The Big Sigh.

Before I became the head of a university club, I didn't know that you could feel like something is over before it's begun. And not in that bad "It's failed so we should just not try" way, but in that "I am stressed and there's a million things to plan and I have to flee around planning them and now the day is actually here and everything's planned and I can relax ahhh...".

There are beds for everyone. We have money in the account so we can pay for this crazy adventure. There are enough cars (and more) to transport everyone. The speaker is booked, the food is boughten (well, most of it) and the bags are packed. I'm ready. The fact that I'm going to spend the weekend cooking for 20 people doesn't bother or stress me -- in fact, I'm looking forward to it. I don't need to plan or anything -- just put potatoes in oven(or spaghetti on stove, or whatever) and cook. Then serve.

Ahh...It begins. And trust me, when beginnning means the end of planning, it's worth a sigh.

Familia

Welcome, Daniel "Furious" Lee. It's a hell of a world (and if you don't mind me saying, you've got some crazy parents to deal with), but as long as you have your aunt around to teach you the finer points of making bacon onigiri and how to sing along to pop of the eurotrash variety, you should be fine.

Meanwhile, my family is having a bit of a tiff. I know! I'm shocked my own self. Basically, what's happened is that my Aunt Carol has arranged for my great-aunt Cynthia and the Ohio grandparents to come up to Toronto for Thanksgiving Monday for a big ol' shindig at her house. She wanted everyone to be there (ie. her whole immediate family, and my whole immediate family).

Meanwhile, Geoff has just spent lots of money moving himself out to Halifax and is on a shoestring budget as his girlfriend Meaghan (I should just say partner -- it's more appropriate) tries to find a job for a month or two before going off to volunteer in Costa Rica for two and a half months. Not surprisingly, he said he didn't really want to (and definately couldn't afford to) fly all the way back to Toronto for three days. Instead he offered to call Carol's house on the Monday and have a nice chat with all parties at that point. Good solution.

Except that Carol had already told the venerables that Geoff was coming, and when she found out that he wasn't, laid a huge guilt trip on Mum to the tune of "This could be the last time we get a chance to all be together!" Of course, there's nothing one can say to the 'last chance' argument without sounding like a totally heartless human being, so mum had to (reluctantly) pass on the guilt trip, telling Geoff that he had to fly out, and that she'd pay for his airfare.

The gist of it is, Carol backed both Mum and Geoff into a corner, and now neither of them are happy about it. It's not as if Geoff will have a bad time at Thanksgiving -- it's just that Carol didn't talk to him about it. Instead she elected to go through Mum and not acknowledge that Geoff is now a grown man who has his own priorities and is capable of making his own decisions. Blarg.

Yes, I know, it's not exactly trench warfare or anything, but considering my family generally gets along fine, this is kind of a big deal. I'm mad at Carol too, since she seems to be totally disregarding what Geoff wants. Personally, I think she's stuck in the past -- wanting our family and hers to get together for Thanksgivings again like we used to. But the reality is that things change, and you can't force everyone back into the way things were. However, Geoff and I talked for an hour or so tonight, and we both felt better having gotten the chance to rant at each other. I really do like my brother, and I like the adult relationship we've developed.

...

Although he really does need to learn how to speak up on the phone -- he's so hard to hear!

In case you're wondering, school and qcf continue on much as they ever were: busy, kind of stressful, and exhilarating. I had the most wonderful barn-burning religious discussion last night with some of Joel's relatives. I had meant to meet them at the Brew Pub to say 'hi' at 9:30 and leave by 10pm. I ended up not coming home until 1. It's so nice to talk about these things with people who aren't Christian --it keeps me from being sucked into the Christian lifestyle/ghetto, and reassures me that I am not, in fact, becoming intolerant or losing touch with 'real people'. It's reassuring to know that I can actually integrate my faith with the world around me in a meaningful way which doesn't insult or frighten others. It was immensely gratifying to see Geoff (not my Geoff, Joel's half-uncle Geoff), Danielle, and Crazy Uncle Jonathon appreciate my efforts at qcf and come to the conclusion that I was not the fundamentalist bigot that they (half) assumed I was at the beginning of our conversation.

