MORE MUSINGS
Jan 1
It's been a long time since I've had occasion to write. As most students can
testify, once November rolls around it's assignments and nothing else until the break, and even then seldom a break.
Well we've just dawned in another year, and for me that means reflecting back on the year and finding a whole new set of wishes for this year.
So many things will change this year, and one of the major changes will be that I will no longer be a student.
It's easy to avoid consideration of this fact by hiding behind 13 more weeks of classes until the end,
but 13 weeks really isn't very many when it comes down to it. A little more then three months until the question "What am I going to do" falls to me.
I look forward to not being a student anymore. To not being up nights with hours of homework, and to having an opportunity to spend some energy on hobbies for a change.
I sometimes wish I could see into the future with a crystal ball. All I want is a peak, some hint of what the new year will bring for me, or something assuring me of a decent future.
Until that happens however, I can only hope that my wishes will come true, and for all of you who read this, have a safe and happy new year that brings you all you wish for.
June 30
As someone pointed out to me, it has been an extremely long time since I've updated my musings, and I must admit to my neglect of these pages during the second school term.
Before I begin though, I must thank all of you who have taken the time to visit my pages. In the year since I began my project, I've had over 2000 hits, and I cannot express how happy that makes me.
I am not mentioning this to brag, but to simply say thank you. I haven't had time to respond to all the messages in my guestbook, but I do appreciate the entries, and I enjoy hearing from people who have
been touched by what I've done here.
Now onto my musings. A great deal has happened since the last time I wrote, and I'm finding that piece by piece my life is moving in a different direction than it was a few months ago. The most important thing is that I've now finished my so called undergraduate education after several road blocks.
For those of you who don't live in Canada, (or even Toronto) let me mention that at the end of March this year, two and a half weeks before the term was to end, the full time Faculty at York University went on strike. This was no small potatoes either. The strike ended up lasting just under two months, and it was taxing on all involved.
I won't get too much into the issues. The basic facts are that the faculty believed that they were not being offered a fair contract by the administration, and for two months they quibbled over details, each side refusing to budge. When I think that the prediction was that it would be over in days, I can scarcely believe what actually happened.
In any case, the two month delay was tense at best, but I'm glad to finally be through now. Thanks to the wonder of e-mail I got my last paper in without setting foot on campus, and I can safely proclaim my freedom, however temporary.
On a different topic, I've been thinking about the Hong Kong handover a great deal today. For a change I was actually up early enough to watch the ceremony on tv, and it was really quite moving, and the fact that I was watching history made it all the more important. China has promised to keep things more or less the same, but I can't help wondering if it was more than just the Brits who sailed out on that ship today. Back in January I wished for a glimpse of the future, and at the end of the ceremonies today, I'm sure a lot of the people in Hong Kong were wishing for the same thing. Hong Kong also got me thinking about the continuity of life, and how many things both change and remain the same. This raises an interesting question. (For me anyway.) If a person moves full circle have they moved forward? If by moving forward we wind up back where we started from, then how can we profess to have made any progress? Is progress measured by the nature of the changes which took place in the course of that circle? To end, I leave you with a quote from my favourite poet Ranier Maria Rilke. He writes: Do you also ponder that we are all surrounded by a blind world? We only face to face, we gamecup into which the ball falls. (Taken from On love and Other Difficulties.)Just something to think on.
September 28
Well, five months later here I am back at the desk after a really hectic summer. Lately I've been thinking about knowing people, or rather the opaqueness and transparency of those we care about. It always amazes me how much of ourselves we reveal and keep hidden, and our own perceptions of this. Are we all as shrouded as we believe ourselves to be, or are we easily readable. I have this discussion quite frequently with a friend of mine who delights in insisting that I really don't know him at all. Perhaps it is because of this that his moments of revalation require complete silence, as though to speak would destroy his courage and break the spell. He hides himself to protect himself from pain. It frightens him to have someone know his soul, and to deny being known is the way he convinces himself of his impenitrabilty.
Maybe we are all like him, and we delude ourselves that we are shrouded in mystery, when all the while there is someone out there who knows the meaning of your winks and smiles, and who doesn't believe in the mystery of humanity.
