JULIE PETERS

Recent Writings--take a look at elej!

2011-08-02T10:55:00.000-07:00

Hey folks!

Thanks for stopping by. I'm just going to go ahead and redirect you to elephantjournal.com, an [amazing] online magazine about yoga and the mindful life, where I've been posting my thoughts on yoga and life quite regularly.

Take a look here: http://www.elephantjournal.com/?s=Julie+%28JC%29+Peters+ and feel free to browse the site.

love, peace, and unicorns,

JC

Crocodiles, elephants, and a whale of a tale

2011-06-12T20:43:00.000-07:00

I'm shocked and awed that my most recent article, also published on elephantjournal.com, has received over 37,000 views at last count. I've gotten so many personal messages about this article, and it's been an amazing help in my own pile on the floor to know that others are going through it, right now, all the time, and that of course we can do this. We are so strong and capable and amazing and we can get up on our fear and ride it like a crocodile into the river.

I'd love for you to read it here.

Meantime, I'm laid up at home a little longer, having been hit by a car and hurt my knee, to add injury to insult (it's been a tough month.)

I miss you folks, and I'd love to see you this Saturday at Highgate YYOGA in Burnaby BC to learn about Yin Yoga and the Poetry of the Body. We'll be going deep into a physical meditation to learn about the stories we've been hlding onto in our bodies and how we can start to tease them out and create space to tell newer, more interesting, juicier stories about our lives and our bodies. Bring a journal!

See you soon lovelies!

peace, love and unicorns,

jcp

The Warrior in Your Belly: RAWR

2011-04-14T18:48:00.000-07:00

Hey all,

This article was originally posted in elephant journal, which is an amazing online journal about yoga and meditation. You can see the original article here, or read on:

Secrets to the Warrior Power in your Belly: Exploring the Core through the Chakras
by Julie (JC) Peters

Have you ever been in a yoga class where the teacher is making you go through a series of crunches, or core planks, or boat pose, and you start to feel your belly burning, and you just get this image in your head of punching that teacher in her smug little face? Really, really hard?

I have. Core work does that to me sometimes. And I love it. (Though i don’t usually follow through, of course.)

There's something about working the muscles of your core that is different than working other areas of your body. Feeling your thighs burn is just not as psychosis-inducing as a few innocent-looking little crunches.

One of the things asana yoga can do is stimulate centres of energy in your body called Chakras. There are seven of them (depending on who you ask) and for the purposes of this article, we will be focusing on the lower three, all of which reside in the belly: Muladhara, the root chakra, Svadisthana, the sacral chakra, and Manipura, the solar plexus. These lower chakras have to do with ourselves as individuals: our basic needs and instincts, our emotions, our desires, and our egos. All of our crap is located in our lower chakras (and not just theoretically). The belly holds all of our anger, our desires, our shame, our fear, and our unresolved issues. Poses that work the belly, our bodies know on a deep instinctual level, could create some seismic shi(f)ts.

Engaging the core must always start at the beginning: the root. According to yoga philosophy, we have a magical little spot in our bodies called mula bandha. Located at the pelvic diaphragm, the pelvic floor, the perineum, that special area that we contract when we want to keep shit to ourselves, this magical little spot is the key to the door of our inner power. Reema Datta and Leza Lowitz describe it this way:

“‘mula’ means ‘root,’ ‘origin,’ or ‘source.’ [...] Many yoga practitioners consider mula bandha to be the secret to maintaining strong life-force energy. Mula bandha is a grounding, centering force that helps to create heat, protects the overstretching of muscles, and increases the functioning of the parasympathetic nervous system that is responsible for relaxation. Engaging mula bandha thus creates a relaxed state in the midst of deep movement” (Sacred Sanskrit Words).

They make it sound so easeful. It can be. What’s happening from a physical perspective is this: when we engage the pelvic floor, we can set off a chain reaction in the body that becomes the Deep Core Line. This is a series of muscles that run from the inner arches of the feet, through the inner legs, mula bandha, the low belly, middle belly and diaphragm, through the chest and into the palms, and all the way up to the tongue itself. The belly becomes the brain of this physical connection, the control centre. Did you know that the digestive system has as many neurons as the spinal cord? It has its own unique intelligence, and one that most of us spend our time overriding with the crazy reasonings of our overworked brains. Turning on this deep core line can create access to a completely new kind of intelligence that runs through the whole body, and through several other bandhas, or locks, in the upper belly, the throat, the hands and feet, and the tongue. If you could actually see this electric current turning on, it might look like something out of the anime TV show Avatar: the Last Airbender, when the magic of earth, air, fire, and water come together to create a mythical beast of power. Anyway it feels that way when I do it. Like a skinny, gangly yoga teacher turning into Optimus Prime. It's awesome.

Part of the reason turning on your core can feel so supernatural is because when you turn on the Deep Core Line through your lowest chakra, you get each one of those seven wheels spinning, right up to the Crown, where we connect with the universal or the divine. But first, we must plant our roots: Muladhara is the chakra that connects your feet to the earth. It connects us to our most basic selves that need nourishment, shelter, and protection. It's where we hide our fear. Svadisthana Chakra, located on the level of the sacrum, is our centre of pleasure, desire, lovemaking, creativity, romance, and emotion. Our shame is hidden here. Manipura Chakra is located at the solar plexus, around or above the navel itself. Though core engagement begins at Muladhara, the chakra that is often most stimulated is actually Manipura, the solar plexus.

Manipura is our centre of personal power. This is where we feel determination, willpower, the ability to manifest our desires, our ego, and yes, anger. Its Sanskrit name means "lustrous gem" and it is represented by a bright yellow sun. This is the fire that can distill diamonds from coal. It is what can sort through the shit and find the gems. A lot of us, women especially, have issues with the solar plexus chakra: issues of speaking up, standing up for ourselves, and self-protection. Working the physical core can often bring up those feelings of weakness, inadequacy, fear, shame, and then that familiar desire to punch the teacher in the face or yell at the father with his adorable daughter riding in front of me on a bicycle built for two going TOO SLOW YOU ASSHOLES! (I didn’t actually say that. Just so you know.)

I discovered that the more I could access the power in my centre, the less unstable those red hot emotions started to feel. I started to feel powerful. I started to do the things I had been planning on getting to for months. I started to speak up when someone wasn't treating me right. I was able to channel that anger into confidence, finding my own inner power, as a woman, yes, but as me, which is a big part of what Manipura is all about: your sense of yourself.

I also learned that as important engaging the pelvic floor is, releasing it is equally important. If the power you access through core work stays in the solar plexus and can’t move out, the anger and the ego start to burn you up from the inside out. Being on fire is sometimes necessary, but at some point we need to hose that baby off.

The pelvic floor is the key to turning on the core, but also the key to releasing energy that needs to move on. Because our issues of control are stored in the belly region, we tend to walk around with tension there unconsciously, which blocks the flow between the chakras. Consciously activating the core can also teach us how to consciously let it go: this is the secret to the power in your belly. By wading into the mystery waters of our bellies and exploring them on our own terms, we can begin to access the courage of the true warrior. My favourite Persian poet Hafiz describes the warrior this way:

The warrior
Wisely sits in a circle
With other men
Gathering the strength to unmask
Himself,
Then
Sits, giving.
Like a great illumined planet on
The
Earth.

