I am dissatisfied. I am disenfranchised. Jaded, politically cloudy. I am walking through a haze of pop-culture and the wisps of its thick smoke - thickest on the outside, not the expected centres - wrap around me, heady and beckoning. I stop and smile and walk on by.
No one wants anymore. Everyone is content. No one understands what Derrida was talking about when he uttered the word differance. Not only for linguistic purposes but as a catalyst, as an entire universe of pository change and action, of distinguish and the opposite of lingering, the opposite of stasis and homogeneity.
The problem is that no one wants to learn for the sake of learning anymore. No one wants to sit and wonder and then explore hidden meaning. Those that do, seek to be published, lust for recognition, of the kind that Emily Dickinson exchewed. There is no passion in their work, only a few dozen articles in a database to their name - and my, what a name they've established. Indeed, when they're gone this earth will remember their name, will whisper it on the wind, will bear a mark of their own arbitrary system of words and languages.
The futility of doing - well, anything, really strikes me hard. But that doesn't mean I don't want to do. Everyone looks at you all funny when you say things like - I lust for knowledge, I strive for truth, I need to learn, I want to project and effect and - most of all - i want to BE affected.
I'm tired of these fucking markham street car racers and people lusting for Benzs and lofts. Waiting for the start of life which equals economic independence - their new Promised Land. I'm tired of people earning degrees to try and be the next CEO under 30 who gets published like that is real self worth - the real startup, Canadian/American dream. They think that getting a boyfriend or a girlfriend is their milestone and it puzzles me. It puzzles me that it puzzles me.
Me myself, I am a bolter, a great big run-away-er so I'm not one to talk; my opinion is biased. I am scared of something that has no name, no face, no identity that I can concretely call out to. See a devil, call him by his name? I cannot. No interpellation. Running away is the only way I know how. Of course it's true, beginnings are the best. When everything is new, when change is still rife in the air, hanging on a low wing. But after that...routine sets in. Familiarity.
Sure, everyone wants a rock, a bastion, somewhere you can return, somewhere like home. But what happened to process? Why does no one value the process? Why can i kid myself and want to pull the wool over the eyes of others, make up excuses for the reasons that I'm doing these things, pursuing what I want to y pretending their goals to a bigger something? They're not! They are lives in and of themselves! They are valuable in and of themselves. I don't want this to be another Waterloo.
An example of this restlessness and a need for the organic, the inspiration, the process in my life: an essay assigned ot me. I will not write it if I feel even a bit of resistance. There doesn't have to be a spark of inspiration but if there is any resistance, if it doesn't flow - I will put it off 'til the process is organic, 'til it feels like its time, like its right. These are internal processes, inexplicable and complex.
It's not only that the fun of everything is gone. It's not only that I cannot enjoy what I'm learning or studying anymore. I would love to be a doctor but if I had to worry about getting into med school...I would shoot myself. Cutthroat, goal-oriented. End results. Investments with the dependent clause of profit. Why can't the dependent clause be independent experience? Why can't the process be cherished? Practicality shouldn't be made a part of casting yourself into the future; it should be a matter of dreams, of wants, not what is feasible and what you should do today to make tomorrow happen. Tomorrow is already happening; it's happening as a virtue of today. We are in residual time. No one understands that. No one values that - very few, at least.
Everyone just wants to know know know. Where where where. Where are you going? When when when. When will you be there. How how how. How will you get there. Where is there, I ask? What is this 'there'? Why must I know and, more foolishly, how can I know? Clearly, I am not going to be a psychic, nor am I a machine that can calibrate. How can you ask me to predict the outcome of Chaos Theory or how an infitesimal shift in action, in thinking, in movement can change in my path?
What is the point of these plans? But then again...how does one go through. For those of us floating in a sea of nothingness, negation, floundering, wishing we had some way - some outlet. Not merely only to show the world that we're progressing towards something but to feel alive, to justify to ourselves that we are proceeding to something. Some...goal. Some unforetold horizon.
