Rampant thoughts on a mock European bus

Thankfully, I caught the ghost bus this morning. The Viva, which is Toronto/GTA's pseudo-european answer to express bus service in an area only recently cultivated for the housing boom but was previously acres of desolate farmland, is usually jam packed in the morning, especially by the time it gets to Woodbine & Hwy 7.

The ghost bus was characteristically quiet this morning. Not too many occupants, and empty seats. I stretched my legs at leisure and piled the adjacent seats with my so-heavy-could-be-carrying-a-corpse backpack. So there I sat, with bright, sharp morning sunlight streaming in and hiding the fugitive wind of a cold March morning, blaring my John Mayer.

Whether or not you mean to, it's always fun to listen to people's conversations, and hard to miss if they're talking particularly loud. There were two guys talking about...anything and everything. Aah, just my type of conversation (no sarcasm intended). I paid no attention - they were talking about the Bible & hypocrisy (man, is that a tired topic) - but then the words "Loan payback" drifted to my seat and tapped me persuasively on my shoulder. And so the volum on my ipod dropped to a hum.

I didn't care much for the particulars: the amount of his loan or anything like that. These guys were talking about being students and their plans for LIFE. It's been plaguing my own mind for a long while now so I decided to learn what I could.

They were just as green as me, of course, not really veterans in being homeless/penniless students but...their approach was different. Their outlook was what I like to adopt and stick to on good days and that I hopelessly drop and succumb to fear on bad days. Naturally, for me, there are more bad days than good; funny how that works. They figured, whatever happens, happens.

So this was the gist of the conversation:

Boy 1: ....and I've got my OSAP loan and line of credit. I figure I can at least pay off my line of credit

Boy 2: How much is your line of credit?

Boy 1: Oh...like 18, 20K? Yeah, it's not too bad...it's a mountain but it's a doable mountain, you know? Like I could work for a year straight and just pay that shit off so it's not too bad. Like, right now I make all the minimum payments...and there was a point in time where I'd make like a full payment....yeah, me and my parents were really good at that time. We'd talk and all, our relationship got better and I kept paying the full amount for like six, seven months straight. But then...man, I don't even know what happened but I stopped paying full...and I even missed a payment. So my dad got really pissed. Whatever man.

Boy 2: Hah. Shit. So what do you think?

Boy 1: Seriously, man, I don't care. My parents are all like, what the hell are you going to do with your life, you're not getting an actual degree of use, you're going to be homeless and live in a hole. And I'm like, what the hell? How do other people live? Like, there are so many kdis with Arts degrees and they're actually doing stuff with their lives, you know? They figure things out, I will too.

Boy 2: Mhmm...

Boy 1: Like, they work, pay, go to school. They travel. Okay, there's this guy I know. He's in university and this summer he's going to BC 'cuz he's writing this book. Artists and Life Art or something like that. And he's doing this project, you know? And he's like, if I'd come out and help him with research and editing, he'd pay for my flight ticket. Crazy, right? But here he is, doing something with his life. Stuff like that.

Boy 2: For sure man. Like people just get caught up in work and jobs and whatever.

Boy 1: Exactly. There's this girl I know. All she does is work for a year, saves up as much as can. Puts half toward her tuition and then save the rest for traveling. That's all she does: works and travels. And then the next year she goes to school. Like that's amazing you know? She fucking knows how to live her life.

Boy 2: Are you serious? She just...travels?

Boy 1: Yeah man, she takes like 3 or 4 jobs through the year and earns all she can. It's crazy. And so awesome. But you know what, that's the way to be! Like, I'm not worried about stuff. There's no rush for me, and people figure things out, you know? Just because you're an Arts grad, doesn't mean you're going to be broke. It annoys me when people think that way or say that to you.


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I found this to be...not quite an eye-opener, because I've met and talked to people like this before. But to have this to consider in the morning, when I've been thinking about this all along...to have it come from strangers was...thought-inducing.

Because it's something that is hard for me to grasp or fully apply to my own life. I'm torn between being an idealist and just being...practical. And the biggest struggle for me right now is, yes, the money, yes what the hell am I going to do in the future, but also, when the hell is it going to finally happen. There's honour...doing the right thing at the right time, finishing a degree in four years getting a job, making some money to pay back those loans. And then there's freedom where someone like the aforementioned girl works and lives her gawdamn life!

I don't know the answers to anything yet, and my head was swimming, hearing this. It wasn't a new sentiment. It's been expressed before. But in trying to apply it to my own life, I'm held back by fear. Great and immense, bottomless fear that doesn't usually tinge my behaviour or my thoughts.

A very big part of me is still stuck in that room in Waterloo, worrying about honour and freedom and the cost of pursuing your dreams and the tradeoffs, the sacrifices, the depression, the idealism, the follow-through and the potential for failure. A big part of me is still that timid girl crying over the phone, is still battling with my father, is still lacking coherency and stability. Is still missing in action in a very big way.

And as though my ipod could read my mind (and I swear it does this often), their conversation prophetically ended to the beginning of Dave Brubeck's Take Five. Life is so uncannily stylish, sometimes, it's scary. Take Five indeed.

The Promised Land

So I was talking to a friend last night at this pre-new years reunion party thing. She goes to Berkeley in San Fran. San Fran, land of the Andreas fault line, Golden Gate Bridge, many gay people and Full House. Land of the no less than 20 degree weather, surfing and bleached blondes. Land of the - well, you get it.

