Creative writing has been bubbling in the back of my mind for a couple of weeks now. You may or may not know that i have a workable (i.e. beginning - middle - ending) premise for two and a half novels and a radio play. I am being encouraged to start writing during my time off. I think if i started it might be difficult to stop - and this blog has evidenced that i don’t really care if anyone else reads or cares about my work. I just like translating thoughts into written language.

So… the titles:

My current mediterranean historiographies paper: The Death Knell of Atlantis: Time and Space after Fabian.

The novels: The Masturbator’s Manifesto (i actually have the opening chapter of this written somewhere, but i have found a plot hole that i haven’t really thought about how to overcome - basing things on real life events, you realize that sometimes the sequence of events in the past as you remember them don’t make logical sense - it’s a parody of The Vagina Monologues and contemporary society’s obsession with sex); In a Random Coffee-Shop (i might turn this into a play actually, if i ever write it (and come up with an ending. this is the half) - three couples meet three times (not each other) in the same place - will investigate the usefulness of scripts for social interactions); and Francesca: A Post-Modern Epic (this is essentially me trying to come to grips with post-modernism ending in a Schopenhauerian negation of existence - yes, i am writing my own suicide).

Radio-play: Fuck You. I hope you die. Although this one is likely the most approachable it is also the one that my complete and utter lack of talent poses the biggest problem. It’s a collage of telemarketing from the “dark side” - but i’m not really funny enough to pull this off without just copying from my summer in 2006.

Taken from Ashis Nandy, “History’s Forgotten Doubles,” History and Theory 34:2 (May 1995): 44-66.

History manages and tames the past on behalf of the exile, so that the remembered past becomes a submissive presence in the exile’s world. The objectivity and empirical stature of history is supposed to give a certitude that alternative constructions of the past -legends, myths, and epics can no longer give. The latter used to give moral certitude, not objective or empirical certitude; history gives moral certitude and guides moral action by paradoxically denying a moral framework and giving an objectivist framework based on supposedly empirical realities. This is what Heinrich Himmler had in mind when he used to exhort the SS to transcend their personal preferences and values, and do the dirty work of history on behalf of European civilization. He had excellent precedents in Europe’s history outside Europe (56).

How is the form of moral certitude offered by “history” as a discipline any different from the moral certitude of “myths” or any other alternative conceptualization of history? In 14th century Spain/France, lepers were accused of poisoning wells. There were “myths” to substantiate such a claim. Lepers were massacred based on myth… Although perhaps Nandy is getting at something interesting (okay, he is…) his invocation of Nazi mentalite seems like a sleight-of-hand. Should i really condemn MY form of the past (as history) for the atrocities which it perpetrates when there is little reason to think that the past is always tied in to persecution and acts of violence? The greater epistemological critique - that history’s view of itself blinds it to even providing a history of other peoples’ approaches to the past and that history’s view of itself is conflated with THE PAST in contemporary society perhaps fudging other knowledge-claims, is well-taken. However, I have to say that i find Dipesh Chakrabarty’s Provincializing Europe (Princeton & Oxford: Princeton UP, 2000) a much more constructive and palatable response.

I got work done yesterday. Yes, REAL work. I know you are impressed. I biked in to school, got almost all the books on my list, read three articles, took notes, biked home, copied out a whole bunch of Latin from my primary sources (not for class, that’s still on the to-do list) and then… took a much needed break around 9pm when Veronica showed up at my door.

I had rented American Gangster, which we didn’t finish (too long… too boring… too tired), earlier in the day and gone to the grocery store to purchase Kashi, popcorn and, well, since i was there, a potted purple mum. I love flowers.

We had edamame, cheese and crackers for dinner. Veronica brought a bottle of wine (which we guzzled… LOL) and wine gums. There was also Liberte’s Mediterranee Apple Pie yogurt (not as good as the plum-walnut, but damn close) with Kashi. There was lots of food. There was lots of catching up. I hadn’t seen Veronica since the Wine Tasting on March 7.

Right before she arrived i was having one of my more philosophical moments… thinking how happy i am to still be friends with some of the people from my childhood… and then reflected that people is two people - Veronica and Shaun… and that i end up going months without communicating with Shaun. If i still lived in Montreal i would love to keep in better contact with a lot of the people i still see occasionally from high school, but, alas… i live in Toronto. I didn’t use to think about these things when i was with Steve… the continuity in my life was such that it didn’t need pondering. There is nothing like being single and an ex-pat to bring you to a better understanding of how the past and your homeland has shaped who you are.