I just want to run away. I want to run away and live in a chateau, reading books and drinking wine and living like a recluse, the oddity in the village like the author of Wide Sargasso Sea. I want to get lost in a marketplace in Morocco and resurface, a year later, at the base of the Himalayas. I want to make people smile, I want to educate. Enough of theory- I want to activate. I want to write stories and see them come alive on film. I want to listen - listen to others, listen to the Greats espouse their thoughts, study and observe nuances. Marvel. No one wants to marvel. I want to stay in while it rains for days on end and watch as the world goes by with Miles Davis in the background. I don't want to speak anymore.
Monday, November 30, 2009
Friday, November 13, 2009
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
About a week ago I received a bill from my family doctor's clinic of all the services that I had used last year and I was assured that they were covered under OHIP.
"Dear Ms. MacKrekar" the letter read, "Please be informed that these services are covered under -"
Hang on just one bloody minute, I thought. I backed up, my eyes hardly believing that what I had just read could be true. Everyone always wishes for this when then get their credit card bills - hoping that all their extravagant purchases are sent to someone else while a batty old woman's can of tuna is the only thing listed on their own credit card bill - obviously the result of a bad mail switch.
For one wild second, this was me: it has finally happened, I thought. Canada Post finally messed up and sent me some old Scottish hag's bill. But upon closer inspection and second glance, I soon came to realize - this wasn't someone else's bill. This was MY bill. MY bill addressed to ME, Sarah Merekar. Or, MacKrekar, according to this doctor's office.
The lack of caring notwithstanding, I blinked and wondered at the level of incompetency and stupidity that must be rife in our society for someone to be able to mispell or enter incorrectly, someone's last name over and over and over again, especially if the creation of the bill was probably just a form to be filled in. All they had to do was enter the right bloody name. So shocked was I that I ran to fetch my health card and, of course, my health card informed me that my last name was firmly Indian, not some strange Scottish variant.
How hard, I wondered, how hard is it to spell a bloody name that isn't more than 10 letters long. It's 7 measly letters! Has anyone ever tried spelling OTHER brown names? They go on forever! Or let's take Russian or Polish names - those are just a long list of unfortunate consonants all rammed together, any sadist's dream. Or how many times can you say "polous" in one greek last name? My last name is not the hardest gawdamn last name in the world. In fact, all circumstances given, it is actually quite simple: two e's, two r's, a K, an A, and an M. And not in that order. It's so simple.
But no. No, they must mispell it. It's not such a big deal, really, people mess up names and last names all the time. Which is why Satish and Rajiv and Chandrashekar have to change their "ethnic" names to Saul and Ray and Charlie. And it was this, this very notion that annoyed the hell out of me. Once upon a time, I was indignant, yes, that anyone with an eastern name had to change it to something seen to be more "easier", more "integrateable" into Western culture. But now it struck me that besides all the tools of hegemony naming and renaming really introduce and apply, it was like a whole new identity. And here was a whole new identity being offered to me. A new form of imperialism? Maybe I'm too quick to judge, too quick to fly off the handle, to spout a theory. But I was affronted - affronted that they couldn't take the time to bother to check the spelling of my name when I, the ethnic "other" the eastern counterpart of Edward Said-like descriptions, would have to do so. And inexplicably puzzled that they had chosen, instead to give me a NEW name. For this is not a mere case of typos or letters being put in the wrong place.
Once - no, many times over - in grade school, I had a friend named Nadejda. The supply teachers would always pronounce it Nad-JYE-da. One day I got so annoyed at this blatant lack of care obvious idiocy that I blurted out loudly, "The E comes before the J!" I got detention for speaking outloud but I never forgot this moment. Thankfully, there are not many ways you can fuck up Sarah but a few had a hearty go at my last name - I got Marker, Meerkat, America, Mareep the Sheep (when Pokemon came out. dear god.).
