It's Been a While

I’ve retuned!

It’s been a long summer and start to a first semester, and I’ve completely neglected this blog. My four month long sojourn from school, by the way, was pretty fabulous. Notable events included new releases from Death Cab for Cutie, Franz Ferdinand, My Morning Jacket, Coldplay, The Decemberists, Broken Social Scene, and Ryan Adams. My family and I hung out in Vancouver and Tofino for a couple of weeks, and I attended the Folk Festival, Fringe, Street Performers’ Festival, and many more yearly must-see cultural events. I also checked out some Formula One Racing that stopped in Edmonton, and it was so incredibly foreign to me! Somehow my sister really got into it, but all I can say I got out of it was the worst sunburn of my life (almost second degree). Of course, with a bit of aloe vera and icing the pain of a burn can be quelled sufficiently, but the extreme redness of my face and arms was the cause of many jokes and comments at work. I’ve never been so embarrassed in my entire life!

During my break from school-prescribed literature, I read two really profoundly deep books: The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath and 1984 by George Orwell. The former is an empathetic examination of clinical depression and a young woman’s experience in the middle of the previous century. Plath’s writing is so fluid, and remarkably rich with subtle symbolism and imagery. I’ve never really understood what a depressed person felt like, and she made it so vivid and heartrending in her poetic descriptions. 1984 is perhaps a less touching, but rather alarming, examination of repressive societies of a just post-war world. Orwell has a gift of illustrating his concerns through inconceivable and yet entirely credible other-worlds. 1984 is likely the most hopeless novel I’ve ever read, but its intelligence and nuanced examination of political issues was worth the disheartening read. I totally recommend both, despite their melancholy subject matter!

Another suggestion I would make for your personal pleasure would be to check out the atmospheric, although totally non-Canadian, sounds of Boards of Canada. This group has a pretty experimental, maybe indie, approach to its exclusively electronica tracks. Some of their songs, especially those without the somewhat excessive beat tracks, are truly stirring. My favourite is a short piece called “In the Annexe” which totally reminds me of these classic film adaptations from the late ’80s of Canadian short stories put out by the National Film Board of Canada. I must have watched 20 of these videos in my high school English classes, and they never ceased to entertain me! The best feature of these films was their shortsighted use of what would have then been trendy synthesized ambient music, but now sounds dated and absurd. There’s nothing like having a tender moment between two characters interrupted by a cacophony of awkward keyboard cords. Who knows what the incredible Garden State soundtrack will sound like when this generation's children watch the film years from now?

The picture I’ve included is of my sister in our kitchen after my grandma's unbelievably good Thanksgiving dinner last weekend. I think she’s even eating some of my grandma’s tomato harvest (hence the curious bulge in her cheek). I had four dinners during the weekend, likely a record, and it’s a miracle that I didn’t explode. I’m already missing the turkey, stuffing, and pumpkin pie! My dad (who is a grade 3 teacher) remarked recently that he thought a holiday for giving thanks once a year was really insufficient, and he planned to discuss thankfulness throughout the year with his students. Especially in this year of hurricanes, earthquakes, war, and celebrity-initiated anti-poverty campaigns, it’s so important to count our blessings.

It’s often easy to complain about the unfair taxes we pay or how others have wronged us, but we have relatively infinite resources in this economically and socially polarized world. Amazingly, impoverished people in other countries, particularly in Africa, find joy in seemingly insignificant pleasures. We’ve been discussing Bentham’s ideas on the proportionate happiness that wealth brings the individual in my Poli Sci class, but I genuinely believe that the small pleasures in life and the peace that God grants us are all that’s necessary for us to reach our full “happiness-potential.” Ironically, it’s in the exceedingly hedonistic lifestyles of Western culture that the most apathy and cynicism develop. As we try desperately to achieve that ideal state of happiness, we experience more frustration, disappointment, exhaustion, and emptiness. If only our society could find total contentment in the simple pleasures of life, like star gazing, a beautiful song, or the not-so-simple love of God.

As the Brits quaintly say: cheerio!