In Defense of Late Bloomers

Typography by Sherry Qian

Originally published in Show & Tell Zine

I’ve always been a bit of a late bloomer. I was the flat-chested, stick-thin thirteen year old hoping beyond hope that I’d wake up one morning with boobs; the one who watched from the sidelines as all my friends started dating, the one who didn’t start wearing makeup until the tenth grade, the one who saw a concert for the first time last summer. I have this vivid memory of being about eleven or twelve and crying to my mom that I didn’t have a “best friend” like all the girls in movies did -- someone whose house I’d go over to all the time, or who would call me after school to gossip and chat about our lives. She told me it was just because of the school I was at, that most of my friends lived far away, that their parents were strict about when they could go out. She said that it would be better in High School.

Whether or not that particular conversation had much of an impact on me, I’ve heard the same thing expressed in various ways across various mediums for pretty much my entire life. High School. The big one. “The best four years of your life”. Yes, of course the universe doesn’t start and end with high school. There’s a whole world out there, and the idea that the four years you spend trying to get your shit together stuck in a building with a bunch of other sweaty, stressed-out, frightened teenagers will be the peak of an 80+ year lifespan is more than a little ridiculous. But if all we ever hear is “don’t worry, it’ll be better when you’re older” -- well, that’s the same advice I got when I was twelve: just wait. Just wait. Just wait. It’ll be better in high school, it’ll be better in university, it’ll be better once you graduate, it’ll be better when you’re dead. At what point is it too late?

I’m seventeen -- why haven’t I had my first kiss yet? Why haven’t I gotten drunk, or thrown a house party, or gone on a date, or a road trip, or skipped school, or snuck out of the house at night, or gone on any of the amazing adventures with a band of quirky misfits my 12-year-old self was sure I’d be having? When I was younger all I wanted to do was grow up. Now, with one year left of high school and less than three years left of being a teenager, I feel like I’m running out of time. 

In my darker, self-pitying moments I attribute all of this to some personal fault of mine. Maybe I’m ugly or annoying and everybody hates me, or I’m too scared to take risks and do things that I could get in trouble for. Maybe I’m forever doomed to go through life without ever really doing anything because I’m a Boring Person. I feel like I’m missing out on some integral part of The Teen Experience™ that movies and books and TV shows have been selling me for so long, and as long as my life continues to be unexceptional, I’m plagued by the idea that I must be wasting it. 

The problem with this type of thinking, however, is that it’s all wrapped up in expectation. If you’ve spent your whole life expecting that certain very specific things are going to happen to you at very specific times, it’s hardly surprising that you feel like a failure when they don’t. High school comes with a set of expectations, and so does University, and adulthood, and just about everything you’ll ever do -- and as long as I keep focusing on the things I haven’t done yet, I’ll forget about the things that I have. I may not have gone on a date yet, or been to a real “party”, but I have gone to New York, and ridden a horse, and seen Shakespeare in the park, and read a 1079 page novel, and I have absolutely no idea where life will take me next.

So when I worry about why I haven’t had my first kiss yet, or when I worry about whether or not I should take a gap year after high school, or when I worry that I’ll be missing out on something if I go to theatre school instead of university, or when I worry that if I do go to university it’ll be too late to go to theatre school afterwards, it’s because I expect that things always and only happen in one specific way. I was lucky enough to be accepted to a two-week theatre training program at the beginning of this summer, and the actress I was paired with there as my “artist-mentor” gave a me a really good piece of advice. She said that there’s no A + B = C pathway for being an actor. There’s no set of rules or any guarantee that if you do this or that thing, you’ll end up with one specific outcome. Anything you learn can be useful, whether it’s English lit or particle physics, because it’s all about figuring out who you are and what you want -- and this can apply to anything. Maybe it’s a cheesy notion, but that doesn’t stop it from being true. There’s no such thing as Too Late. 

I suppose I could have had any of the stereotypical teen experiences I expected I would have in high school if I had forced them, but it probably would have felt worse to do things just for the sake of crossing them off of some kind of cosmic to-do list than to wait until things happened on their own. Sure, you shouldn’t just sit back and wait for things to happen to you, and yes it’s more than possible to be lazy, or mess up, or make the “wrong” choice, but dwelling on it isn’t going to change anything. 

In the end, whatever happens happens. There aren’t any rules, there aren’t any guarantees, and I’m not going to force anything just for the sake of having done so. I don’t know what happens next any more than you do, but I can grit my teeth, make choices I believe in, and try my best to figure it out as I go along. 

That’s all any of us can do, really. 

Infinite Jest Liveblog Part 5: The End?

credit to: Cody Hoyt

So... I finished it. I knew beforehand that the ending was abrupt, but I wasn't expecting that. Not that I thought it was a bad ending, though, don't get me wrong. To be honest I think it was the best (and quite possibly only) way it could have ended. I still threw it down and yelled "what the fUCK?" several times upon getting to that last sentence, but I'm glad it ended how it did.

I could write about the whole "what the heck happened" thing, but there are a lot of people online who have done a much better job of that than I ever could, so I'll leave that part to them (N.B. of course these are still their interpretations, and not all of these people agree with each other on what happened, but for me at least it was nice to read up on what other people thought so I could compare it with my own ideas and reach some kind of conclusion on it for myself)

http://dfan.org/jest.txt

http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/ijend

https://tradepaperbacks.wordpress.com/wordswordsword (I've been reading along with this liveblog, and have found it tremendously useful, so I definitely suggest it to anyone who's planning on starting this book).

And as for interpretations on the book itself, I highly recommend this essay on it - a little long, but totally worth it and really really brilliant: http://www.thehowlingfantods.com/thesisb.htm

Now, my own thoughts... I have a lot but I'll try to keep them brief.

