i’m sure there’s a lesson in here, somewhere (august was awkward)

“Genius is unavailable for the song ‘Sail’ by AWOLNATION.”

Well, fuck you too, iTunes.

I’ve been on a little mental breather lately after losing my shit at the end of August. Not literally losing my shit but like, low-on-what-I-assumed-was-iron, depressed-before-waking-up shit of the lost variety. You know? I didn’t quite understand it except in the way I always explain it, which is, “the end of August makes my head explode.”

You thought I was going to say something really meaningful there, didn’t you?

I’ve been making the Puddle of Disappointment a permanent residence lately.

Seriously though – I was on a speeding wagon to Panic-town for a while there. Anxiety-rama. Except it was mostly for (and about) nothing. Just some sort of mental trick that my mind thought it would be funny to play on myself. Just to keep my middle-class life all interesting and shit, I guess.

This year I’m settling into my privileged little existence quite comfily, until it continues to exist and I finish school and realize the room beside my family’s living room is not considered “being independent.” Until then, denial – denial – denial!

Because that’s just better than worry – worry – worry, which is what I do for a good portion of the time I occupy in my head. I wrote a whole post about Jack Layton dying and other sad world newsy things a week ago and never published it because I sound like a preaching hipster, and we all know that the hipsters already have a God(dess). And her name is KREAYUSHUN. Actually, nobody knows how to spell it, so you might be better off just typing “Gucci Gucci Prada Prada fuck me I’m a hipster” into Google and clicking “I’m Feeling Lucky” – cause at the end of the day, if you’re not lucky, well – there is still nobody who gives a shit.

Recently I’ve pared my responsibilities down to a prioritized and manageable list of things that very barely include getting paid and mainly focus on expanding my mental glandules and working up a sweat with my writerly muscles. I’m pretty excited about this, and also about my impending (like Doomsday 2012) trip to Russia with the Boy in October 2011. I will be showing him all sorts of heritage-soaked things like subway stations, dachas and the bottoms of alcohol bottles. Also, perhaps Russian street whores.

I am über-stoked about this trip, even if it’s only a week and a bit long (in my head). I mean, it’s also actually going to start coming together “on paper” (or “by email” in modern-times) but right now it’s all in my head, mainly because I haven’t been able to get in touch with the Russian consulate to ask them pretty darn important questions. During working hours or late at night. In fact, I don’t even think they exist in reality. It’s like that stupid Descartes thing about if a tree falls in a forest and nobody hears it fall, did it actually make a sound?

Well, the Russian consulate is kind of like that. Except, it only exists if you can see it with your eyes and press the number 8 elevator button in the correct building on Bloor St. If you try to contact them indirectly (without seeing real people working and documents being shuffled), then they must not exist – they only exist in the “idea” form, like, “wouldn’t it be a great idea to have representatives present in a prominent North American country to speak for another country which these said North Americans might some day, hypothetically, want to visit?” Hypothetically, yes.

Visa-related existentialism. Welcome to the life inside my head.

Everything else has been all interviews and writing and reading and Hippocampus is so great and reading Canadian authors (Zoe Whittall, you rocked my brain with Holding Still For As Long As Possible) and watching lots of Iron Chef. Camp ended amiably and I am going to be helping out with some art classes during the year, which might barely pay for my self-indulgent (and self-made) gifts of lattes to myself after torturous 3-hour lectures about English Romantics.

School starts in 2 days and I am trying to use up all this oh-so-free time wisely. Smartly, Canada’s weather knew that school was starting and decided to lower the bunsen burners under the Great Lakes down about 10 degrees (from a humid, drench-y weekend to a “let’s wear the warmer sweater Monday”) to prove to us that, in fact, it is still down with the normal progression of seasons and “FUCK YOU GLOBAL WARMING, I AM ON TIME, NO TYPHOON BABIES HAPPENING IN THE GREAT WHITE NORTH – BI-ATTTCH.”

I think I speak for all Canadians when I say that every single one of us has personified our weather into a very vivacious personality.

Overall, I’m a bit calmer than I was a few weeks ago. My headspace is now all clear and organized and full of Ingrid Michaelson and Laura Marling and Zoe Whittall, saying things like “Billy holds her breath as if it’s an accessory”; and happy things like art lessons and spontaneous poetry breaks.

-A

Back to being grounded.

passport to freezing

Good eve, lovelies.

doesn't toronto seem warm now? yeah.