In other words, It takes real bravery to get to know your own shit and find diamonds. It takes even more courage to then let them go.

Yoga: pictures of anxiety

2011-03-24T18:16:00.000-07:00

I have been haunted, these past weeks, by terrible dreams, fears of earthquakes, and the coffee-buzz hands-trembling anxiety of these words from the news: "consider the earth shaking to be your warning to evacuate the building." That's your warning, folks, the earth moving under your feet. Get the hell out of the way, we can't help ya now.

In the meantime, spring has sprung, the warm weather is goosing everyone and my students are still coming to the mat to play. My students, coming to the mat, looking up at me with this supermoon, end-of-the-world desire to step up onto their hands and do something really fun and crazy and good, has been helping me more than they will probably ever know.

I have something called Generalized Anxiety Disorder. It makes me think of this time when a friend of mine had this skin problem near her mouth. She went to the doctor, and he diagnosed her with something called Perioral Dermatitis, which translates literally from the latin to "skin problem near the mouth."

All doctors seem to know about Generalized Anxiety Disorder is that you get anxious, just generally, with no specific reason. And there are drugs you can take for that. That they know.

I think a lot of people have this disorder. The buzzing phones, the computer screens, the mutating diseases, the news, the coffee, the tsunamis have us all in a state of semi-shock, and we get all tight in the belly and can't release our collective pelvic floors. I think the inside of my head, some days, looks like a cluttered bedroom floor with dirty clothes and half-eaten sandwiches and past-due applications and all kinds of things all over it culminating in a burgeoning mushroom cloud of stuff. To paraphrase Kurt Vonnegut, if you think it's a mess out there, you should see what it's like in here.

Yoga attracts a lot of people like me. We need it so badly, especially now, because our world is so crazy, and yoga is this place where you can just be present, in a room, on a mat, with yourself or with your community, and really, that's all you need to know. I don't do yoga because it gives me a nice bum or because I can do handstands now. I do yoga because it's alive, because it tames the mushroom clouds, and because it's home.

I've been reading this book recently called Yoga 2.0 by Matthew Remski and Scott Petrie. It's a slim little volume about yoga in the 21st century, what we think it is, and what we think it was. This quotation, I think, explains why so many of us choose to call yoga home:

Asana [yoga postures] practice has the potential to constitute the recovery of the unseen, simply by shifting us away from visual focus. The unseen we seek need not be confused with a metaphysical force, but rather what is most literally felt, tasted, etc. While the whole world looks for atman [soul] in HD, the yogi can enter absorption by feeling the warmth of his own hand, laying upon his own thigh.

We spend so much time in this world looking; often we override what we feel with what we can see. Yoga, for many, is actually defined now by these images of beautiful smiling women tying themselves up in knots on the cover of Yoga Journal. It is something we can do on a playstation, with a virtual teacher who can't actually see us. When we are looking at something to see what we should be doing (including a mirror) we become self conscious, we start scanning for imperfections, for the ways in which we are not what we see. We are in another zone of anxiety, and we lose our sense of ourselves without our senses.

When I sit down on my mat, with a teacher and fellow students encouraging me to focus and breathe, i can actually do it. I remember...something. Something I don't need to put into words here. Something I don't want to intellectualize, but just want to feel. My brain works hard enough in the world, and I'm starting to want my gut to be a lot more involved.

I can not listen to one of my favourite teachers, Shiva Rea, and do what she is asking me to do on a yoga DVD. I can't follow through with it. I have tried five times. I love her teaching because it's brought me something living through her students who have become my teachers, something beautiful and flowing and very much alive, and when she is this recorded image on a screen my body rebels, stops listening to her, and starts going with my own flow, and hearing her voice as an irritating distraction. How can she feed me any nourishment from this yoga if we are not even in the same room?

I'm not saying images of yoga are always bad--when NOT on the mat they can be very useful, especially for teaching purposes. But when I am tired and scared and haunted and I wanna go home, I'd rather just be in a room with my students, those beautiful women and men high on the full moon who want to play, and I'd rather play. And if they are not around, well then I'd rather be alone, eyes closed, blasting John Lee Hooker and BB King and letting the blues teach me what my body can do. I'd rather be alive, animal, human, me, with the photographic evidence in another place, another time.

The world is trying hard enough to kill me with general anxiety. On my mat, I'm gonna close my eyes, and breathe myself alive. I'd rather do this with you.

Truth, yoga, jazz, rap

2011-02-07T08:13:00.001-08:00

Satya.

This beautiful sankskrit word means "truth," and it's one of the 8 limbs of classical yoga. Like one of the ten commandments: Don't lie! it sits there solemnly, quietly inching its way under my skin.

For some reason, this is the aspect of classical yoga that I keep coming back to again and again. And not because it's easy.

For me, this word means a lot more than just "don't lie." It means be honest with the people around you and with yourself. We are better at lying to ourselves than anyone else has ever been capable. Did you know that there is a specific part of our brains whose entire purpose is to tell us stories about reality when it doesn't make easy sense? It fills in colours and blind spots in our vision that we can't really see. It rationalizes movements of the body that don't correspond with decisions we've made in our minds. It is constantly explaining the world for us, like a caring mother who does not want their sweet baby to see the truth.

This is immensely useful, actually--it's really what you need when you are trying to get from A to B, or survive, which is the general evolutionary purpose of every part of the brain when you ask a neuroscientist about it. But it's not always useful when you are trying to break a pattern or change something in your life or stop lying to yourself.

Over the last little while, I've decided to start taking some of my own advice: Pussy up, be honest, and show people who you really are. (well I don't phrase it like that in my yoga classes.) I'm a spoken word poet: the sort of label that makes me seem like I must smoke cigarettes, own a beret, be fantastically, immaturely angry at the world for what it's done to me, and have no capacity for maintaining healthy human relationships (some of these things are quite true for many spoken word poets). I'm also a yoga teacher, which means I'm supposed to be peaceful all the time and never feel angry or drink beer or have any problems (not a single yoga teacher in the universe, I'm pretty sure, is like that). My versions of these two personalities go quite well together really, like a dish that sounds strange but once you try it you'll never go back: popcorn with olive oil and nutritional yeast. Seriously. Try it.

Some of the interesting ways this has manifested itself:
the Yoga Jazz Rap: It's a long story, but suffice it to say I found myself onstage in the Jazz Cellar a little while ago 'rapping' spoken word with a hip hop artist and a full jazz band. And it was about the best thing that ever happened to me.

East Side Yoga Studio teams up with Vancouver Poetry House : My little yoga studio is partnering up with the organization that puts on the poety slam: we will be donating free yoga classes to every slam, hosting writing and yoga/writing workshops at our studio, and otherwise collaborating to make the world a better place.