Throughout the whole book I kept thinking of the Entertainment as something fatally pleasurable. As described by Steeply, Marathe, and many other characters, you keep watching it over and over because it's the greatest, most wonderful feeling you have ever experienced and you never want it to end. This, however, isn't ever actually stated as being true. Yes, people watch it over and over again but because nobody sees it and lives to tell the tale, we don't actually know what exactly it is that keeps people watching. All we know of the Entertainment comes from JOI and Joelle, and Joelle's description of it is that describing it as fatally pleasurable was meant as a joke, like her saying that she wears her veil because she's fatally beautiful, but in actual fact she's horrifically disfigured. So what if the trap isn't pleasure, but understanding? Entertainment doesn't necessarily have to be pleasurable, it just has to be entertaining - and there's something inescapably lonely about Entertainment for its own sake. Like the novel Infinite Jest, maybe the film Infinite Jest doesn't give you closure - that somehow through the death-as-mother scenario (in Gately's dream Joelle's final word to him after he wants desperately for her to kill him is "wait") you are fatally compelled to go back to the beginning and try to understand it, and each time you do it makes a little bit more sense, you take it apart a little more and things start to come together but that only leads to more and more questions until you're trapped in an endless cycle of questioning. You cannot escape unless you get rid of your own innate need to understand - literal "analysis paralysis". Remind you of anything?

W/r/t the ending, I think the thing is that finding out what happens next isn't the point. You're plopped down into this novel's universe for a while, you experience it, and then you're pulled right back out again. To use a quote from Gately, "it occurred to him if he died everybody would still exist and go home and eat and X their wife and go to sleep". JOI's passages about figurants and his attempts to not have them in his own films also seemed to me to reflect the novel itself. We get Hal, we get Gately, but we also get Erdedy and Wardine and Poor Tony and Barry Loach. Every single character is equally im- and unimportant.

The length of the novel, the complexity of it, seemed to me to not be some kind of turn-off or a sign that DFW was trying to be smarter than everyone else in the room, but in fact the opposite. Reading this book is kind of like going through your own little 12-step program, one of the largest results of which is learning to get out of 'analysis-paralysis'. Understanding every tiny minute detail, getting all of the math and the politics and the tennis and the long involved drug terminology -- that's not the point. The point is that you don't have to 'get' everything, you don't have to break everything down and have a hold on it all. It felt like a kind of trap for "intellectuals", we who are so used to always being right, always having the answers for everything. We, like Hal "obsessed with the fear the [he] was somehow going to flunk grief-therapy", are obsessed with getting this book "right". "Here was a top-rank authority figure and I was failing to supply what he wanted ... I'd never failed to deliver the goods before".

When you really think about it, most of what this book attempts to do is get across simple, single-entendre principles. Like the cliches of Boston AA that sound simple and banal but are incredibly difficult to actually implement: cliches about love, and family, and happiness, and what success actually means. By placing them in a long and complex novel, we are almost tricked into repeating these cliches for ourselves -- and as with a 12-step program, once you repeat a cliche long enough you start to believe in it.

“The next real literary “rebels” in this country might well emerge as some weird bunch of anti-rebels, born oglers who dare somehow to back away from ironic watching, who have the childish gall actually to endorse and instantiate single-entendre principles. Who treat of plain old untrendy human troubles and emotions in U.S. life with reverence and conviction. Who eschew self-consciousness and hip fatigue. These anti-rebels would be outdated, of course, before they even started. Dead on the page. Too sincere. Clearly repressed. Backward, quaint, naive, anachronistic. Maybe that’ll be the point. Maybe that’s why they’ll be the next real rebels. Real rebels, as far as I can see, risk disapproval. The old postmodern insurgents risked the gasp and squeal: shock, disgust, outrage, censorship, accusations of socialism, anarchism, nihilism. Today’s risks are different. The new rebels might be artists willing to risk the yawn, the rolled eyes, the cool smile, the nudged ribs, the parody of gifted ironists, the “Oh how banal.” To risk accusations of sentimentality, melodrama. Of overcredulity. Of softness. Of willingness to be suckered by a world of lurkers and starers who fear gaze and ridicule above imprisonment without law. Who knows. ” 

- "E Unibus Pluram: Television and U.S. Fiction"

Infinite Jest Liveblog Part 4: Prince Hal

Just a bit over 100 pages from the end of Infinite Jest, I'm in a kind of emotional tug of war between wanting to read it constantly, and knowing that if I do it will very shortly be over.

Instead of a full-on point form recap this time (because I think that was starting to get excessive), I'll just do a quick note on where I am right now. 

There have been a ton of Hamlet references throughout the book so far, but I think this point is where it's really starting to all line up - or at least the scene I just read seems to be quite similar to the opening scene of Hamlet. You've got the ghost of Himself, who is possibly the reason for everything being moved around at Enfield (and Ortho's bed), Ortho stuck to the window kind of "standing watch" over the grounds, Hal's facial expressions doing weird things (is he mad? is he pretending? is everyone else mad or pretending? who do you trust? though this be madness, yet is there method in't?) ... I still don't know what's going on but I'm loving every second of it.

Vegetarian-ing?

So, I've recently gone vegetarian - I've had various attempts at it over the past year or so but at 17 I'm not out of high school yet and still living with my parents, which means a lot of the time I end up eating what my family eats (as much as I want to go vegetarian, I feel bad about not eating the dinners my mum makes because then the food will go to waste, and I hate wasting food). However, I've been warming them to the idea of it and have been able to work around some things so that I've only really eaten meat three or four times this summer so far -- and now, as a kind of incentive to keep myself on top of this, and to get better at coming up with meal ideas that don't involve meat I'm going to be recording it all on this blog! So now, since I just started this and it's the end of the day, you just get to see my dinner - I'll hopefully do full-day recaps from now on (or maybe an end-of-the-week roundup or something).

And yes, it's probably weird that I eat dinner at 5:30, but I work from 6-10/11ish most nights so I have to eat something beforehand.

Dinner: Big Salad
Because salads are AMAZING

Ingredients:

- Lettuce

- Tomato tofu

- Raspberries

- Bocconcini balls

- Cherry tomatoes

- Salad dressing

I only had two of these left but they're really good on salads, or if you cut them up and melt them in a sandwich, yessss

Raspberries <3

Honest to god this is the best tofu EVER, I eat it all the time it's brilliant

Because I was too lazy to make my own vinaigrette and this stuff is damn good

And voila, the finished product. Eating salad always makes me feel like I'm being super healthy and good to myself, but let's be real I just love salad (if you do the exact same thing but take out the tofu, it's good as an addition to any other meal - I like having dinner salads though because it's better to not have a huge dinner - big breakfasts and lunches are the bomb

The Decemberists

My mum recommended this band to me a few months back but I kind of brushed the suggestion aside and forgot about it until they were recommended again, by my drama teacher this time (who has given me some really excellent recs in the past), at the end of the school year. So I got their newest album from my mum and promptly fell in love with it, and shortly after also got "The King Is Dead", and then just three days ago finally got around to buying Picaresque on iTunes. And, can I just say, wow. I don't want to go out and listen to their entire discography quite yet because I've learned from past experience that it's usually best to just immerse yourself one album at a time, but I REALLY LOVE THEM SO FAR.