But here is a psudeo-scot name being offered to me. Being fashioned and given, a new form of evangelical, Christian missionary. Here, it is not the Bible that is the Sign taken for Wonders. It is this identity, this new name, that, when donned, integrates me into the culture but also allows me to stand up, now in the skin of my conqueror and look back at him.
Madness, you may think. Post-colonial theory in a simple health letter? But intended or not, dormant or not, latent or clear, they are there. It is there. It is inherent. And whether the intention is there or not, whether the awareness is there or not, I am very aware. Very aware that it is NOT spelt MacKrekar or McKrakken or any of that. It's Merekar, thank you very much and I think I'll stick to that for now. Unless Gerard Butler seduces me and I succumb, of course.
"Dear Ms. MacKrekar" the letter read, "Please be informed that these services are covered under -"
Hang on just one bloody minute, I thought. I backed up, my eyes hardly believing that what I had just read could be true. Everyone always wishes for this when then get their credit card bills - hoping that all their extravagant purchases are sent to someone else while a batty old woman's can of tuna is the only thing listed on their own credit card bill - obviously the result of a bad mail switch.
For one wild second, this was me: it has finally happened, I thought. Canada Post finally messed up and sent me some old Scottish hag's bill. But upon closer inspection and second glance, I soon came to realize - this wasn't someone else's bill. This was MY bill. MY bill addressed to ME, Sarah Merekar. Or, MacKrekar, according to this doctor's office.
The lack of caring notwithstanding, I blinked and wondered at the level of incompetency and stupidity that must be rife in our society for someone to be able to mispell or enter incorrectly, someone's last name over and over and over again, especially if the creation of the bill was probably just a form to be filled in. All they had to do was enter the right bloody name. So shocked was I that I ran to fetch my health card and, of course, my health card informed me that my last name was firmly Indian, not some strange Scottish variant.
How hard, I wondered, how hard is it to spell a bloody name that isn't more than 10 letters long. It's 7 measly letters! Has anyone ever tried spelling OTHER brown names? They go on forever! Or let's take Russian or Polish names - those are just a long list of unfortunate consonants all rammed together, any sadist's dream. Or how many times can you say "polous" in one greek last name? My last name is not the hardest gawdamn last name in the world. In fact, all circumstances given, it is actually quite simple: two e's, two r's, a K, an A, and an M. And not in that order. It's so simple.
But no. No, they must mispell it. It's not such a big deal, really, people mess up names and last names all the time. Which is why Satish and Rajiv and Chandrashekar have to change their "ethnic" names to Saul and Ray and Charlie. And it was this, this very notion that annoyed the hell out of me. Once upon a time, I was indignant, yes, that anyone with an eastern name had to change it to something seen to be more "easier", more "integrateable" into Western culture. But now it struck me that besides all the tools of hegemony naming and renaming really introduce and apply, it was like a whole new identity. And here was a whole new identity being offered to me. A new form of imperialism? Maybe I'm too quick to judge, too quick to fly off the handle, to spout a theory. But I was affronted - affronted that they couldn't take the time to bother to check the spelling of my name when I, the ethnic "other" the eastern counterpart of Edward Said-like descriptions, would have to do so. And inexplicably puzzled that they had chosen, instead to give me a NEW name. For this is not a mere case of typos or letters being put in the wrong place.
Once - no, many times over - in grade school, I had a friend named Nadejda. The supply teachers would always pronounce it Nad-JYE-da. One day I got so annoyed at this blatant lack of care obvious idiocy that I blurted out loudly, "The E comes before the J!" I got detention for speaking outloud but I never forgot this moment. Thankfully, there are not many ways you can fuck up Sarah but a few had a hearty go at my last name - I got Marker, Meerkat, America, Mareep the Sheep (when Pokemon came out. dear god.).
