I've come to the conclusion lately that it would be best to apply for university again. That I am not enthusiastic about it is certain, but since I live in a country where it is paid for and since it is better than idling for another year (the idling is worthwhile, but there is a time when it is worthwhile, and next year it would not be) I have decided to take a chance. The main obstacles now are, first and foremost, the likelihood that I will not get in; secondly, figuring out which programmes to apply for; thirdly, finding work to supply an income and help me when (if) I have the BA and am standing on the threshold of a career.
So far I would like to take Modern Greek, Russian, and Latin. (The first would be the major, the Russian and Latin double minors.)
The courses of Ancient Greek at UBC might not help that much, so I have decided to try learning a great deal in the meantime. At the bookshop today I did quizzes to learn the colours, for instance, and of course there are newspaper articles available for reading practice once I am advanced enough, which will take a little while. Besides there is the literature, geography, history, cooking, etc., to read up on for background. I'm hoping that the fact that I've liked Greece and Greek so much, though as they were two thousand years ago, will fuel the toil.
Besides I would like to do something in journalism and maybe visit one or two classes to be sure that I am making the right decision.
In the meantime I am worried that I am worthless, etc., as customary, and past dealings with the Freie Universität haven't removed the feeling that with the grades I had in the past and other things I am not a welcome applicant and am both obstreperous and beneath their notice; but these worries won't help even if they are right, so I blot them out and try to forget them. I still haven't lost the feeling that I should stick with applying to the FU, either, rather than trying a different university.
Anyway, in the best case scenario I'll be accepted and happy in my studies. I have all sorts of inferiority complexes about my mind, reinforced by years of creeping along in school and sometimes doing very well and sometimes doing very badly with equally middling energy, and never being able to take positive opinions as an incontrovertible truth rather than polite flattery. Besides I worry that the next time I become depressed or unhappy, the clarity of mind, memory, etc., will be taken away again — which is one reason why I am so circumspect about finding the right job. Feeling stupid feeds into insecurity, and not being clearminded enough to sort through the problems and find mental distraction makes me feel trapped inside my head. At present reading novels, one after the other, feeds my mind and curiosity reliably, and keeps it running so that I can process newspaper articles, the world around me, whatever I feel like reviewing on the Lighthouse blog, etc., easily.
As for the distant future, I have changed my mind in a major way about becoming an author. I feel less doubtful now about being able to write reasonably mature stories and so on, which may be a troubling sign in itself; but the prospect of becoming a public figure or of flogging my ware is so disruptive, and so little concerned with the kind of personal but unselfcentred exercise which I consider nice literature to be, that I want to wait if at all until I am older, secure of my identity, and good-humoured enough to clown around in public persona if that's what publishers, etc., demand. Journalism and writing stories for myself seems better, and if I can Emily Dickinsonesquely leave one or two very good novels behind for posthumous publication (if they're any good) I'd be pleased, and aside from that I think I'd like to publish stories for free on the web. Not middling run-of-the-mill stories but good, unpretentious ones whose principal purpose is to be enjoyed in the reading and the writing. As for poetry (to which the Dickinson analogy would of course better apply) I'll no doubt write it when the spasm seizes but otherwise I think my approach is too desultory to deserve much respect.
Monday, May 16, 2011
Tuesday, May 03, 2011
Canada: Roughly Four More Years Of The Plague
In . . . cheerful . . . news, Canada has just reelected Stephen Harper as Prime Minister and given his Conservative Party a majority in Parliament.
Though I have long left the shores of Canuckia, it was not before Harper appeared on the scene as part of the "reform" conservative movement. It is essentially composed of neoconservatives who have very peculiar ideas of the world allied with a practically impermeable layer of semibenevolent stupidity. Its other exponents include Stockwell Day who, though also young and reasonably picturesque (in politician terms) like Harper, was a less serious figure but left the realm of Canadian political comedy with far greater riches, like the picture of him in a skintight suit on a speedboat. Harper seems, behind his somewhat undistinctive face and slightly protuberant-tipped nose and indolent blue eyes, the most intelligent of the lot.