The following is a diagram detailing the process of band obsession:

They're basically huge nerds who make beautiful music with tons of literary-type allusions and gorgeous poetry. What more could you possibly want? They have a music video version of the Eschaton scene from Infinite Jest, and another one that's based on Rushmore by Wes Anderson. LIKE?? YES PLEASE. THANK YOU.

Again, I've only listened to three of their albums, and to be honest I love pretty much all of their songs (especially on picaresque, wowww) but so far my favourite songs are definitely:

What a Terrible World, What a Beautiful World

The Wrong Year

A Beginning Song

Carolina Low

The King is Dead

Rox in the Box

Calamity Song

Picaresque 

The Sporting Life

The Bagman's  Gambit

On The Bus Mall (lovelovelovelove)

Infinite Jest Liveblog Part 3

So I'm officially past the halfway point - just finished page 619, so I'm considerably further along than I was in my last post about it. Cause there's so much to fit in, I'll just keep it to some point form notes, plus a few photos of my highlighting and underlining because goddamn there are so many wonderful passages in this novel.

• Although I can't pick one single favourite character by any means, every passage devoted to Mario that I've read thus far has been unquestionably excellent. He's one of the best examples of what this book is trying to get across, I think, especially w/r/t sincerity and love and what it means to be a human person. "He took citizens' kindness and cruelty the same way, with a kind of extra-inclined half-bow that mocked his own canted posture without pity or cringe"
• Marathe and Steeply's conversations continue to be endlessly fascinating - I especially liked the passage on page 319/320 on temples and freedom. Also their 418-430 section made me realize that they're essentially having a Hobbes/Rousseau argument (and, as Hal tells us in the first chapter, Hobbes is just Rousseau in a dark mirror). Plus, "Unmentioned by either man was how in heaven's name either man expected to get down from the mountainside's shelf in the dark of the U.S. desert's night" - both sides are right and wrong, and neither really know what to do about it or offer any kind of solution
• ESCHATON! The math went entirely over my head, but that's just part of what makes this book what it is, I think. If you're too hung up on understanding everything exactly perfectly, you won't be able to appreciate it (or anything, really, which I feel like is intentional on DFW's part). 
• Also, the idea that "the map is not the territory" seems to continue throughout a lot of the novel, and I don't think that the slang use of map as face (especially to do with suicide - "eliminating one's map") is coincidental. Eschaton, moving to President Gentle, moving to Clipperton, make this clearer as well. It's reasonable that de-mapping would become slang in a time that parts of the map/territory are literally being eliminated
• Also why hasn't anyone made a version of the ONANtiad puppet show, I need it
• "T'war a tard in t'loo. A rail tard" (probably one of the single funniest sections of dialogue I've ever read - and somehow it still manages to be sincere and kind of beautiful)
• "The truth will set you free. But not until it is finished with you"
• I had no idea that the "this is water" fish story -- albeit a rougher and more explicit version -- was used in this book (and years before the Kenyon college speech!)
• "va chier putain!" - having a working knowledge of the French language, Canadian history, and philosophy, have all been very helpful in my appreciation of this book
• ^ Also, this plus the description of the ominous squeaking and cowboy-movie-esque scene where the store is surrounded by wheelchair assassins were hilarious. The best part though was that it managed to be both funny and scary - I was breathing in through my teeth in suspense and out through my nose in hilarity (made for a strange kind of forced hyperventilation)
• Speaking of which, Lucien's death was incredibly disturbing -- probably one of the most cringe inducing sections of the novel thus far -- but at the same time absolutely beautiful, especially the last passage on page 489. All of it was another great example of how he doesn't let you look down on anyone (even aphrasiac half-cellular insurgents)
• "you gone risk vulnerability and discomfort and hug my ass or do I gone fucking rip your head off and shit down your neck?"
• More (of many many) Hamlet references, with Avril and CT being very clearly set up as Gertrude and Claudius
• Lenz. oh god. Need I say more? And you're compelled to somewhat empathize with him, even as you hate him and reel back in terror. 
• Pages 467-574. DAMN. Some absolutely A+ writing. First off (as with almost everything in this book) it's written in 3rd person omniscient, but at the same time told from a single person's perspective (the Marathe/Steeply sections, for example, use french grammar phrasing so you can tell they're from Marathe's perspective). This is used to great effect here as the whole thing is told only in sound and dialogue, because Idris is blindfolded through all of it. Also I just love that the entire thing is such an unabashed excuse for excessive exposition -- similarly to the ONANtiad puppet show. There is no exposition at all for basically the whole first quarter of the book, you're just kind of thrown into it and things are mentioned as if you understand all of it already because you live in this universe or whatever, and then when things are finally explained, they're done in such huge obvious chunks that in any other context could be seen as bad writing. But in here somehow they work? And it works better than it would if it was slowly explained as you went along, because it allows all of the different phrases and world structures and stuff to become a part of your vocabulary as you read, even if you don't necessarily understand them, and then when they are revealed and explained it's SO satisfying to put together. Like how subsidized time isn't explained until page 223, or how the convexity/cavity and feral hamsters and giant infants are mentioned casually in passing, and you have no idea what it all means and have almost dismissed it as some absurd and untied detail when it's finally explained in full
• Brucie Green is my new favourite (and apparently Gately's as well) and getting to see him opposite Lenz just puts an even bigger perspective on what a really shitty person Lenz is.
• Pages 601 to 619 are like one giant fast paced movie scene and so much happens that I was absolutely reeling by the end of it, it was so goddamn good. I probably only breathed about three times between when the 'Nucks showed up and when the passage ends on 619. I also made various noises of surprise and dread out loud -- vocalizing my reactions to this book have been another kind of surprising thing that happened without my realizing it. I do sometimes laugh out loud when I read something particularly funny, and I have been moved to tears by a couple of other books, but I'm pretty sure this is the only novel I've ever read that has caused me to vocally express pretty much my entire range of emotions (another reason, apart from the fact that it's huge and I like to write in it, that I don't carry it around with me and read it in public)

Bard’s Bus Tour | Driftwood Theatre Group | Hamlet

Celebrating more than 20 years of classic theatre on tour in Ontario. 

