Perspective

My hard-drive has died. It is D-E-D, dead.

R.I.P.

I don't really care about the damn computer. But everything I have written over the past four years is gone.

I am so sad. The only thing that is keeping me sane is some expired pills from the back of my medicine cabinet and the mental triage that is necessary to finish two take-home midterms and an essay for next week. I can't believe we put so much of ourselves into these satellites, these technological extensions that fail us and which most of the time we don't even fully understand.

Back to pencils and fucking sheafs of fucking papyrus!

At least I have CBC 3 (you have to allow cbc.ca in javascript to hear my current playlist). And good friends. And a party to go to, and champagne to drink. Perspective, perspective, you always elude me (shakes head slowly).

We are ugly but we have the music

I used to have a coworker who was this incredibly gorgeous girl. We worked together in a crappy little store in the basement of a mall selling appliances (blenders, coffee makers, electric razors, etc). And every single day we worked together, I heard someone or other tell Johanna she was beautiful. She just had wattage, an arresting beauty that stood out, the kind that can launch a thousand ships. In her presence, I felt invisible.

Leonard Cohen sang about how we are "oppressed by the figures of beauty," and that was how I thought of it.

Men would pretend to shop, and linger for half an hour just working up the nerve to speak to her. Some men couldn't even keep up the pretense and would stand and gawk at her until she shot them a hostile look, forcing them to flee or account for themselves. It was annoying. It was unnerving. No matter what form the attention took, it usually seemed to bother her - she would pin on a fixed smile and speak to them in monosyllables. Yes, no. No. No. No.

People are pitiless about that kind of thing. It doesn't occur to them that someone might not want to hear about it. Oh yeah, poor you, it must be so hard to be so pretty. They acted like her beauty was something for their benefit - like she owed them something for the way she made them feel. If she didn't act flattered by their attention, she was conceited. If she turned away, they thought she was stuck up. Men could launch into these very direct approaches, sometimes harrassing her as if haggling the price of a car. When she rejected them, they could get rude, even hostile.

And she was so much more than they were letting her be: a hot-headed, proud, sweet, deeply romantic, jealous, often very goofy woman.

At that time, we were both stuck in a rut, hemmed in by expectations other people had thrust on us and desperate to escape. We knew our lives could amount to more and we were both too scared to do anything about it. I had flunked out of college and was trying to figure out what it was I even wanted from life. I suspect Johanna was paralysed because all anyone told her was how beautiful she was; she sometimes sounded like she doubted there was anything more she could be besides something to look at. She got all this attention, and yet she hardly had any friends. All her ambitions seemed to involve escape.

So we filled our days with work, chatting, booze, and cigarettes. We talked about boys. And we tried not to think too hard about what we were going to do with ourselves later on.

Later, after I had pulled myself together, quit the dead-end job and gone back to school as a university student (keep running at that wall, you know you can climb it, you'd better, you pansy, you coward), I went back to the basement of the mall to visit her. She was standing in the back of the shop looking anxious, overly thin, still beautiful. When she saw me, her face lit up. We both excitedly started chattering: "It's so good to see you! - How are you, what's up with you?" She closed the store so we could head upstairs and have a cigarette outside, and because I had quit smoking, the nicotine made me giddy and ill. The tone quickly dampened. Staring out into the street, she told she had finally realized that she had bulimia, and I was silenced by my own lack of surprise. She had also learned that she had been turned down for a modelling contract because, at 26 and 5'7", she was too old and too short. She seemed vulnerable and angry, fed up with her life.

We chatted about things we had done, people we had seen. She said again, "It's really good to see you," but this time it was less convincing. We were both trying too hard to put these days behind us.

We tried staying in touch for a while, played phone tag, but eventually she just didn't call me back. Even later, I heard that she had been fired for being too difficult, too temperamental and demanding. I don't know what she's up to these days, and sometimes I wish we were still friends. But I'm also relieved that that part of my life is over. That the things we had in common are not things I recognize any more.

Still, sometimes when I see some lovely fifteen-year-old's face staring up at me from the glossy advertisement in a magazine, I think about how terrible "beauty" can be, how it fucked with Johanna's life. And I wonder how she is, and hope that she's ok.