Three families: a birth, a rift, and a discussion. The bonds we forge between those people we didn't choose to have around us are always interesting, if not always peaceful.

Euphemisms about Scatological Crap.

My first week of classes, done. As usual, I have an 8:30 class Friday morning, which was harder than usual to get up for this morning since I stayed up too late talking with the housemates about hair removal systems, soup, and the cathartic effects of swearing. I've intelligently participated in a discussion about Native American Folk Tales and taken five pages of notes, and I still don't think I'm technically awake.

The above discussion (had, not surprisingly, in my American Lit. class) was a little frustrating to me, because everyone seemed so embarrassed and puritanical about it. Y'see, we were supposed to read Christopher Columbus and some Native American trickster tales in order to learn (once again) that the native population of this land was a large, diverse, and strongly oral culture which the Europeans raped, pillaged and looted, all while maintaining that they were 'bringing the heathens into the saving light of Christendom'. Honestly, sometimes I don't even know how I, as a white Christian of European heritage, sleep at night.

Anyways, we read some excerpts from the "Winnebago Trickster Cycle" (BTW, does anyone else find it repulsive that North Americans managed to eradicate an entire tribe and so entirely commercialize them that now we hear 'Winnebago' and we think of a large and inefficient camper van driven by old men in Bermuda shorts?) which, in a nutshell, dealt with 'Trickster' disguising himself as a women by using an elk's kidneys and liver to make breasts and a vagina, then, after he gets fround out, eating a bulb on a bush that sings "He who eats me will defecate" and then farting and shitting so hard he has to swim up out of it.

Pretty graphic, eh? As my professor delicately put it, these were highly 'scatalogical and taboo-oriented tales'.

Now, we come to the point. Really.

The tales weren't nearly as funny, or as interesting, as they could have been, because they were very obviously encrusted over with european puritanical 'editing'. These tales had to be translated from their native languages, obviously, a process which was done through several different layers of interpreters in the 1910's. What this means is that these tales, which should be talking about shit and sex and farting, instead very primly refer to 'excrement' and 'intercourse' and 'passing wind'.

To use an expression of my own: what a load of shit! The tales are told so literally that any possible knowledge about how these tales would have been enjoyed by the pre-adolescent native children they would have been told to becomes purely speculative. Half the point of these stories is that they are dirty, that they do say words that one wouldn't normally say. This goes against our sense of what is socially acceptable, and so we laugh because our expectation is different from the reality. That's humour, folks!

But this prim and proper white man who sat in his double breasted suit at his mahogany desk, carefully inscribing these words in his finest penmanship, clearly missed that point. By turning 'shit' into 'excrement' he sanitizes the story, makes it clean and scientific. Which basically means that he's killed the whole story. The story is all about what isn't acceptable, what isn't normal -- yet somehow this stupid anthropologist rendered it in acceptable language.

A little excerpt, to show you what's making me so mad:

"Trickster now took an elk's liver and made a vulva from it. Then he took some elk's kidneys and made breasts from them. Finally he put on a woman's dress. In this dress his friends enclosed him very firmly. The dresses he was using were those that the woman who had taken him for a raccoon had given him. Now he stood there transformed into a very pretty woman indeed. Then he let the fox have intercourse with him and make him pregnant, then the jaybird and, finally, the nit. After that he proceeded towards the village."

Leaving aside all the notions of what makes a woman a woman (vagina, breasts, dress -- a whole other topic I could rant for days on) do you see what I mean? How all emotion, all feeling, all humour, all humanity, has been leeched out of this story by the prim and proper words and diction? It's like even in 1912, when the natives were all but dead anyways, and a few anthropologists were racing to collect some few fragments of their culture which had been deemed worthy of study, even then, these white men still couldn't bring themselves to accept native culture fully. They still had to translate it, force it into an acceptable mold, strangle it with Victorian notions of propriety and modesty. It sickens me.