Shakespeare’s Hamlet, performing Jul 9 - Aug 16, 2015. 

Over the past two weeks, I’ve had the privilege of being a part of the “young company” of Driftwood Theatre Group, and have gotten to know many of the amazing and talented people that are a part of this year’s production of Hamlet. I saw the preview at Todmorden mills on Friday and it was excellent, and I’ll also hopefully be volunteering as an usher at a couple of the productions throughout the summer.

And now, why does all this matter to you? Well, if you live somewhere in Ontario, Canada, they could be coming to your hometown and you should definitely come and watch!

Want some reasons this particular production of Hamlet is worth your time? Here’s a list of 10 that I think are pretty compelling:

1.  It’s pay-what-you-can, so you won’t have to worry about being able to afford super expensive tickets
2. It’s outdoor theatre (which is always fun - but bring bug spray!!) 
3. The text they use is based on the scene structure of Shakespeare’s rarely-performed First Quarto (1603), and the textual content of the iconic First Folio (1623) – so it’s faster paced and more energetic than the classic 4-hour version, but the flowing poetry and text is mostly kept in tact (for anyone familiar with the “bad quarto”, don’t worry, the to be or not to be speech is, although shorter, kept pretty much entirely the same for the beginning of it) 
4. The cast is a great mix of established actors and emerging talent, and colourblind casting has ensured that there was no clinging to the outdated idea that shakespeare characters can only be played by white people unless they're explicitly stated to be otherwise (eg. Othello) -- many of the lead roles are played by people of colour.
5. Horatio is played by a woman, but they don’t use it to push any kind of romantic subplot 
6. It’s modernized, and not in a stupid or pandering way – it allows the characters to be even more clearly portrayed 
7. The set and costumes and stuff are really cool 
8. A quote from the show’s program about their purpose in putting on this play:
   “[there is] a correlation between the fictional environment from which Hamlet emerges … and our post 9/11 reality: societies dominated by the politics of fear. Pick up a paper, turn on the news: there’s Elsinore. Russia, North Korea, Islamic State, Central Africa, and more domestically the Baltimore and Ferguson riot - these are all events framed by, escalated by, or responding to a culture of fear. And although the impact of fear-based politics is perhaps more acutely felt in regions like the middle-east, Western Europe, or Asia, we certainly aren’t free of its effects here in Canada. In the wake of the controversy of our own government’s reaction to terrorism - Bill C-51 - we must understand that the politics of fear are being increasingly used not to justify our protection, but to maintain power and ensure a compliant public. Hamlet is not only a satisfying and thrilling revenge-play, it is an immediate example of the perils of nurturing the politics of fear. It could not be more relevant.” 
9. HAMLET IS ACTUALLY PLAYED LIKE HAMLET. He’s not some old dude, he’s played by a super talented 26ish year old guy playing a depressed college student because thAT’S WHO HAMLET IS. LIKE? Although David Tennant’s Hamlet, for example, is quite good, he’s still too old. He’s not some angsty manchild, he’s a scared and confused and upset kid who’s smart and competent and doing the best he knows how to in his given circumstances. 
10. And, honestly, it’s just a really well done show. Like if this wasn’t already apparent, I have a lot of Hamlet feelings, and a ton of the things that I think are rarely dealt with in other productions are brought full front and centre in this one. 

Sure, I may have a bit of a bias because of my association with the company, but I sincerely think that this is a wonderful and worthwhile production. TL;DR - GO CHECK IT OUT!!!

Where Have I Been????

So, I've basically been MIA online for the past two weeks, and that's because I was living downtown with my aunt (who has limited internet connection), and attending the "Creative Roots Theatre Training Intensive" at Driftwood Theatre Company. I won't go into much detail about the program itself, but it was an incredibly fun and rewarding experience, and I learned a ton and made some really great connections with theatre professionals (who are also some of the sweetest, loveliest people I have ever met).

Didn't take any pictures while I was there, but I went out to see fireworks on Canada day so I've got some pictures from that, as well as my incredibly successful play-haul at the used bookstore "Re:Reading" that I went to on Thursday -- I'm set for the rest of the summer!!

I'll be making a couple more posts over the next couple days to catch up for lost time on here, specifically an Infinite Jest liveblog update (I'm past the halfway point!), my "new words of June" which is now quite overdue, and a post about the production of Hamlet that Driftwood Theatre is currently putting on and that you should definitely see if you live in Ontario. My plan for this summer is to keep this blog updated and try and stick to some kind of content schedule so I don't only ever post one type of thing.

DAY ONE: All packed up, my copy of IJ in tow (it was too big to fit in the suitcase...)

The place we went to for fireworks had this whole little carnival thing set up, it was super cute

Didn't go on any rides, though, I get way too motion sick
(which sucks because I have no fear of them, they just make me throw up)

The view from my walk from the subway station to my aunt's house

Re:Reading has A+ bags

8 books, containing approximately 36 individual plays/short plays
I'M SO GOD DAMN PUMPED

Infinite Jest Liveblog Part 2: Sincerity

I am now on page 310 of Infinite Jest, having just finished reading a 17 page endnote on fictional Quebecois politics and continuing to be blown away by this book in pretty much every aspect. One thing I can say for sure is that I definitely didn't expect Canada to have such a prominent role in IJ, but it's nice to know that the fact that I am Canadian and was lucky enough to have a really great Canadian history teacher last year makes all of this a little bit easier to understand (god knows otherwise I'd be looking things up every 5 seconds to figure out what the hell he means when he talks about Trudeau, Levesque, Chretien -- spelled Cretien in IJ for some reason?? -- the FLQ, and the Meech Lake Accord). Although, let's be honest, I still had to do some serious brain wracking to keep it all straight in my head.

