Tag: Questions

The more you know

*First things first – the show on Friday was amazing, and I couldn’t be happier with how it went. The headliner was brilliant and very complimentary after I performed, encouraging me to continue comedy and he let me know he was impressed that I had only been doing stand-up for a short time. I was also invited to perform at a local venue by another performer, which is rad.

Right after the show, M and I drove to our friends’ house as we had to dog sit for them all weekend, and only now have arrived home after a bonkers weekend of animals and activity.

So in lieu of anything even remotely sane, I present to you dear readers: 

TWENTY QUESTIONS.

Did you know that a Boston terrier can snore louder than a steam powered locomotive?

Did you know that three nights of little to no sleep due to said snoring can leave a person positively knackered?

Did you know that sometimes a run in the pea-soup mist can do wonders to revive your spirits?

Did you know that doing the exact same run two days later can tire you like no other, which is strange, so you imagine that the second day’s mist was the residual spittle from a dementor’s kiss?

Did you know that stand-up comedy is pretty much crack, only healthier for you?

Did you know that all I want to do is continue to make people laugh for the rest of my life?

Did you know that mint-green dresses are in?

Did you know that I’ve just been told that it’s just “mint-green” that’s in?

Did you know that I purchased a mint-green dress, but because of it’s dodgy length I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to wear it sans-tights?

Did you know that the best yogurt is lemon yogurt?

Did you know that after two days away from my cat I can never figure out who is more excited to see whom?

Did you know that if I had to eat only one kind of food for the rest of my life it would be south-Asian hands down, no contest?

Did you know that my amazing husband bought be a new laptop for my birthday because my current computer sounds like there is a hot tub bubbling away inside its processor?

Did you know that he also bought me The One Hundred Year Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and I will be reading nothing else this week?

Did you know that I’m also reading the Lost City of Z WHICH IS ABSOLUTELY CRAZY?

Did you know that Victorian adventurers were probably the nuttiest (and sometimes most appallingly racist) people of all time?

Did you know that sometimes I drink chocolate milk by the litre?

Did you know that there is a tumblr called Les Mean Girls, which is a mash up for Mean Girls and Les Mis? And that it is amazing?

Did you know that I adore you all and that as I fall asleep as I type this I want to know random, crazy things about your life and loves?

Did you know – zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz…

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A very hairy situation

Let’s talk about body hair, shall we?

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So.

As a white, western woman, I feel as though it is socially (culturally?) expected of me that I remove most of my visible body hair, save for that atop my head.

I don’t know if it’s my newly minted old age* or what, but I just really haven’t had the time for these expectations of late.

*SARCASM PEOPLE, OKAY?

But seriously. I mean, I really, really hate shaving my legs. Almost as much as I hate shaving my armpits. I hate shaving my armpits THE MOST. Especially in the winter. I’ll go for months without taking a razor to my limbs because of my rampant MEH syndrome.*

*Also sarcasm, but sometimes it does feel this way.

I’m also completely lax about plucking my eyebrows, and I’m starting to believe that the only time I really get around to using my tweezers is when it becomes apparent that I’m only using my eyebrow pencil to differentiate my actual eyebrows from the ever-thickening unibrow taking over the width of my face.

And I don’t know how to feel about this.

On one hand, I don’t want to have to worry about carting around a fainting couch for all those I inadvertently scandalize should they catch a glimpse of my underarm hair, but then on the other hand, I do worry, because my initial reaction to seeing my own armpit hair is pretty darn unfavourable.

(Luckily though, I have yet to employ the use of the couch.)

But overall, this reaction of mine does bum me out.

The fact that I’ve internalized prescriptions of what’s acceptable and what is not when it comes to the completely natural growth of hair on MY OWN BODY makes me glum.

And it is this glumness, combined with my before mentioned  apathy, that makes me feel as though I am catapulted back and forth between NOT CARING and CARING about my body hair.

(I should look into whether or not that correlates with not summer, and not summer.)

Either way, right now, I have engaged NOT CARING mode.

Plus, at the base of it all, I am one of those people that just doesn’t care for sticking around any longer in the bathroom than I absolutely must.

I don’t want to faff around getting ready for LIFE, because LIFE is already completely bonkers and as such, I have enough things to do already.

And also, excuse my horn blowing, but I kind of think that I’m pretty darn snazzy looking as is, and I’m of the mind that whether or not I remove my leg hair everyday – during  the eighteen years of winter I am currently living through no less –  isn’t going to put a significant dent into my hotness quotient.