And, my personal favourite: The East Side Yoga Studio Art Party! : On Saturday, March 26th, we will be getting poets, musicians, band members, and yoga dancers together to perform and party at Cafe Deux Soleils, the same veune that hosts the poetry slam. Cover will be $5 minimum donation, and it will be the strangest and best show you've ever seen. You can see the facebook event for it here: http://www.facebook.com/#!/event.php?eid=174930052552047

So my advice to you for this week: be honest about who you are, put the pieces together. You might end up being the world's first Yoga Jazz Rapper. After me, of course.

My new year's resolution is to not make any resolutions

2011-01-06T10:40:00.000-08:00

It's January 6th. I suppose I should be at a gym somewhere burning off holiday calories or making to do lists for the rest of my life. But I am instead drinking coffee under a fuzzy blanket at 10:45 am on a Thursday. Oh, the life of a yoga teacher.

January is a strange time of year: the holidays are, for most of us, stressful in one sense or another: we see family. We don't see family. We see our partner's family. We eat too much. We drink too much. We rest too much. We work too much. It's a time of pure indulgence for some and struggling to get through it for others. Usually our bodies end up mad at us for some reason or another.

And just because it's the beginning of January doesn't mean it's any warmer or brighter than it was two weeks ago: I'm starting to think the coldest and darkest season of the year is NOT the best time to be making huge life decisions.

Especially since so many of us make these extreme New Year's Resolutions that essentially say: this is the year I give up chocolate/booze/sugar/fun! I will be a whole new person, this is the year to do it! Everything will change....NOW!

I think we should reevaluate this masochistic "holiday" for a moment here. How about we give ourselves a break? Ease back into the new routine slowly, rest a little, eat good food, and take the pressure off? Life is stressful enough, why add more to it unnecessarily? The spring is a much more reasonable time to be taking on big tasks. There's SUN at that time.

My New Year's Resolution is to be easier on myself. Hence coffee and fuzzy blankets at 10:45am. I am proud of that.

And I have a suggestion. What if we stopped all this wheel spinning for a moment, closed our eyes, and asked our bodies what their New Year's resolution would be? Setting aside for a moment shame or guilt or judgment, honestly listen: if your body could talk, what would it say? Would the intentions of your gut, your hips, your lower back or shoulderblades be the same as the one you made in your mind?

The new moon was just the other day--write down this gut intention and do your best to follow it, just until the full moon waxes. Remember: it's okay to make mistakes: if it doesn't work out, you probably learned something, and another cycle is always on its way. A year may be a little too big to peer into; one cycle of the moon sounds a lot more reasonable.

And of course you can do it. Look what you've already done.

Isn't every day Men's day?

2010-11-22T18:22:00.000-08:00

Actually, no. Not anymore, anyway.

The gender story in North America has changed so drastically over a period of barely one generation. The wildly popular show Mad Men is an uncomfortably accurate portrayal of life between the sexes in the early 60s. My mom's response to the show was: "Why would I watch that? I don't want to remember being chased around a desk." My mom is not that old (seriously. You should see her doing yoga).

Shocking, right? And now things are different: women have a lot more power in the workplace and in family situations, women win most lawsuits related to sexual harassment and child custody, and more and more women are becoming primary breadwinners. Women are also shown to be better at handling mental illness because they have close friend groups and a willingness to seek professional help. So what's the problem? Of course women are still dealing with our issues, and though it's (very) tempting, I will not delve into my own challenges as a woman, especially in academia.

But things have certainly changed. The woman's movement was just that: a woman's movement. Women got together, discussed ideas, created organizations, fought for each other, and worked bloody hard to change the role of a woman in society so that now we have (at least officially) the same rights as men do. The birth control pill meant that women could decide if they wanted children, how many, and when. No one needs to depend on anyone else financially. Divorce is about as common as marriage, it seems, and women are far outperforming men in education, if not in the workplace.

So what have men been doing all this time? How exactly have men been negotiating this new world where women as a whole have become something different, and no one's been allowed to ask any questions?

For example, what is the appropriate way to approach a woman at a bar? Do women still want men to pay for dinner and hold doors open? Do women want rich men or educated men? Is it 'manly' to get pedicures and use hair products? Why is it assumed, at least in the judicial system, that women are better at childcare than men? Now that women want men to express their feelings more, how exactly are they supposed to do that?

And a plethora of other questions I can't begin to imagine because, of course, I am a woman. But I have my own questions.

Like why are there so many sexual scenes between women in popular media and so few of men? Why is it playful and sexy when women are doing it and so serious when it's between men? Why don't men talk about their feelings with their friends? Why are so many men dropping out of school? Why is bullying in schools so bad that little boys are actually committing suicide?

And how can I possibly explain to my boyfriend rationally that I want to be understood and a strong, intelligent woman and still want him to tell me I'm pretty? I can't. I can't explain that. We are all very much still in this thing, and it's still broken.

Last weekend, my colleague Charlie and I went to an event called "International Men's Day" to present our Broga: Yoga for Men workshop. We have created a style of yoga that focuses on opening men's common tight spots (shoulders, hips, hamstrings), healing areas of common pain (knees, lower back) and celebrating the poses that are actually a little easier for men to do (arm balances, inversions). Often when I mentioned this event to my students and whoever was around, I would be greeted with shock, surprise, sometimes expecting it to be a joke, and, a lot of the time, the question: "Isn't every day men's day?"

This is a question about which our organizer, David Hatfield, had a lot to say. David heads a weekly workshop called "Manology: 21st Century Masculinity" that is basically a group for men to get together and talk about the above and many other questions to do with men's health, wellbeing, gender roles, and yes, of course, feelings. One of the main issues men have to deal with today is the common assumption that men still feel totally in power and have no questions at all about their sexual identity, especially if they are heterosexual.

The world is still a very different experience for little boys and little girls growing up, and some of that stuff has gotten a lot better, and some of it has gotten more confusing than ever. Little girls are now told they can be whatever they want when they grow up, they can have children or not, they have the right to do anything a boy does and lots of other empowering stuff (though perhaps teen magazines [and extended families] tell a different story), and little boys are still being told that boys don't cry. The role of the 21st century father has become something pretty different than what most of us grew up with, and nobody seems to know exactly what these new roles are supposed to entail.

At some point in our history, women got up the courage to stand up and start questioning their roles in society and how they wanted things to change. It's time for men to start doing the same.

But if women don't support men in making the world a better place for everybody, then we've all failed. Anyone who thinks every day is already men's day needs to open their eyes, and if our kids are going to do any better than us, we are going to have to help each other out. Things will never get better for women or men unless we are on the same side.

To me, that's the meaning of satsanga: a community (sanga) dedicated to truth (sat). Truth is, we've all got work to do.