Another round of assorted reactions:

• I LOVE LYLE. I'll bring this up more later but the way characters are written and handled in this book makes me so happy on so many levels
• The rise and fall of videophony was both hilarious and scarily accurate -- it's interesting to read a novel set in the "future" that was published in 1996 (two years before I was born, holy shit) -- he gets the technology wrong (the idea of "teleputers" is one of many examples I could list that show how he's in the right area but not quite exactly) but damn does he ever get the people right. The "bilateral illusion of unilateral attention" has gone even further in present day, I think, with most people I know rarely even using the telephone to have voice calls with people anymore, sticking mostly to texting and online messaging. Whenever I'm talking to someone on Facebook I always have several other tabs open at the same time
• "Urine trouble? Urine luck!"
• The monologue-chapter between JOI jr and sr was amazing -- I actually stopped and re read the last two pages of it out loud once I finished it. "... how the drunk and the maimed both are dragged out of the arena like a boneless Christ, one man under each arm, feet dragging, eyes on the aether". 
• The "things you learn in a halfway-house" section fucking destroyed me. By the time I got to the end of it on page 205 (before it goes into talking about tattoos) I was crying and I had to take a break. Pages 203-205 are the most highlighted and underlined pages I have so far, I think.
• I find the mentions of "anticraze" and "antifashion" that have come up a couple of times in the novel so far really interesting. It's all tied into what DFW is trying to get across about sincerity, I think. Like irony and trying not to risk things by allowing yourself to be vulnerable (kind of the opposite of "giving yourself away to something" that's also mentioned a lot). Also brought up in Hal's paper on the postmodern hero, too -- another of many Hamlet references so far is when he mentions the hero of "inaction".
• Another possible Hamlet reference is Joelle, I think, and her Too Much Fun suicide attempt in the bathtub -- Ophelia?
• The descriptions of addiction are always so ... gripping? I'm not sure what word to use to describe it, but they (Erdedy, Joelle, Poor Tony, etc) always seem to land in the area of being deeply disturbing but extremely compelling - like watching a car crash. Writing this made me think of a quote from the book Cat's Eye, by Margaret Atwood, where she describes something as being "sacrosanct, at the same time holy and deeply shameful".
• I also didn't expect to see myself in Hal as much as I do. I mean of course his characteristics are pushed to a higher, almost farcical extreme, but it's a little unnerving to think that he's one of the closest fictional characters to myself w/r/t my flaws and how I think. This book is also fucking me up because a lot of the times it feels like he's somehow found the keys to my brain and figured out how to articulate everything I'm struggling with and feeling and done a better job of it than I ever could. I'm not addicted to anything but I can hugely relate to the 'analysis-paralysis' we encounter in Ennet House, and Hal being "obsessed with the fear that [he] was somehow going to flunk grief therapy" is ME. IT'S ME. I've had these exact conversations with people in my life. From various discussions I've had with my drama teacher at the end of this year, my main point of growth moving forward into grade 12 is getting over my need to be "right" or do things "correctly" -- this obsessive need for validation. "Here was a top-rank authority figure and I was failing to supply what he wanted. He made it manifestly clear I wasn't delivering the goods. I'd never failed to deliver the goods before" -- or endnote 76, which (although, again, pushed to the extreme) could have been a parody of my own childhood.

One of my favourite things about this book so far is its sincerity. A lot of writers seem to be making fun of some of their characters -- like a character will exist purely to be stupid or be wrong about something or the butt-end of a joke. DFW's characters are all sincere because, yes, they're flawed, but even the ones who would be mocked in the hands of a different writer are treated with a kind of tenderness. Like the anticraze kids and "beautiful tits" girl on page 229. They are funny, and they do make a point, but it doesn't feel like he's looking down on them or allowing you as the reader to look down on them. I read his essay on television and US fiction a couple of months ago and I've had it in the back of my mind through a lot of my reading of IJ. His whole thing with irony is that it's used nowadays as a tool to make you feel like you're in on some joke because you're smarter or somehow better than these characters. It may not be perfect, but I really do think this book achieves the sincerity he was looking for when he wrote that essay. He doesn't allow you to feel superior to anyone in this book. Anyone. Not beautiful tits girl, not Lyle, not Geoffery Day or Poor Tony or Steeply or CT or even good ol' Ken Erdedy. Each and every one of them is treated with enough empathy to keep anyone (or at least me) from looking down their nose at them, because we can see ourselves in all of them. 

"Are we not all of us fanatics?"

Infinite Jest Liveblog Part 1.5

A thought: I went out to see a movie with a friend of mine last night and I brought IJ with me so I could read it in the car while I waited for her to meet up with me in the parking lot of the theatre, and when we left and I locked up the car I had this really weird moment of being concerned that because it was sitting out so obviously on the passenger side car seat that someone would break into my car and steal it – which, like, ???? But the idea of losing my copy of the book is really upsetting to me which I’ve never really had with a book before because I can always just buy a new copy, but for IJ I can’t because it’s got all my underlines and margin writing and sticky notes.

It’s weird to think that there are very very few things in my life that aren’t completely replaceable. Basically everything I need to “keep” is saved on the internet somewhere, so other than the cost of buying new stuff, I could essentially lose everything I own and be cool with it. The only things of mine that aren’t replaceable are my journals, IJ and maybe one or two other books, and a couple of things I have that friends of mine made for me as presents.

I feel like this is symbolic, somehow. Or indicative of my generation - but not really in a bad way or anything. Like my grandmother just recently left her house to move into a retirement home, and she was very upset because she could only take so much with her and she had a huge amount of “stuff”. Just things, objects, that weren’t replaceable. I don’t really have “stuff”. I have no desire for “stuff”, when I’m older I don’t want a house or any kind of permanence, really. I feel like the world now is moving more toward an experience-based culture, rather than a stuff-based one. I don’t want to have things, I want to do things. Not that people didn’t want to do things before, or that people now don’t want to have things anymore, but I think there’s just been a wider shift in what people consider to be of value. Not much is permanent anymore, but the things that do hold a kind of permanence are held in much higher regard than they were in the past, I think, because they’re few and far between.

If that makes any sense?

Infinite Jest Liveblog Part 1

Before I started reading Infinite Jest, I was worried it was going to be one of those books that I’d like to have read, but not actually read. Now I’m 127 pages in, and I honest to god just love reading it. I like being in / a part of this book. My continued interest might be partially because it’s still just a bunch of thus-far unconnected vignettes, so nothing is held on to for too long, although it is now finally starting to go back to some of the characters introduced at the beginning.

