Today is my last full day in Toronto, which, to be honest, doesn't feel as much like a city I used to visit for field trips. You spend enough time in a city and you become used to the idea that its structures and streets and parks and whatnot don't really go anywhere. And while I've been provided with some memories that will last me a lifetime, I've long since gotten used to that feeling that Toronto usually puts in me, that combination of melancholy and nostalgia and excitement and pure happiness that runs through me all at once as one experience triggers every other experience I've had here simultaneously. The city has become new to me in the way that it's become familiar.

Yesterday I handed in my essay, wandered around Value Village, came home and crashed. I woke up at sunset and went to the grocery store with the air that it would be my last trip, realizing afterwards that I'll probably have to go back to nab a box or two to pack tonight. I picked up copies of Diner and Monty Python's And Now For Something Completely Different that were on sale, plus the essentials for the 36 hours one has left to spend in a place: Pop Tarts, soup, and peanut butter chocolate granola bars. I watched Diner and tried to understand that for the first time in months I didn't have to think about school work.

Tonight I'm getting together with Matt to have a beer and say so long for the time being. I'll have to spend the greater part of the day packing, but first I have to take back the rest of my library books and pay my fines, otherwise I'm pretty sure U of T will fail me out of spite.

Last night I ordered one of the new iMacs from Future Shop. I should have it next week. It's the newest computer I've ever purchased and it's effing pretty:


Ooo. Ahh.

I'm off. Tomorrow will be my last entry.

It snowed HARD in the city yesterday. Canada.com said there were so many car accidents as a result that police had to stop responding to the sites and advised people to get a tow and head to special drop-in centres. I spent a good portion of the day tromping around campus, trying to make sense of the white blur everywhere.

I finished Salih's book, which I read in the short term loan section of Robarts, listening to the winds howl against the building. It was quiet and nice. I went to L'Espresso for a bit and chilled out reading City of Glass. They didn't have any coffee brewed, so I had an Americano. I had to ask what it was because I'm pretty coffee-illiterate. It's essentially espresso and hot water and it tastes like coffee if you stir it like mad.

I also bought my plane ticket to Vancouver, so I suppose this means I'm officially going. Today I'm going to finish Lord of the Flies and Heart of Darkness. I also have to return a cell phone I found to a guy on campus. It's amazing I found it considering it was a white phone dropped into an infinite landscape of snow.

Yesterday I met someone who shares all of my musical interests. She doesn't look like much, but she's knowledgeable, organized, and easy to turn on.

Meet Lacie:


"Lacie" is the name of the company that makes the drive as well as the friendly name that pops up whenever her USB cable is connected. That's right - she's completely plug and play. And one day she'll hold my entire music collection. That is, if my CD burner can take it. I doubt it's looking forward to ripping all of that material. I tried to go entirely digital about three years ago and all of that music is currently sitting on the hard drive of a desktop PC that, last time I checked, is suffering severe problems. The process took me a long time. But I miss not having all of my music at my immediate disposal, so I'm starting the trek all over again.

I wrote the scene analysis for The Journals of Knud Rasmussen, which is an excellent film. I had a lot of fun picking it apart. It's been awhile since I've done a scene analysis and it really opens up a whole new way of watching the film. I imagine I could sit down and analyze a film shot-by-shot and come up with literally hundreds of pages of material. That's the beauty of the moving visual image and its relationship with the senses.

I had a much better Wednesday yesterday than what has proven usual lately. Class was stimulating. It snowed really hard, which gave being on campus one of those "last of the population left alive" qualities. Lots of work to do this weekend.

Andrea arrives back in Canada today, and I'll get to see her briefly when I meet her at the airport and escort her to a shuttle that's taking her home to London. She sent me a Facebook message indicating that she's been setting off alarms at airports, so all that hinges on what security decides to do with her. Regardless, I can't wait to see her.