At least not in my eyes.

I mean, isn’t that what it’s all about anyways?

If you think you look good, who cares either way?

Unless you’re telling me that my leg hair is slowing down my running.

Then we might need to talk.

Life in the fast lane

Yesterday I worked a thirteen hour day. Coming home, I was completely knackered.

This is what I thought about as I rode the metro back to my home:

Such a fantastagorical tale had never been known.

Such was the way of these things.

Reading a bit like a history of popular culture in the early 20th century, and a tiny bit like a teen trash comedy, the combination was meant to amuse and articulate. Perhaps, most terrifyingly of all, it was the clearest representation of the inner workings and thought processes of two individuals.

One of them had come to a realization that he was often too pessimistic for his own good; he sometimes sought humor in disappointment as some kind of weak balm.

This would have to change. And it did.

Genuine excitement should not have to be manufactured. Riding on a jetski at 60 mph – for example – really has a positive effect on this. You cannot help but feel exhilaration, your mouth open and cheeks flapping with the force of the wind as you carve your way up an arm of BC’s mightiest river.

Twisting and turning you see how far you can go before the mechanical power under you can, shuddering, hurls you into the wild, flowing water. You cannot feign emotion on such a contraption, taking those risks.

SO – how to make life more like that? How to seek out, in everything, a sudden charge of passion and fury. What triggers those flags in my mind to suddenly send me rushing headlong emotionally at something or for something. I don’t need a cause to believe in so much as I need a credible dialogue, a wild formulation, a mysterious agenda.

Just think, the first people who ever read the Principia by Newton or Galileo’s letters must have thought they were reading some Clive Cusslerian escapade of fantastic proportions… and yet we now know it to be real.

But does that make Cussler any less exciting than Newton? Or just more poorly written?

(Definitely the latter.)

Also, should belief be THE defining reason for goodness?

I don’t think the best stories are always the truest ones. I like the ones that hover at the very edge between what-might-have-been, the possible, and the barely possible.

In this space we stop our minds from only formulating those images that we can understand and see, and make things that have never been made and will never be made, except inside the limits and demarcations of our own fancies, the thrum of our birthing brains.

Golden lads and girls all must, as chimney-sweepers, come to dust

Last night I watched Werner Herzog’s documentary Into the Abyss.

It is an amazing film, though disturbing. In fact, I went to bed feeling very strange.

Mr. Herzog’s films often leave me feeling profoundly unsettled – their subject matter, his style of direction, his narration, his score – all of these elements combine to create a film that rattles something very deep inside of me.

It’s like something has been jarred loose, and I cannot put it back in place.

And I’m nervous – because I’m not even sure from whence this piece of me came.

If you have ever seen any of his films, you will be familiar with one of his trademark styles – how he purposefully lets his shots linger, long past the point of comfort.

Instead of cutting away, the camera will remain focused on the person, or the scene, and as a viewer, it makes me squirm; I find myself willing for him to move on.

Indeed, the longer he stays with the shot, a feeling of perverse voyeurism begins, and takes root inside of me.

I feel as though I have no right to see these moments, these snapshots of humanity – raw, stripped, debased, terrifying, beautiful, maddening, heart breaking – scenes that in any other film might end up on the cutting room floor.

But it is also these moments that – no matter what my stage of discomfort – envelope me is a perverse majesty, luring me into the film.

In fact, they transform me – from disconnected bystander, to active participant.

No longer a passive observer, disconnected from the film, its subject, and its characters, I am forced to reconcile how  my judgments, my reactions, my questions fit into the movie’s narrative.

Where do I fit in this conversation?

Into the Abyss focuses on two inmates: one is on death-row awaiting execution in a Texas penitentiary; the other is serving a life sentence. One crime; two sentences.

The film explores, in a very subtle and yet incredibly powerful way, the question why people, and the state, kill.

Why do people die? Why do people live?

Who decides who dies and who lives? And why?

The film is structured is such a way that we absorb not just the heinous, senseless crime that these two men have committed (for which neither shows any remorse, nor do either of them admit guilt) but also the broader (and yet incredibly insular) world that contributed to the crimes.

A so-called “civilized” society that is unable to tame a chaotic nature driven to seed – one that is reflected in an endless cycle of broken homes, abuse, unemployment, casual street violence – a warped world where two eighteen year old boys would kill three people for a red camero.