So, i spent Friday night and Saturday morning (before biking to school) listening to the two French-Canadian rock bands that i actually like: La Chicane and Les Cowboys Fringants. I SHOULD be too busy to be home-sick.

The plan for today is to bike to Pratt and cloister myself there in order to write a rough draft for the paper that is giving me epistemological problems. I also need to get some Latin in at some point - and read an article for Mediterranean historiographies and an article for social history. Be prepared to be wowed by my incredible productivity levels.

Yesterday was an overall very good day. No, i didn’t get any work done - before you even jump to that conclusion - but there were other developments that made it one of Toronto’s better.

I woke up ON TIME and made it to class EARLY. Class went really well (as it always does - i love Prof. Cochelin’s class ever-so-much). There is the perfect balance of people worthy of mockery and people whom i worship contributing at all times keeping me awake and lively. Furthermore, Sandy gave me four Anzac cookies - yeah for Australian-themed baked goods.

I had an appointment with Prof. Robins. Not only did he reassure me that my presentation idea was both do-able and the appropriate length, he also helped me with my aforementioned epistemological crisis and directed me to some pertinent reading material to help me crystallize my thoughts before handing in a detailed outline to the professor for April 1st. Saturday is going to be my research day for that…

Although i was not properly prepared for Latin class, Rob called on me for a section i had actually prepped. I think i did an okay job and although i am very sad that we are no longer reading about Asinarius, the donkey-king, i do so love the story. We had a bit of a disagreement in class as to whether or not puns are funny. I stand behind my statement that when someone makes a pun i am laughing at them, not with them. It was nice to talk about something other than schoolwork for a moment.

I stood outside and talked to Alice, a Welsh medievalist, after class in order to avoid going home to do collection calls. It was nice to talk to someone i don’t usually get a chance to.

Collection calls went very well and i got through them all in record time - 1hr! So, i ran to the grocery store to buy the week’s groceries AND provisions for the dinner i was making for Sandy and Jeff who were coming over before pub night. I made onion rings in a beer batter, spicy oven-fries and blueberry-almond thumbprint cookies. Everything came out pretty well and was served with my favourite cheese, St. Paulin, grapes, pistachios and halva.

Pub night started off sort of awkwardly, as i knew no one at the table, but Evan showed up and we had a great conversation of catching up (i hadn’t seen him at all since the first week of February and we know each other from Concordia) and then talking about Middle Eastern politics and Anti-Israeli Apartheid week with another PhD student, Dan.

Evan insisted on walking me home… but we stopped at a diner first and i drank his Diet Coke as he ate a cheeseburger. At the diner, i was asked if i was Ukrainian (apparently i look it according to the cook)… which surprised me, because i am under the impression that i look VERY North American, to which said cook responded that i look uncannily like his daughter and they are Czech. I have been seriously complimented.

So, the walk home continued… and we trashed Said and other post-modern thinkers in ways that only a historian will. I have come up with a new line… “I’m alive… the writer of the source is dead. The othering going on here is totally legitimate. I have ALL the power and agency - this other doesn’t even EXIST anymore.” I amuse myself. Prof. Rothman may hate my paper, but i am determined to have a helluva good time (and maybe some helluva good cheese to go with it, LOL) writing it.

I fell asleep before my head even hit the pillow at 2am.

I can’t decide what was more important in the sexual revolution: antibiotics (making syphillis and other STDS curable) or the contraceptive pill.

I tried biking to school today for the first time… last week it rained on me. Egadz i am out of shape. That my tires were almost flat didn’t help. The boy at the bikeshop that pumped them (LOL, that sounds dirty) made quite an oaf of himself around me (and i was a little out of it myself) which caused his boss to give him quite a ribbing as i was leaving. I was amused.

I’m going to pub night tomorrow even though it is against my better judgment. I ran into an acquaintance from Montreal at the copy store this afternoon ($24 worth of photocopies later…) and we agreed to both attend rather than making a separate “coffee date” to catch up. Ugh. I will not back out of my one social event of the week. i need interaction. Books are lovely, but they never tell me that i am wrong, or stupid… or pretty. LOL.
I had a philosophical, actually epistemological, but whatever, epiphany on Monday night… ran out of the room screaming… jotted down my new found understanding of what this post-modernist, post-colonialist anthropologist was saying… and realized that if i understood him correctly he was saying that history was a crock of shit. Well, that wasn’t a pleasant realization. My professor (the class i was battling with this theorist for is my least favourite) is convinced i have misunderstood him. I now need to figure out how to write, in 5000 words, something to convince her that someone is saying she is wasting her life. I like history. I currently hate school SO much. LOL.

