I am apparently more concerned with organizing a party taking place two weeks from now than I am with writing an essay that's due tomorrow, the reason being one is much more fun than the other.

Anyhow, I'm getting this puppy done today. I need six pages to hit the minimum, though I'd like to get eight. I'll be shoving off to the library soon. Yesterday I watched Stalag 17 and Hart's War and tried to come up with possible comparisons. It's difficult commenting how how race is used to change a narrative. In a way, though, I feel by writing a paper like this it takes me out of a sentamentalist approach to the subject matter. I can't write a paper on race that just screams "Prejudice is unfair!" over and over in a variety of ways. I have to take a step back and analyze how prejudice is affecting the film from a structural standpoint. That's hard to do, but I'll give it a shot.

Almost forgot to update today. I haven't done a lot of work today, and the day has gone by fast. I just ordered a pizza and I need to press myself on that last presentation. Five more pages. Yesterday I finished my biography presentation at Pratt, so barring some last minute editing it's pretty well good to go. Tomorrow is going to be a busy day.

I was up kind of late thinking about things, the future, what have you. Something inside me is going to break eventually, and soon. I can feel it. And I'm looking forward to it happening. I'm going to leave behind all this childish worry, apply myself and find happiness. It's just a matter of time.

Last week Tim mentioned a prof he used to have whose only comments about a presentation he had made had to do with his hair and clothes. He was joking around, but this morning I decided to shave and get a haircut. I'd been planning it for awhile, anyhow. I wanted to look different, and now I do, and I feel a bit better about my last few weeks. 26 days, apparently. Start the clock.

I got most of my Tragedy readings out of the way yesterday (unprecedentedly) so that I could focus on the presentation and paper I'm writing this weekend. As excited as I was to get out of bed at 9:30, I ended up falling asleep on the couch around 2. I may as well accept the fact that I'm most awake after noon and I should adjust my work schedule accordingly until I actually have a job that requires me to get out of bed earlier.

Race and Cinema was fine. I'm moving to Ottawa in exactly one month.

Happy Valentine's Day. I'm celebrating it by having no classes for the next twelve days. Though I might get right into some light work just so I don't have to worry about it later. In any event, I can exhale a little. I'm going to see Andrea on Monday. It's going to be a great week.

I was up really late last night talking with Esther and reading old Livejournal entries. I've decided to sit down and chronicle the year I spent living at the Party Flat. The journals I kept are sporadic and I feel as though I'm still carrying some baggage from that time that I need to come to terms with. It won't be anything I'll post online, but I am looking forward to finally setting down some thoughts I've had about that period that have been on my mind since I moved out. I want to use it as an excuse to flex my narrative muscle a bit, since it's kind of been buried under mundane details of assignments and such lately. Quite honestly, though, I'm impressed that I've been so devoted to this blog. I've written in it almost every day since I moved to Toronto. As much as I think my writing has been flagging, it's the most devoted I've ever been to a diary. So much so that I see the year before as a gap that needs to be filled more completely.

I've signed papers for a place in Ottawa come May 1st. I'm moving in with Ash and Ian. Ash's roommate is subletting for the summer, so I'll be able to get myself a foothold to find a job and ultimately my own place come September. I'll save a bit of money in the process, too.

Yesterday I watched Jezebel. Bette Davis was gorgeous and not a bad actress at all. Henry Fonda played a really stiff part and I couldn't get over how young he looked. The film was Warner's Gone With the Wind, but obviously paled in comparison to the production value of that film. Dyer had some interesting things to say about how whiteness is presented in the film while comparing it with Night of the Living Dead thirty years later. It seems like a stretch, but I found the argument compelling.

I spent a few hours at the libraries yesterday getting some reading done - Euripedes' "Medea" and Toni Morrison's "Beloved," the latter of which I purchased at the Bob Miller Book Room beforehand. It's the second time I've bought that book (I think my first copy was a victim of the Toronto move). I tried reading it once for an American Literature class in my third year undergrad but only made it through the first chapter. By that time I was rarely finishing material for that class due to time constraints. It's a shame, because the book is very powerful. Morrison writes a bit like Ondaatje, which is certainly a positive thing.