But here is a psudeo-scot name being offered to me. Being fashioned and given, a new form of evangelical, Christian missionary. Here, it is not the Bible that is the Sign taken for Wonders. It is this identity, this new name, that, when donned, integrates me into the culture but also allows me to stand up, now in the skin of my conqueror and look back at him.
Madness, you may think. Post-colonial theory in a simple health letter? But intended or not, dormant or not, latent or clear, they are there. It is there. It is inherent. And whether the intention is there or not, whether the awareness is there or not, I am very aware. Very aware that it is NOT spelt MacKrekar or McKrakken or any of that. It's Merekar, thank you very much and I think I'll stick to that for now. Unless Gerard Butler seduces me and I succumb, of course.
Saturday, November 7, 2009
I think this is so kickass:
UTH OYE
Design, check. Heart and soul, check. People ready, check. Sustainable development, check. It's simple, its clear, its sexy and its 100% wearable, non-shrinkable t-shirt love. So order away - I'm getting two. Handscreened pouch?? yes please. And its a great initiative....we should think of starting something simple like this here.
Plus the website is pure design, CSS style sheets and flash LOVE. So get off your lazy ass and contribute (in a microcosmic way) - UTH OYE!
UTH OYE
Design, check. Heart and soul, check. People ready, check. Sustainable development, check. It's simple, its clear, its sexy and its 100% wearable, non-shrinkable t-shirt love. So order away - I'm getting two. Handscreened pouch?? yes please. And its a great initiative....we should think of starting something simple like this here.
Plus the website is pure design, CSS style sheets and flash LOVE. So get off your lazy ass and contribute (in a microcosmic way) - UTH OYE!
Thursday, November 5, 2009
Saturday, October 31, 2009
Somewhere between reading the critiques of Adorno and the changing landscape of Coconino County with How I Met Your Mother running faithfully in the background, it hit me. It was amusing, yes...but these jokes on Canada...actually sort of bothered me. It's not the first time I'm hearing them, of course. And, okay, so the 80s lasted a little while longer here (judging by when I first arrived here...can anyone say pouffy hair?) but that quip about marriages not being really recognized as such? That was kind of sucky. Like how are money really isn't money.
Which is funny, of course, because Canada and the U.S. are on par. So what's there to get worked up about, they're only jokes. Yes. Yes, they're only jokes and they shouldn't matter and usually I snicker alongside with them. Like an outsider - in a very knowing, superior way. I guess the issue here is not so much the joke but the fact that I was bothered by it - which would, of course, signify some sort of identification.
And then it struck me...I am no more the outsider. Of course, I will never wholly say I am Canadian in the way my little brother will be able to - he was born here, and I was not. I've moved around everywhere and he has not. But after experiencing a smorgasboard of cultures, your mind always drifts back to where your roots are. And true as this might be...I think I have finally been in this place long enough to feel...annoyance when someone cracks a joke at our country. Canada, being that country. Mind you, when I think of Canada, I think of Toronto - and Toronto is pretty effing great. But this whole country is completely unexplored by me. And yes, those history lessons were a PAIN: a few provinces and 3 measly territories, no great history, no great global participation, pacifist, American-kissasses, always harping on the great glory of one thing or another (the russian hockey game or the suez canal crisis or that damned battle on vimy ride - my ears BLED).
But then I really thought about it - no bloodshed on our hands. No cultural hegemony. No massacres. No apathetic uninvolvement until we got hit cuz then it was our problem. No masquerading as the supporter in a war and then trying to take over when the war was won. No furthering of global expansion goals on the account of developing nations. No exploitation of resources when countries are at their most vulnerable. No masking all this under the Puritanical, pre-destined, biblical crap. No spouting of separation between state and religion, democracy and secularism when really it's there. No fallacy and failings of an American Dream.