Habit

In The Devil's Dictionary, Ambrose Beirce defines habit like this:

Habit n. The shackle of the free.

My most especially bad habit is procrastination. Procrastination is something common enough for people of all ages, particularly people who are frequently engaged in time-sensitive activities to which they are not 100% committed. The deadline approaches, the deadline looms... and here one finds oneself desperately doing one's utmost to cram in as many irrelevant distractions as possible.

I don't know why I feel so disconnected from my life, so that I procrastinate even the most mundane of activities. Particularly, I don't know why I feel so disconnected from school. Not that my feelings about school aren't complicated, because they are. But I actually really love school. How fantastic is it that I get to spend hours at a time discussing Hume, or Foucault, or literature of nineteenth century Australia? How fantastic is it that I get to converse with people who are passionate about injecting the world with meaning? But it took me such a long time to even get to the point where I felt able to enjoy this.

The reason I am still in a bachelor's program at university in my late twenties' and not embarked on some exciting 9 to 5 career (or PhD), like my friends are, is that it took me the longest time even to realize that I enjoy my education. For years I felt like it was just this thing I had to do to prove myself. My family acts like whether or not you graduate from university defines you as an individual. They pretend they don't think this way - indeed, would be horrified to see themselves this way - but it's the truth. My mother once said, "Well, maybe you just aren't cut out for university. People are different." It was meant to be comforting, but it was like she was saying, "You and I both know I don't mean this, but this is something I'm expected to say." It was so insincere, and her disappointment was so palpable.

The other thing that ruined education for me for a long time was the myth of how "promising" I was. Ever since I can remember, people have been telling me: oh we don't worry about you, you're so smart, what a clever girl, you're going to do great things, we have high hopes for you. What a load of crap. Because the people who accomplish great things, who make a difference in the world, are the people who work hard, persevere, and have passion. Just being a smarty-pants who can use big words and name-drop scientists and literary figures impressively, won't actually get one that far. Or atleast not anywhere I would want to be.

The result of all this, of this emphasis on intelligence and education, was that I started to feel like that was all I had. Like that was it for me. And if I failed to live up to that - then there was nothing.

So I developed techniques for dealing with the sense of impending failure. I developed ways of not trying, to avoid failing in the first place. I dropped out of classes, and friendships, even out of routine things to take care of myself, like eating and sleeping regularly. It felt good to neglect myself, to treat myself like nothing, because nothing was what I wanted to become.

It was a nasty little bomb shelter of an existence - of a subsistence. And sometimes when my huge workload gets me panicky, I feel myself being pulled back in that direction, my feet descending those old familiar steps out of die-hard habit. Habit, the shackle of the free. But ultimately what has saved me is art and philosophy. It is reading the words of all those lonely men and women who just thrust their ideas out into the world and hoped that somehow they would find welcome somewhere. Those people who couldn't do anything else but say what they felt, because anything else would be a kind of death. I understand that. It isn't about fulfilling the expectations of others. It is about being honest with oneself and the world. I am not a gifted wünderkind, nor am I necessarily cut out for any level of outstandingness. But I am being given the opportunity to play with ideas, to learn such exciting things, and I would be a fool to pass that up. Because I really do believe that ideas are important, that they are the most important thing.

girls in movies

Anna was berating me for not reading her film script. She sent it to me ages ago, and I said, "oh, I'm going to read this right away!" And then... It's tucked away in a folder on my desktop, Things To Do, basically a reliquary of famous last words and good intentions gone awry.

I love Anna's films. She hasn't done a lot yet, because she hasn't been out of school that long. She also shares her creative time with her partner. But the few movies she has made, I like a lot. I have known Anna a long time, and she has always had stories to tell. In high school she used to write, like, a story a week. And I believe she has her own voice for telling them, and that her films will put something new into the world that it hasn't been seen or heard before.

I have been thinking a lot about the female point of view in film. I was reading someone else's blogpost about the film Marie Antoinette, and how people seem to be judging it by all kinds of irrelevant criteria, like how much it cost and how anachronistic it is. They are treating it as if it is a period drama, when obviously it is experimental. As this woman Julie wrote in her blog,

"Why is it when a man spends money on his vision, it's socially acceptable, but when a chick does it, they try to embarrass or 'make her' feel guilty? I REALLY doubt that a film featuring Siouxsie Sioux music, set at Versailles, where people consume drinks not invented yet, could be bad."

