Face to Face at Last

The underwater ocean world is a scary place -- ever since I was stung by a jelly fish in the pacific ocean in grade 5, I've been rightfully wary of the sharks, plants, fish and other oddities that live under the water. Like, it's INCREDBLE how little we know about what goes on there -- apparently deep sea has been dubbed the "real final frontier"; we know more about our galexy and solar system than we do about some places on our own planet. Case in point: today, for the first time in history, scientists captured live footage of the elusive giant squid, more than a kilometer beneath the ocean off the shores of japan. And this thing is huge - the average giant squid is significantly larger than a city bus ... could you imagine? After hours of struggling, when the squid broke free from the trap, it left behind a 5 meter long tentacle that was STILL FUNCTIONAL when they pulled it up on board the ship, suctioning itself to people and flopping around. And you wonder why I don't ACTUALLY surf. That's messed up. The coolest part is? We have no idea what else is down there.

Here's a picture of a dead giant flying squid ... it's 1/2 the size of the one they found today. Put that in your calamari and chew it!

The photographs that we don't see

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Originally uploaded by Rosie O'Donnell.

In preparation for a scalding entry tonight on celebrity blogs, I was perusing Rosie O'Donnell's photos on her blog, which lead me to her flickr collection (online photo album, for those of us who aren't blog saavy). And there, within pictures of her getting dressed for her stint on Fiddler on the Roof and shots of her kids going to school, were a collection of pictures of New Orleans. Whether these were sent to her or taken by Rosie herself, it's hard to say.

It's hard to say a lot about this, actually. And graphic as it might be, I think it's really important to know that it exists. The death toll today rose above 1000 people and as more staff are hired to sweep the waters and check each and every attic, closet and basement, more are going to be found. I'd like to reccommend that this photograph, in particular, be used for the 2008 Republican Campaign. Pity the man (or woman, fingers crossed) who has to inherit this backwards, confused and war-hungry administration. This girl didn't get to go to her first day of school this year. There's not a lot that anyone can do to fix that.

Dick Cheney mentioned in an interview that George Bush was "lucky" to have Hurricane Rita roaring towards the Texas coast, because it gave him a second chance to repair his damaged relationship with the american public by providing faster emergency services. But a hurricane, and 1000 ensuing deaths, isn't something that you get a practice shot at. That's why you were hired for the job - for the one-shot deals. The world is watching, and I sincerely hope that after the storm passes this weekend, there won't be any photographs like this one for us to bear.

-b

3 Concerts in Review

And just like that, the era of my life that I like to call "touring steve and frantically trying to secure tickets at the last moment Bri" has come to an end. As much as I've neglected my blog this summer, I feel like it deserves a second chance. Something about the semi-publicness of this space kind of got to me; I couldn't decide whether to take the "fuck-it" attitude and write whatever I felt like writing, or try to please the throng of admirers (usually telling me that they like my blog, keep up the good work, and have I been to their travel site recently?) and write something that might actually be worth reading. THEN, I realized that unlike my word-slut boyfriend, I'm not a writer. Not for other people, anyway, and attempting to write something worthwhile and failing is much more embarrassing than pretending like I don't care.

Where does that leave me? 2 weeks into the new year and 4 concert reviews behind! The blog must go on, if only because I promised myself that it would, and it really has become an exercise in self-discovery. And while I may only aspire to the likes of the blog-greats, I still want to hope that my words could mean something ... even if only to myself ... in 50 years. I constantly think about Ann Frank, who my best friend bears a striking resemblance to; she had NO idea her diary was going to be published in 36 different languages and read by millions of people. Shouldn't I at least be considerate of the possibility?

Right - the concerts. I won't attempt to write an intellectual and well-constructed review, but I do have a few notes about seeing Pearl Jam 3 times on their cross-Canadian tour, and U2 wedged inbetween for good measure. Most of them are positive. My first PJ experience, in particular, was extraordinary. The London venue was gorgeous, small, intimate and packed with genuine die-hards who had an energetic wave going before the show started. It was electric. At that point, not having ever seen the band in concert, everything that I heard was a treat. Seeing the show with Steve made it 100% more meaningful to me -- knowing how excited he was to be there was something that I fed off of. in a strange way, I was really proud of him. He was surrounded by people who claimed to be PJ's biggest fans and he held his own. I was proud to tell the couple sitting next to us that he was sitting 7th row at the Thunder Bay show. I was proud when he knew the names of obscure Bruce Springsteen and Dead Kennedy covers that I had never heard before. I was proud that he knew all of the hand signals to the song Animal. Like, he just glew. Couple that with a blistering set-list, including oft sought after but rarely played "Hard To Imagine" and I was TOTALLY satisfied.

Being satisfied didn't stop Michael and I from being complete idiots, however. He came home from work the following night and asked me how the concert was. After gushing about it to him, I casually mentioned that the Hamilton show that night hadn't quite sold out yet. He eyed me cautiously. "We should go", he said. I tried to gage if he was serious. "Could you imagine how crazy that would be?" I replied. And we looked at each other. After a drawn out silence, he suggested, "do you want to?"