Tada drashtuh svarupe-vasthanam: hanging out in my own true nature

2010-11-05T10:21:00.000-07:00

I sometimes teach poetry at schools with this organization called Wordplay, that helps bring a more positive understanding of reading and writing poetry to young kids. One of the ones I did recently was at a private girls school, and we asked them what they were studying right then. "My Last Duchess," they told us, by Robert Browning (c. 1842). My partner, Barbara, asked: "Does anyone know a duchess here? Anyone have a best friend who happens to be a duchess? No?" Of course they laughed, but she was making a really important point: WHY are we studying this? Poetry has always been a sounding board for society, and one of the most interesting things about studying it is that you learn something about the culture that created that poem. There are, of course, lots of reasons to study Browning, but what a lot of people need to understand is that contemporary works of art can teach us more about ourselves.

So when I am in a yoga class, and the teacher starts spouting off something from the traditional texts or something she learned from her 'teacher,' who by virtue of being from India must understand something better or higher than we ever can, it sort of makes me angry. I wonder what that person knows, personally, about what she is saying. Does she actually believe it or is it just someone else's words coming out of her mouth?

I don't have a problem with ancient texts or teachers per se, it's just as it happens i live here, and now. In Canada. In the 21st century. And I want to make my life better. That's why we do yoga, isn't it, most of us? To have a better life right now, not 200 years ago in India. It's just not where we live.

That being said, one of the basic lessons of yoga is that every lesson must be experienced to be understood. The Buddha is another one who said over and over, don't listen to me! Go learn it for yourself. Avidya--non-knowledge--can often come disguised as what someone else has told you.

One of my major teachers is also my business partner and one of my closest friends: Coco Finaldi, and in a course she is teaching right now at our studio, East Side, she writes:

There is a wealth of knowledge available to the yoga practitioner; asana,
pranayama, kriyas, scriptures... It is important to understand that the in-
formation itself doesn’t hold all the answers to self realization or to the
state of Yoga. Yoga is comparable to music in that music needs to be read
and played in order to be heard and experienced. The mystical writings of
Yoga need to be read and played, practiced and experienced.

And as I am indeed learning, she is RIGHT. The Sutras are these ancient (think 300 BC) writings by a guy or possibly a group of guys named Patanjali about the practice of yoga. I never thought I would be finding something from 300 BC make sense in my life right now, but here I am, with Sutra 3:

Tada drashtuh svarupe vastanam: When the thought waves are controlled, the seer is established in his own true nature.

This didn't make any intuitive sense to me until about 11 days ago, when I started a 40 day challenge to meditate, for at least 11 minutes, every day. Here's what usually happens:

I sit down. Assume the position (chin mudra). Sit quietly. My mind begins to yell at me. Thoughts from the day, plans for later, worries about the studio--oh yeah. Focus. Focus on your root chakra. Root chakra, root chakra...am I subbing a class tomorrow? When is that, how will I get there....no, focus. Don't attach to your thoughts. Focus on your third eye. Third eye, third eye....that was a weird dream last night. I wonder what it meant...stop! focus.." and I go on like this for another 9 minutes. I can't tell you how challenging it is to stop the thoughts. I have had 'successful' sits in meditation, where my mind yells at me less, but part of what I want to do here is let my thoughts run. Everything in my life has changed so dramatically over the past year and a bit, and everything has happened so quickly that I haven't had a chance to process it. There are more effective meditations I know are available to me, but I kind of WANT my thoughts to run wild, so they can say their piece and then leave me alone.

Anyway, though the meditations themselves sort of feel like failures, the rest of my day feels totally different. I can tell that some of the garbage (you are not good enough. That was a bad class. Should I be doing more of this pose or that pose in classes? Why don't I write poetry anymore? Why can't I jump back from crow to chatuanga? I wonder what my boyfriend meant when he said...) starts to quietly filter out, and I am left with the real things in my brain that either need work or are actual real life truths for me. I feel like I am sitting in my true nature a lot more of the time (though I wouldn't say I have control over my mind!). I care a little less what other people think of me. I am more sure of where I am going and why I teach the way I do. I am more patient with myself and more compassionate when I can't do everything I want to do. I am letting my relationship be. I am learning that I am good on the inside, somewhere, not just a mess of insecure thoughts (though yes, sometimes it feels that way).

So what did I do to express my newfound freedom and self-trust? I marched down to East Vanity Parlour and got half my hair shaved off. Even though everyone told me not to. And it looks freaking sweet. And I have a feeling Patanjali would approve.

People cry a lot in yoga.

2010-10-19T16:19:00.000-07:00

Have you ever noticed this? Moving through a sun salutation, flying through 5 full wheels, or calming down in savasana, have you ever heard a little sob or two from one corner of the room? Ever stopped to notice that it was you?

I have. I'm one of those people. I've always been pretty sensitive, and I've loved those moments in those really powerful classes when something just breaks and this release happens inside of you, and your sort of feel horrible and euphoric all at the same time, and then you leave the class feeling lighter, different, like something bad is gone and something new is possible.

And it hasn't happened to me in a really, really long time.

Part of the reason some people must practice yoga is because of its infamous transformative powers. We break down so we can build up again, and there is this amazing high that comes with it. It happens in the first few months, usually, and then who knows how many times after that. Then maybe we just keep looking, keep searching, like if I can just do that again, if I can just break down that one last barrier then...what? I'll be free? Happy? Never have any problems or traumatic situations again? Achieve samadhi and leave the world as I know it? Get a cheeseburger and move on?

I don't know. But I certainly keep on looking for it, and I have been following the teachers that have taken me there waiting for that moment to reoccur. Waiting for something to be....clear. Someone trying to sell you on yoga will probably not tell you that that just doesn't always happen.

Well, this weekend, I went seeking answers with one of the biggest names in transformation out there right now: "The Queen of Kundalini Yoga": Gurmukh.

Kundalini yoga is basically a practice in which you do something repetitively until you want to kill yourself and have no choice but to tune out and let the thing happen, whatever the thing happens to be (transformation? A cheeseburger?). These Kriyas are purported to change the actual molecular structure of your body and your brain. You know those etheral white folks wearing white turbans and flowy white outfits? Those are the Kundalini-is.

Now I don't want to give the wrong impression: I thoroughly enjoy Kundalini, and I love teaching certain Kriyas in my classes--they can be incredibly powerful, and maybe they do actually change the molecular structure of your body and brain. Kundalini yoga is an example of the many types of yoga that try to change you and sometimes really can: Hot yoga's purifying fire, Baptiste Power that will make you sweat your asana off, Forrest Yoga that will work you until you curl up into a ball and cry like a baby, Chakra based Hatha that will make you a superhero etc etc etc.

But I was sitting in a room FULL of Kundalini-is, many of whom were in the white garb, watching this quite old woman in lots of jewelery and draping white cloth sitting up on a pedestal reading from a book and telling us what to do: pretend you are about to hit yourself in the face, and then turn your palm forward instead. For 11 minutes. Or what felt like an eternity. I start to hear sobs here and there. Gurmukh is saying, "Let it go. Don't analyze it. Whatever is coming up, let it go." I was thinking, "cheeseburger." Just kidding. But I wasn't quite in the same room if you know what I mean. And I am a BELIEVER in this kind of shit.