Well, I have yet to see the film, so maybe it's terrible. But I definitely do think successful women filmmakers get singled out more. Maybe just because their scarcity gets them extra critical attention. Sometimes blaming bad press on sexism is a cop out, but in this instance I think the industry is guilty as charged.

When I see a good film about women by a woman filmmaker, I have to say the female point of view is noticeable. I find the pacing and the focus and the tensions in the film all give a sense of the underlying preoccupations being slightly different than in films by men. Of course, there are men who are capable of pulling really extraordinary performances out of their actresses, of creating female characters that are three-dimensional and nuanced. But the stories they tell, and the way they tell them, is different.

I guess you could argue that it is just a difference of individuals, nothing really to do with gender. I don't know much about gender theory, or any of that.

But to give an example of what I mean - there are scenes of female sensuality in the films of Campion, and Sofia Coppola, and my darling Anna (she is young, but she is mighty), where the woman is very much aware of herself and her body and its capacity for pleasure. But there is no sense of that capacity being in any way tied to the reaction of the spectator. It is the absence of the male point of view that I find refreshing. The camera lingers, but not on the same things. There is a knowledge of how it feels to be inside the skin, to have breasts and curves and female physicality, that has nothing to do with visually stimulating the appetites of the person watching. It is a sensuality that is almost unsexy - it is so familiar and every day.

I also think the quality of girlishness is often lost on critics. So-called serious films often show intelligent women as very pensive or serious or angry. The prettier an intelligent woman is in a film, the more unhappy or serious she has to be, to balance it out. Any girlish women, the kind that giggle, are usually ridiculous caricatures. We need some new archetypes. As examples of the old archetype, Marilyn Monroe and Goldie Hawn were both these intelligent, talented women who were really good at playing into the comedic aspect of the way men view women. I love the scene in Shampoo where Goldie Hawn is telling Warren Beatty why her bad dreams scared her and made her invite him to come over, and she is sitting and (supposedly unconsciously) flapping her knees open and closed so you keep glimpsing her crotch. It's funny. It's funny because obviously on some level she is aware of the effect this will have on Beatty's character and on the male viewer generally, but you are not sure whether the character is intended to know or just the actress. It's funny because whether she knows or not is irrelevant; that irrelevance is so absurd.

Now we have filmmakers like Coppola (especially in conjunction with an actress like Dunst) who can depict more realistic girls. Girls who are sexy and goofy and wry and sensitive and sometimes ridiculous. They know they are sexy, but it doesn't seem to be preoccupying 95% of their brain - they have other things to think about. They are fun without being superficial, silly without being stupid. Vulnerable without being victims. I hated that film, Lovely and Amazing, because it just made being a woman seem like this incredible drag. Enough, no more crucifixions. I want to see women who wrestle with life and all that, but also women like the ones I know, who are capable of just being randomly happy in the moment without it meaning they are somehow deficient in understanding.

The origins of Fiercegirl

Now, now, darlings.


You - my manifold millions of adoring fans - keep plaguing me with the question: who is Fiercegirl? What is she? How came she to be named thus?

I stole the name from my friend's older sister who, when she was four, insisted that her parents address her as 'Fiercegirl' rather than by her real name.

"Fiercegirl, time for dinner!"

"Stop tormenting the cat, Fiercegirl."

"Fiercegirl! Whatever you are doing with that lego block, I want you to QUIT IT RIGHT NOW!"

It is definitely supposed to be fierce as in roaring lions and karate chops, not fierce as in what ex-models call something instead of just saying it's cool.

Goblins and griffons

So I was listening to Jarvis Cocker reading Icelandic folktales (I am so glad he is still around, we never hear about him here in Canada). I am reminded of how much I love eery folktales.

I work as a cleaning lady a couple of times a week, so I can earn some money that won't be clawed back out of my student bursary by the government. I hate that I have to work under the table. It is completely against what I believe, but what am I supposed to do? What they give us students (loans and bursary) is hardly enough to survive on, certainly not with any dignity. The moment you start earning money, they take it out of your bursary - not your loan - so that basically you are working for free. It's so stupid.

