Itâs an ominous, terrifying thing that we often choose to ignore until it slaps us in the face, in the form of an empty bank account, a nagging parent, or an inkling that we are destined to be great⊠but the looming question is: in what?
In life, we are constantly playing the game of catch-up. We are always running to destination unknown, and usually wielding scissors.
Little do we know, that these are the scissors we fall on when we run towards nothing with the desperate intention of making it something.
Itâs very difficult, I know, to ignore the big mystery of how to make something of ourselves. We all want to leave a mark on society; we all want a purpose and a path and a relatively clear way of making whatever we want to happen, happen.
Either we have so many passions and interests that we cannot choose one to focus on, or we canât think of anything that we can make money off of and be simultaneously happy.
Out with the old and in with the new. Iâm not talking about Spring Cleaning.
A motto and way of life that has remained consistent in mine goes a little something like this:Â people are baggage. I probably would need 100 hands to count the times in which this motto has proved itself. Time and time again, it rears its nasty head â and Iâve finally learned to listened to it.
Is this harsh? Maybe. A bit cynical? Most likely. But is it also a pretty awesome defense mechanism against the harshness of some pretty awful people out there? Yes. It is extremely effective in coping with the endless rounds of disappointing people and painfully lost friendships. This will occur until the day youâre on your death bed (at which point, everyone will pretend to love you).
There is an unwritten rule in our society that not only frames the way people see us, but shapes the ways in which we view ourselves.
In today's world, this unwritten rule is not only skin deep but cuts down to the core, and so often we stop ourselves from taking chances, from doing things we love, from being who we are â all because of this rule that, despite our fabricated reality, cannot exist.
We are told on the daily that being unique is important, that being an individual, above all, is something we should constantly strive for. Simultaneously, all we see on the front of magazines are women we do not look like or identify with â women with class A body types, airbrushed skin, and legs for miles; women who do not represent individuality, but rather an impossible stereotype that we are all meant to achieve, even if it kills us, and even though we never will.
You see, in the city, you can get lost. And I mean really lost. I mean, so lost you don't know up from down, North from South. You lose track of your footing, you wander down an alley and you end up at the end of a street wondering how you could have possibly gotten there.
You left your house with a purpose. Maybe you were pushed out. Maybe the emotions that filled your bedroom squeezed you out of your bedroom door, and you stopped. You looked back over your shoulder and thought, That room will never feel the same again. And it didn't.
Maybe you needed to get away. You needed to find yourself, but in that process of finding yourself it required finding other people. So you found them. You went to university, you got a job you worked hard for, you made the best friends. But you still felt unsatisfied. You still felt like, somehow, somewhere, you were letting someone down.
You felt like that person you left in your bedroom, full of emotions, was waiting for you to come back.
But you didn't want to wait, you couldn't wait. You couldn't bare the thought of planting your feet somewhere so fully that, like sinking sand, would swallow you up piece by piece, and, like a black hole, make you disappear completely. You didn't want to be an empty shell.
So you wanted experiences, that was what you wanted. You chose the less-beaten path despite that girl in your bedroom telling you no, that you couldn't, that you shouldn't. You would fail, you thought, you would fail so hard that your old bedroom would suck you back into its grip and it would choke the life out of you.
You did what you had to do, didn't you? The less-beaten path became more and more appealing, but you were stuck. The pain of missing that old bedroom, the comforts of familiarity, the comforts of a pain you would immediately recognize, called you in, reeled you in.
Instead of returning, you buried yourself. You surrounded yourself with things â with material, with people, with working, with activities. But that didn't change the fact that your other half was still there, silently waiting to be released, to reunite and to flourish.
That room never did feel the same again. It felt different. It wasn't really full, it was empty.
I remember when I was little, walking with my dad through downtown Toronto. We had meant to walk in to the MTV building, but instead walked in the opposite direction. I was young and impressionable. I saw young punk kids playing music for money, a few drunk men here and there, but I saw people.