This was after a talk on how in this Western world, we have too much information in our minds. Too many tv shows, to much internet, too many cellphones. Empty your mind, she was saying, and tune into the innate intelligence of your heart. Absolutely yes. But then an added implication: if you do not do this you will go crazy. "Has anyone seen the movie A Beautiful Mind? Brilliant, brilliant man. Crazy."

hm. If we empty our minds too much and lose our ability to think critically, then we become like lemmings who would run off the edge of a cliff after their leader, or, you know, start dressing like them. In white. With turbans.

Not that this was in any way Gurmukh's intention. She is obviously an amazing teacher who has done important things for many people [and I am no one's authority on why the turbans]. And I am not saying we don't need teachers and leaders--we do, desperately, and they can take us places that will slowly make the world better. If I didn't believe that I wouldn't be a teacher, would I?

But I think when you get a bunch of people together who want transformation, who are unhappy with their lives, who need something outside of themselves, they are vulnerable to anything you say. They look for a leader, someone to tell them, It's not your fault you are unhappy! It's the awful world you live in! Use this secret technique I have and you can be transformed!

And you know what, it works.

Not because, I've realized, you finally went to see the guy who spent 6 years meditating in the Himalayas, or the person who invented a style of yoga that makes you backbend a lot with a smile on your face or because you went to see the woman that teaches Madonna yoga. Or because of the secret technique. Or because of paying many dollars hang out with whoever, whether it is Shiva Rea or David Bowie. It's because you WANT to be transformed. Your teacher is giving you tools and you are choosing to do something with them. The tools themselves may not be the point.

There is only one true teacher, and it's you. The teachers that have made me cry in yoga weren't some special aliens who were smarter or better than me (more experienced is a different story), I was just willing to listen to them. I can't rely on Gurmukh or David Bowie or anyone else to make me something different, I am the only one who can do that. These teachers help you find your path, show you things you never could have dreamed of, help you to be strong and safe in your body and your mind: they open the door. But you are the only one that can walk through.

And then what?

Well shit, I don't know.

So In lieu of an answer, I leave you with this poem from Tukaram:

BIRDS DON'T BRAG ABOUT FLYING

Birds
Don't brag about flying
the way we
do.

They don't write books about it and then give
workshops,

They don't take on disciples and spoil
their own air
time.

Who could dance and achieve
liftoff with a bunch of
whakos tugging
on you?

Sadie Nardini and me on the couch watching NetFlix and sneezing

2010-10-04T23:15:00.000-07:00

So everything was going swimmingly--In one weekend, I had my birthday celebration(s) including a beautiful dinner with my parents and Robert at the Van Dusen Botanical Gardens [they make the food WITH the stuff from the garden! Now that's local] and a lovely dinner at Grub on Main Street with some particularly goodlooking friends, 3 different workshops at the Vancouver Yoga Conference and Show [Anodea Judith, Sadie Nardini, and Maria Garre], AND finished a recording of a spoken word track inspired by/including a poem I wrote for a real live yoga CD, and BAM! I got sick. Big surprise, right?

Well, finally it is Monday, and I spent the day in my pajamas doing yoga, drinking a huge pot [literally, a cooking pot] full of cinnamon tea with white tea flowers, watching NetFlix [which is an amazing technology, truly] and working on that thing I've been hearing people talk about: "resting."

Have you ever noticed that yoga teachers tend to teach what they need, not what they already have? Sadie Nardini, a beautiful, magnetic, charming woman who obviously works ridiculously hard [185 youtube videos!] at giving as much of herself to as many people as she possibly can, is a woman with a very specific "core message." Distil down the coal, she says, to the jewel that is inside you. Stop trying to please everyone and just be who you are. Create boundaries. Stick to your message and stick to your voice; the best teacher, lover, friend, parent, etc. that you can be is who you already are. One of the things I love about Sadie is how honest and down to earth she is: and with that it is quite clear that she is a giver, a pleaser, a wanderer, and a freedom fighter against the boxes the world and she herself have created around her. She teaches core integration so beautifully because she has so clearly struggled with it. I think I resonate with her teaching so much for a reason: I, too, often teach "feet on the ground!" because I am often trying to remember to do that.

Lately I have been theming a lot of my classes on change--the fall can be a stressful time, and things tend to shift with the seasons, sometimes in ways that are not so thrilling. My [business] partner's [life] partner's business [I know] was trashed and set fire to recently, and then her SHOES were stolen off her porch. Two different friends had their guitars stolen this month on separate occasions, and a friend and student of mine got stuck in the hospital for almost a MONTH with blood poisoning, unable to do yoga for probably the next six months--and this is someone who practised often more than once a day.

But change, as they say, is good, though not always easy, and here I insert the requisite Wayne's World reference: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eoPiJOubR-4. Sometimes getting sidetracked gives us a chance to think about where we are and what we are doing when it is the LAST thing we really want to do. And when that sidetrack goes right off the rails and something breaks, we have a chance to put it back together in a new way. Hard times make us better people--I love this quote I heard the other day:

Good judgment comes from experience, but experience comes from bad judgment.

I know, I know, I know I need to rest more, I work too hard, I am too hard on myself, and whenever I do this too much or for too long, I get sick or I twist my ankle or something else goes horribly wrong, as if my inner buddha is whacking me with a big stick. My friend in the hospital said to me: "Some people have a mid life crisis and they buy a new car. I'm having it here in the hospital." What an amazing human to take a month in a horrible little hospital room as an opportunity to meditate and face who he has become and who he wants to be. He has a whole new life to come back to on the other side. I'm not sure I'll get that far this Monday afternoon, but I do understand this illness as a message.

Rest is a beast I struggle to master, and while my students teach me to be smarter, stronger, cooler, and wiser, I try to collect their lessons and my own and watch as they come out of my mouth while I'm teaching. Sadie asked us in this conference: if you could write a message in the sky, and everyone in the world would read it and really think about it, what would the message be? It's a good question, and I think for many of us the answer would be a lesson we had to learn the hard way. My message would be: "Think for yourself." And it takes stopping, sometimes, in the middle of the mad flow of life in this world to do that, and look at what you are doing and judge whether it aligns with who you really are. And when you stop, everytime you stop, you have the chance to start again. Starting again is an adventure everytime, but maybe then so is the stopping.

I am. I am. I am. A Yam.

2010-09-17T10:28:00.000-07:00

My 27th birthday is coming up in a little under 2 weeks. My birthday is sort of like New Year's to me. I end up thinking a lot about where I am and what I'm doing and whether or not it's the right thing. With an outsider's eye, if I look at my life, it's pretty sweet: I have a business, a job I love (yoga teacher! Best job ever) a cute apartment, and a sweet partner that I live with. I would say this is a good list of things I would have wanted to check off by year 27. And yet, I suppose I'm still an angsty teenager inside, because I sure spend enough time doubting myself.

Things have changed so rapidly for me in the past year: at this time last September, I was heartbroken, scrambling for teaching gigs, and wondering what the heck was going to happen to my life. I feel like I became an adult within exactly a 12 month period [I have my own dentist now! And my parents didn't even find her for me! (Penny Thompson: she has a camera at her office so I saw all the gross cracks in my own teeth! She is also awesome. I digress.)]