Another quotation:

"Now [Trickster] began to break wind again and again. "So this is why the bulb spoke as it did, I suppose." Once more he broke wind. This time it was very loud, and his rectum began to smart. "Well, surely it is a great thing!" Then he broke wind again, this time with so much force, that he was propelled forward."

The story goes on escalating until Trickster is farting so hard that, even when he gets a whole village to pile on top of him, the force of the explosion still sends everything flying. This is funny! Just say the word 'poop' to any small child, and their ensuing hour of hilarity will convince you that if this native story was told properly, it would enthrall and amuse little children for months, possibly even years.

But thanks to the (pardon the pun) tight asses who translated this, now all we have is a sanitized, academic shell of what was once a story.

[NB -- I swear a lot in this post. Just to let you know, this isn't my normal way of being. I don't swear casually. But, for this post, I partly needed to do it to explain the native tale to you, and partly to express my own frustration and inherited guilt over what the Europeans did to the natives. It feels weird apologizing for swearing in a post where I get mad at someone else for not using explicit language enough, but that's the paradox of being me, I guess.]

Apologies.

My apologies to one and all (probably only one, actually) who read these missives of mine. I had written a second, more amusing and less angst-ridden post yesterday. While I did press the happy "Publish this Post" button, the poor note now appears to be floating around on the information backroads somewhere ("I'm in a place where I don't know where I am!"), since it certainly isn't on my blog. We will now observe a moment of silence for poor 'Skule'...

wait a minute... aha! 'Skule' is not, in fact, lost. It was just posted (for some bizarre reason, probably the fault of someone's helper monkey) before the long ranty post, not after as I intended it to be. That's weird.

Now I don't have anything to talk about -- and I was going to write 'Skule' such a lovely eulogy, too!


So that's all, I guess.


Bye.

How to Lose Weight, Become an Adult, and Flee from Responsibility, All In One Easy Week!

Y'know, it's a funny thing, growing up. Every time you think you're done, you think you have achieved that nebulous state of adulthood, every time you say to yourself "Aha! Now I am a responsible, cool, collected, and 'with it' older person who can handle anything" -- you're not. There's always something else waiting, lurking around the corner, just out of sight. You just think you've reached adulthood because you haven't experienced it yet.

It's like the syndrome of school, which gets progressively harder each year, with more to do and more to fit in. Each year, we all complain about how 'this is the most stress I've ever had -- last year seemed stressful at the time, but that was nothing compared to what I've got to do now." And the reality is, we're right -- because stress, and growing up, are all about experience vs. naivete. As Grade Fours, we complain about how stressful it is to have to write a two-page story with three pictures in it, because we haven't yet been to Grade Five where we have to write a five page story with No Pictures. Incrementally we creep towards bigger and harder things, until we, one day, find our limits.

But not yet. At least, not for me.

Last week, my first proper week as QCF President (as far as I'm concerned) was certainly stressful. There were rooms to be booked, people to talk to, meetings to have, difficult issues to muddle through. I suddenly find myself leading a university group of Christians, when I'm still really not all that sure about my own faith, and how much I actually know/beleive. No one died, and no one yelled at anyone else, but I flee from conflict of any sort (real or soon-to-be-real) and it seems that Christian groups are not known for being able to avoid big scary conflicts very well. Imagine that.

But it was fine. Really. Now that I think back, I don't know what I worried about. The events ran well, I didn't feel as if I had to be there for all of them, my executive met and worked together well, and the events I led all seemed to be a success. So why is my overwhelming memory of last week one of fear? Last week, my stomach so roiled in knots that I ate very little [which, by the way, is a great way to lose weight, in case your wondering]. Why was it so stressful?

Maybe I'm just not a very strong person. Maybe if there was ever real conflict inmy life I'd simple crumple to the ground like a rag doll, crushed under the weight of my own inhibitions and desires to have everyone like me.

Or maybe I'd handle it. I just don't know.