Just wanted to bid the Canadian internet adieu, since I am flying off to Russia for 2 weeks tomorrow.  And, well, from what I remember about Russian internet via my grandparents apartment, it is much less kind, young, or fast. So, while I’m taking Sebastian with me (my macbook), I can’t take my quick WiFi with me, which I’m sure will ensue in quite a bit of frustration. But I’m only really taking him with me because of school assignments (I don’t really consider this flight a “vacation” per say) so he’s really coming along as a rather semi-unwanted piece of machinery. But, then again, he might be a good photo-backuper, so I’m not complaining.

Anywhoozer, I’m off to finish stuffing some books into my suitcase and possibly eating some unhealthiness before bed.

I wish you all a wonderful couple of weeks without me and I will come bearing goodies, so don’t get too depressooooo.

Love,

Arina

the hum of heating

I don’t know if this is a good development or not, but since the new year I have been sleeping a lot less.  Part of it is unfinished business – exams, unread books, articles – but some of it is just hooking up to the world again.  For the general part of my winter vacation I disconnected with the world and forgot all the ties that kept me there.

It was fabulous.

So fabulous.

I’ve dreamed up of a million things (of course, with my commitment and attention span, I have none of them written down) and thought of a thousand places to go.  It turns out that I need to stay here for a while before I can think of going somewhere else.  That’s kind of a bummer, but getting back into things (“hooking up” as I said earlier) has been a dual process of self-pity and excitement.  Yes, there’s a lot of work in front of me, but do I love it? Yes. Do I yearn to do it every day? Yes. (Okay, not every day).

I love being at York’s campus in the build of winter. I love the crispness of the air and the malleability of the weather – the quick turns it makes from blindingly sunny to softening snowfall.  This keeps me so occupied mentally that I find it hard to settle down and do something worthwhile.  Huckleberry Finn, of course, is worthwhile.  It’s fantastic, really.  But I just don’t feel as though I currently have enough patience to sit myself through another 140 pages of it.

Unescapably, I will and I must, if only to save myself from certain guilt and remorse come exam time.

This summer’s plans (still in the drafting stages in my head) are quickly evolving from international escapades to bogged down school work and work overall.  Thinking about quitting the money work (at the bar) is tempting, but I feel like it would be pushing back against the current that’s sweeping me abroad.  I need money for travel, after all.

I’ve decided to do the TESOL/TESL certificate along with my Specialized Honours of English and Professional Writing – an extra 30 credits ($3000) with which I gain the freedom and the bare necessity to qualify for a teaching job overseas.  I’ve been looking around, and the market for ESL teachers in Canada isn’t bad either, although, who would expect it to be, it being the land of the immigrant as it is.

I guess I should learn Mandarin, or something along those lines.

I just want to stay in school for a long time, although I often nag my boyfriend about the complete opposite.  We’re different creatures, him and I, though – creatures that are built for different goals and meant to come to them through different means.  I try to understand that as much as possible, but it’s difficult when you expect everyone to mirror yourself (that’s the narcissism speaking), or at least understand the main judgements you make in your life.

Editing as a side job without pay makes you really want to write everything perfect the first time, so you don’t have to spend any more time thinking about your phrasing then you could possibly have to.  It makes me want to write like I talk when I get excited about something – cutting myself off in mid-sentence to mention something important and accidentally segueing [sp?] into another equally exciting but similarly incomprehensible (due to the interruptions) point.  You know?

Anyway, I guess you need to put in a fair bit of work to earn a degree, even though everyone says it’s so easy.  I won’t be satisfied barely passing.  I need to be trying for it.  I need to earn it, not just with my money, but with my brain.

I see now that it’s already crudely late (not comparing the past couple of 3-4 am nights, but according to the non-existant sleep schedule that I should be keeping) and I have a tedious class tomorrow morning.  I haven’t gone to this class for more than half of last semester and I’m still doing well.  The man is a holy idiot. I swear to all those administrative masters that are sucking money from my wallet over at York.

Alas. (I really like this word).

In February, hopefully, I’ll absence myself to Moskva for 2 weeks – disconnecting and hooking back up to the world in a mere 14 days.  I’m done trying to fit into the world’s schedule though; that is, without a doubt, one thing my boyfriend has right.  You have to make time to life your own life.  Yes, it’s inconvenient at work and I will probably have assignments due the week I am away and the editing will need to be spread out – but you know what? I’m 20 (for now) and I miss my grandparents and after all, it’s a matter of legal status, so it’s almost important in a way, too!