Behind this meaningless façade the government is as far as I can tell self-seeking and inwardlooking, ignores those social problems which it might prove inconvenient to solve, and casually prone to endorsing rather repellent ideas to the effect that Muslims are generally suspicious, people who are poor are maliciously bent on disturbing the comfort of the rich, immigrants are moochers, and that the starving masses abroad should feel content with Canada's past largesse and accept the now circumscribed crumbs of aid like the princely alms which the wilted soul of an Ottawa parliamentarian considers it to be. This mentality will be familiar far beyond the shores of Canada, for its proponents are a somewhat international burden.
On the other hand the NDP, the New Democratic Party and the party to the left of the Liberal Party, has done exceedingly well. How the Liberal Party, which happily occupied the centre and majority of the Canadian pool of eligible voters for over a decade, managed to lose the vast sections of support may remain a mystery. Certainly Michael Ignatieff is a contentious figure, though whether it is that he mostly dwelled in the US, that he is an Elitist who spent years in the Ivy pinnacle of the Ivory Tower and hobnobbed among the ambient intelligentsia, that he supported the Iraq War (which is the "deal-breaker" for me), that he had tinges of neoconservatism (which was also a problem for me) or that he is simply not very compelling in himself and as a representative of a happy and harmonious Liberal Party, it is impossible for me to determine.
The NDP's Jack Layton seems a slightly abrasive, combative miniature Napoleon, who has the minor opposition party advantage in always being right whenever he criticizes a government policy that turns out to be wrong. And I think he has also profited either by the leftwing belief that now that Canada's economy is in a good state one can afford a little idealism, or by a spillover of the lefty hopefulness of Obama-era America circa 2008, or both. When I was growing up in Victoria the problem was that the Liberal Party was the only left-wingish party capable of gaining a majority, so a vote for the NDP or the Green Party was essentially a vote wasted. Since the opposition to the Conservative government has been a triumvirate for a while, composed of the Liberal Party, the NDP, and the Bloc Québécois — the second and third parties harbouring a relentless undercurrent of needling resentment for the first due to their history of suffering as the more or less impotent naysayers under the Liberal yoke — the argument that the Liberals are the lone hope of the left has evidently become less and less compelling.
Lastly the Green Party triumphed with one parliamentary seat, held by the party's leader Elizabeth May.
Anyway we may well wonder at the degree of stupidity which led people to vote for the Conservatives by such a margin, but evidently the Canadian public has decided that the success of the NDP is a sufficient sign of progressivism, so the mere, trifling fact that the Conservative Party can push its nasty ideas through freely is a side issue . . . except of course for the people who are most affected by the nasty ideas.
If my Facebook friends are an indication, there is no great rejoicing at this electoral outcome, though as one friend astutely pointed out, it isn't quite as embarrassing as the reelection of Bush was for Americans.
What I will do is effectively stuff my ears for the next little while and think very concentratedly back to the glory days of Trudeau and Chrétien.
Though I have long left the shores of Canuckia, it was not before Harper appeared on the scene as part of the "reform" conservative movement. It is essentially composed of neoconservatives who have very peculiar ideas of the world allied with a practically impermeable layer of semibenevolent stupidity. Its other exponents include Stockwell Day who, though also young and reasonably picturesque (in politician terms) like Harper, was a less serious figure but left the realm of Canadian political comedy with far greater riches, like the picture of him in a skintight suit on a speedboat. Harper seems, behind his somewhat undistinctive face and slightly protuberant-tipped nose and indolent blue eyes, the most intelligent of the lot.
Behind this meaningless façade the government is as far as I can tell self-seeking and inwardlooking, ignores those social problems which it might prove inconvenient to solve, and casually prone to endorsing rather repellent ideas to the effect that Muslims are generally suspicious, people who are poor are maliciously bent on disturbing the comfort of the rich, immigrants are moochers, and that the starving masses abroad should feel content with Canada's past largesse and accept the now circumscribed crumbs of aid like the princely alms which the wilted soul of an Ottawa parliamentarian considers it to be. This mentality will be familiar far beyond the shores of Canada, for its proponents are a somewhat international burden.