Sometimes as things change in our lives, we have to make the choice to let some of the dead leaves fall off our metaphorical trees and decide what we want to plant for the next season. My responsibility level is so much higher than it was that there's just no room for me to be an amateur bellydancer or army base bartender or spoken word poet anymore.

um....Bummer?

So what I need to work on now is the quality of discernment--Viveka in yoga philosophy. What stays and what goes? What is real and true and what is just an illusion? Do I set aside time each week to go to a dance class instead of a yoga class? Do i start going back to the poetry slam again at the expense of the one night off my partner and I have together [he is not a fan of the slam]? Do I stay out and celebrate a friend's birthday when I teach a morning class the next day [the answer to that one is a resounding no]? Adult choices are hard! And these are relatively childish adult choices.

We change so much in such relatively short periods of time, it makes a lady wonder who she really is. Just a couple of years ago, I was serving drinks at a cheesy glow-in-the-dark bowling alley and pool bar in heels and miniskirts, and now you're lucky if you see me with anything other than yoga clothes on. [Heels are painful! What was I thinking?] Ironically enough, the savings I made from shaking my little booty while carrying 3 pitchers of beer in each hand paid for my yoga teacher training. [i think the tray carrying was also the beginning of the massive yoga triceps i have now. Trust me. Huge.]

So--Viveka. Which of these thoughts and desires are weeds, and which are the delicate flowers that need to be watered? How much can I express myself as an individual [poet, dancer] and also uphold the trust in the relationships I have with people and the world [partner, teacher, business owner]? Well I guess I sure have a lot of questions. I think for a lot of us it's a bit scary to stare down that abyss of questions, many of which simply don't have answers yet.

So as I peer down the horizon of my 27th year, the best I can do is try to remember why I am doing what I do--the core values that colour my intentions day to day. A big one for me is freedom: the freedom to think for myself, act for myself, and empower my students to make their own choices and gather the tools to make a work of art of their own lives.

But another intention is love. The freedom of the individual self reeling away from responsibility is not an individual filled with love. Love requires work, boundaries, and the support of a consistent community (and sometimes a partner who needs me, too). Love requires relinquishing the selfish illusion of freedom and finding a freedom that instead gives us enough to share with the people we love and make the world around us better in some way.

So, in conclusion, I still don't know who I am at 27, but I am getting a little clearer on how I am: in as few words as possible, eternally: working on it.

Yin times

2010-08-29T08:31:00.000-07:00

I am one of those people that will tend to plan her day so much that I've forgotten to schedule in lunch. I do this all the time, actually, taking on as many projects as I can in between work, play, friends, and family. Boredom is the thing I fear absolutely the most. When I was a kid, I remember, I was so afraid of being bored that I made a list that I kept in my room of things I could do if i got bored. "Play with Barbies. Call a friend. Easy-Bake something. Smash head against wall." These were quite literally lifelines so that I never had to be still. When I was about 14, I had a summer off, and I was bored, so I made a play. I chose it ["The Ugly Duckling" by A.A. Milne], bought the rights to use it, cast it, directed it, rented a stage and rehearsal space, put it on, and made something like 24 bucks in profit.

It's pretty cool that I made a play when I was 14, but when I think about it, it's such a perfect example of how ridculously type A I am [you wouldn't have wanted to know me before yoga] but also, I think, this is indicative of the kind of world we live in all the time: a very Yang world, very active, fiery, and full of stress. Great fun indeed, but I often come home at the end of the day feeling like the end of a hungry, frayed rope.

Over the past week, I have been participating in a Yin Yoga Teacher Training with Bernie Clark at Semperviva on Granville Island. We wake up at the crack of 5:30 for a 2 hour Yin practice and then long lectures on anatomy, the energy body, meditation, the history of yoga and the religions that shaped it (Hinduism, Tantra, Buddhism, Zen etc). It's been delicious, and feeling absolutely indulgent. I have loved the meditative, passive practice of Yin since I discovered it a couple of years ago, but I have never had the chance to do it every single day for a week.

And man, my hips feel WEIRD. But also, I think, this training has been teaching me a lot about being still and resting. We need stress to live, says Bernie. The problem in the west is not that we have too much stress, but that we never rest.

I've taken the week off from Vinyasa yoga (excpet for teaching) so that I can experience softness and stillness for awhile in my own body. And if you read my last post, you may have noticed that I've been getting particularly frustrated with my practice recently and feeling like my chaturanga doesn't look right, my arms are not strong enough, and getting angry that I can't do certain poses. The whole point of Yin is to go where your body will go naturally, accept that place, and just be with it. We spent many hours talking about the innumerable variations within the human skeleton, and the major thing we learned is that you cannot know what someone is feeling by looking at them. And yoga is not about what you look like, it's what you feel like. Yin is empowering me in my practice again with these principles of stillness and acceptance, so I've been spending time walking more slowly, talking more slowly, eating thick, luxurious 10% yogurt and adding more butter to everything, sitting in meditation, watching Planet Earth with my man. Next week will be the real challenge: can I integrate more stillness and less compulsive filling of time into my daily life when 2 hours of Yin is not planned in?

Anyway I think this post is long enough for now--more later, but until then, I will leave you with this Yin/Yang Prayer:

“Lord, grant me the strength to accept the things I cannot change,
he courage to change the things I can,
and the wisdom to know the difference.” -- St. Francis

Why am I doing this?

2010-08-20T09:14:00.001-07:00

This is a question I ask my students a fair amount in my yoga classes. Usually in this context: "If this is feeling good, try putting your foot behind your head. If that hurts, ask yourself why you are doing it!"

But this becomes a bigger question for me sometimes as well: why am I doing this? Why am I teaching yoga? And why do I practice yoga? This thing, this spiritual practice or exercise regime, whatever you want to think of it as, has become my entire life--everything I do is a part of my yoga, and that question comes up all the time, you know, like, a) why do I drink so much wine? Or b) why will I stay home tonight and watch movies instead of go to my friend's party? [answers include a) because I LOVE it and b) because I'd rather teach a good class tomorrow morning)

Well one of the reasons I am doing this is that yoga has helped me to deal with a lifetime of issues with anxiety and many difficult periods in my life. Yoga has made me feel strong when I haven't been, and its showed me that my body was capable of things that I didn't think were possible, so it gave me the hope that everything is possible. It's just yoga, sure, and that's important to remember when we as teachers worry too much about what our students think of us. But at the same time yoga has been a sacred thing to a lot of people for a lot of different reasons.

And I think the direction yoga in Vancouver is going is kind of...interesting. There seems to be a lot of emphasis lately on what I've been calling 'celebrity poses': forearm stand, handstand, scorpion, crow pose and its variations, and all kinds of other arm balances. Now, don't get me wrong, I love those poses, I love inverting, and figuring out how to do them to the degree I have has afforded me a lot of self confidence. But everyone's body is different [and let's be honest, many of these poses are easier for a man's upper body strength and higher centre of gravity] and those aren't the poses that made me fall in love with yoga. I didn't even know what they WERE until about a year ago.