Where two young men are convicted of the same crime, but only one is sentenced to death.

Both have killed, but only one is killed.

Although the question is never expressly asked in the film – indeed Herzog never reveals his overall thesis statement – you cannot stop asking yourself, why?

Again and again this question: why do some live, and others die?

Indeed, I find this query arresting.

And it keeps coming back, over, and over again – presented in different incarnations, addressed to different situations, but always the same: no matter what the reasoning behind it – blind rage, capital punishment, war, pre-meditation, revenge – how do you kill someone?

Why do you kill someone?

This system, the institutions we have devised to support life – call it the state, call it society, call it government, call it the law, call it civilization – these are not infallible, impartial machines.

They, like human beings, are susceptible to bias.

Sometimes they are as equally chaotic as the world they are meant to discipline and punish.

They are flawed.

And like human beings, they kill.

And by the end of the film, after conversations with lawmen, a priest, the convicted killers, bereaved family members, and a former prison guard, we can look at this unthinkable crime – these three murders, and their inherent meaningless – and at the bottom of it all, we do not see redemption.

We do not see hope or forgiveness, renewal or compassion, regret or acceptance.

We see only time and emptiness.

Chaos.

There is life.

And there is death.

Two powerful forces – forces that exist with or without us.

Who lives and who dies?

This is something we must never decide.

We are all Canucks. But why?

Well, the Canucks lost tonight.

We were all shouting Boo-urns.

And that’s all I want to say about that.

Seriously, I don’t know why I care so much about this stupid hockey club. I am sitting here asking myself how I could possibly be SO BLOODY CUT UP OVER THIS LOSS.

It actually makes less sense than a Ramada hotel advertisement (and those are obtuse in the extreme.)

One of the coolest books I read in grad school was “Imagined Communities” by Benedict Anderson. In his work, Anderson defines a nation as “an imagined political community – and imagined as both inherently limited and sovereign.”

They are limited in that nations have “finite, if elastic boundaries, beyond which lie other nations” andthey are sovereign since no dynastic monarchy can claim authority over them.

(Anderson’s work is focused predominantly on the rise of European democracies.)

A nation is an imagined community because “regardless of the actual inequality and exploitation that may prevail in each, the nation is always conceived as a deep, horizontal comradeship.”

The imagined community is different from an actual community because it is not (and cannot be) based on everyday face-to-face interaction between its members. Instead, members hold in their minds a mental image of their affinity, or their bond.

A great example of this is the sensation of “pride of nationhood” individuals share with other members of their nation when their “imagined community” participates in a larger event (such as the Olympic Games.)

Now, I won’t go into too much detail on the entirety of Anderson’s thesis (however, I will encourage you to read it without delay if your interest in the subject matter has been peaked).

But I will say that I am consistently drawn to him every time I find myself sitting here, questioning my (always baffling) relationship with ice hockey.

Do I watch because it’s been ingrained in me to watch? Do I watch because I love sport, and am, at the root of it all, a highly competitive person who gets off on watching excellence?

If I lived in Europe would I feel the same way about soccer? If I lived in the States, would I feel the same way about football?

Where is the dividing line between cultural (or national) assimilation, and personal autonomy? Or are these too, imagined constructs?

And why is it that I loathe so many elements of hockey (and so many other elements of professional sport)? Is this my individuality asserting itself over my imagined nationality? Or do I just hate goonery more than I love winning?

And why the heck am I assuming ownership over a victory that I played absolutely zero part in?

Yeesh.

When I’m not thinking about Anderson, I’m thinking about Rome and the coliseum and the gladiators. I think about complacency and apathy and what is enough to keep a society happy and unquestioning?

And what about our appetite for gore, and war, and physical supremacy? Is this somehow manifesting itself in these sporting events, because we are unsure of how to address this need in the every day political activities and actions our “nation”?

I mean, here in ye Old Great White North, we like to advertise ourselves as a “peace keeping” nation, but don’t even think about the fighting out of our national passtime!

A GOOD BENCH CLEARING BRAWL IS WHAT CANADA’S ALL ABOUT!

Unfortunately, I don’t have the answer to these conundrums.

And I probably never will.

The sky is beautiful. We're all still alive. We'll be okay.

All I know is that tonight the Canucks lost.

But Nadal won. So that brings a big old smile to my face.

Until of course, I start to think, would I feel this way if Djokovic was a Canadian?

Or if I was a Serb?