As always there was a trigger for these thoughts. I went to a classical recital the other night in Toronto, where the soloist was Frederica Von Stade. She is a wonderful Mezzo-Soprano, and I thoroughly enjoyed the recital. Anyway, at this recital she performed mostly French music, and in the translation of a song by Poulenc, I discovered a beautiful passage called C'est ainsi que tu es.
Your body, mixed with soul,
Tousled hair,
Your foot beating time
Your shadow stretching out
And murmuring at my temples
There it is, it is thus that you are
This is your portrait,
And I want to write it to you
So that when night comes
You can say and believe
And say that I have known you well.
Well there it is. The text is by Vilmorin, and I hope that it will move something in you as it has in me.
Jan 15
Here I am again, sitting at my desk updating my musings. Firstly of course, a happy new year to all who are reading this- I hope you had a happy and safe holiday, and that the return to the real world hasn't been too startling.
The last four or five months have been reasonably good to me. I changed course once again, leaving my job at the symphony for a new job at the National Ballet of Canada working in their brand new box office. This of course was a great chance for me, as the ballet is my biggest passion, and as happy as I was at the symphony, it was time to move on.
There are always positives and negatives to any job, and of course Nutcracker from a seller's point of view was quite frustrating, but we all made it through in one piece. (Just barely!) There's nothing quite so disturbing as the ease with which a riot can be triggered. If you've worked in box office before, or any kind of retail business you understand, if not, suffice it to say that I was never quite as grateful for the glass barrier as I was during Nutcracker time. I'll leave the details to your imagination. ;)
Lately my mind has been turing around a few things, this time brought on by a revisiting of the "Emily" Books. (By Lucy Maud Montgomery) The last time I read those books I was about 14 or 15, and I never quite forgot them. Anne, (Montgomery's more popular heroine) is a wonderful creation, but Emily is a far deeper and more interesting creature.
Like Anne, Emily is an orphan, but the similarities between them are few. I wonder now that I look back on them how influenced L.M. Montgomery was by the Brontes. If I were to write a paper now, it might be on the link between Wuthering Heights, Jane Eyre and Emily, but I won't get into that now. At one point in her tale Emily writes a letter to herself at 24 from herself at 14, and I began to wonder- what would I have had to say to myself had I done the same. I'm just over 23 years old, and I know that I have changed a great deal since I was 14, (One would hope.) but many of the things which were important to me then are still important now. My interests have matured somewhat, in that I have left many of my childhood imaginings behind, but like Emily's Wind Woman, there are some fairy tales I doubt I will ever be able to let go of. All I can hope is that when I look back on myself at 34, there is still some semblance of the girl I was at 14.
To end this off, once again I will quote from Rilke. The passage doesn't entirely have anything to do with these musings, but it moves me, as I hope it will move you.
"How should we be able to forget those ancient myths that are at the beginning of all peoples, the myths about dragons that at the last moment turn into princesses; perhaps all the dragons of our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us once beautiful and brave. Perhaps everything terrible is in its deepst being something that wants help from us. (From Letters to a Young Poet)
July 4
Hello again, and Happy 4th of July to all. Thanks to the wonders of television, I can watch the marvellous fireworks in Boston tonight on the Boston Pops special. This year they estimate half a million people are in attendance at the concert. What an astounding figure. What amazes me even more is that a piece of music which is well over 100 years old is the biggest highlight of the evening, and is perhaps the biggest draw of the concert. I'm well familiar with Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture, but as classical music lovers will agree, certain pieces just have to be done live.
On the subject of classical music, about two weeks ago I managed to score a couple of tickets to Beethoven's 9th, and I was so struck by it's power I felt shivers up my spine. When Beethoven composed the 9th he was completely deaf. Imagine hearing an entire symphony in your head and never knowing what it sounds like. An even more amazing fact is that he was unable to hear the thunderous applause from the crowd, and he had to be turned around to face them before he was aware of their reaction. I think the goal of any artist is to make an impact on somebody's life, and Beethoven succeeded beyond his imagination.
To end this section of my musings, I leave you with a quote from Pamela Brown. She said: "Dance can give the inarticulate a Voice", and that applies to all art. Art gives expression to the deepest reaches of our souls, and above all, this is what I hope to accomplish in my poetry.
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