I have found something more tedious than Toronto - and that is difficult to believe i know. The book’s title is Before Columbus and i very seriously haven’t read something less engaging since, perhaps, high school English classes.

Speaking of high school… the sugar shack last night was awesome. It’s nice to be surrounded by people whom your interactions with are integrated into your personality. The conversations flowed nicely and there was a fine sense of both belonging and not-belonging. Watching Steve dance has always been a highlight of my life.
Unfortunately, watching people who have managed to accomplish SOMETHING and have lifepaths to follow which lead somewhere concrete - that makes me wonder how much i have been wasting these youthful years. But, i got excellent advice on the purchase of a round-the-world ticket from Dave and that made me happy.
Back to reading this horrifying piece of scholarship - i now know why it was only available through a special order from the publisher. No one in the right minds would read it other than for class.

It is almost 1am. The week is over tomorrow and i have barely managed to work on my papers at all. I had done all my readings and feel very prepared for Latin class - but am no closer to graduating. BAH!

Breathe deeply…

I babysat for three hours this evening. Emily is teething - joy of joys. I am not a person to pull the “cry because i want something you said no to” gag on. Listening to her scream does not affect me in the least and i am quite capable of leaving the room to do something else until i hear a “Abba?” (her pronunciation of my name) to which i respond “oh, are you done crying now?” The answer is inevitably yes, but the answer to her original question remains no. There was a good thirty minutes of wailing at bedtime this evening because it was late and i was NOT reading more than one story… i looked up Latin vocab. Why do i feel like this is a small victory?

I should not be making buttermilk pancakes and drizzling blueberry jam over them. Alas, when The Joy of Cooking said they come out best if the batter is refrigerated for 6 hours or longer - i knew i was doomed. Although i have to get up very early for school tomorrow (and the day after that) at least i have something to look forward to for breakfast.

By the by, pancakes are an excellent midnight snack. They took me 20 minutes from start to finish (i fried up two) and the rest is now in my fridge for the rest of the week’s breakfast.

Other than that, i have been good today. My schedule has gone off track, but because an article i was going to just skim turned out to be pertinent for my larger paper unaffiliated with a course. I went to Italian even! I went to Latin (despite getting up an hour late because i fell asleep at like 3am again)! I started to read an article on Montaillou! I read an article on Dante and Boccaccio’s influence on Chaucer. I am reading a chapter from a book on the same topic right now (after my snack break). Encourage me! Be wowed by both my productivity levels and my lack of advancement on the papers i have to write in the next three weeks. Yes, there is still essentially no research accomplished. I am on it…

Read two chapters of an interesting book today which addressed “pagan” culture in early medieval Western Europe. Finally i have the full answer to those crazy “neo-pagans” who view Wiccanism as an answer to the misogyny that Christian was supposed to have perpetrated. If this new form of spirituality is a pet peeve of yours too, i have included a summary of my reading below for the perusal of the general public. My favourite aspect of the entire reading, however, was likely the use of numbered points in the argument. I am very fond of this organizational technique but am always getting mocked for using it in my longer articles. Yeah for validation.

I am translated Asinarius (the King who was an Ass/Donkey) and the word “tabescit” comes up… from the verb tabesco, tabescere, tabui, — (3rd verbal group). It means to dissolve… does this mean that tabasco sauce is “i dry up” sauce? i am amused.

Bernadette Filotas, Pagan Survivals, Superstitions and Popular Cultures in Early Medieval Pastoral Literature, 2005.

“The integration within medieval Christianity of elements of ethnic cultures and of magic continued a trend that had been present since the beginning” – circumcision and dietary laws were abandoned, Irish Church organization is not diocesan and the distrust of sexuality is attributed, according to Brundage, to the influence of pagan philosophy on St. Jerome and St. Augustine (6-7).

