Dear Blog.
Sooooo....this is awkward. Definitely haven't been here in a while. I am chalk full of excuses why I have neglected this blog and I'm sure they are all very convincing but I have a feeling this is already going to be a long post so you'll just have to take my word for it.
I guess I will say that I have been incredibly busy - or I was for at least a portion of my absence. I've been writing essays, and a research proposal, applying to phds, etc etc. During this time I felt far too busy to sit down and organize the thoughts that were going on in my head , or to try to describe all my visits and trips and hilariously witty gendered criticisms of popular sitcoms. Then I got not so busy and just didn't feel like I had a whole lot to write about. Anyway...highlights reel? These are things I planned on writing entries about and didn't. Warning, not at all in order.Also, the nitty gritty feelings stuff is at after the updates if you just want to skip to that. Or skip it. I'll never know.
- Saw the Doctor Who Exhibit in London and loved every geeky minute of it. Also, watched Season four of Doctor Who and made insightful observations about the season's preoccupation with reproductive technologies and their ability to both emancipate women, and yet somehow also reduce their centrality to the show.
- Visited home and stepped outside the bubble of people who care deeply about gender-ness. It was eye opening, and kind of sucked. Sometimes I was a reasonable person and met criticism with rational arguments and a sincere desire to open people's minds. Other times I stormed out of the room and cried and gave up on ever changing anything ever. Like so many things, it's a learning process.
- Saw Cirque du Soleil (also in London), right after finishing a paper on eco-criticism and postcolonialism and it blew my mind. The show was amazing - people's bodies are just, incredible. While watching in awe of their amazingness, I also thought a lot about representations of nature, and race, and culture, science, and evolution proving that I can think very critically about entertainment while also really, really enjoying it.
- Visited York dungeons and had fun. Visited the supposed inspiration for Diagon Alley and had fun. Visited the filming location of Diagon Alley and had fun.
- Visited markets in London and ate samples and decided that if one day I suddenly develop an urge to get married, should probably be to a cheese seller man (I know there's a proper British word but with the accent and stuff I know I won't spell it right). Anyway, for some reason they are all super good looking and chatty, and give you cheese. What more could a girl want? Note to Space Pod - I believe this is the answer to the "sexy like cheese" mystery.
- Visited Edinburgh and ate/drank coffee/read a portion of Quidditch Through the Ages at the very cafe where J.K. Rowling sat and wrote the first three Harry Potter books, thereby changing my life forever in the most wonderful ways. Pilgrimage complete.
Eh, I'm tired and can't think of anymore. But there has been a lot more... but its also just been me plodding along, living my life, watching entire series of television shows back to back. Like I said I think the main reason I don't blog anymore is that I don't always feel like I really have anything exciting to say - or if I do, I put it in an essay and get graded on it. Along with this feeling of having mediocre thoughts, there have been times (many times) when I feel like even though my course is amazing and I'm learning amazing things and being with amazing people, I still want something more - to be accomplishing something more, or maybe experiencing something more. It's been tough being away from home, and my network, and my family and the community of Guelph, and even, if I'm honest, the community of Accra. I feel like last year, I dealt with a lot of boredom due to constrained circumstances, and I struggled with culture shock and isolation, but for some reason it all felt much more worthwhile. Now, one year on, I'm still trying to figure out what exactly I took away from that experience, in addition to what I'm supposed to take away from this one. Still trying to figure out? Maybe I'm only just starting to ask again. I leave it, and come back, and leave it, and come back. On Monday I'm leaving with a friend for a two and a half week trip to Spain and Portugal. I'm really, really excited. But planning has also brought up these weird parallels of traveling within Ghana, on our tight little budget, with the rules about "living simply" and in solidarity. It's just so, so easy now to decide...well....it would be nice to just pay that little bit more for a nicer hostel, or to go to a certain town even though its super expensive, or fly instead of take the train. And it makes me uncomfortable, but not uncomfortable enough to actually change the way I'm planning on traveling. Basically the story of my life. I do things everyday that I thought I wouldn't after coming home and making so many commitments to be a more responsible global citizen. I buy wants that aren't needs, I embrace my debt instead of trying to live within my means, and I make excuses all the time - except those times I don't even bother because I really don't have to. Example - just got an amazon order of the Hunger Games Trilogy. Way, way back last April while I was making my goals for this year I decided I wanted to buy at least 1/2 my books second hand because it's less production, less waste etc. But because of our fucked up economic system, it was cheaper to buy them new. So I did. And now I'm staring at them and I'm thinking a) I can't wait to read you and b) why, why, why did I do that just to save a couple of pounds. Commitment to global living fail.