I’m making time for myself this year.

Love the quiet non-multitude of you that come by.  Need to write more, as always.  But the wires are hard to come by once you’re disconnected, and the freedom that being “wireless” allows is poisonous in the extreme.

Maybe it was meant to be, c’est la vie!

-Arina

a fat brown man runs the clubs up in here

I usually have an excuse ready for you guys, in case I don’t write for like, more than two days in a row.  Something really lame like ‘I was out, y’know, totally living life.  And all that jazz.’

Fun fact: did you know that jazz comes from the word jizz? Because jazz first used to be played in black brothels back when they it was still an underground musical movement and there was a lot of jizz.  Jizz=jazz, got it?  I’m totally serious, and even though my white English teacher taught me this etymology, I’m not willing to double-check it via wikipedia for your reading benefit because I like that story more than I would even if it weren’t real.

I’ve actually be up to a few cool things lately.  I went shopping with a friend of mine from U of T .  PEE ESS, this is like the 4th result I got after I googled “I hate U of T” :

Cool, huh? I especially like the bitch fight at 2:59. Also, the fact that his rap name is Z-ro could stand for so many culturally relevant things, like for example “ZORRO”.  Or, “zero”, as in “you’re a hero, not a zero” like from Disney’s Hercules rap.  Or perhaps he’s a loser version of Zorro.  The readings of this piece are never-ending.

Anyway, “actual prison footage”, I walked around so much on Monday I think that instead of getting blisters, blisters just grew a body (mine).  Ie, it’s like all the communist Russia jokes that everyone loves so much, but seems to have misplaced lately in their comedic vernacular – You don’t get blister. Blister get YOU!

So of course, I went to Old Navy and bought myself some $5 child-labour-encouraging relief.  And boy, didn’t it feel good!

Shopping ended up being fruitful but not overwhelming, something that tends to happen to me every now and again, when the sheer volume of the things sold in the store just clobbers me over the head and I pass out because of anxiety of wanting to try everything on but knowing that I don’t want everything but STILL want to buy everything. Oh, brain-washing advertising…

In the evening I made it to a film called My Perestroika at the Toronto HotDocs film festival at Cumberland Cinemas.  (Little note:  Cumberland is a wicked ass street in Toronto that you should all frequent.  Often.  Even if you, like I, cannot afford to buy even coffee there.)  Anyway, so my long-known friend M joined me for the screening and holy CRAP I was blown away.

Firstly, I must clear some issues up about my bias.

1. I am Russian.
2. This movie was made about Russians.
3. I like this movie.

This is a totally unpossible-to-disprove theory, and I’m pretty sure some guy like Plato taught it very importantly when he was alive in who cares when, and then Descartes and Bacon and all those fun kids.  ANYWAY

So this movie: it’s basically everything I remember from my childhood in the 90′s from Russia.  As you all know (you don’t unless you’re my facebook friend and you can see when I was born), I was born on April 24th, 1990.  In August ’91, as Ms. Robin Hessman very vividly shows, tanks rolled into Moscow.  My father was working at a bank that day, and a building next to his was hit and destroyed with one of those tanks.  He was like, 24 at the time, and I had just turned 1 year old.   I’ve heard all of these stories from my own parents, but it’s incredible hearing these things on film, also.

The contrast of communism, where people’s childhoods are bathed in sunlight, stability, and happiness to the adulthood of post-communism, where all of a sudden there was no bread, no meat, no eggs in the stores, and people had to wait for hours upon hours to get basic foodstuffs, except for vodka, which you were given 2 bottles of per person per month.  My grandfather just recently recounted how he had to wake up 3 hours before work in order to stand in line to get me my milk when I was a baby.  I am a child of this change, and I always was.  While I’m not plagued with the inconsistencies in society that historics and politicians blow out of proportion, I’m also curious about them.  They haven’t seeped into my blood to make me some anti-communist crusader, that’s for sure.  Everything I’ve heard about it from my family is positive (more or less), and the fact that this film takes in the negatives of it and shows it to audiences is incredible and reassuring.  Nothing was ever just positive.  But memories are always brighter than the present.

People couldn’t vote for the Communist Party, but they didn’t and couldn’t vote for Medvedev either.  This practice is becoming much too overwhelming.  Iran, Russia – where next, Canada?  Whose votes do count?  Where are people listened to? Cared about? Consulted?