On the other hand the NDP, the New Democratic Party and the party to the left of the Liberal Party, has done exceedingly well. How the Liberal Party, which happily occupied the centre and majority of the Canadian pool of eligible voters for over a decade, managed to lose the vast sections of support may remain a mystery. Certainly Michael Ignatieff is a contentious figure, though whether it is that he mostly dwelled in the US, that he is an Elitist who spent years in the Ivy pinnacle of the Ivory Tower and hobnobbed among the ambient intelligentsia, that he supported the Iraq War (which is the "deal-breaker" for me), that he had tinges of neoconservatism (which was also a problem for me) or that he is simply not very compelling in himself and as a representative of a happy and harmonious Liberal Party, it is impossible for me to determine.
The NDP's Jack Layton seems a slightly abrasive, combative miniature Napoleon, who has the minor opposition party advantage in always being right whenever he criticizes a government policy that turns out to be wrong. And I think he has also profited either by the leftwing belief that now that Canada's economy is in a good state one can afford a little idealism, or by a spillover of the lefty hopefulness of Obama-era America circa 2008, or both. When I was growing up in Victoria the problem was that the Liberal Party was the only left-wingish party capable of gaining a majority, so a vote for the NDP or the Green Party was essentially a vote wasted. Since the opposition to the Conservative government has been a triumvirate for a while, composed of the Liberal Party, the NDP, and the Bloc Québécois — the second and third parties harbouring a relentless undercurrent of needling resentment for the first due to their history of suffering as the more or less impotent naysayers under the Liberal yoke — the argument that the Liberals are the lone hope of the left has evidently become less and less compelling.
Lastly the Green Party triumphed with one parliamentary seat, held by the party's leader Elizabeth May.
Anyway we may well wonder at the degree of stupidity which led people to vote for the Conservatives by such a margin, but evidently the Canadian public has decided that the success of the NDP is a sufficient sign of progressivism, so the mere, trifling fact that the Conservative Party can push its nasty ideas through freely is a side issue . . . except of course for the people who are most affected by the nasty ideas.
If my Facebook friends are an indication, there is no great rejoicing at this electoral outcome, though as one friend astutely pointed out, it isn't quite as embarrassing as the reelection of Bush was for Americans.
What I will do is effectively stuff my ears for the next little while and think very concentratedly back to the glory days of Trudeau and Chrétien.
Monday, May 02, 2011
De Miseris Mondayensis
It's around 1:30 in the bookshop, a thunderously grey day only without the thunder and the sky has dissolved into white cloud cover, and the very new heavy foliage of the trees gives a peculiar weight and fullness to the scene. I hadn't been outside much since the Friday before the holidays, if at all, and it was all very new to me. There are even dandelions blown to seed in the garden patches at the street.
During the white night I read about the Osama bin Laden stuff and wrote the blog post beneath, which I may delete eventually because it doesn't seem nice or helpful, and it feels revolting to be so cheerful about someone's death (Mama felt that it was murderous and Papa was angry about it, I think). I also still don't understand why someone dying should make me feel so much better. Someone came into the bookshop to drop off a book for us to sell on commission, and he solemnly stated that yesterday was an important day in history. I must admit that I replied, facetiously, "Because of the Pope?". As I was going to write on a Facebook update I never posted (not wanting to attack people with political controversies), I think that this would be an important day of history if bin Laden's death made the people who died in 2011 (or in the African embassies earlier, or on the U.S.S. Cole) alive again. But this is just a death day. So that's why I was irritated and (completely uncharacteristically) sarcastic.
What I don't understand is why all of the doubts I had about whether bin Laden knew of the plans for Sept. 11th, or took them seriously if he did, have suddenly vanished. The idea of CIA plots was in my view absurd though in the realm of possibility; what I rather thought is that it might have been a "grassroots initiative" and to make Osama bin Laden immediately responsible for that is like arguing that any crime a Mafia drug dealer commits is directly ordered by the padrone (if that's the correct term).
In any case it is comforting to read Gawker and Jezebel, because there is a good deal of New Yorkish levelheadedness, skepticism and thoughtfulness in the comments. I was looking for an editorial or article in the newspapers to make a useful point for me, but it didn't happen. There was an immensely sad quote from a woman whose son had died on Sept. 11th who basically had no reaction, and said that bin Laden's death didn't change anything. Nonetheless I felt as if it did, and though it may be wishful thinking I hoped that we could cork the islamophobia back up in the bottle, not carry out secret operations in Pakistan, etc., and begin again with a clean canvas.