I made it about two-thirds of the way through the book before I went to bed at around 3:30. I think I'm going to focus on getting my Tragedy readings out of the way today and push that annotated bibliography to tomorrow and Monday. Still a lot of work to do. I'm looking forward to Reading Week and visiting Andrea and being alone with her.

I've been offered a room in Ottawa for May 1st - a summer sublet. I'm still trying to figure out how good of an idea it is. Weighing the pros and cons. It certainly would be reminiscent of the first time I moved up there back in 2001.

Tired. Coffee.

Last night Andrea and I talked on the phone and I found out that there are twelve weeks left until May begins, which means that my stay in Toronto is essentially two-thirds of the way complete. Not that I'm counting.

I found out that the Ontario Arts Council will not be giving me any money to fund any art shows this summer. I was disappointed but also a bit relieved to hear it. As much work as I put into that grant application, I don't feel as committed to the project as I used to. Time away from Ottawa is changing some of my attitudes. Maybe things will snap back into place when I return. In any event I'm trying very hard to learn to be honest with myself about what I want in all facets of life. There are still three months of experience and consideration to be had before my time here is up.

Of course, big life events such as discovering I won't be funded drive me to do things like put resumes together, so I revived my account at monster.ca. I'm going to throw myself full force into a job hunt once school is over with and I won't stop until I grab something that pays well. God knows I'll have spent enough time in school.

I watched Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest, which wasn't as murky or complicated as I remember. Davy Jones is a great character and I still go nuts for the ending. The first time I saw the movie I used a pass I'd won from the staff Oscar competition at 3-Way Street. It was one of the few times I've sat in the very back of a theatre.

The new chair is a vast improvement. I wish I could spend the day sleeping in it. To work...

My brain ended up all jazzed after watching The Snowball Effect, a documentary on the making of Clerks and the launch of Kevin Smith's film career (I'm obsessed with the guy, it's true). That documentary makes you think that you can leave the house right this minute and make a film or do whatever other project you're creatively inclined to do. So of course, I end up sitting at my computer, chatting with Peter, thinking about Mike's current job dilemma, wondering what I'm going to focus on when I get back to Ottawa. I tell Peter that I'll be happy if I can get back to the city and find a job that pays me at least $10/hour full-time, leaving me to do what I want on the side. And I want to do a lot.

Here are some ideas that have jogged through my head in the past couple of months (some more developed than others): Organize next Ottawa Art Bazaar. Start a new small press. Assemble a team for a new chapbook publication with a unifying theme. Turn ottawaart.ca into an online zine featuring columns on Ottawa art, recruiting columnists from volunteer pool of journalism students at Carleton. Interview and profile artists for Ottawa art wiki. Re-learn French. Take a college certificate course. Apply for PhD programs.

I keep forgetting I have this ESSAY to finish for Monday. I'm about 1800 words in with 2425 to go. I'm writing it fairly quickly; I've just been taking huge breaks in between finished arguments to watch The Chipmunk Adventure, Simpsons episodes and the aforementioned documentary.

Tomorrow, though, will be The Day Before. My favorite day to work on papers. It's been awhile since I've seen one.

Welcome to post #100. I think I hear trumpets blaring.

Today I watched the Visconti film version of Death in Venice, which looks great and has an interesting take on certain scenes that should work well with arguments in my paper.

After the film I went downtown for my meeting with the man, George Elliott Clarke. We sat in the bar of the Intercontinental Hotel and talked about the course before moving onto all things Ottawa. He spent five years living there and makes a visit at least once a month for various reasons. He said that it's a city that's very closed off from other Canadian cities and operates differently with respect to its arts. I asked him what he thought of the arts in Ottawa, and he told me the following anecdote:

In 1989 a sculpture of two children sitting on a bench was dropped off out front of the Library and Archives Canada building by its artist, Lea Vivot. The bench sculpture stayed in front of the building for a year before someone in the government realized that it hadn't been given official permission to be there. So, Vivot was forced to remove it. In 1994, it was replaced by a casting with inscriptions of various people across Canada (including Clarke) related to the importance of reading.