The point is that this movie brought up many fantastic things in my mind. It made me feel closer to my heritage – a feeling I treasure because I often feel like the best-adapted immigrant Canada has ever seen.  I experience doubt in my nationalistic beliefs and my devotion and representation of Russians through myself.  It’s like I’m not the best example for Canadians to look at and go – hey, look, a real Russian person, with all the trademarks.  I mean, I know that’s stereotyping etc, but other than my face (albeit, a rather large gift from the motherland) I know very little about the things Russian Russian people know about.  I don’t know the names of many movie-stars or singers, I haven’t read the most important literature (shame on me, I know – but admit, it’s daunting to even begin, sometimes!), I speak well but not at the level of my peers and more.  I realize that it’s healthy to adjust to your habitat – that’s always what they taught in wilderness training at school in grade 8, when we did that stupid pioneering unit again (And again and again and…) – but I feel like I lose out on important things I should know.  It makes me incredibly sad.

However, this movie made me see that people really aren’t that different from each other, and that the stabilization I’ve received here has made me a happier person than some Russians (when they we’re not laughing, or drinking, they we always look so hopeless, don’t they we?)  But even apart from that – there is some sort of thread.

We make the same apple pie.  The same simple apple pie.  And I bet their apartment (the couple in the movie) smelled just like my grandparents apartment did.

It’s a good feeling these things bring up.  And I’m so epically glad that I finally went.  Maybe I’ll try to find another one to go to this Sunday before they all go their lovely ways to other world festivals. But you guys (if you live in/near Toronto), please, go see one of these documentaries.  They will totally open your eyes and stun you.  Who knew movies could actually be helpful and interesting and informative and touching at the same time, without having Hollywood stamped on their bare behinds?

I did!

Now, you do too.

Here is a picture of my pretty little guineas! I’m pretty sure I haven’t posted this before, because I kept on promising to, and, finally, here they are, little cutie patoots!

Ocya (Autumn) on the left and Klyusha (Klutzy) on the right.

Fin.

-Arina

watching from the window, the snow so red

Hi internet browsers,

It’s that time again.

……….

I don’t know what time I was specifically referring to, but it would be nice to have a weekly… something.  Perhaps I will find a day of the week to post poetry on.  That would be exciting.  A seven day countdown to prose.  Mrooowr.

Or not.  It really depends on whether or not you actually like reading my poetry/what I write.  If you don’t that countdown would probably suck.

Anyway, I kind of had a point to this post, I’m pretty sure.  Since I started uni again today it’s got my brain all processing shit, including my new wicked assignment from professional writing, which I will copy for you to laud and be jealous of, because I get to write about stuff like this… (okay many of you will not laud or be jealous, but I can pretend you guys like(d) school for a second, can’t I?)  :

Choose a historical event (something that holds significance in the larger world, not just in your family or personal experience) or a cultural object (a painting, a piece of music, a building or monument etc) that is especially meaningful to you and analyze it. Then explain the personal impact that preoccupies the writer: the insight about self, the wisdom you gained, the significance that you want to communicate. In order to engage you reader your message should be clear and focused.

Isn’t that wicked?  I have no idea what to pick yet, but the whole idea of a “personal context assignment” is so wonderfully personal and exploratory.  Exactly the sort of stuff I love doing.  Mostly because it helps me wean out my own personal opinions about things and also because it is freaking interesting to do something like that, and I have never tried anything of the sort before.  New challenge, what what?  If anyone is reading.. what would you pick that you can analyze through social context AND personal – and what would your analysis/perspective say about you?  A painting? The Autobahn?  A sandwich store?  What?

But what I REALLY wanted to write about is my reading for next week: Maus I: A Survivor’s Tale, My Father Bleeds History by Art Spiegelman.  I just read it all in one go tonight from 10-12.. supaaa. It’s in the format of a graphic novel (ie. a comic book with a little bit of seriousness involved, and cooler thought processes and layouts) and totally reminds me of another “survivor” type graphic novel that I love called Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi.  I think these types of books are so freaking amazing for so many reasons, some of which I will share with you, my willing audience.