Here’s a somewhat coherent list of my reactions:

• Half the time I read into everything heavily and make notes in the margins, and the other half of the time I just float along and hope that it’ll all make sense eventually (note-making hasn’t ever really been plot related, though) 
• This is the first book I’ve ever written in (I’ve written in plays but that’s different) 
• It’s also the first book I’ve used multiple sticky notes in that hasn’t been for school reading purposes 
• I’m glad I’ve read a lot of his essays (like, a lot) because apart from getting me used to DFW as a writer, it’s interesting to see how he brings up a lot of the ideas he’s written about before, but in a fiction novel context. Like solipsism and “giving yourself away to something” and the “endless war against the self” 
• It feels like each plot line has its own unique style of writing 
• I already quite liked tennis - one of the only sports I actually like - but I’ve reached a whole new level of tennis appreciation thanks to DFW
• Like really. I love tennis right now. It's surreal. I want to play tennis immediately
• Lemon pledge as sunscreen ? 
• Herd of feral hamsters ??????????? 
• The first scene with Hal, Erdedy waiting for the woman who said she’d come, and Kate Gompert in the mental ward, are three of the best short pieces of fiction writing I have ever read 
• Other favourite scenes are Hal & Mario talking about God, the professional conversationalist, Schtitt and Mario discussing the infinite/finite nature of tennis/life/dedication to a cause, and the intense switching-back-and-forth-between-characters-without-explanation bit at ETA with all the Big Buddy/Little Buddy scenes (all of which, by the way, would make sUCH great short films or something, holy shit) 
• I love Mario Incandenza 
• I cannot believe I read an 8 and a half page long endnote 
• Wow. This book. Wow. 
• wow???
• wowwww 
• W O W

And But So it Begins

Well, with just a little over one week left of school (and school itself basically over - exams start on Tuesday) I went out and bought myself a copy of Infinite Jest and am about to get right into it. I'll be semi-liveblogging it on here as I go along, but not at any kind of regular interval. I plan on just writing about it whenever I feel it fits. I've read a ton of DFW's other stuff (mostly his essays) so this seemed like the next logical step -- plus, seeing this is my last summer while still being in high school (grade 12 next year!!), I've got more free time to attempt to plow through this monstrosity. Although plow probably isn't the right word. Some kind of mountain climbing analogy is required here, I think. 

I'm already prepared with two bookmarks and sticky notes and the emotional mindset required to allow myself to write in the margins of a book. Writing in margins, by the way, is something that I feel should probably be done more often, and I'm not sure what weird anal-retentive habit has stopped me from doing it before now. I write in the margins of plays all the time, and I've always loved annotating articles and things for English class. Books aren't so holy that writing in them would somehow damage them. It makes them more permanent, I think. The book becomes yours. Plus I'm sure it would be interesting to re read a book you wrote in years ago and see what you thought of it at the time. Reading should be a conversation, a give and take between you and the author of the book, not just a kind of passive state where the information washes over you and you hope that you somehow absorb it through literary osmosis. 

Field Trip 2015

Field Trip is a two day music festival started by Toronto record label Arts & Crafts. It was the first music festival I had ever been to, and if it’s anything to go by, it won’t be my last. According to their website, Field Trip is “Toronto’s downtown community music and arts festival”, and it certainly fit the bill.

The first thing I noticed when my friends and I arrived there just past 1PM on Saturday (we were aiming for earlier, but that’s a long story involving cancelled subways, missed GO buses, streetcar confusion, and an overall inability to navigate downtown public transit) was the vast range of ages of the people there. I was only really expecting to see teenagers and twenty to thirty year-olds, but there were a ton of younger kids and older people as well. One of my favourite moments of the day was seeing this woman who was probably in her 70’s or 80’s getting really into dancing to Pins & Needles -- don’t let anyone tell you you’re too old to go to a music festival.

There was a lot offered for the really young crowd as well. Not only was the whole festival free for anyone under twelve (a 5’2” friend of mine joked that she should have pretended to be someone’s little sister), but they had a whole kids’ section with everything from bouncy castles to face painting, and an afternoon performance by the ever-cheerful Sharon and Bram. I won’t pretend I wasn’t at least a little jealous -- or tempted to run through the giant plume of bubbles that I passed by on my way to the TD Fort York Stage.

There were artists selling handmade pins and hats and and flower crowns, there was some kind of immersive technology game that I didn’t get a chance to check out because the line up was too long, apparently there was a stand up comedy show that I never got around to seeing either, someone was painting a mural, a couple of women were doing some pretty impressive hula-hooping, and that’s not even mentioning the food trucks! I had a portobello burger for lunch, which is essentially a hamburger except instead of meat it’s just one giant mushroom (I know, I couldn’t believe it either). Dinner was mac and cheese with gelato for dessert, and by that point I had to stop buying food or I wasn’t going to be able to afford the bus fare home.

Now, as much as I could spent the whole time talking about everything else, the most important part of any music festival, of course, is the music. I think the main thing I kept thinking about during the whole experience was that there was so much going on I’d never be able to see everything, but I managed to get to a hell of a lot. After seeing a great set by Pins and Needles at 1:30, we walked over to the other side and spent most of the time at the Garrison Stage. We lay down our blankets near the back of the field and ate lunch while listening to The Belle Game, and then moved right up to the front for the next act: From Jamaica to Toronto. We were pretty lucky in that we got to stay pretty close to the stage throughout the whole evening, as the crowd got bigger and bigger through De La Soul, The War on Drugs, Arkells, and finally the headliners for the night, Alabama Shakes. I wasn’t too familiar with most of the bands there, but not knowing all the lyrics didn’t stop the whole experience being pretty spectacular overall. Alabama Shakes were definitely my favourite, so thank you for that, Field Trip, I don’t know if I would have found out about them otherwise. Brittany Howard has a voice like you wouldn’t believe, and the whole thing was a perfect way to cap off a great evening. I think the sense of community in the audience was at its peak by that point, because I could almost feel the buzz in the air around me like something alive. Being shoved in at close quarters with a big crowd may have its downsides, but my god if there isn’t something magical about jumping up and down and cheering to the same beat as a thousand other people.