Anyway, these things happen slowly. The newspapers are much better again, even before 2008 I was thankful at the thought that Donald Rumsfeld was no longer Defense Secretary (though when he appeared on the Daily Show this year it was definitely too soon), when Obama won the election I realized that the Bush administration had stolen eight years of my life which I will never get back but at least those eight years were over, and pretty much every time I watch a session in British Parliament I am happy that Antonius Blair has departed and the clean fresh air of David Cameron has entered. But Fox News and its brainless brethren are still with us, and CNN for instance has I think not a fifth of its former succinctness, informativeness, and class, and since I watched the Headline News almost daily as an eighth- or ninth-grader I should know.
Other than that, my holidays were I think well spent. I've read dozens of romance novels, relaxed into a veritable sea anemone, scribbled a little on stories, returned to long Hermitologies blog posts though they are most likely a nuisance, and finally spent more time on the piano, where I had marathon sessions with Bach, Beethoven, Satie, Haydn, Scarlatti, Chopin, Schumann, Mendelssohn, etc., etc., and eventually stopped overthinking the music. The idea of composing probably won't amount to much, though.
Here in the bookshop I turned to a philosophical book on Aristotle again but couldn't concentrate. But hopefully I will, because it spreads on the troubled waters of my soul like a calming oil, and I could really use some of that.
P.S.: Never mind the Latin in the post title. Half of ancient Rome is probably rolling in its graves.
During the white night I read about the Osama bin Laden stuff and wrote the blog post beneath, which I may delete eventually because it doesn't seem nice or helpful, and it feels revolting to be so cheerful about someone's death (Mama felt that it was murderous and Papa was angry about it, I think). I also still don't understand why someone dying should make me feel so much better. Someone came into the bookshop to drop off a book for us to sell on commission, and he solemnly stated that yesterday was an important day in history. I must admit that I replied, facetiously, "Because of the Pope?". As I was going to write on a Facebook update I never posted (not wanting to attack people with political controversies), I think that this would be an important day of history if bin Laden's death made the people who died in 2011 (or in the African embassies earlier, or on the U.S.S. Cole) alive again. But this is just a death day. So that's why I was irritated and (completely uncharacteristically) sarcastic.
What I don't understand is why all of the doubts I had about whether bin Laden knew of the plans for Sept. 11th, or took them seriously if he did, have suddenly vanished. The idea of CIA plots was in my view absurd though in the realm of possibility; what I rather thought is that it might have been a "grassroots initiative" and to make Osama bin Laden immediately responsible for that is like arguing that any crime a Mafia drug dealer commits is directly ordered by the padrone (if that's the correct term).
In any case it is comforting to read Gawker and Jezebel, because there is a good deal of New Yorkish levelheadedness, skepticism and thoughtfulness in the comments. I was looking for an editorial or article in the newspapers to make a useful point for me, but it didn't happen. There was an immensely sad quote from a woman whose son had died on Sept. 11th who basically had no reaction, and said that bin Laden's death didn't change anything. Nonetheless I felt as if it did, and though it may be wishful thinking I hoped that we could cork the islamophobia back up in the bottle, not carry out secret operations in Pakistan, etc., and begin again with a clean canvas.
Anyway, these things happen slowly. The newspapers are much better again, even before 2008 I was thankful at the thought that Donald Rumsfeld was no longer Defense Secretary (though when he appeared on the Daily Show this year it was definitely too soon), when Obama won the election I realized that the Bush administration had stolen eight years of my life which I will never get back but at least those eight years were over, and pretty much every time I watch a session in British Parliament I am happy that Antonius Blair has departed and the clean fresh air of David Cameron has entered. But Fox News and its brainless brethren are still with us, and CNN for instance has I think not a fifth of its former succinctness, informativeness, and class, and since I watched the Headline News almost daily as an eighth- or ninth-grader I should know.