This study “is intended to… organize the available material on pagan superstitions and superstitions… for pastoral literature [which] present the policies, and reveals the attitudes, of the hierarchy with respect to the traditions of the local communities during and immediately following the period of conversion. Pastors saw a continuation of the old cults as a perversion of the new in various popular customs, and incorporated their strictures against them in legislation, penitentials, sermons, letters and tracts written to combat specific practices” (9).

“Pastoral literature, then, presents a notable variety of practices and beliefs of baptised Christians as idolatrous, pagan, superstitious or sacrilegious: the cult of deities and nature, celebrations of the natural cycle of the year and unauthorized ritual to celebrate the liturgical cycle, reverence shown to certain places, recourse to cunning men and women, divination and other forms of magic, mortuary rituals and even alimentary customs” (25).

Chapter One, “Concepts, Contexts and Sources” develops a discussion of each type of source, their prevalences, the contexts in which they were written, the problems of language and their credibility and the scholars who have engaged in any debates around their usefulness.

Chapter Four, “Time” discusses how a “cyclical concept of time and the very nature of the rituals” of pre-Christian Western Europe “were deeply offensive to the Church. In the Christian view, time and nature are made and their course determined by God alone” (153). The Church employed two principal strategies against these festivals: ban them or replace them with liturgies. The first was very unsuccessful, the second less so: “The liturgy of the Rogations was meant to fulfill the functions of the Ambervalia, while the Circumcision, the feast of St. John the Baptist, All Souls’ Day and Christmas were superimposed on the Calends of January, Midsummer, the Celtic feast of the dead at Samhain, and the birthday of the Unconquered Sun respectively” (154). He then discusses the problems the clerics had with each pagan festivity as evidenced in the pastoral literature and what was done to overcome their observance. It appears that New Year’s was most problematic and St. John the Baptist most syncretic. There is an emphasis in all the literature on “proper” behaviour at the festivals/liturgies. Apparently debauchery in dancing, gluttony, promiscuity and other transgressional behaviour was more inclined to break out on feast days (surprise, surprise).

Greg summed up my current take on doctoral work very well in a discussion board post last week:

“And this is where I sort of freaked out because of the amount of energy that has been exerted by the historical project to bring us to the point where Husain writing in the 2000’s not only can, but HAS to say that the point of history is to say what happened and that sort of scares me. And I know I am being a little tongue in cheek, and that it is easier said than done, and if I had an answer I would probably be going on to do my phd. But I don’t, all I have is the unnerving sense of disquiet over the fact that we are still wrangling over how to tell a story that ended hundreds of years ago and the best we have come up with is the absurdly obvious assertion that it is complicated.”

Yup. So i am taking a year off… to find myself? to learn Italian so that if i want to go into Italian studies i will actually be able to? to run away from the past? to do the unheard of and make a decision JUST for me?

Here is the tentative plan (obviously based on the people involved agreeing and it working out):

September to December 2008: Purchase ticket to Australia to ensure i do not get sucked into staying in Montreal, doing menial office work forever just because it is EASIER and less SCARY. Work and accumulate needed capital. Take the CELTA course in order to have income possibilities in France, Italy and South Korea.

November 2008: Apply to University of Ottawa’s one-year “become a teacher” program for 2009-2010 (so i have something to do when i get back if it isn’t PhD programs).

January 2009: Tour Eastern Oz. Meet Ben.

February 2009: Fly to South Korea. Work a short TESL contract. Meet Lorne.

March/April 2009: Fly to Italy. Teach English or work as a Nanny for three-four months. Will need working holiday-maker VISA.

July 2009: Train to Southern France. Perhaps Belgium instead… still thinking. Perhaps teach English… perhaps wait tables… perhaps just sit on a beach on the Mediterranean.

August 2009: Plane to England.

September 2009 - Back to Canada to do the one-year teacher thing (or not) and apply to grad schools if i decide that i want to do a PhD.

The good side of this plan: The first two stops involve meeting people i have already met before… hence, less scariness. Hopefully easing into this travelling on my own thing will make the process less shocking.

Thus far, no one has told me that it is a bad plan - or that they see flaws. Are people humouring me because i seem so lost (people being friends and family) or does this genuinely look like a good way to spend a year of my life in which i am supposed to make the momentous decision of what i want to do for the rest of my life? I validate the expenditure as necessary for even the possibility of grad school (i.e. Italian skills). I would buy my ticket for the next lag at the arrival of each new destination - ensuring i don’t get stuck. Thoughts?