One year on, Ghana and everything it taught me just seems so very, very far away and I don't know how to get back to that place where I cared passionately about holding myself responsible. These days, it's just so much easier to blame other people, or "the system", and I feel like much more of a hypocrite than I have in a while - and not just about the consumerism stuff. Holding myself accountable to my commitments to gender feels like a constant project in hypocrisy. I think it's incredibly unfair that women need to wear make-up to appear professional, yet I wear make up everyday that I leave the house - even if its to the grocery store and I don't really know how to be confident or brave enough to go without it, even though I know that by wearing it I'm participating in and reinforcing this expectation. I maintain that a woman (or anyone) should be credited for her brains, wit, humour, personality, passion etc more than for her ability to perform ideals of beauty, and yet I feel just as validated (if not more) by a boy calling me pretty than by doing well on a paper (not that institutionalized education is necessarily a mark of success...blah!). I get lonely, and want a boyfriend, companionship, whatever but then avow that I will never get married because I tend to equate it with women making sacrifices for men and state institutionalization of personal relationships (which isn't necessarily true - marriage can be radical, and equal and all the rest of it and anyways, a certificate doesn't really "define" marriage and its more about how you practice marriage then the institution itself. sigh).
And for the record - I do not believe that any of these equals "feminism"; or that if I was able to go without make-up, not care if boys think I'm pretty, or be either a) ok being alone for the rest of my life or b) ok with being married, I would somehow have achieved gender-enlightenment. It's the same annoying thing I came to realize last year when it comes to living simply - you never get there. You never "achieve" it. It's not a paper you hand in then forget about, or a diploma you worked for and now can frame and put on your wall. It a constant struggle and I hate constant struggles - which is why I guess I disengage so often. Or fail to practice what I preach. Or stop blogging and pretend that the amount of money I spend in H&M isn't really important. Feminism, or gender awareness, or whatever, is really friggin hard though, and it's as much about these stupid everyday questions as it is about the value of a masculinities approach to gender and development work, or the representation of women and dogs as companion species in two recent works of postcolonial fiction.
Anyway, in other news, I'm reading a really fantastic book called "The End of Mr Y" which is by my friend Anna's ex boyfriends sister. Her copy is signed, which is kind of cool, but I feel bad because I cracked the spine, and Anna, if you ever read this I'm sorry but I'm going to hope you never do and that you just don't notice. This is why I prefer buying second hand books - I kind of like to destroy them. Not in a destructive way but in a "I carry this book around with me and spill things on it because I drink Tea while reading" kind of way. or a "I can't stop reading this book long enough to put hand lotion on but my hands are really dry so instead I just get hand lotion all over it" kind of way. Or a "I fell asleep reading this book because I was really tired but just couldn't put it down, and then rolled over it and wrinkled the cover way". I remember how destroyed my first copy of Harry Potter was because my whole family read it, and it got left out in the rain, and had so many pages kept in with scotch tape. I also remember getting my copy of "Away" signed by Jane Urquhart, and feeling really embarrassed because it was fully of sticky notes and pencil notes, because I'd written my extended essay on it. She told me it looked well loved, and it really, really was (is). I think the best gift I ever gave anyone was to a boy I was in love with - my beat up copy of the Diviners with all my margin notes and it felt like I gave him a piece of my soul. He really didn't deserve it, but it still felt really amazing.
Anyway, random tangent on my weird book fetish. Also the reasons that while I appreciate the convenience of an e-reader, I will never really love it the way I love my real books. I do miss my bookshelf at home and I can't wait for the day when I have a library - a library filled with second hand books! On that note, I did buy some second hand books the other day, at a real honest to goodness second had book shop. Such a happy place to be.
Ok, I don't know where I'm going anymore. Possibly to add some pictures to facebook. Of all the amazing blog posts I've thought about writing the past few months, this was not what I expected to finally write. Hopefully my next post will be a much more upbeat account of my fantastic trip to Spain and Portugal! Whoohoo!! Also, I should probably take this moment to advertise to my wide readership that I got offered admission to University of Western Ontario's women's studies and feminist research phd program. Scary. Scary to take on a 4 year plan like that. I'm terrified of making that kind of commitment. But it might be nice to leave the nomadic existence of the past two years behind. Even if it is to settle down in London Ontario....
Happy Benito Juarez day to everyone. That means you, Dom.