Other than that, my holidays were I think well spent. I've read dozens of romance novels, relaxed into a veritable sea anemone, scribbled a little on stories, returned to long Hermitologies blog posts though they are most likely a nuisance, and finally spent more time on the piano, where I had marathon sessions with Bach, Beethoven, Satie, Haydn, Scarlatti, Chopin, Schumann, Mendelssohn, etc., etc., and eventually stopped overthinking the music. The idea of composing probably won't amount to much, though.
Here in the bookshop I turned to a philosophical book on Aristotle again but couldn't concentrate. But hopefully I will, because it spreads on the troubled waters of my soul like a calming oil, and I could really use some of that.
P.S.: Never mind the Latin in the post title. Half of ancient Rome is probably rolling in its graves.
Trying to Close the Chapter
Last night I came across the snippet of an AP news article which announced that President Obama had called a press conference in the evening and that, unprecedentedly, he had not mentioned what it would be about. I was guessing that it would be about Libya, the budget or (in the wildest conjecture) his resignation.
Then the first reports came that, according to an anonymous American government official, Osama bin Laden had been killed and his body captured, and that the press conference was related. About an hour after the announced time of 10:30 Eastern time, in which I had the White House livestream open but nothing happened, that turned out to be the case.
Though I would have expected that the death of Osama bin Laden would leave me indifferent, it hasn't. It brought back my memories of Sept. 11th and made me feel (illogically or not) that it was finally resolved and put in the past.
The fact that he had been purposely assassinated didn't bother me either. I preferred it to torture, an unjust trial, secret jailing, humiliation, institutional execution, desecration of the body, or any of the other methods which disgrace us and our governments more than the people who suffer them, and which I would have expected. If he was really shot through the head he hopefully died right away.
If the attacks had not happened on Sept. 11th, several thousand people would still be alive and (as Obama pointed out) parents would have been able to raise their children, etc.; besides the press would have remained objective, no one would especially notice if people are Muslim or Arabic, and there wouldn't have been the pressure to go to war in Afghanistan.
On a personal level it also had a bad psychological effect on everyone who cared, also on me, and dragged us down into a weltschmerzy depression which had a deadening effect on anything artistic and intellectual. Though that was important to us of course it was insignificant in the grand scheme of things.
It also seemed to damage the relatively pacific and open inner life of America itself. Though it bothered me that no one made the connection between the suffering of Sept. 11th and the suffering of people abroad who live with war daily, there is really something vile in bringing violence into a country which (regardless of what its government wreaks abroad) has managed to forge a reasonable level of inoffensive comfort and harmony, and to gain a sort of innocence, and to share this peace and some goodwill (naïve or otherwise) with those who enter it. I don't think immigrants had an easy time, but unfortunately, no matter what the country, they rarely do.
*
On the other hand, we are responsible for the hundreds of thousands of deaths, torture, illegality, and so on that came afterwards.
We used indiscriminate weapons in Afghanistan and killed entire families, we supported any force whose opponents are Arabic or Muslim and armed no matter how they treated civilians, we killed Sikhs and Muslims and didn't report the deaths properly, we were suspicious of anyone who was or looked Muslim and made them feel it, we pretended that torture wasn't torture and handed off men to dictatorships to force confessions, we imprisoned over seven hundred people in Guantánamo Bay without investigating their situations properly and let them rot there, we invaded Iraq, we undermined the case for respecting human rights by demonstrating that we did not feel bound by them, we hired contractors who shot people for no reason, we put hundreds of thousands of soldiers into situations where they had to fire on civilians or terrorize people by invading their homes at night and where they were at risk of being wounded or killed or emotionally damaged, we arbitrarily arrested people and held them over the twenty-four-hour limit under the Magna Carta, we approved the Patriot Act and its ideology that an American life is worth more than the life of an individual of any other nationality, we intimidated and harassed and isolated people who were against the Bush administration's policies for being unpatriotic, we flew over and dropped bombs into Pakistan and didn't particularly care whether people who had nothing to do with the matter died, and so on and so forth. Some of these things are continuing.
And I think that we are solely responsible for all of that.
So it is time now, since not only the hijackers but also the person who apparently stood behind them are gone, to begin to really look at and address the abuses and murder that followed Sept. 11th.