So okay. We might not have had major cultural movements. Our authors may be a snore because all they want to talk about sometimes are the Maritimes. Okay, so we only have one major national highway. But in a rare act of patriotism for a Western country (which is as close to patriotism for a western country I'll ever feel - besides New York, because that is not patriotism, that is love) I'll ever experience, I just want to say:
Our money is awesome and colourful. Our national anthem is great and not steeped in history. We glorify things that happened ages ago to nurse our wounded pride and keep the spirit alive. We don't get that involved and we like to think of ourselves as peacekeepers - heck, some of us even are. We don't have creative movie studios (we really don't have that many Jews...). And marriages here DO count. Love here IS real. Fall and Winter are separate seasons and we're a chartered plane ride away from the Aurora Borealis and land where the sun never sets.
And we DO NOT pronounce it "ABOOT".
Which is funny, of course, because Canada and the U.S. are on par. So what's there to get worked up about, they're only jokes. Yes. Yes, they're only jokes and they shouldn't matter and usually I snicker alongside with them. Like an outsider - in a very knowing, superior way. I guess the issue here is not so much the joke but the fact that I was bothered by it - which would, of course, signify some sort of identification.
And then it struck me...I am no more the outsider. Of course, I will never wholly say I am Canadian in the way my little brother will be able to - he was born here, and I was not. I've moved around everywhere and he has not. But after experiencing a smorgasboard of cultures, your mind always drifts back to where your roots are. And true as this might be...I think I have finally been in this place long enough to feel...annoyance when someone cracks a joke at our country. Canada, being that country. Mind you, when I think of Canada, I think of Toronto - and Toronto is pretty effing great. But this whole country is completely unexplored by me. And yes, those history lessons were a PAIN: a few provinces and 3 measly territories, no great history, no great global participation, pacifist, American-kissasses, always harping on the great glory of one thing or another (the russian hockey game or the suez canal crisis or that damned battle on vimy ride - my ears BLED).
But then I really thought about it - no bloodshed on our hands. No cultural hegemony. No massacres. No apathetic uninvolvement until we got hit cuz then it was our problem. No masquerading as the supporter in a war and then trying to take over when the war was won. No furthering of global expansion goals on the account of developing nations. No exploitation of resources when countries are at their most vulnerable. No masking all this under the Puritanical, pre-destined, biblical crap. No spouting of separation between state and religion, democracy and secularism when really it's there. No fallacy and failings of an American Dream.
So okay. We might not have had major cultural movements. Our authors may be a snore because all they want to talk about sometimes are the Maritimes. Okay, so we only have one major national highway. But in a rare act of patriotism for a Western country (which is as close to patriotism for a western country I'll ever feel - besides New York, because that is not patriotism, that is love) I'll ever experience, I just want to say:
Our money is awesome and colourful. Our national anthem is great and not steeped in history. We glorify things that happened ages ago to nurse our wounded pride and keep the spirit alive. We don't get that involved and we like to think of ourselves as peacekeepers - heck, some of us even are. We don't have creative movie studios (we really don't have that many Jews...). And marriages here DO count. Love here IS real. Fall and Winter are separate seasons and we're a chartered plane ride away from the Aurora Borealis and land where the sun never sets.
And we DO NOT pronounce it "ABOOT".
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
You know what? I think it is distinctly unfair that Miranda, Samantha, and even Charlotte, have to bare their boobs but SJP never has to. I mean, seriously, why the discrimination?! Wtf is up with that? What could possibly be the rationale behind SJP never having to give us some of the ladies?
Not that I have a real hankering to see her ladies. But I just think...it's so discriminatory. In a sense. Because it's as if they're saying, look, she's the main character. Just to hit it home, just in case the fact that Carrie is narrating is not enough, we have to let you know that she's the main character and, as such, she's hella important. And she's just the right blend of neurotic, cynical, hopeful, witty like a man but fucks like a woman. She is the perfect blend of all equal parts of her girlfriends. She tempers everything.