Firstly, I can’t stress their influence on young people’s/everyone’s knowledge of world history; detailed or general.  While the Holocaust is a pretty well-known event, very few people know of the suffering of other countries apart from Germany and Russia in it – Poland, Hungary and many, many others.  Personal accounts of the war and world events have served my understanding of them so much more than Grade 10 history ever did (Mr. Treasure, I’m looking at you, asshole).  I was reading this amazing book a while back that I never got around to finishing (yet) called The Whisperers: Private Life in Stalin’s Russia, by Orlando Figes.  This book has so many personal stories of people affected by Stalin’s regime and procedure and ideology – directly, indirectly, through their children, their news, their friends, their radio.  Hearing real people’s experiences really brings history to the forefront of your brain and makes you visualize all of the terrors the people must have gone through, instead of just hearing numbers broken by commas to represent devastating world tragedies.  Numbers do nothing to break our tv-addled brains from their incoherent and ambivalent stupors, but hearing stories does.  Trust me.

There is a big difference in your approach to, “Life was hard in the gulags during Stalin’s reign,” when compared to,

“I saw the nurses getting the children up in the mornings.  They would force them out of their cold beds with shoves and kick… Pushing the children with thier fists and swearing at them roughly, they took off their night clothes and washed them in ice-cold water.  The babies didn’t even dare to cry.  They made little sniffing noises like old men and let out low hoots.  This awful hooting noise would come from the cots for days at a time.  Children already old enough to be sitting up or crawling would lie on their backs, their knees pressed to their stomachs, making these strange noises, like the muffled cooing of pigeons.” (Whisperers).

Obviously, stories have a great deal of sway in showing us the reality of tragedies, events, and even joyous occasions.  However, these books aren’t really about the joyous things as much as about the real things.  The 20th century really seems like quite a bit of crap when you just take these 3 books as a sample: war between Iran and Iraq, Holocaust/ 2nd World War, Stalin’s brutal civil communism.  It’s kind of crazy.  Really crazy.  It still baffles me that these are real stories.  Not just made up to write for a book, not predictions, but the PAST, that HAPPENED, to REAL people.  Unbelievable.

Anyway, so that’s obviously a giant bonus of these books (The Whisperers book not included – that is just a really beautiful history book taking a more personal look at things.  Funny thing is that it was banned in Russia: go figure.), they make you revisit these events that you knew about but if you weren’t generationally connected, didn’t really care to go into the details of.  This makes everything personal.  War, death, struggle.  The way it puts everything into such crisp perspective is astonishing – the drawings make it all the more real, for some reason.

While drawings kind of contradict a post I made a few days ago about the disappearance of reading and the dumbing down of society, I think these are drawings that simply help to more effectively spread a sombre but important message.  These stories are told simply, instead of incessant layers of statistics and quotes.  Just the facts.  It makes it impossible to ignore.  That one page in Maus with the men’s feet hanging from the gallows in the town square is so haunting that it really makes you upset. “I traded also with Pfefer, a fine young man – a Zionist.  He was just married.  His wife ran screaming in the street.” Guh.

These books are stunning in their take – so I definitely recommend them to anyone.  Their drawings are pretty interesting as well – Satrapi has her own unique style (I especially like her drawing of God in the first book) and Spiegelman’s portrayal of the Jews and mice and the Nazis as cats is something that’ll keep me (and possibly you?) thinking past the time I’ve put down the book, which is definitely a good thing.

Anyway, it’s just cool when I can relate stuff I learn at school to stuff I’m interested in.  Including history.  Iran’s history is actually quite fascinating but unless you take a specific course on it in university, you won’t hear a peep about it in public schools in Canada.  300 probably came out of nowhere (or a lot of personal research on the viewer’s part) if you knew nothing about the Greek and Persian empires of the time.  But once you take a classics course, this shit actually becomes really exciting and interesting, because you start putting this together and realizing where the movie strayed for Hollywood’s sake etc.  Same thing with these books – the research it causes you to do post-coital (yes, I regard reading as having having sexual relations with my books) is in itself beneficial. Go see if these stories match up with other books, go see if other countries disagree (they do), and why, and why they’re wrong or not!  Go learn.  Oh man I’m so mentally excited, you’d think I just creamed in my nucleus accumbens.  I’m so smart.  Also, I just googled pleasure centre to be able to use that reference, but I KNEW IT FROM psychology, I just didn’t remember it’s name. I swear.

Anyway, goddamn that’s a lot of reading for you to get through, but rss it for future reading, in case you’re feeling a little dull or something.  OR not. Whatever.  Just saying, it’s cool, and these books are A-MAZING, so go read them. Also, I love university. Oh, I am so lame.

That’s it for tonight,

Ciao. Arina.