And that was it. We got Alana, who probably could name two Pearl Jam songs, tops, to drive us to Hamilton, picked up 40 dollar scalpers tickets and took it in from the back of Copps coliseum. The set list was solid, I heard a TON of songs I hadn't heard the night before and I was totally fucking proud of myself for being such a bad-ass.

The third show, in Toronto, I managed to get a ticket to from Alana, who decided after the Hamilton show that PJ wasn't her groove. I was more than happy to agree, if not persuade her that she was right. Again, an awesome performance, an awesome setlist, an awesome crowd.

HIGHLIGHTS:
- hearing "Small Town" for the first time live
- seeing Stone, who had been asked to sing, approach the mic and say, "What I really want to do is dance" ... with sexy butt-shaking to follow
- Bono and Eddie, along with a trio of tambourines, ripping up "Keep On Rocking in the Free World" together during the second encore in Toronto
- All of the solid, friendly and gracious PJ fans that I met and had wild conversations with
- Phone calls from Steve from each of the 4 venues that I didn't go to, with his cell held up toward the stage so that I could hear whatever was playing
- Hearing "Hard to Imagine", "Thumbing My Way", "Oceans", "You Are", "In My Tree", "I Am Mine" and "Present Tense"

DISAPPOINTMENTS:
- sitting up in the 300s was a lot different and a lot less special than being on the floor
- not hearing "Long Road", "Baba O'Reilly" or "Last Kiss"

So I guess, in the end, I completed a little tour of my own! More on the U2 concerts later (well, concert singular). I'm off to sleep.

Random Photo #4

The lovely Alex and I on a walk-home shift. As to his head-dress, your guess is as good as mine!

I Can Hear The Bells

There is no feeling quite so giddy as having that 'underwater' effect in your ears post concert, where everyone sounds like they're yelling at you while submerged in a bathtub. The shock of the normal decibel range sounds almost foreign, as though the concert was in technicolour and the rest of the world in shades of grey. That's how you know you had a good night -- if you've damaged your hearing. More than an hour after Bono and Eddie Vedder brought down the ACC tonight during a passionate cover of "Rockin' in the Free World", my ears are ringing and I have blisters on the bottom (yes, bottom) of my feet, either from walking from my house to the ACC (in a cool 47 minutes) or from standing in section 321 for a solid 2.5 hours straight.

It was a strange and unexpected way to end what was already a strange and unexpected day for me. Beyond the fact that I was somehow able to catch the Pearl Jam craze before it moved east to the lovely city of Quebec ... City (and ending my lovely boyfriend's obsessive, 2-week string of PJ shows in 7 different cities, thus returning to me a much more normal, if slightly exhausted Steve), today was also notably the day that I dropped out of graduate school.

It was such an easy thing to do. And I feel like a bit of a biter to be writing about it here today, because Steve and I actually resigned from our respective University of Toronto programs within hours of each other, but it was a legitimate decision for each of us. And yes, we're probably going to start picking out matching outfits and power walking in the mall together, now that we have all of this time on our hands and have evidently decided to make all of our decisions jointly, but I digress. I am no longer registered as a masters student at the Graduate Centre for the Study of Drama and I feel as though I maybe never was -- as though it was merely a typo on a long list of good decisions with positive repercussions. Coming to Toronto was a good decision. Deciding to enlist in higher education was a good decision. But drama, for me, was no longer a good decision. Part of me applied for the program because there was nothing else that I could see myself doing this year. Part of me applied just for the excitement and honor of getting in. I like challenges. I like to see how far I can take myself. I was proud to tell people that I was going to graduate school - it was something that very few people in my family (2, that I can think of ... My dad and a great-uncle) would be able to say. But I never really made the distinction between being passionate about getting a grad degree and being passionate about committing myself to 5 full credits of graduate drama.

Right away, I think, as soon as I went to my first class (which happened to be taught primarily IN Italian) I knew that I was in the wrong place. The things that I wanted to study in detail and the way I wanted to contribute my knowledge and passion no longer had any real connection to this community. I don't care about dramaturgy or directing or women in 20th century theatre or Canadian history ... or anything. I felt so indifferent that I debated attending my second class, and my third. I was in the wrong place. I want to teach and work with children and make decisions about curriculum and get people excited about art. So I went in today, explained this to my graduate co-ordinator (who sent me on my way with a big hug and a promise to stay in touch, bless her) and I'm done.

What next? I have no idea. I also, as of today, have no child support, no more interest-free student loans, no disability income from my mom's pension, no health insurance, no flight benefits, no money in my bank account and no job. And yes, I did happen to have a bit of a breakdown yesterday. But I'm so excited about the idea of spending a year on ME: making money (soon, soon), exercising, reconnecting with friends, volunteering for a group that I care about, getting to know Toronto, and most of all - NOT going to school, that my positives seem to brightly outshine any obstacles that I'm going to have to overcome. I have nothing but choices and therefore nothing but opportunities, all of which I can't wait to be a part of. I'm reminded of my favorite Jann Arden line, which I come back to every time I feel lost:

"feet on ground/heart in hand/facing forward/be yourself"

and I think to myself that I can really do it. It has been a REALLY big day for me, but like Steve told me last night, maybe it was the day AFTER I dropped out that I was really scared about. Hopefully tomorrow, when things are inevitably tough again, I won't forget how 'right' I feel right now.