Now, that's Clarke's version of the story, but Vivot definitely said this in an Ottawa Citizen interview: "The building needed something and I don't feel that artists have the time to go through the bureaucratic approach. In the same amount of time that it would take to go through all this (bureaucracy) I can cast another sculpture and enhance another space."

That word "bureaucracy" is one that Clarke kept using when describing the state of the arts in Ottawa. I don't know much about bureaucracy. I've always had a difficult time figuring out how a dominating political climate can affect a city's artistic output. But the anecdote he used points towards the idea that the art that doesn't receive any kind of direct government support to place it into public consciousness is ignored entirely at a federal level. Artists are left to fend for themselves after the offices and galleries shut down for the day.

Now, perhaps that's not so bad for a community - finding a little wherewithal. But this leads to Clarke's second point. In the artistic sphere, Canada is markedly different from the United States; whereas the States operate as a republic that encourages the growth of populist art, Canada still operates under monarchical influence that encourages a gravity towards classical forms. That's why the country has no Bob Dylan.

Canadian literature resides solely in the academic realm. Clarke's concerns seem to lie in revisiting our own literature (mentioning specifically MacLennan and Raddall) rather than in continuing to develop old themes and structures belonging to European nations. He wishes that our literature could find its way out of the forests and into the cities. He sees Quebec as the only part of the country that's producing art with a unique voice because it holds so fast to French-Canadian identity.

Most significantly, I think, is his observation that Canada is hierarchical in nature and prone to memory loss, and this goes beyond the ideas he brought forward regarding African-Canadians in his class. Clarke is worried that people (as a populous, not as academics) are already starting to forget Mordecai Richler, to forget Irving Layton, all the way back to the relevance of Canada's earliest authors. The Canadian attitude has always been to wipe the slate clean and start over in a search for something new, yet they can never seem to cut this invisible umbilical cord from England. Until the populous decides to build from its own recent history, Canada will remain an idea in a university in search of practical fulfillment.

We talked for an hour and a half. I got him to sign a couple of books before I shook his hand and left. I'm not sure I agree with everything he said, but I know I could have sat there for a lot longer sharing ideas with him. I don't get to share as many ideas as I used to. That part of it felt good.

When I got home I watched Die Hard to officially kick off my Christmas season. Tomorrow I should start getting at that Opera paper (though I still have 4 whole days).

The chief design for my Touch of Evil final project is done, with the first two video clips in place. It actually looks pretty much like I'd envisioned. Tomorrow night I'll come up with some stuff to say about it for the presentation on Tuesday. You can literally, if you time it correctly, play both versions of the opening sequence at the same time, side by side with each other.

There is snow everywhere. I found out that my brother was ALSO in a car accident the other night when a truck hit the cab he was in. He's okay but kind of banged up. My family shouldn't leave the house for the rest of the winter. I'm looking forward to getting home for Christmas. It's just about time to break out some Christmas movies. It's a Wonderful Life, Scrooge, Die Hard...

God, I should be more careful about visiting old journals to double check on information. I always get pulled in and end up reading for an hour. I really used to be a pretty emotionally distraught guy, it would seem. I'm glad I've kept this blog up. Even at only a little over three months and almost 100 entries, it's been the diary I've been the most consistent at keeping, and the tone is certainly worlds different.

Looking back, it seems clear that I was deeply upset that I wasn't in love. I've had a bunch of relationships over the past ten years or so, but no matter how frequently I was with someone I would always eventually fall under the impression that I was going to be alone. This coincided with my creative side kicking at me, and all I wanted to do was write out the insecurities that kept me awake at night. I wrote more than anyone else I knew, and sometimes that made the isolation even harder to deal with. I wanted my words to stab at people's hearts and minds. I wanted them to break apart formalities and structures that I felt kept me at a distance from other people. What I perceived as bare honesty was my only weapon against being ignored and forgotten by everyone. And if my words didn't provoke a response, I felt that I was unsuccessful at being alive.

Dramatic, I know, but that's the way it was. I can be hot-headed and rash. Sometimes I think back to the period when Andrea and I started dating, and I mark it as one of the early stages in which I experienced great, positive changes in my personality. It was around the time I moved to Centretown. I had a group of friends I enjoyed hanging out with, going to the bars to drink and dance. I was able to live and not really worry too much about the future, because I knew I'd get around to it eventually. Towards the end it felt as if things were starting to fall apart. I'm hoping that when I get back, I'll be able to rediscover all of those things that made me fall for the city, in whatever new contexts they might present themselves.