I saw life. I saw excitement. I saw a city where I fit, or didn't have to. I saw a city where I could walk around anywhere I wanted and never see a face I recognized. Or, instead, see every one and every face and every thing and every moment and recognize, I can be a part of it all.
We were lost, but it was the best lost I've ever been.
Since I was a little girl, I religiously collected Journals â soft cover flip pads and eraser-chewed pencils turned into Moleskin hardcovers and pens with gel-filled finger grips. Poetry written about coloured tiles at Home Depot and newspaper clippings became prose on body image and sexuality and the harshness of life, as seen through my eyes.
Writing is a place â to me, it is a place â where I make my home. It is a place I feel comfort and can create my own stories, my own little lives. When I have no one to talk to, I scream angrily through my pen. When I feel particularly passionate about a song, I write about it. I wrote a lot and was constantly buying Journals to fill â they are my treasure boxes.
It was always in the back of my mind that I would become a journalist. I slightly abandoned that when I got into Queen's University. I, foolishly, thought this prestigious education would make me realize how juvenile a writing career is. I thought it would pave the way to all the other career choices I dabbled with â lawyer, social worker, speech pathologist. I thought I would find something to be passionate about, and I did â at the school's newspaper.
I don't believe the people who say there is no future in writing, because without writing I don't think I would have a future, or at least one as happy as I would like. I've always been told to pursue what makes me feel life is worth living and I didn't take that sentiment with a grain of salt. I have taken it as literally as possible.
Writing, looking back on its place in my life, has been my only constant. It is sometimes my yo-yo, and almost always my compass. And I've found myself here, full circle, re-realizing what I want to do with my life.
Thirty-four chapters came and went like a tidal wave bowling me over, disorienting me, then washing me back up to shore again, only this time with a little more sand where I didn't want it. By this I mean, The Age of Miracles, Karen Thompson Walker's debut novel, like many stories in reality, left a cynical taste in my mouth. Instead of a Hollywood end, it simply... didn't. A true cliffhanger.
The Age of Miracles is thus so much more than the coming-of-age story of 12-year-old Julia you would expect. Because it isn't.
It is a study of raw humanity, amongst a chaotic and looming expiry date of Earth. It is careful, calculated tale of a family coming loose and fraying at its nuclear seams; the precious parts of it peeling back to reveal the dual lives of its members. More so, it is a comment on the state of our world â that we really aren't so important, that we arrived quietly and we will go, just as quietly, like everything else.
I spent hours trying to find this gem amongst racks of Spanish books, in a Spanish book store, in a Spanish country. I deeply longed for a story like this one, but didn't know it until I folded back the crisp pages and dove into these tender lives.
What I liked most about this timely masterpiece is the validity it grants tween-hood. An adult, like myself, can read fiction of a 12-year-old and relate to the complexity and beauty of that age. I saw myself in Julia's mother â a worrier, cautious, a hoarder of peanut butter. Similarly, I saw myself in Julia's father â silently secretive with a subtle curiosity. Within Julia manifested a combination of them both.
Walker beautifully captured the importance, or lack thereof, of time, and how the appearance of night and day can map and bring to scale the losses and gains of relationships and friendship. Time, as Walker shows, can be lost, ironically, in a minute. And we see how our dependance on time can result in us similarly losing ourselves and our sanity.
Walker makes you ponder on things most people don't want to ponder on â the fragility of life and its very real lack of true, meaningful purpose in the span of Earth's lifetime.
When I was asked to go to my first Catholic mass with my current work placement for school, I enthusiastically accepted. I figured it couldn't hurt to be exposed to new things and drink some holy wine -- and what a great opportunity to wear my new skirt.
While the priest did his thing, I began analyzing what made me different from them. Why wasn't religion something I picked up on more? Why was it that not even one small fraction of me could believe I was on this earth to be the slave to another person that I couldn't sit down and have a beer with.
