombastically frightening. I'd like to get some scary movie time in before Halloween, too. But what I'd like most is to see The Darjeeling Limited this weekend. Is there anyone out there who will take a couple of hours out of their busy lives to accompany a poor Wes Anderson fan to the cinema this weekend?

I used to think I was immune to the effects of chopping onions. I was dead wrong.

I'm in Peterborough for Thanksgiving weekend. Jay gave me a ride. We almost got into a mashup on the 401 - Jay had to stop really suddenly and avoided hitting the car in front of us by inches. The car behind us squealed its tires in the effort to follow suit. A close call.

Today I swung by campus early to pick up a textbook I still required (they never seem to end, the required texts). In Bibliography I held a first edition of Tennyson's In Memoriam in my hands, as well as an autographed copy of Samuel Taylor Coleridge's translation of the first seven books of the Odyssey. Talk about surreal. We also talked about Foucault's conception of the author. He seemed to prophesize the age we're living in now, where a free-for-all of meaning and information exists. It's interesting taking a look at property, legality and ownership alongside what we truly believe an author to be - it's popularly defined in both financial and ideological terms, but there are so many more layers to the identity of the author. I think, however, that Foucault sees the free distribution and obtaining of information - sort of a collective conscious - as the ideal state of a world embracing art. He posits that in the future, all questions will fall to this: "what does it matter who is speaking?" (Foucault's essay "What Is An Author?" is also a great read if you're interested in the ideas of both copyright and cults of personality.)

I finally got down to the passport office and handed in the appropriate documents with little trouble. Apparently I'll be able to pick it up on the 22nd of this month. They'll call me if there are any issues with my application, but it looks like smooth sailing for now. Funnily enough, after applying with my temporary driver's license and worrying that the office wouldn't accept it, I came home to find my new license in the mailbox. Figures.

I watched Topper with my folks, an old Cary Grant screwball comedy in which he and his wife lead reckless lives, die in a car accident, and can't rest their ghosts until they show a tight-assed bank manager how to enjoy life. Really neat effects for the time and some funny moments, but the plot is paperthin and ridiculous. It also stars Billie Burke in a supporting role (she played Glinda in The Wizard of Oz).

Autumn on Spadina

in the blood warmth of
the shrinking sun,
children at chattering play

the precision
of a heart clicking
into place, again,
again

in front of the mission,
the homeless begin
bundling themselves

(gone)

I like being home. It feels good to curl my feet up on the couch. Secure.

Well, I'm going to Germany. Got my ticket and everything. I'm leaving on December 28th and coming back on January 4th, so I'll be having the coolest New Year's in pretty much my entire life (though eating that bowl of vodka jello at Cam's place in my teenage years will be hard to top. Sometimes I really miss my capacity to do shit that stupid). It will be my first trip to Europe. I'll get to spend time with my lady. It's all roses.

That, however, is still three months off. In the meantime, I finally finished putting the grant for the OAC together. I received Pixie's DVD in the mail today, as well as Donna's reference letter. I spent a few hours doing some fine-tuning and printing off every last copy. It's done. On Monday I'll send it off to do its thing.

Today at school I held a 400-year-old book in my hands, as well as some really old editions of Don Quixote and old translations of Plato and Socrates. One of the Socrates works belonged to and was annotated by Northrop Frye. I wrote down one of his annotations because I thought it was endlessly funny:

Socrates: "And I ask again, What do we do when we weave? The answer is that we separate or disengage the warp from the woof."

Northrop Frye: "Huh?"

Classic. I get a good vibe from the Bibliography prof. He seems very intelligent and approachable.

I watched the film "Closer" for the first time. Just an amazingly brilliant piece of work with incredible performances by all. I want to see it again, but I think it would be a hard movie to sit through multiple times... the actors essentially take turns being the biggest living piece of shit in the film. The dialogue is overcast with emotion and eroticism without being hokey - very hard to pull off given the intensity behind each scene. It plays around so deftly with ideas of honesty and truth while at the same time using both as justifications for unconscionable behaviour. A really amazing film.

Bedtime is way overdue. Nuit Blanche tomorrow! Hopefully I'll be updating with some pictures.

I went a little nuts tonight and wrote an ode, but not before reading some John Keats and Pablo Neruda. I'm going to look at it in the morning and wonder what the hell I was thinking. But at least it's something.

WHAT I'M IN FOR (PART FOUR)

Bibliography is the study of research methodology. Solves that little mystery. Really, it's just a course that teaches the latest research methods, proper citation, and, yes, bibliography preparation. We spent our first class in a computer lab in the EJ Pratt Library going over journal databases. In fact, we'll be spending most of our classes in libraries all over the campus, including the Robertson Davies Library in Massey Hall, where we'll be privy to seeing a relic of a printing press at work.

I was feeling like a shut-in last night (being indoors for almost two straight days will do that). I ended up spending a lot of time outside today, walking around the campus looking for book stores, and it helped my constitution as much as it put a hurt into my feet. I ended up walking down College and up Bathurst, and I stopped in at Honest Ed's discount store, which to be honest I found unsettling. I took a look at some information about Ed Mirvish online, and the man was a god in Toronto until he died about two months ago. He did a lot to help out the city's artists. His store, however, looked like a Dollarama blown freakishly out of proportion and my prolonged search for the exit left me feeling, ironically, a little claustrophobic. I also, for one reason or another, take issue with a business that insinuates so forcefully that it's "honest" (yet another item in a growing list of incriminating factors revealing that I am not, and probably never will be, a true Torontonian).

I made some yummy chicken salad pita sandwiches for dinner and watched The Wizard with Jay, which is essentially an hour-and-a-half-long commercial for the Nintendo Entertainment System with a little family drama thrown in. Nevertheless, it was a movie from my youth that I was incredibly stoked over at the time. "I love the Power Glove. It's so bad." Truer words were never uttered on celluloid.

Jay showed me how to rip Touch of Evil, so I should be able to grab a couple of clips this weekend. He's going down to Buffalo tomorrow to buy an iPhone. I'll be going over my grant and catching up on readings. But mark my words - I'll be getting out of this place on a more regular basis come October.

I was able to talk with Andrea for about ten minutes on the phone today. I imagined her in her hostel on the other side of the world as I looked out at the Toronto cityscape. It's hard to account for such an immense distance, to think that a person's voice could travel such a long way almost immediately. I've always disliked talking on the phone, but it kind of amazed me today.

I've been keeping to myself a lot since she left, but I'm hoping to get out a bit in the next couple of weeks. Nuit Blanche is coming up at the end of the month, and I'd like to spend some more time hanging out with Matt and some other folks around Toronto that I don't normally have the chance to see. This is officially the longest stretch of time I've ever spent in the city, and I'm used to packing what time I have here full of visits and excursions. My number one priority is school, however. I'm not going to screw this up. I also need to get on applying for grants. I have the forms and I'm planning to go over them this weekend while I wait for some additional material to show up.

I watched the move Airheads today (a gift from Andrea, some cinematic silliness to give me a break from work), and Rear Window, which is undoubtedly my favorite Hitchcock film. There are so many feminist subtexts at work that it's hard to view the film in any other light, but it's such a great piece of suspenseful, claustrophobic filmmaking. I also finished reading "The Hanging of Angelique," and I don't remember the last time I finished a book so fast. 306 pages in 36 hours. Probably not since my undergraduate years.

This week has felt incredibly long. Tomorrow is my last new class of the week - the Bibliography course. It will, at the very least, finally answer once and for all the question that's been on my mind since I started looking into grad school: namely, what the hell is Bibliography?