Yesterday I went to campus and had my best intentions cut in half by the U of T bookstore, which is still out of a book I need, and by forgetting a voided cheque for my OSAP installment. I did manage to read Shakespeare's Coriolanus and Aristotle's Poetics before heading home. As if an entire play and a book of philosophy weren't enough for one class, I still have to read a critical essay and Aeschylus's Prometheus Bound and write a response paper. Today I'm focusing on the Avant-Garde material. I'm starting to realize how lucky I am to have five free days to work on assignments.

I walked home from Keele Station and made some vegetarian chili for dinner before breaking into season three of The X-Files. After writing up some bibliographic annotations for Shakespeare and Aristotle, I watched Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones, which unlike my recent reviewing of Episode I was NOT such a pleasing experience. The movie was worse than I remember. It doesn't feel as organic as the first film because it's so entirely digitized. You can practically see the actors moving around on the sound stage, talking to themselves. I don't care that the film is overly political. The romantic scenes are painful to sit through due to the lacklustre dialogue, and Anakin and Padme's relationship feels completely forced. More politics, please.

I went to campus to hand in my Bibliography assignment to Professor Robins, which went off without a hitch. After dropping off some library books and trying to seek out secondary sources for my last paper (easier said than done), I picked up some Euro currency and went home. Jay had a couple of people over and we watched the Simpsons movie after they made dinner. After that, professional student that I am, I immersed myself in some Legend of Zelda and collected three Triforce pieces before calling it quits.

I do think that I have a good idea for my paper, it's just a matter of doing the work over the holidays and finally writing the thing in the two-day window I have when I get back to Canada.

Tomorrow I'm Peterborough bound. I really should try to get to the terminal early on in the day because holiday traffic is always ridiculous.

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 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 met with Professors Hutcheon, Clark and Columpar today to discuss what they're going to be subjecting me to. Professor Columpar seemed nice and I'm even more excited for the Touch of Evil Project. I'm doing a presentation on Marlene Dietrich, as well as the very first class facilitation of the year on cinematic re-vision. Excellent stuff. I also toured by Gillian Northgrave's office to finally meet her and pick up my CGS award money. Gillian is the Graduate Counsellor and Program Administrator of the English Department, and we'd been conversing for a few months before I was finally able to put a face to her name.

I picked up most of the African-Canadian Lit course material at the U of T book store, which has an overly complicated TOKEN LOCKER system to ensure that no one sneaks out books in their bags. Give me a break. After scoring the texts I stopped by Pita Pit for some grub. "Young Hearts" by Rod Stewart was playing on the PA inside, and it brought back memories of Ottawa. I spent some time mulling over "The Hanging of Angelique" while waiting for my appointment with Professor Columpar. It's a book that unveils the truth behind slavery in Canada as it tells the true story of a 29-year-old bondswoman who was put to death for setting Montreal ablaze. It's a wake up call to anyone willing to think that slave ownership in Canada wasn't that bad. The Underground Railway ran both ways.

For dinner I attempted beef stroganoff from scratch, and it wasn't a complete failure, but I don't think I'll be making it again. I find the recipe's sauce too thin.

Buck 65 is performing on Friday at the Drake Hotel. I might go.

I feel, somehow, as though floodgates are about to open.

When I read, I am overcome with emotion and thought. Reading ignites ideas, little bits of fire grow wings, more often than not sputtering and fluttering out after I've had a chance to calm down, to leave the idea behind and let it walk on its own. I'll read a paragraph and I'll have the most enormous inclination to write the perfect sidekick, an inspired companion to the lines I'm mowing through. I read something set in an office, and it convinces me with the force of God dictating to Adam that I should add a chapter onto whatever I've cooked up and set it in an office. Add a couple of Canadian tropes, twist it with a little magic realism and VOILA! But then I stop reading. More often than not, the fire goes out, the wings cease to beat, the idea can't walk on its own.