It wasn't because my parents didn't give me the opportunity. I went to church when I was little. I did the whole Christian camp and Sunday school thing. And from as early in my life that I can remember, not once have I believed in Heaven or a God. In fact, I believed the opposite -- that Heaven didn't exist, that God was just a picture in a book, and that when I died, that was it.
I distinctly remember wiping the cross of holy water off my forehead that my priest put there, and only really enjoying the fact that I got to wear a name-tag, be a nameless angel in the Christmas play, and stand up when they announced my name for that week's birthdays.
I bet some people would think this was such a tragedy, but I think quite the opposite.
I observed this morning on the sidelines of Catholocism. I noticed the lovely Kelly Green, bell-sleeved robe the priest was wearing. I gave some of the younger boys a few coins to place in the donation jar, because I knew it meant a lot to them. I stood when I was told and sat when my feet started to hurt, and drank the wine because I never turn down free alcohol.
My poppy always said, "never be a slave to anything". To me, this phrase of his is wildly applicable when it comes to my relationship with faith and religion.
I'm not a slave to a Sunday morning mass alarm clock. I'm not a slave to the guilt of existence Catholocism teaches us to carry on our shoulders. I'm not a slave to a "Catholic duty", because my duties are my own.
And I don't have to repent every time I sin, because in my reality, sinning is a learning experience -- and sometimes, almost always, really fun.
Culture shock is only noticeable to the people who travel believing everything will be the same. To that, I kindly inquire, why the fuck are you traveling?
If you want nothing to change other than your scenery, go on a cruise or go vacation with The Hills cast or buy a box of sand and put your stupid feet in it.
True travel is growth in three areas -- the growth of others, usually the growth of your body given the amount of food you'll probably consume, and of course your own interpersonal growth.
I included seeing the growth of others because I think watching how people change impacts your own ability to change, too. It's kind of like watching a movie you've already seen with other people, just to see their reaction. Learning by example, and taking the way others view themselves into consideration when you think about yourself.
You'll probably grow in size because, let's face it, Jenny Craig and Weight Watchers didn't make it to this part of the world, nor would either survive because in many parts enjoyment is more important than fitting into a size zero. Although I've encountered a lot more of this in Ecuador, which I was surprised by because generally Latin American women are prized for their bodacious booties. (Guess I'm going about that one the wrong way; eating instead of squatting?)
And interpersonal growth, well that's sort of an obvious one. Every experience you have, every fight with a cab driver, every poorly mixed drink, and every wrong bus you take, will lead to this. You'll discover you are much wiser than your teachers told you, much braver than your grandparents thought, and much more independent than your parents wanted. Most importantly... you'll surprise yourself. That's where the growth comes in, and that's where your addiction to trying new things will start.
And then you'll find yourself flying 50 meters above rapids in a human birdcage attached to nothing, wondering how exactly this bullshit interpersonal growth got you there.
In Puerto Viejo, Costa Rica, instead of saying âgoodbyeâ they say âpura vidaâ, or âpure lifeâ. And by the end of my trip, I was saying it too.
There's something so special about this part of Costa Rica. Although it's the only part I saw of the country, it sparked within me a desire to live a more simple, holistic life. The peaceful vibe of this town is infectious and attracted me like a magnet to stay as long as I could.
I planned to stay for one day and stayed for six. I lived at a hostel called Rocking J's Swinging Hammocks â a place where it is a novelty to pay $7 to sleep in a hammock, rather than a bed.
I can't tell you how many times I heard the âI-came-with-my-friends-met-a-local-boy-and-here-I-am-two-years-laterâ story. Not to stereotype, but nearly every woman I met who was either running a cafe or a used clothing shop, to name a few examples, had the same story. It started out with a love for a person and evolved into a love for the land, which prevailed regardless of a sustainable relationship.
And I can see how this could happen. Costa Rican men, or at least the ones from Puerto Viejo, have charm down to an masterful art. They call you over to their car, tell you you're what they've been looking for, and ask you to meet at the beach later on that day. âI'll be looking for you,â he'd say, and every other day after he, in fact, did successfully find me; in town, at the beach, at a bar or restaurant.