As a side note, I don't think that Osama bin Laden's death should be celebrated as an achievement of America as a country, either, since killing a man is the kind of, er, feat which knows no national limitations. But I admit that it's bringing out weird jingoistic feelings in me too, the kind I hated ten years ago, and of course I'm not American.
*
As a detail, I was wondering why the CIA director, Leon Panetta, was so moved and close to tears during the press conference about the shuffled positions in the Department of Defence, etc., last week. I think this may be the reason.
Then the first reports came that, according to an anonymous American government official, Osama bin Laden had been killed and his body captured, and that the press conference was related. About an hour after the announced time of 10:30 Eastern time, in which I had the White House livestream open but nothing happened, that turned out to be the case.
Though I would have expected that the death of Osama bin Laden would leave me indifferent, it hasn't. It brought back my memories of Sept. 11th and made me feel (illogically or not) that it was finally resolved and put in the past.
The fact that he had been purposely assassinated didn't bother me either. I preferred it to torture, an unjust trial, secret jailing, humiliation, institutional execution, desecration of the body, or any of the other methods which disgrace us and our governments more than the people who suffer them, and which I would have expected. If he was really shot through the head he hopefully died right away.
If the attacks had not happened on Sept. 11th, several thousand people would still be alive and (as Obama pointed out) parents would have been able to raise their children, etc.; besides the press would have remained objective, no one would especially notice if people are Muslim or Arabic, and there wouldn't have been the pressure to go to war in Afghanistan.
On a personal level it also had a bad psychological effect on everyone who cared, also on me, and dragged us down into a weltschmerzy depression which had a deadening effect on anything artistic and intellectual. Though that was important to us of course it was insignificant in the grand scheme of things.
It also seemed to damage the relatively pacific and open inner life of America itself. Though it bothered me that no one made the connection between the suffering of Sept. 11th and the suffering of people abroad who live with war daily, there is really something vile in bringing violence into a country which (regardless of what its government wreaks abroad) has managed to forge a reasonable level of inoffensive comfort and harmony, and to gain a sort of innocence, and to share this peace and some goodwill (naïve or otherwise) with those who enter it. I don't think immigrants had an easy time, but unfortunately, no matter what the country, they rarely do.
*
On the other hand, we are responsible for the hundreds of thousands of deaths, torture, illegality, and so on that came afterwards.
We used indiscriminate weapons in Afghanistan and killed entire families, we supported any force whose opponents are Arabic or Muslim and armed no matter how they treated civilians, we killed Sikhs and Muslims and didn't report the deaths properly, we were suspicious of anyone who was or looked Muslim and made them feel it, we pretended that torture wasn't torture and handed off men to dictatorships to force confessions, we imprisoned over seven hundred people in Guantánamo Bay without investigating their situations properly and let them rot there, we invaded Iraq, we undermined the case for respecting human rights by demonstrating that we did not feel bound by them, we hired contractors who shot people for no reason, we put hundreds of thousands of soldiers into situations where they had to fire on civilians or terrorize people by invading their homes at night and where they were at risk of being wounded or killed or emotionally damaged, we arbitrarily arrested people and held them over the twenty-four-hour limit under the Magna Carta, we approved the Patriot Act and its ideology that an American life is worth more than the life of an individual of any other nationality, we intimidated and harassed and isolated people who were against the Bush administration's policies for being unpatriotic, we flew over and dropped bombs into Pakistan and didn't particularly care whether people who had nothing to do with the matter died, and so on and so forth. Some of these things are continuing.
And I think that we are solely responsible for all of that.
So it is time now, since not only the hijackers but also the person who apparently stood behind them are gone, to begin to really look at and address the abuses and murder that followed Sept. 11th.
As a side note, I don't think that Osama bin Laden's death should be celebrated as an achievement of America as a country, either, since killing a man is the kind of, er, feat which knows no national limitations. But I admit that it's bringing out weird jingoistic feelings in me too, the kind I hated ten years ago, and of course I'm not American.
*
As a detail, I was wondering why the CIA director, Leon Panetta, was so moved and close to tears during the press conference about the shuffled positions in the Department of Defence, etc., last week. I think this may be the reason.
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