But sometimes... once in awhile, the idea sticks. There's a purity in it that I can sense. I carry this idea around with me, adding accouterments, shaping it in my brain, sometimes for years at a time. I become obsessed with it. I start to value it as one would value a childhood love. It becomes something almost physically attached to my body - a wrinkle, a rib, an unsettling click in a joint. And then... I can't write it down.

I'll mention what I know for certain. I never felt more alive as a writer than I was as recently as a couple of years back, when I was printing out my own chapbooks fairly regularly for about a year and a half. I don't know if anyone read them, if they retained any of the information, but it felt as though I was saying things that needed to be said. Lately I've been wondering if it was simply a youthful idealism on my part to think that I was being unique in my output, that I was writing worthwhile material that would impact some loosely defined world of readers and critics and artists. But none of that matters.

In the five chapbooks I wrote alone (Heartsex, Joel, The Scene, Kitsch, and Puget Sound) I wrote about love, sex, art, coincidence, accidents, apocalypse, dreams, idol worship, memory, music, alcohol... and God. Last night I tried communicating to Andrea how writing about God was really the only thing that kept drawing me back to the craft (I probably failed miserably, looking too much like a Modernist and coming off as a little crazy). But it's true, and I didn't really recognize it until I tried explaining it. To use your classic neoliberal preface, I'm not a religious person, but I see God at work in everyday life. Nothing provokes my curiosity more than the existence of God, despite the fact that I've developed an outwardly calm veneer on the matter, as opposed to my younger, more adamantly existential self. On the flip side (?), I believe in the existence of beauty as truth. What's in front of us - our loved ones, that pencil on your desk, is enough to bring spiritual satisfaction, simply by its being there for us to engage, regardless of the presence of God.

These are the two most pointed conclusions I have to come to regarding my writing - first, is the notion of God still important to me, and secondly, whether or not I can still find beauty in an agnostic world. If the answers to either of these is no, I won't be able to write any longer. I just won't. It won't work. Thankfully, I don't think that will happen.

-

Position is where you
put it, where it is,
did you, for example, that

large tank there, silvered,
with the white church along-
side, lift

all that, to what
purpose? How
heavy the slow

world is with
everything put
in place. Some

man walks by, a
car beside him on
the dropped

road, a leaf of
yellow color is
going to

fall. It
all drops into
place. My

face is heavy
with the sight. I can
feel my eye breaking.

- Robert Creeley, The Window

-

On another note, things happened today:

I saw Andrea off at the bus terminal. Through the haze of being awake at 8:30 I still felt like crying. She leaves for Germany in a week. We kissed long and hard and squeezed hands.

I had to go to my MA orientation almost immediately afterwards. While waiting in the Sanford Fleming building, Jonathan Abresch sidled up to me. We graduated Carleton at the same time and are now entering our graduate studies, though with very different priorities. He's pretty heavy into the Medieval side of things, whereas I'm going as interdisciplinary and contemporary as I can. It was good to see him. The meeting was your average hodgepodge of vagueness, but everyone who spoke seemed genuinely approachable. Some folks from echolocation also took the floor, inviting students to their first meeting of the year, which I am looking forward to and will most certainly attend.

I went home and slept for what turned into a couple of hours, then slouched back to campus for my meeting with MA program Associate Director Sara Salih, which went swimmingly. I'm going to stick around Toronto until Friday so that I can take a tour of the library. I've been in Robarts a handful of times now and I still haven't seen a book.

I spent the rest of the evening reading, letting the floodgates open. Read the ten-year anniversary intro to Whylah Falls (complete with Discography. That's what I like to see). Hopefully I'll be spending the next couple of days effectively organizing what remains of my free time. It's a commodity I will soon miss.

I added a fancy new userpic, taken by the fancy Andrea, featuring my fancy new haircut. Effin' fancy.

Jason's gone for the weekend, so we stayed up late watching Ocean's 12, which was good but felt long (that's what she said! Sorry, too many Office episodes)...