I'd like to think I'm not so naive, but the beauty of this bubble-town is enchanting and everything inside of it is like a beautiful dream, where everything is surf's up, sunshine and fresh mangoes on the beach. I had to remind myself that my 6-day stay couldn't turn into more unless I wanted to drop out of school and leave, once again, all that I really knew. And I didn't want to stay â I live by a strong principle that you can't live where you vacation.
Before I knew it, my time at Rocking J's was up. Six days felt like an eternity. I knew the owner and some of the staff, one of whom shared his guacamole with me which if anything is definitely a sign of friendship. It was raining the day I left and before I could cry, I swung my bag, which had gotten much heavier, onto my back and set forth to the public bus station â a $2 ride to the border.
We drove through Talamanca and it completely uprooted my previous notion of Costa Rica. I'd found myself in Central American wonderland 6 days earlier, and now I was driving through a wasteland of smog and poverty.
I would argue the object of a vacation is to forget the monotonous nature of life back home and, being a realist, or as some would say cynic, fool yourself into believing that where you are allows you to ignore the reality of the country you're in â as if we somehow deserve to emotionally profit off of the misfortune of others to escape our lives when others don't have that luxury.
I love a good holiday just like anyone else, but I'm not that good at pretending.
John Masseyâs silk-screen print, âVersailles,â is of two arms. One is normal. The other is made of gold and twice the size of an average human arm. Itâs the first thing you see at Adornment, the latest exhibit at Agnes Etherington art gallery, which contains several prints and photographs that are on display for the very first time since they entered the vault.
Reviewing it started as a daunting task. Itâs a mix of 18th to 20th century artifacts and contemporary works dealing with body ornamentation.
Ed Pienâs âWinged Girlâ is a disturbing ink drawing. It depicts a female head in a darkly animated style. Sheâs wide-eyed with smaller heads attached to her long black hair.
An estimated 1,400 people voted in the on-campus advanced polls between Sept. 21 and 23 this year, the first year that advanced polls have been available on campus during a provincial election.
AMS Academic Affairs Commissioner Mira Dineen said based on anecdotal experience, she feels the majority of on-campus advanced poll voters were students.
Dineen told the Journal via email that students, like all voters, have differing concerns that span a wide range of topics.
It was -11°C outside and apparently felt like a brisk -19°C, but the pre-show excitement I always experience distracted me from Kingstonâs fluctuating weather. It snowed softly and the cool wind stung my cheeks, but I was overwhelmed with a curiosity of how this night would play out. Having never heard of the Toronto-based band The Golden Dogs prior to this show, I had little idea what I was in for.
Walking into the Grad Club (which is accurately described as campusâ âwell-kept secretâ) for the first time, I was pleasantly surprised to see how intimate the converted Barrie Victorian house was. Every show-goer on Friday night, despite age, gender, personal attire or drink of choice, seemed to fit just right.
The Union Gallery, a room nestled subtly within Stauffer Library is a hidden gem that I had not yet discovered until viewing the Body of Work exhibit. To be frank, I had no previous knowledge of the gallery, the artist or their work.
Walking into the gallery with no preconceptions of how it would be laid out, I had little to start with; a fresh slate. The Union Gallery looks like a lot of other galleries I have been to: a neutral coloured, garage-esque open space, with nothing to distract from the artwork.
Richard Terfry, better known as Buck 65, isnât pretending anymore.
âOver the years, Iâve grown to be comfortable with who and what I am,â he told the Journal via email. âEarly on, I tried to be tough. Now, I mostly want to make pretty music.â
Fall of 2003 marked the release of his single âWicked and Weirdâ and the first time I ever heard Buck 65. To be honest, I donât think I had a clue what Terfry was talking about, but as a rambunctious 12-year-old, âdoing back flips on a mattressâ sounded appealing.