The last time I spoke to her, she was thinking of switching into Linguistics but totally bailed on it when she realized that Linguistics had more to do with syntax and sound than with the socio-economic and anthropological backgrounds of the language, which is what she was looking to gain. So she decided to take Economics as her major, which sounds drab and commonplace , but of course it's not because she's at Berkeley.

So she's taking a course called Crisis Development, being taught by an actual memeber of faculty who's a UN ambassador. And the format of the class is as follows. This brilliant ambassador bloke will state an international crisis; for example, the president of a major country gets shot. Every person in the clas sthen gets assigned a role in the internation community. Thus, someone could be a CNN reporter, the vice president to the late President, a leader of neighbouring or trade relations country, head of the UN, etc. Then they have debates, convene at summits and UN headquarters and discuss a strategy to calm the masses, to implement on the country, and the social, economic and political consequences of their decisions.

I don't know about you, but I think that sounds absolutely amazing. See, this. This is what I pictured university would be like; full of amazing classes and dynamic faculties, with life-changing experience. I'm envious of her, I'll admit, because she gets to meet people like Simon Hurst and the Guy Who Invented the Laser .

I know that in the grand scheme of things, no one need pity me and that this complaining is rather ungrateful of me, yes? I have the chance to even attend university and for that I'm humbled and grateful, and the experience must and can only be what I make out of it what I will. In other words, I must take my learning in my own hands.

But there is more to university than that. It is a lifestyle; it seems to be a mindset. This physical place somehow molded into a train of thought in my mind and the minds of others. You cannot run away from it: the studying is tied in with the people. The lifestyle is varied; that is, you can make of it what you want. If you want to party, you party. If you want to study, you study and if you want to do a little bit of both then you rely heavily on coffee and sparks notes.

I was talking to Ter and we were just bitching about the stupid people on her residence floor. It reminded me of how I myself hated not only where I lived but the people whom I lived with. And compared to Western, Waterloo was fairly tame. Yet I was still aggravated. I think I would've been the psychotic shoots-everyone kid if I had to be at Western. It's so strange, she told me, because everyone had basically been lying to her all her life. I understood. How was she to blame for being coaxed into loving this place, this notion of university? This living breathing revolutionary thought it had become through no fault of her own. People like us, we saw it as a light at the end of our very very dark tunnel, almost like a salvage and not quite as the prize but not a stepping stone either. More like a place of quenching the thirst, the restlessness. They told her she would meet like-minded people but maybe the fine print was, like-minded people provided you attend university in with your brain off and not inspect too closely.

I feel bad marginalizing because not everyone's brain is off, by any means. But a majority of the people I've had the neutral experience (or thorough displeasure) of meeting have been either completely unremarkable or so remarkably ridiculous so as to blip on my radar for their intense stupidity. It is rather unnerving, I sometimes (I lie: often) think that these people will someday be running countries and making grand decisions for the so-called betterment of society. I only can feel thorough distaste and then I feel guilty for feeling that because, really, it is this society that has caused them to be such mind-numbing idiots.

Then someone such as myself thinks, well, these kids are idiots, the mainstreamers, the engineers, the healthsci or environment kids but maybe there's a small collective underground group that keep to themselves, scholars who'd rather not be marred by the reps of The Others. It's all very hush-hush and the dark, artsy, underground thought appeals to me. And I even find them. But of course, like everything in university, this too requires closer inspection and is a play on the original words. I see, really, that their underground is more the basement of someone's house and their dark artsyness gives way to misinformed, ill-opinionated pretentiousness. I'm rather shocked at their naievety and am somewhat offended at how ignorant they are. In the end I grieve that I ever leant them that much credit and think, well I'd rathr be with the numbskulls anyway: they might not have an opinion but then that means you don't have to put up with the close-minded pretentious crap either.

The Amish have this ritual for 19 and 20 year olds. It's like a coming out or something. Before they transition for adolesence to adulthood, the ducklings are released into the wild so they can have as much promiscuous sex and alcohol as they want, experiment with drugs and the like and basically havea kickass life for one year before they return back to the homestead. Upon their return, most renounce those years as Satanic and move on to their quiet furniture building existence (joke XD) but some - few mind you - decide to head back to what we big city folk call "real life". This is almost like that....except without the hope of these people ever withdrawing.

So what exactly am I trying to say? A good many things here. I'm trying to say...I feel a little cheated, no matter how childish that sounds. I feel different; I am not like these other people who worry about whether a boy likes them or whether he'll call them or who wore what or what club event is going on. I feel very tired and bothersome when friends try to tell me about what she said or he said and why that matters at all. I really cannot seem to connect on the same points as others around me and perhaps that is my own fault for being too uppity in my arse. Perhaps not. It just...shocks me a little and I feel like a...blind, lost soul, grappling for the next crevice of rock to hold on to, to take the next step. I'm sad not because this is a lonely existence but because the Soul of this World seems to be entrapped in something else entirely.

When my friend from San Fran tells me about all these wonderful things she has the opportunity to experience I'm in awe but I'm jealous too. She attends an American University and so she has a broader base, a wider spectrum with which to confer from. I'm bordering on attending three universities by now and I have to say that the experience is pretty much the same, with varying degrees of insanity. There is no depth, there is no importance; there is only frustration and anger at the atmosphere. There is a sense of loss and sense of detachment. I just felt like...this was supposed to be it. It was supposed to be the centre of my world, an overprivileged slice of real life. People looked forward to high school, I looked forward to second year university.

And besides Queens and Western, universities are pretty effing ugly.