And gawd, that is ANNOYING. Yes, you love Carrie the most because she is the most least craziest. She touches all departments. She obsesses, then she lets go. She's so...so...gah, she's so proverbial. So just in case all the blatant favoritism wasn't enough, we're not going to have her bare her drawers 'cuz no tasteful main character does that. Because, even though everything is in her point of view, she is still enigmatic and charming; she's crazy enough to have a one night stand but not so crazy that she'll show it like a two dollar whore. She's raunchy and proper.
Or is it because SJP is a producer? Or was it executive producer? Is it because she has a financial stake in it that she can't? You never hear her (Carrie) having an orgasm...the most she'll do is mourn. The closest we got to her having sex was Jack Berger and even then she had a bra on! And yet Miranda is yelling and screaming, Samantha is suitably outrageous and Charlotte is slow and sensual.
No, it makes no sense to me and I can't pinpoint the reason. I started to wonder if maybe it was because, eventually, as the show picked up, they realized that Carrie, with her love for Manolos, should be the bastion of fashion. That theory was quickly knocked down when I considered Miranda, Samantha and Charlotte. Look at Samantha! She's a bastion of fashion too! All of them are, in their own neat typecasts. The only one who breaks the mould is Carrie, and we're just supposed to agree with that; that's the reason, apparently, she gets laid so much. It's because she's "different". "Special". And not like, 'stop eating the paste' special, either. By the way, some of her outfits (most, really...50%) are just...stupid. They're not vintage, or cute, or M.O.D. or squarishly hip nor nostalgic enough about the 80s (or at least the screaming horror overpowers the nostalgia).
What I do love about Carrie, are her legs. Good thing they aren't covering those up. But really, it's made me wonder. Why no pecs Parker?
Not that I have a real hankering to see her ladies. But I just think...it's so discriminatory. In a sense. Because it's as if they're saying, look, she's the main character. Just to hit it home, just in case the fact that Carrie is narrating is not enough, we have to let you know that she's the main character and, as such, she's hella important. And she's just the right blend of neurotic, cynical, hopeful, witty like a man but fucks like a woman. She is the perfect blend of all equal parts of her girlfriends. She tempers everything.
And gawd, that is ANNOYING. Yes, you love Carrie the most because she is the most least craziest. She touches all departments. She obsesses, then she lets go. She's so...so...gah, she's so proverbial. So just in case all the blatant favoritism wasn't enough, we're not going to have her bare her drawers 'cuz no tasteful main character does that. Because, even though everything is in her point of view, she is still enigmatic and charming; she's crazy enough to have a one night stand but not so crazy that she'll show it like a two dollar whore. She's raunchy and proper.
Or is it because SJP is a producer? Or was it executive producer? Is it because she has a financial stake in it that she can't? You never hear her (Carrie) having an orgasm...the most she'll do is mourn. The closest we got to her having sex was Jack Berger and even then she had a bra on! And yet Miranda is yelling and screaming, Samantha is suitably outrageous and Charlotte is slow and sensual.
No, it makes no sense to me and I can't pinpoint the reason. I started to wonder if maybe it was because, eventually, as the show picked up, they realized that Carrie, with her love for Manolos, should be the bastion of fashion. That theory was quickly knocked down when I considered Miranda, Samantha and Charlotte. Look at Samantha! She's a bastion of fashion too! All of them are, in their own neat typecasts. The only one who breaks the mould is Carrie, and we're just supposed to agree with that; that's the reason, apparently, she gets laid so much. It's because she's "different". "Special". And not like, 'stop eating the paste' special, either. By the way, some of her outfits (most, really...50%) are just...stupid. They're not vintage, or cute, or M.O.D. or squarishly hip nor nostalgic enough about the 80s (or at least the screaming horror overpowers the nostalgia).
What I do love about Carrie, are her legs. Good thing they aren't covering those up. But really, it's made me wonder. Why no pecs Parker?
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