I should also be clear that I am no last bastion for classical yoga in the West--I'm a pretty Western yogi, and I'm all about doing whatever works for you. But I can't help but get the feeling that something is getting lost in some of these classes that have been about 5% core, 80% arm balancing, and 15% sun saluting, especially when I leave the room feeling...weak, small, skinny, powerless, and worse, injured from trying to do a pose my body wasn't ready for. I may be a teacher now, but I still offer myself up to my teachers as a student to create all that magic I've relied on for years now.

And then I realized something....love and compassion are really difficult to feel when you are angry at yourself and frustrated because you can't do something other people can! Love and compassion often are accompanied by a feeling of power, and powerlessness makes it a lot easier to be bitter and hateful.

Well THAT's interesting. And something I'm going to need to work on. And for this work, I will head to those teachers that have that amazing talent of making me feel awesome no matter what I can do. [Hey Ego! Oh, good to know you're still here!] And thank goodness, there are lots of those teachers in this city too. Love and compassion. And biceps. Here I come.

how to be an adult

2010-08-03T10:47:00.001-07:00

When exactly does one become an adult? I sort of think you are pushed into it on some level when you leave the soft comforting womb of school. When I moved away from Montreal and my Master's degree in English Literature, my plan was to become a bartender and a bellydancer. That was the plan. It failed pretty completely, but landed me somewhere else entirely--I am now a full time yoga teacher and I own half of an awesome yoga studio on Commercial Drive [www.eastsideyogastudio.com].

Last night I had this recurring dream again--that I was in the halls of my old high school. I can never remember my class schedule (this is similar to yoga teaching-thank Gs for google cal), so I wander around looking for the room I am supposed to be in. Each one looks like it could be my classroom--the faces and the material looks familiar, but I'm not entirely sure it's where I've been slotted, not sure it's the one I've chosen.

Now my dreams can be quite intense sometimes, and quite hilariously obvious in their metaphors. I once was going through a breakup, and I dreamt that someone put a steak knife in my heart. So.

This dream, I think, is about figuring out the difference between what you chose and what someone else chose for you. And going in a certain direction that seems right, but you are never really sure if you've made it to the right place.

School gives you this feeling like you have very specific goals to work towards and a very specific timeline on how it's all going to pan out. Life, adult life, I suppose, is not so much like that. When you have a job, even one you are lucky enough to adore, and you are just doing your best day to day, it's weird to think about what you should be doing in your downtime. Like, now that you don't have a math test on Tuesday and an English paper due in two weeks, what are you supposed to be preparing for? School is also a great way of not having to decide exactly what it is you want to do. People are always telling you who to be in that situation. In fact, I think a lot of us probably feel like people are telling us who to be all the time. I guess that decision, that Ultimate Question: who am I and what should i be doing? carries a hell of a lot of responsibility.

Well, luckily, my dream last night gave me a really good answer to these eternal questions. Through all the stress of what was going on in the dream, a cat appeared at a window and stared at me for a long time like it had something to tell me. Suddenly the curtain waved in the wind and the answer came to me...

BATMAN!

Seriously. I told you my dreams were obvious.

Well, it's been awhile..

2010-07-27T10:39:00.000-07:00

And I feel like that has pretty much been the title of my last 5 or so posts. Its been a while indeed, but I think it's time to return to my blog because things have changed a lot since I last wrote in and, well, I sorta miss it. It's just nice to have a place to sort out your thoughts every now and then, and whether or not anyone reads it, well, let's live in a little self-indulgence for once.

So indeed things have changed. Let's start here--I am now a yoga teacher, and have been teaching yoga full time for over a year now. I also own a little studio on Commercial Drive with my lovely and amazing partner Coco [www.eastsideyogastudio.com]. I think about yoga a lot and maybe if I write about it here, my nearest and dearest will get a break from my yammering on. And there is SO MUCH I want to talk about!

I think I'll start, though, with a class I took yesterday with the lovely Sjanie McInnis, an Anusara Inspired yoga teacher at Yaletown YYOGA. She started off the class with this story--this weekend, she said, there were tons of great yoga events happening. And she didn't go to any of them. She went to the beach instead. SJanie went on to theme the class on desire, mature, adult desire, and the need to stop punishing yourself with 'shoulds' that just end up ruining your day. Because being at the beach with your partner is an awesome way to celebrate life, and what else are we here for? To follow some prescription of a life we are supposed to be living rather than the one we want? Well honestly I don't know.

I was lucky to run into Sjanie yesterday because I think I really needed to hear that message. I'm one of those people that likes to be busy all the time, have a million projects on the go, and be in a constant state of accomplishment. It gets stressful and I get tired, but i am actually a little afraid of what happens when I stop.

Sjanie was talking about how our culture is in this new paradigm now where we are richer and freer than we have ever been before, and a lot of us are filled with options in a way that even our parent's generation had no idea about. We are stuck with this anxiety of choice--how do we fill our time? Who do we really want to be? That is a hard question, actually, and I've been thinking about it a lot lately. I am in many ways exactly where I want to be right now--I am doing what I love and [i think] what I am good at, and I have an awesome little studio in a great neighborhood that is creating a community of people that are excellent. So what do I do with my time off, when I've done what I can for the studio and I've done my teaching for the day?

Um, start up my blog again, I guess.

links?

2009-05-22T09:41:00.000-07:00

Hello loves,

Well allright, I have been neglecting this blog thing. It's hard for me to pay attention with facebook, twitter, and my new website, jcpeters.ca : please go there to see what I've been up to. I can upload audio tracks of sets around town, youtube videos of my poetry, articles and book reviews I've written, AND links to every single episode of AudioText that happens. Check it out.

In the meantime, I'm starting a new blog in honour of my wine club, Winos United. Check it out here: winosunited.blogspot.com

aight?

peace up

News! Poetry! Life!

2009-04-10T12:09:00.000-07:00

March 17th! Well that was a long time ago since my last post!

Things have been a little crazy on this end (tell me something new, right?) and I've been a little disorganized.

I'm writing this post from my parent's couch, on the first day off I've had in about 2 weeks. I just moved here from my old place because I wasn't able to find a place to live for April 1st. I did find a sweet one for May 1st, though, right near the Drive, that I'm pretty excited to move into pretty soon. My chaise lounge is already there, and I wonder how she likes it so far.

Anyway, this means it's me and the parents for a month. It's not so bad, we're never here at the same time, and I get to use the car a lot, which I like more than I'd like to admit. Getting to Burnaby is just so much easier in a vehicle, it's just true.

Anyway, I've been doing this thing called the Poem a Day Challenge for April, which is Poetry Month. Every day, Robert Brewer posts a prompt here: http://blog.writersdigest.com/poeticasides/. You post your poem in the comments section every day, and there's going to be some sort of ebook at the end I don't quite understand yet.

Anyway, it's been amazing for me to be writing this much. It's busted me out of my usual writing box (sex, sex, sex, love, sex--boring!) and I've got a whole bunch of other stuff that's been on my mind out. I feel GREAT! Daily therapy. Love it.