New Words - May 2015

prolegomenon - a critical or discursive introduction to a book
Peter Principle - a concept in management theory in which the selection of a candidate for a position is based on the candidate's performance in their current role, rather than on abilities relevant to the intended role
paucity - smallness / a small amount of something
nadir - the worst or lowest point of something (directly opposite the zenith)
atavism - the tendency to revert to ancestral type
titivate - to make smart or spruce, make small enhancing alterations
preterit - bygone, former
quixotic - hopeful or romantic in a way that is not practical
denude - to strip something of its covering, to make bare
sybaritic - fond of sensuous luxury or pleasure; self-indulgent
belletristic - literature regarded as fine art, especially as having a purely aesthetic function
diaphanous - (especially of fabric) light, delicate, and translucent
epicanthic fold - upper eyelid folds
accretive - growth in size or extent
appurtenances - accessories or other items associated with a particular activity or style of living
prurient - having or encouraging an excessive interest in sexual matters
puerile - childishly silly and trivial
formication - a sensation that exactly resembles that of small insects crawling on (or under) the skin
mordant - sharply caustic or sarcastic, as wit or a speaker; biting
perfunctory - (of an action or gesture) carried out of a minimum of effort or reflection
echelon - a level of command, authority, or rank. Military - a formation of troops, ships, planes, etc
phatic - linguistics an expression whose only function is to perform a social task, as opposed to conveying information
picayune - petty, worthless
unctuous - (of a person) excessively or ingratiatingly flattering; oily
punctilious - showing great attention to detail or correct behaviour
concupiscence - an ardent, usually sensual longing; the selfish human desire for an object, person, or experience
thanatotic - Death as a personification or philosophical notion
sedulous - (of a person or action) showing dedication and diligence
pleonasm - the use of more words than are necessary to express an idea; redundancy

Book Clothing ???

So I stumbled upon this site called outofprintclothing.com and now I'm engaged in an intense internal debate over how badly I really need socks that look like the cards they stamp in the backs of library books (hint: so badly)

  

Their main thing, though, seems to be various items of clothing with famous book covers on them. I'm partial to the 'La Petit Prince' and 'Fahrenheit 451' tee shirts, myself. 

I know there's probably a good amount of baggage involved in wearing a book cover on your body, especially when it's a well-known "intellectual" or "literary" novel. I feel like if I bought one of these, I'd have to accept the fact that ultimately part of my reasoning would be because it would make me look more intelligent and well read (it would essentially have the same effect as very obviously carrying around one of these novels with me wherever I go). The other parts would be because I love the books regardless of what people think of them, and because they're pretty, god damn it, and I think I'd look cute in them. 

Some questions to consider:

Do you even have to have read the books to wear them (Is this the same thing as wearing band tee shirts) ? Do I have to have a certain amount of in-depth knowledge on these books in order for me to be allowed to wear them? Would wearing them make me pretentious? Would wearing certain books be seen as some kind of statement? Can I do/wear/read/say anything without it being somehow construed as having an ulterior motive? Does everything I do/wear/read/say actually have an ulterior motive that I may or may not be aware of because it's somehow subconscious? Are all of my actions somehow tied in with a desire to present myself a certain way to people (including myself) ?

Will I ever be able to do something like casually look at clothes online without needing to dissect it for hidden meanings and philosophical implications? We may never know.

New Words - April 2015

I firmly believe that you should always try to read books that are a little bit too hard for you. I'm not saying that you should never read books that are under or right at your level, but at least for me I think I get the most enjoyment out of reading challenging books because there's a payoff at the end of it. If you have to work at it, I think, you can get a hell of a lot more out of it -- and the more difficult books you read, the better you'll get at reading difficult books, and then you'll be able to move up to books that are even more difficult. This is learning. Plus I think it's important to be okay with not always understanding every little thing that happens to you, so for someone like me that can get really stressed about not knowing things it helps to sometimes have to accept that you may not get something right now, but it will all make sense later. This ends up making an even bigger payoff when you reread books that you used to believe were one thing, but now mean something completely different to you based on how you've grown or learned or changed as a person (see: Catcher in the Rye).

Now, one of the biggest things that come from reading difficult books are difficult words -- ones that you may have never come across before and don't understand. When I was younger I developed a lot of my vocabulary from reading and putting together the meanings of words I didn't know based on how they were used in context. When you're a little older, however, this doesn't work as well anymore. Thanks to David Foster Wallace's extensive use of difficult words in the essay collections of his I've been reading recently, I've been prompted to actually start searching up (the dictionary app on my iPhone is my new favourite thing) and keeping track of the new words I've learned from everything I've been reading. So seeing as this is my so-called writing blog, I think I'll start posting all the new words I learn, and their definitions, at the end of each month. Hopefully by writing them out it'll make them easier to commit to memory -- looking up definitions won't do me much good if I promptly forget them all.

otiose - serving no practical purpose or result 

syncretism - the combination of different forms of (religions, cultures, schools of thought, versions of a word) 

biosensor - a device that monitors and transmits information about a life process 

synecdoche - a figure of speech by which a part is put for a whole 

post hoc - formulated after the fact (eg. a post hoc rationalisation) 

[comes from Latin - post hoc, ergo propter hoc (after this, therefore because of this)]

episcopate - the position, rank, or term of office of a bishop 

anaclitic - the direction of love toward an object (as the mother) that satisfies nonsexual needs (as hunger)

détente - the relaxation of strained relations or tensions (as between nations) 

antinomy - a contradiction between two apparently equally valid principles or between inferences correctly drawn from such principles (a fundamental and apparently unresolvable conflict or contradiction) 

instantiate - to represent (an abstraction) by a concrete instance 

promulgate - to make (an idea, belief, etc.) known to many people 

Solomonic - marked by notable wisdom, reasonableness, or discretion especially under trying circumstances  

interdict - a prohibitory decree commensurate - equal or similar to something in size, amount, or degree

  

simulacrum - image, representation. An insubstantial form or semblance of something: trace 

intractable - not easily managed, controlled, or solved 

plangent - of a sound : loud, deep, and often sad 

vitiate - to make (something) less effective : to ruin or spoil (something) 

protean - able to change into many different forms or able to do many different things 

peristalsis - successive waves of involuntary contraction along walls of hollow muscular structure (as the esophagus or intestine) and forcing the contents forward 

peripatetic - a follower of Aristotle or adherent of Aristotelianism : pedestrian, itinerant : movement of journeys hither and thither 

staid - serious, boring, or old-fashioned 

laconic - using few words in speech or writing 

tacit - expressed or understood without being directly stated 

prophylactic - medical : designed to prevent disease 

licentious - sexually immoral or offensive 

semiotics - the study of signs and symbols and how they are used 

diaspora - a group of people who live outside the area in which they had lived for a long time or in which their ancestors lived 

ostensible - stated or appearing to be true, but not necessarily so (ostensibly = “for all practical purposes” …)

reticent - not willing to tell people about things, inclined to be silent or uncommunicative in speech

ersatz - copied from something else and usually not as good as the original (an artificial and inferior substitute or imitation)

taciturn - tending to be quiet, not speaking frequently

apocryphal - of doubtful authenticity, well-known but probably not true, fictitious 