More to say on that point, but I'm tired. Tomorrow the long-gestating Opera presentation finally sees delivery. I'm nervous, but I'll be glad to see it go.

Today I found out that I didn't get that government position in the policy leader program, whatever that is. After yesterday's obsession with after-school career plans it made me panic and do superficial searches for jobs, browse college programs and think about taking French courses. After awhile I calmed down a bit. My brain is so fucking active sometimes it makes me dizzy. I want to do everything all the time, and while that can be a good thing for creative output, it can also frighten me into not doing anything or doing things poorly.

One thing at a time. School is my priority now. I have, however, decided not to apply for a CCA grant for Ottawa Art Bazaar funding. I don't think my "organization" qualifies anyway, since calling it an artist collective would be a stretch and would require me to seek out detailed member profiles from at least three people (at most the "collective" consists of two - myself and Kat). We're just not grown up enough to count yet.

My goal right now is to get my Master's degree. After that, I'll move back to Ottawa and figure out what I'm getting myself into. I might not stay in the city depending on the kind of work I find or what I become involved in. I do know there are a few things I want to accomplish artistically there, along with people I want to work with and get to know better.

I spent the day in front of the TV. I did write a poem, however, and I think I'm coming to realize why I more or less stopped writing after I finished my undergraduate degree: I don't spend as much time with writers. People who write inspire me to write. The story I wrote last month was prompted only by requests from Cameron and Peter. I need that sort of direction to sustain my output. Otherwise, I grow bored of my ideas and think that they're too dull or meaningless to write out. I need someone there to DEMAND meaning from me, either directly or by virtue of their own work.

It's felt as though my head has been on backwards for the better part of today. I couldn't take care of passport issues because I forgot to have Jay sign my photo, so it kind of threw things out of whack. Tomorrow I have to give it another shot while also attending class and making a trip to the bookstore. At the very least, Jay offered me a ride to Peterborough for the weekend, so I don't have to think about bus schedules.

I discovered that I'm not going to be able to apply for one of the grants I had my eye on, but then I found another to take its place. It would be easier to ask for money if I were applying as an incorporated non-profit organization. But I know hardly anything about owning a business. I'd need a board of directors, a lawyer, an accountant. How would I put all of that together without a budget? I don't have that kind of money. And besides, even if I did get a non-profit organization off the ground, how would I be able to make a living at running it?

That seems to be the biggest and baddest thought running through my head these days: how I'm going to make a living once I'm through with school. I want a steady income at a higher-profile job. The money isn't even all that important to me - I just want to be in a position where I feel as though I'm doing something more meaningful than selling a product I don't personally care about. I don't want to keep waking up early every weekday morning with eight hours of a ridiculous bottom line over my head. That's more or less what I've been doing job-wise since I started working. I'm going to have a ton of education under my belt when I'm through at U of T. It has to qualify me for SOMETHING worthwhile. I shouldn't worry about it, I suppose. I've never had a lot of trouble finding work, and I haven't done any research into what's available yet. I used to freak out about a career all the time, always under the idea that it was a FUTURE problem. One step at a time.

Sometimes I get the feeling I'd be a tragic character in some author's work on ambition. That's what happens when you read as much Can Lit as I do. It wouldn't sell very well, as I probably haven't had enough success yet.

I fantasize about what life is going to be like when I move back to Ottawa. My own place, new furniture, my movies and books neatly displayed on a shelf, a filing cabinet for my personal papers, the ability to sit down and write and design without even the slightest thought that someone is around invading my headspace. Erecting a home office setup where I can tackle event organization more effectively. Just me and a cat (and Andrea once in awhile). An adult paradise.

I'm reading Thomas Mann's Death in Venice, which is a pretty intense story about uncomfortable subject matter, equating artistic drive with taboo obsessions (it's about a writer who goes on vacation and becomes transfixed by a ten year old boy). It's short, so I'll probably finish it before going to bed. One more step towards what will happen next.