First off, my sister Holly just got engaged to her boyfriend Steve. They've been dating for about 7 years, so it was a while coming. My parents just had their 38th wedding anniversary a couple of days ago, and I think the announcement coincided, so that's nice.

I started off the day marching over to the license bureau and shelling out $75 to renew my driver's license, which expired ten months ago (I don't drive). I was having my picture taken when some guy walked right past me in the line of the shot, so I was momentarily taken aback. The woman at the counter smiled as if thinking "these are the kind of douchebags I'm going to have to deal with on a Friday? Faaaaaaaaantastic." She assured me he didn't end up in the final shot, but I'm expecting a photo of me in mid-WTF glance. If your license photo is supposed to be bad, at least mine will come with a story.

We made our way to the U of T campus to pick up my student card and tour around a little. We checked out the old buildings that looked like something out of Harry Potter. Apparently there had been a fire in the regular location of the English Department offices, so everything is moving to the far north of the campus. I still have yet to find out where exactly my classes will be taking place.

After visiting the University bookstore, we made for the Eaton's Centre. We stopped at a Tim Horton's and I tried tipping the cashier but she told me they don't accept tips. That's BALLS. I worked there for four and a half years and those people DESERVE tips. Way too cockamamie. I picked up records by The New Pornographers and Rilo Kiley, plus Whylah Falls by George Elliot Clarke to prepare myself for what this guy is capable of. Andrea showed me the spot where she picked up the fake Maine ID she used back when I first met her. Sam The Record Man has closed its doors, on a sad note. Maegen used to work there and I myself have fond memories of browsing its racks.

After additional shopping and one hilarious photo op we headed home, watched some TV, ate a good meal, and said goodbye to August. Not a bad day on the whole.

Yesterday I got my hair cut, which means that I'm finally able to a) have a new driver's license photo taken; b) have my student card photo taken; c) post a userpic for this journal. a) and b) are my goals of the day, so I'll be checking out the U of T campus for the first time since moving. c) will follow a bit later, I'm sure.

Last night was fun. After watching Evan Almighty, Andrea and I had dinner at the Cadillac Lounge with Matt and Kim. The patio was nice and serenaded by yodellers; in contrast, some skate company was putting on a show inside. I didn't hear the band they had lined up but Matt said he liked what he heard of their soundcheck. After dinner we checked out the tail-end of that "Other Goose" reading. And I mean tail-end - the reading was completely over, and we were just in time for the calypso dance extravaganza. Surreal. The venue was the Gladstone Hotel and it was cool to see a stage with a projector set up to show pictures from the book. Probably not the greatest space to hang artwork, but it was swank and drew a lot of people. Kim said it was popular for book launches.

Feeling more than slightly tipsy and perhaps less cautious of not really knowing my way around, Andrea and I headed for Queen and Bathurst to meet Jenna. We searched for a bar without cover to grab a couple of drinks in the meantime and ended up in Michael's Restaurant, a pretty sketchy bar populated by undesirables shouting gibberish at one another. Lots of random bathroom graffiti about pussy. Jenna showed up and a bit of hilarity went down as the girls attempted to escort their drinks out of the bar in their bags. This brought two folks of Asian descent out of the bar, intent on tackling us like semis bitchslapping deer, but I put on my largest doe-eyes and told them I had no idea what they were talking about. Their threats to phone the cops echoed off the Queen Street concrete as we rounded the corner up Bathurst.

We ended up at Kukulo, a cafe turned venue for the launch of some band's CD. The place looked pretty cool in a Club Saw type of way, with art on the walls and the requisite band gear crammed into a makeshift jam space, but it was packed with people and sweltering. Fortunately they had a patio for Andrea and I to down our last beers of the night. It's funny how much the back entrance of a place on College can look a lot like some dude's back porch (complete with barbecue and swinging gate).

After many, many litres of various beers, we headed home in a stupor and crashed at the relatively early time of 1:30. I'm going to fill out my license paperwork while Andrea watches The Hills.