Sept. 14 1996
Welcome!
It's a funny thing being a writer and being unable to come up with a few simple words to form the first sentence of a simple little page about me. One might think that my entire university career hinged upon these words, but of course it's nothing so dramatic as that.
"Well what's the problem." You may be asking, and there is no real answer I suppose. Quite simply, it just is. Something I've learned about life's questions is that you can ask and ask, but sometimes there just isn't an answer. But enough about that. By now you've seen my front page, so if you're still here, I'm guessing that something about it has caused you to venture further. I thank you for that. I began this project as a lark. Just something to do over the summer to keep myself busy, and to take on a new challenge. Now three months or so have passed since I first began work, and I can safely say that it has certainly done both.
You must be wondering by now if this page has a purpose. You're wondering whether or not I have a point to make and if I'm going to make it sometime soon. This would probably be a good time to remind you that as the title suggests, this page is simply my musings here for you to read or not as you please. I'd love to tell you that this page is going to be about me. If I had all the wit and charm in the world, right now you'd be reading a wonderfully crafed autobiography, telling you all about myself in an interesting and funny way. Unfortunately, that just wouldn't be true. You see a self portrait is a difficult thing to sketch as there are so many elements involved. The most important is how to make it interesting. The best we can hope for in the course of our lives is that somebody will find them meaningful enough to read and write about. We all want to make our mark, and for now anyway, mine is a tiny imprint on the world wide web.
Currently I'm a student at York University completing a degree in English literature, and wondering what the future holds for me once I'm no longer a student. In a perfect world I'd do nothing but immerse myself in art and literature for the rest of my days. I would visit Paris and do the Hemingway walk, or I'd sit in a charming cafe with my journal writing poetry, listening to the melodies of my favourite composers in the starlit sky. Quite a romantic dream eh? Sadly this isn't a perfect world, and therefore living the nomadic life is hardly an option.
In all seriousness though, I firmly believe that it's important to have a bit of a dreamer in you. Afterall, to where else could we escape if not our dreams? Laughter is also an important element in my life. Was it Mary Poppins where they had that song "I love to laugh?" Something like that. There was definetly something to the creed "A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down." Sometimes laughter can brighten even the darkest moments, and as long as we are able to laugh at life nothing becomes too unbearable.(Really!)
Sept. 18thI was watching television tonight (in between my readings for school)and I was once again surprised that it left me thinking. One of the main ideas in this show is the blindness of the main character to another's feelings for her. As the show progresses, it becomes obvious that she has feelings for him, but somehow they are never able to connect. E.M. Forster's famous line in his novel Howard's End is "Only Connect." Spoken by the passionate and romantic Helen. Life is about connections, and being the romantic that I am, I always despair at this failure to connect. I like to think that love is enough to overcome everything, but more and more it seems the idealized view. This is where the connection comes in. Here are these two people (fictional I know ) who care deeply for eachother but are simply unable to make the connection to bring them together. What keeps us from finding that connection then? I don't really have an answer. It's just a thought.
Sept. 26
I've been thinking today about all the frustrations and headaches I've had to put up with since my return to York this year, and last night in my theatre class I believe the university experience was captured in a nutshell.
The idea of this skit was to (as a group) dramatically express what our view of university has been, and we were to create a sausage machine of sorts, representing the phases of university from the evaluation process to convocation. interestingly enough, not a single one of the images were positive. They were cynical and pessamistic, presenting no hope for the future. As each year progressed the people playing students were to respond to what was before them. Many just threw up their hands in despair, wondering if they would ever get out of the mess they were in. Even convoctation was a negative experience, with most of the students being directed towards the unemployment line.
The question that I have then is why was nobody able to pinpoint anything positive? I'll admit that many of the emotions expressed rang true for me as well, but why could they not find anything good to say about their experiences in this school over the last four years? All in all I think that this is a reflection of what's gone wrong with the education system. University really has become a sausage machine, taking the optomistic young raw meat, and turning out the perfect graduate in the end. If that's what University is really about, then that job at McDonalds is looking better all the time. ;)
Nov 11It's been a long time since I've had a few minutes to sit down and muse over anything, but I finally find myself on the web with a few moments to spare to add something to the page. Tonight I again find my inspiration from my theatre class. My class is putting together a show about the occult, and we have each been told to research an aspect of the occult and work with a small group of people within the class to create some kind of theatrical piece. Tonight I've been scanning the web for information about Ouija boards. Some of you may throw back your heads and laugh, thinking to yourselves "What a silly game that is." Others may lean closer to the screen anxious for a fresh perspective on this extremely odd topic. Something that interested me in my research was the extent to which people's opinions seem to be split.
Some people do believe it to be as harmless as Monopoly and others genuinely fear it, claiming that only deamons communicate through this medium. I'm not sure what I believe. I've used the board with friends and have known for certain that people were moving it, but other times I've had experiences which have genuinely frightened me. I had hoped that this research would provide me with some insight but it has only raised further questions. Assuming for a moment that the spirit world can be contacted, I'm lead to wonder why we are unable to solve some of the world's mysteries.
There are many mysterious deaths and unsolved mysteries in our history, and if spirits can be contacted why can't they provide us with useful information. The next question would then be if they did tell us something, who would believe it? Whether or not you believe in the spirit world, we have become an extremely cynical people needing proof before we can believe. In Peter Pan, the children had to clap their hands and proclaim "I belive in fairies!" for Tinkerbell to survive. Perhaps this is the only solution for the resurrection of the imagination as well. So the next time you are confronted with something that is without explanation, close your eyes and clap your hands, and call out for the world to hear "I believe in fairies!"
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