So Mondays I clean house for these two academics and their two lovely children. And being academics, they have so many fantastic kids' books. I sometimes get this incredible longing to just be able to curl up with, say, Tom's Midnight Garden. Just have a rainy day of reading excellent children's lit. This is no doubt part of my general sad nostalgia for the past, when things were less complicated and exhausting. I have to tell myself in these moments - when the days of childhood are like some distant golden clearing barely glimpsed through the menacing trees of this dark forest of adult life - that nostalgia is just the worst and utter crap. Because I was often miserable as a child, lonely and powerless. And now I have people to talk to and people to love, who love me back, and it is really so much better than spinning myself some ridiculous fairy tale about a time that never was.

So I am pleased to be an adult, who can read Montaigne and Arendt and form real opinions and vote and cook my own dinner. But I still love fairy tales and children's books. Here are some books I loved when I was a kid, in absolutely no order at all:

• Tom's Midnight Garden, and Minnow on the Say, by Philippa Pierce
• The Complete Works of the Brothers Grimm
• The Narnia series by CS Lewis
• The Light Princess by George MacDonald
• Watership Down, by Richard Adams
• the Time of the Ghost, by Diana Wynne Jones
• James and the Giant Peach, along with most of the books by Roald Dahl
• Rebecca's World, by Terry Nation (freakiest illustrations ever and very ecological message)
• All the colours of FairyBooks by Andrew Lang (particularly the crimson one)
• Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak
• Once and Future King by TH White
• The White Stag by Kate Seredy
• Green Smoke, by Rosemary Manning
• The Book of Dragons, by E. Nesbit
• The Door in the Hedge, by Robin McKinley
• 14 Classic Tales by Hans Christian Andersen (illustrated by Edward Ardizzone, naturally)
  

I have held on to a lot of my books, although over the years quite a few have gone missing. Also my stepfather borrows them and does not give them back which makes me kind of mad. I have told people who asked that I am keeping them in case I have kids one day, but really these are some of my favourite books still, and when I go to visit my parents I reread them.

Anyway, no wonder my head is full of cobwebs and daydreams.

Pictures of Lily

I just realized I left something very incriminating on the floor under my desk, and that it was there yesterday when my mother stopped by for coffee. She used my computer, and is an observant women. I am going to pretend this didn't happen. I am going to tell myself that she probably didn't notice it there. Ueuh. I have to go hide my head under a pillow and scream quietly for a few minutes.

Lego-block invasion

I live in kind of a strange neighbourhood. It's the old part of town, one of the oldest neighbourhoods on the continent, actually. But where I live, it's also a multimedia district, and there are all these new condos sneaking in all the time. Seriously, it's like you blink and there one appears; some flashy arrogant loser of a building shouldering its way in amongst all the dignified old warehouses and shipping offices. And these numbskull interlopers keep coming - the ugly new buildings and the people who live in them.

The old buildings are all being tarted up, too. This street seems like it's one of the last to go. We only moved in slightly over a year ago (I guess implicating ourselves in the gentrification process), and already a handful of businesses have closed and been replaced with suave boutiques. There was this dive on the corner where M and I were looking forward to hanging out - the kind with dim light, classic rock, old fluorescent beer signs, and very cheap draft - but we never had a chance. It has been reimagined as one seriously horrible yuppy bar.

In the summer, our streets are invaded by tourists. In winter we are isolated, far from all our friends. Fall and spring, we itch to go out, but here everything closes early, and it's like a ghost town. If we head uptown in the evening and get out of the metro at Laurier or Mont-Royal, we feel dizzy with the crowds of people.

So why stay? Well, there are these points to consider:

1 - Our apartment is beautiful, sunny, big, open, etc. It is affordable - and I like that it doesn't have an elevator, because it keeps me fit and makes me feel safe.
2 - Our immediate neighbours are awesome, including our landlord, a true mensch.
3 - Most nights, you hear the calèches go by, the clip-clop of horses's hooves and the bells on their harnesses. This is especially atmospheric when (a) it is snowy, or (b) I watch Deadwood.
4 - The area just west of us is super interesting to explore, because it is old and industrial and crumbling and forgotten.
5 - Our building is alive.