However, I do see progress in myself. The very fact that I didn't attend all the events speaks well of my growing ability to delegate and to let other people do the work. I didn't feel guilty about giving other people work I could have done myself (this doesn't sound like a big deal, but for a recovering Guilt Junkie like me it's huge). My talk on Saturday night was great fun (I likes being the centre of attention!), and, surprisingly, my spirits weren't dampened by the fact that few people showed up to hear it. And I can honestly think about the fact that I am totally uncertain of what this year will bring (Will we have conflict? Will people come out to our events? Will we have enough money? Do I have the faith and the ability to get us through this?) without feeling terrible. It's a little exhilarating, actually, to say to myself "I don't know what's going to happen, but I'll be there, and I'll deal with it. And I have a wonderful group of people around me to help me deal with it. So bring it on."

This is the point where I would usually say "Aha! This clearly means that I am now, fully and completely, an adult willing to face my fears and put others ahead of myself. I am no longer a child in any respect." But I've now gone through that thought too many times; I've realized that actually there is not dividing line between child and adult, between Silly Bento and Big Kid Bento and Adult Bento. I thought I'd reached it when I went to university. I thought I'd reached it when I moved out into my first apartment. I thought I'd reached it when my parents moved and I had to pack up my childhood room. And now I think I've reached it because I've taken on a position of power among my peers in a difficult time.

But really, all I've done is reached another milestone. There'll be more. Lots more.

Skule.

Now that I've had my little semi-philosophical rant (thanks, Biku, this blog really is useful - both cathartic and fun) I'll mention a few things about the first day of school. Just popped in on the first Shakespeare class (not my section though, which is why I felt safe to pop back out again) to find out that I have to buy all the textbooks of +3 expensiveness. I mean, it's not as bad as Wendy and her $100 economics textbooks, but still. I brough a two-foot wide section of my father's books back with me to Kingston just for this Shakespeare course, only to find I can't use any of them. Blarg.

That aside, it's a beautiful day, my brain is tingling in anticipation of all the reading I need to do ("The Victorians were notorious for writing very long, serial novels ..." just what I don't want to hear first thing Monday morning in my Victorian Lit seminar course.) and my housemates and I actually had our first meal together last night. Potato Wedges, Macaroni&Tuna salad, and normal salad. Simple to me, but they were v. v. grateful, which makes any cook happy.

I like skule. I keep thinking I'll wake up one day and find I'm like everyone else around me, dreading having to do work and not liking either my profs or my classes, but it hasn't happened yet. And I'm glad. In my little 'sunshine, lollipops, and rainbows' world, it only makes sense that I should like and enjoy that which I have to do whether I like it or not. I need to cook; I like cooking. I need to go to classes; I like classes.

[just as a personal note to Biku ... I always remember that misheard Due South quote which led to you leaving me a fone message on the first day when I was at Huron "Remember, we both come from the ancient Norsemen - and you 'can't keep norsemen in a cage'." Heehee.]

Now I'm off to buy lots of paper and ink products, and sit in a ginourmous first year Canadian History course.

Let this be a record.

I command all you who read this to remind me next time I decide to move house of this one simple fact: Moving is Hell.

Every time I go into a move I feel happy and joyful, as if moving all my wordly possessions (or in this case, all my parents worldly possessions) will be some sort of romp in the park, possibly involving puppies. But it is not. It is tiring, stressful, frustrating, and generally No Fun.

case in point: my parents hired movers who should have arrived at our house at 8am. Their truck broke down on the highway, so they called at 7:45 to say they wouldn't be there until 11. They didn't arrive until 2.

Also, since my parents are moving house with very little of my possessions, I can't unpack anything because my parents should decide where things go. And since the movers are doing all the hauling, I have nothing to do except sit and fret and pace. I HATE having nothing to do. I like being useful, and in this move (right now, at least) I am totally useless. I fled to Joel's house, but the irony is that I can't even relax here. I'll need to go back home soon, on the off chance that someone needs me. Normally during moves I destress by lifting heavy things, but today all I did was clean a fridge, two bathrooms, and rip poor innocent plants out of my back garden.

hear ye, hear ye! Moving = bad.