OCAD GradEx100

My school day today was spent downtown on a field trip to the Ontario College of Art and Design's 100th graduate exhibition. I was there with my 'media arts' class (a course I am only a part of because I dropped out of physics at the beginning of the semester and it was the only class left that I could take) which meant that three of the four hours I spent there were taken up by visits to two different art technology labs within the vicinity of OCAD. Without going into too much detail, one of them involved a guy who showed us a 3D hologram he had made of his own brain (don't ask), and the other involved a lot of waiting around while my teacher talked excitedly about interactive projections, and I really, really, really had to go to the bathroom. Suffice to say, by the end of it I was bored out of my mind and questioning why I had decided that going on this field trip was a good idea.

The best part of the day, though -- and what really made the whole thing worthwhile -- was the half hour I spent trying to see as much of the OCAD art as I could. After shovelling down a mushroom vegetable pie at the food court across the street (which was actually excellent), I ran over to the gallery building and started looking around. I'd never been in any kind of art gallery type situation alone before, so I had a crazy sense of freedom to look at whatever I personally wanted to for as long as I wanted to (as long as I got back to the bus by 1:40). I took the elevator up to the sixth floor because I had no idea where I was going and that's where the one other person in the elevator with me got off. The actual gallery spaces were large rooms branching off a couple of central hallways, some of which were scattered with high school type lockers that were a kind of stark reminder that all of this was taking place inside of a school. Given my limited time frame  I wasn't even able to see everything on the one floor I went through, but I loved what I did see.

At one point I ran into a class of seventh-graders, so that was interesting. They were all giggling about the nude pictures and daring each other to touch the sculptures they weren't allowed to. A ton of them were taking pictures with their phones of pretty much every piece of art there, too, to which my immediate reaction was one of disdain that I quickly realized was hypocritical seeing as the only difference between them and me was that I had a DSLR camera and a superiority complex. Which brings up the issue of whether or not you should be taking pictures of art. I think you can, but the problem comes in when you have to figure out where to draw the line between taking the pictures for so-called "good" reasons, like wanting to remember the pieces you liked or to share them with people who otherwise wouldn't be able to see them; and just taking pictures so that you can get likes on instagram or whatever, and whether or not taking pictures of art because of that is a "bad" reason. It's hard to say, really, because then you can get into the whole "art for pure aesthetic value vs. art that's saying something" debacle, and what the merits of each are or how you can define what's good or bad in art. I really don't know, but I took pictures of some of my favourite pieces and now I'm posting them on here, and on instagram, and on tumblr so that maybe people will like them and follow my blog or whatever and although my main reason for doing this writing certainly isn't based in that (as of right now nobody's following me, and this post is really long too so it's probably all just a shout into the void so does it matter?) but I've done it anyway. So I think it's mostly for a good reason. Or at least that's how I'm justifying it to myself.

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay

This book, including the "Odds & Ends" extra content at the end, is 678 pages long. I started reading it on Friday and, after a fiction novel dry-spell of about 6 months in which I only read plays and essays, I finished it this afternoon.

I was given it as a birthday present back in January, but both its length and my skepticism at the possibility of me really loving a novel about a couple of guys who write comic books in the 40s, meant that I put off reading it until now -- and boy, did it ever prove me wrong.


The driving force of this novel was its characters, and the fact that just about every person you meet, however briefly, has been intricately fleshed-out and filled with life. Say what you will about it being self-indulgent at times, or its possibly disorienting time skips, or it being too sentimental or optimistic or fantastical, but that's the point. The point is that the world that Chabon writes about underneath all of this is dark and messed-up in the realest way possible, and the characters he populates this world with are just as messed-up. And the point is they're all trying their hardest to confront and escape from all of it at the same time. It's witty and cheerful and optimistic and it rips your heart out and leaves you wondering what on earth just happened, everything was going so well a minute ago, wasn't it? There's a hell of a lot of death in here for a book called "The Amazing Adventures ..."

Its shiny layer of idealism and resolution is paper thin, and it deals with some really difficult stuff without giving you a bow-tied picture-perfect ending. The way these two things come together creates a kind of paean to hope -- to people's ability to keep going, to (finally, eventually, and not even specifically written out on the page so much as suggested that they're headed in the right direction at last) find happiness.

It had its faults, but it was the first book I've read in a while whose characters I've well and truly fallen in love with, and that was more than enough to keep me riveted through all 678 pages of it. It made me care.

"The magician seemed to promise that something torn to bits might be mended without a seam, that what had vanished might reappear, that a scattered handful of doves of dust might be reunited by a word, that a paper rose consumed by fire could be made to bloom from a pile of ash. But everyone knew that it was only an illusion. The true magic of this broken world lay in the ability of the things it contained to vanish, to become so thoroughly lost, that they might never have existed in the first place." - pg. 339

Hi!

So... I've started a blog! I'm not sure what this is going to be yet, but I've started this thing because I want a place to post my writing that will hopefully motivate me to write more and to be more critical of the things that I write since it'll all be up here for the whole internet to see.

I'm not huge on fiction writing, although that's something I'd love to be able to explore eventually because I love reading fiction with all of my heart (I may try writing some vignettes or short stories to begin with. We'll see). Right now my big thing is creative nonfiction - journalistic, essay type things - so hopefully I can get started doing something of that nature.

I've also started this blog partly because I've departed from tumblr (which I've had since the eighth grade - it's been a long run) and I want a more constructive replacement to something that has essentially become the internet equivalent of watching infomercials at one in the morning (so much endless scrolling through pretty pictures that I barely glance at before reblogging). Tumblr had its benefits, for sure - I have it to thank for a lot of really wonderful things I never would have found out about otherwise, as well as opening me up to things like feminism and LGBTQ+ rights that have now become incredibly important to me. For now, though, I think I've moved on and I'd like to try something else. I have no idea if anyone else will ever read any of what I post here, but I think if anything it'll be useful for me.

Here's to actually keeping up with this!

- Ella