Look ahead in the distance

I don't know why I've put this off for so long. I've been waiting to find a punctuation point over what has quickly become the chaos of the last two weeks here in Toronto; I need a moment where I feel like I've achieved enough to be able to comment objectively, or even subjectively, about anything. But everything feels like it keeps looping over itself -days, nights, to-do lists, worries, excitement, change- and I can't get far enough away from my life, disentangled maybe, to be able to write about it.

So here I am. The current scene doesn't appear, to the casual observer, any different from the previous two weeks. My music is playing (softly, because Michael's asleep), I've got a bowl of dry cheerios in front of me (the milk went sour), I've cleaned my room and wrote some emails and made a couple of phone calls and checked for text messages from my boy friend (there were none), and worried a bit about bills and people and other things that are really hard to worry about because you can never really make things right. But the difference tonight, the big difference and the reason why I'm able to sit down and spill my guts, is that I've found my punctuation mark, as it were. I'm coming up for air. Today, I pretty much made the decision to drop out of grad school.

But saying "dropping out" sounds so ugly. It makes it seem as though I've failed somehow, when I truly believe that it was the program that failed me. Okay, maybe it didn't FAIL me, but it certainly didn't live up to my expectations. And honestly, when I give it enough serious thought, I'm not even that emotionally invested in it. Like, it doesn't bother me that I won't be going, don't want to be going. I kind of just feel numb, really.

I tried to explain it to someone tonight by likening it to sexual attraction. When you meet someone with whom you have chemistry, you want to get to know them more. They excite you and intrigue you and make you nervous and you want to get to know them better. Sure, they may turn out to be a horrible match for you, and you end up burning pictures of them over a garbage can, but at least you gave them a chance. At least there was that spark. But with me and grad school, it was like there was no spark at all. As soon as I became a part of the graduate program, I realized that it and I didn't have a future together. There was no attraction, no interest; I was even somewhat repulsed. I think that it might be better for both grad school and I to end things now while we're still able to be amicable, rather than delaying an inevitably messy and expensive divorce down the road. No hard feelings, Drama Centre et al. ... I'm just not that into you. It's not you, it's me. I'm sure you'll make someone very happy one day. I'm also sure that one day I'll be able to love school again - I just need a little bit of time right now to figure out who I am.

Speaking of which (or not, really, but a segue of some sort seemed necessary), have you ever met someone with a defeatist attitude when it comes to relationships? Their attitude is, "every relationship that I will ever have, with the possible exception of one, will end in a break-up" ... so why bother at all, right? I always hated when I was in junior high and high school and would have to field comments from people about my relationships like "you know you're not going to get married, right?" Of course I knew. But eventually, you find the person that you ARE going to get married to, ergo you have to treat each relationship as though it might be the one. I mean, we have no idea, do we.

Just some vague and rambling observations, I guess. I'm trying not to get into the gritty detail of my life in the past few weeks, because it's just as boring as it is complex to me. I moved to Toronto, painted my bedroom, bought a bunch of Ikea furniture, drove a UHaul around for a day with Steve-as-wingman, got organized for school, started school, hated school. I dunno. It all seems so average and uneventful and meaningless. I feel homesick, but I'm not sure what for. Queen's? No - I was ready to leave by the time I was finished, excited to move on to new things. Vancouver? Vancouver isn't really home for me. I dunno. I guess I just want something that makes me feel secure. I act as though I can easily accomodate change, but the truth is that it throws me into a spiral that I struggle to get out of. I like constancy. I like knowing. I like security. I like routine. I don't like feeling scared and lonely, and I dislike writing about it even more.

A couple of days ago while I was organizing my files, I came across a large stack of thank you letters, love letters and friendship letters that I had accumulated over the last 10 years or so - everything from a valentine that I got from a boy in grade 4, to a letter from Alana at the end of university that still puts a lump in my throat to read. Spreading out the cards and letters, looking through old professions of love from boys I had once kissed, christmas cards from junior high friends ... made me feel like if I could somehow wrap up the security and affection from them, I would know how to be happy. I love writing letters, although my letter writing project went a little bit astray. I am reminded of how important it is to tell other people that you appreciate them. My collection is now in a special box, ready to be pulled out any time I feel like no one knows I exist yet in this big city.

It's getting late ... almost two hours after I started (and after various inturruptions). I'm not sure if this is what my entry was supposed to be like, or if I meant to swing it towards sports and shows and concerts and other things that are a little less about me and a little more about my world. But this will have to do. Once I get things figured out, you'll be the first to know. Until then, thanks for listening.

-b