Leaving is my butter-cream

I am at work for the last time. "Lasts" are so strange. I felt like hugging the cafeteria employees and expressing my sincere gratitude for their cheerful smiles of recognition that came with "Coffee? $1.88" each morning. Now they'll be left wondering what happened to the unusually tall blonde girl who always asked for soya milk...

Last night I went to the "Light and Sound Show" on Parliament Hill. They project images and lights onto the Parliament buildings, accompanied by a bilingual soundtrack consisting of quotes by famous Canadians and music of questionable ethnic origin. This bizarre phenomenon occurs twice an evening. Naturally, we stayed for both shows, standing to sing and applaud at the end of each - using geography, technological achievements, and multicultural children to evoke sentiments of national pride works every time. It was quite possibly the highlight of my summer. Not only do our government buildings serve as the backdrop for an evening tourist attraction, they are also housed on the same land as a cat sanctuary.

I have not started packing, which isn't surprising. It won't take long to put my fifteen scarves, three piles of cardigans, four hippos and a string of Christmas lights into the Civic (I hope). Getting ready to leave places makes me feel scattered - like rainbow-sprinkles in a bowl jumping around with static electricity. Finally leaving is like mashing a frosted cupcake into the bowl - the sprinkles get stuck in the icing, a few fall off or stick to your lip, but for the most part the butter-cream contains the chaos. Final departure is my butter-cream (I am going to start using cupcake analogies more often).

Here is the beginning of my to do list:
- Burn 20+ hours of music onto CDs in themed playlists including "Why the '90s were awesome," "Hairy men who wear plaid," and "Boy bands were a phenomenon that actually existed...huh."
- Take photographs of the asbestos-filled-oddly-scented-labrynth-safety-hazard that is Apartment 11.
- Monkey around on the rusty fire escapes one last time.
- Place all belongings into 2 large backpacks.
- Place enough toques for 4 days into smaller backpack. Include bottled water, cortisone cream, and Canadian whiskey (for emergencies - Canada is cold).
- Finish the blueberry crisp in the freezer (after defrosting without an oven or a microwave...).
- Wade into the Ottawa River to film roommate spinning fire-fans.
- Purchase peanut butter and apples for the road.
- Sing and dance to the road-trip gods for no rain and lots of moose.

Final thoughts:
- You can camp on Crown land for up to 21 days for FREE if you are a Canadian citizen.
- We're driving as far North as you can drive...pushing our Southern-Canadian limits.
- Notre pays est beau, and the Pacific Ocean is calling.

We're "tweeting" our updates, so you can stay abreast of our progress and moose sightings:
http://twitter.com/perogie_pirates

Ottawa, thank you, until later...in Ojibway:
Odawa, migwetch, baampii.

Pillow-Screaming and Google: My Anti-Drug

Working on Aboriginal children’s rights has been incredible. I have learned some amazing things – for example, almost everything about Iroquois child care practice before colonization – and will work on sharing them when I am not working under a terrifying deadline (ie. after August 5th).

However, in addition to learning amazingly good/inspirational/eye-opening things, I have also reached new levels of anger and bitterness towards colonialism and Western bureaucracy. After a healthy dose of pillow-screaming following “an assessment of the implementation of the audit's recommendations that offers further recommendations as to how better implement the previous recommendations not being fully implemented,” I indulged my inner cynic on Google and found the following quote:

1492. As children we were taught to memorize this year with pride and joy as the year people began living full and imaginative lives on the continent of North America. Actually, people had been living full and imaginative lives on the continent of North America for hundreds of years before that. 1492 was simply the year sea pirates began to rob, cheat, and kill them.

Kurt Vonnegut, thank you for articulating what my Half-Full-Eternal-Optimist-Yes-We-Can Self could not.

Back to cold coffee and deep breathing. 7.5 hours to the deadline.

Adulthood vs. Studentism

I have to write two papers this weekend. I am having school-year flashbacks – sitting on my bed amidst a sea of papers, listening to drunken laughter from my neighbour’s balcony, drinking coffee reminiscent of nail polish remover at 9pm. However, these papers will not be graded. I will not be rewarded with a number between 0 and 100 to validate my late night efforts. Far more terrifying, my writing is expected to serve some functional purpose for people outside of academia – people in the “real world.”

I am using knowledge and skills acquired during my undergraduate education in a “real world” setting. This implies that I possess “transferable skills.”

The sheer magnitude of this realization has contributed to an amazing tension headache that started in my forehead and has since filled my skull and spilled into my neck and shoulders.

Using my “folk knowledge” of headaches, I ventured into my closet-sized kitchen to make tea. The chord of the electric kettle melted during an impromptu kitchen fire last week, so I filled a pot of water and switched on the stove. The electric stove elements erupted in blue sparks, accompanied by loud clicking noises. While these barriers to tea drinking would normally have seemed like a cruel joke after a stressful week, after leaping to switch off the stove, I high-fived myself: I may have transferable skills with “real world” applications, but my entire apartment is a safety hazard, there are socks drying on my bedside lamp, and I ate peanut butter with a spoon for dinner. Nice try, adulthood. Studentism, I embrace you – we’re still in this together!

Monday

“Deliver me from Swedish furniture.
Deliver me from clever art...
...May I never be complete.
May I never be content.
May I never be perfect.”
~ Chuck Palahniuk

Give me a quiet room with books, without photocopiers, where people only make sounds when turning pages or offering each other hot beverages once an hour.

There will be no high-pitched chattering. There will be no YouTube.

Today is “Cynical Librarian Appreciation Day.”

Breathing/Blinking

I started this at first with a sweeping statement about "faith in humanity," but realized that "humanity" is a really big thing, and that for the most part, I do indeed have faith in "it." So rather than saying that on some days I have little faith in humanity, I will be more accurate and say that on some days, I am surprised by the human ability to experience extreme sadness and still walk upright. When walking upright doesn't go so well, it's the little things (like breathing and/or blinking) that count. Over the past few weeks, I have been brought to my knees by several individuals and their abilities to keep on breathing and blinking when faced with extreme adversity. Going into details would be disrespectful, or at least voyeuristic...so I'll stay mysterious and vague.

I have also been brought to my knees because:
- the walking upright thing was a little much and breathing/blinking seemed more feasible from a lower altitude;
- physical acknowledgement of spiritual gratitude seemed...you know...appropriate;
- I was laughing really, really hard;
- loose change for laundry tends to hang out under my bed.

The lesson I'm taking from this is that joy/sorrow/fear/hope all take it in turns to mess with you, and just when you're beginning to feel profound and emotive (ie. angsty), the absence of clean underwear reminds you that life goes on.

I'll leave you with a quote:

"...A person who is headstrong enough to open their eyes and their heart to the full depth and weight of the world is inviting in everything out there - both evil and good, both dark and light, and the sheer bravery of that openness enables them to gain profound insight into the human condition. It also f*cks them up. It may even make them more prone to stick their head in an oven than to engage in self-promotional chitchat on Jay Leno."
~ Patricia Pearson