On Tuesday night, I went to this event called Foundationradio.ca....'s open mic I guess. I'm not sure what the name of the night is, but it's every other Tuesday at Nyala on Main and 26th. It's amazing....i've never had such a good response from an audience. I read one of my (edited) poem a day poems on the open mic, and the response was really overwhelming. I recorded everything, of course, and I'm posting a recording of the new poem to my website as we speak. Check out the A/V section at jcpeters.ca to hear it.

I also read a poem a day poem on my radio show yesterday, which you can download and listen to here: http://playlist.citr.ca/podcasting/audio/20090408-152500-to-20090408-160000.mp3

And if that's not immediate enough for ya, here's yet another one from the same well of creativity:

Outsider

I just wanted to know that you were in there somewhere.
I wanted to be sure that when your personality split
like a reproducing cell
two equally sized and shaped blobs of yourself at first,
then shaking, quavering into something else,
someone else I didn't recognize,
that you were still, somehow, the blob I used to know.
I wanted to know that from across this table, glass of wine in my hand
half full beer in yours
that you were still in there somewhere.

I can't feel anything but sorry.
I dreamt all last night of letting people down
of being late, of getting lost, of forgetting the safe combination
and being unable to speak the language where you are.

For all the words flying like artillery between us,
trying to understand, trying to make sense,
we're just not speaking the same tongue.

I could touch your hand from where I'm sitting,
but I don't.

And it's only April 10th. Stay tuned for more!

Marginalia by Billy Collins

2009-03-17T12:38:00.000-07:00

I don't know who Billy Collins is, but I just found this poem in an archive of stuff from my old computer, and thought YES! This is amazing! I can't remember who gave it to me, but thanks, person I forget. This poem is awesome.

Marginalia

Sometimes the notes are ferocious,
skirmishes against the author
raging along the borders of every page
in tiny black script.
If I could just get my hands on you,
Kierkegaard, or Conor Cruise O'Brien,
they seem to say,
I would bolt the door and beat some logic into your head.

Other comments are more offhand, dismissive -
"Nonsense." "Please!" "HA!!" -
that kind of thing.
I remember once looking up from my reading,
my thumb as a bookmark,
trying to imagine what the person must look like
why wrote "Don't be a ninny"
alongside a paragraph in The Life of Emily Dickinson.

Students are more modest
needing to leave only their splayed footprints
along the shore of the page.
One scrawls "Metaphor" next to a stanza of Eliot's.
Another notes the presence of "Irony"
fifty times outside the paragraphs of A Modest Proposal.

Or they are fans who cheer from the empty bleachers,
Hands cupped around their mouths.
"Absolutely," they shout
to Duns Scotus and James Baldwin.
"Yes." "Bull's-eye." My man!"
Check marks, asterisks, and exclamation points
rain down along the sidelines.

And if you have manage to graduate from college
without ever having written "Man vs. Nature"
in a margin, perhaps now
is the time to take one step forward.

We have all seized the white perimeter as our own
and reached for a pen if only to show
we did not just laze in an armchair turning pages;
we pressed a thought into the wayside,
planted an impression along the verge.

Even Irish monks in their cold scriptoria
jotted along the borders of the Gospels
brief asides about the pains of copying,
a bird signing near their window,
or the sunlight that illuminated their page-
anonymous men catching a ride into the future
on a vessel more lasting than themselves.

And you have not read Joshua Reynolds,
they say, until you have read him
enwreathed with Blake's furious scribbling.

Yet the one I think of most often,
the one that dangles from me like a locket,
was written in the copy of Catcher in the Rye
I borrowed from the local library
one slow, hot summer.
I was just beginning high school then,
reading books on a davenport in my parents' living room,
and I cannot tell you
how vastly my loneliness was deepened,
how poignant and amplified the world before me seemed,
when I found on one page

A few greasy looking smears
and next to them, written in soft pencil-
by a beautiful girl, I could tell,
whom I would never meet-
"Pardon the egg salad stains, but I'm in love."

Billy Collins

Sistahood Slam on YouTube!

2009-03-11T13:51:00.000-07:00

For those of you who missed the Sistahood Slam this past Monday, i am really sorry for you. The good news is that Warren Dean Fulton was lovely enough to compile a teaser from the evening similar to the one from the WOWPS playoffs, so you can see what you missed.

Never fear though, more poetry is always to come. I remind you to check out my radio show, AudioText, to get your fix (which you can access through my website, jcpeters.ca) and to keep an eye on Cafe Deux Soleils, Cafe Montmartre, and the Cottage Bistro for events coming up. Tonight, for example, there is a poetry event featuring Afua Cooper down at Raw Canvas in Yaletown. It's one of my favourite places to read poetry, so I'll most likely be there on the open mic, recording everything at the same time. So stay tuned.

here it is: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wte3pbcYquA

News! Yoga! Life!

2009-03-11T13:35:00.001-07:00

Hello everyone!

It's been a little while, and I've been slack with keeping up on this here blog. Lots has been going on. Lots.

One thing is that I've been working on my website a fair bit: jcpeters.ca. Check it out if you like and you can read poems, listen to and watch perfomances, even read my academic articles! Crazy I know!

Now, onto the news portion of the evening:

I've been spending a lot of time doing things like meditating and yin yoga, getting massages and trying to get back to my roots and figure all my shit out. Things like, what do I want out of life? What direction should I be going in? As it turns out, you can get this kind of perspective without escaping to a cabin in the woods (though that helps)--the magic is in not dating for a while. Or just getting rid of whatever is cluttering your thinking to give yourself some space. I can't recommend this 40 day revolution thing enough--i'm on day 39 and I feel like my whole life has changed. I think we all know what we need to do to get that kind of perspective, we just have to figure out how to tap into it.

In any case, the obvious solution presented itself to me: teach yoga! Of course! I'm starting an intensive certification course at the end of May, and then I'm gonna be a YOGA TEACHER!

On that note: check out this awesome picture of me and my biceps made out of fighter jets! This was from an excellent Anusara workshop with Chris Chavez, by the way.

hi!

2009-03-10T01:56:00.000-07:00

Hey! Hey bloggers!

Nice to see ya. I never get comments from you, so I forget to check back, but I hear you guys are listening: look: 48% or so of people who saw my stuttering poem on youtube heard it here first, apparently. How awesome! Hey thanks for reading great people! I like you a whole lot.

In any case, I have lots to say, and will do over the next little while, but first I just wanted to say thanks for listening. I remind you all, too, to check out jcpeters.ca for updated a/v like they used to say in high school and news that's happening in the world. And by world I mean around Julie Peters. That's Julie Peters. Got it? Yes you do. I like you.

More soon, I promise!

and thanks, sincerely, as always.

Apologize: a poem on YouTube

2009-02-20T01:04:00.000-08:00

Check it out: me, slamming down some hardcore feminist stuttering at last week's slam.

And yes, my marxist feminist dialectic brings all the boys to the yard:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dpev5ozC5IY

blog blargh

2009-02-06T18:32:00.000-08:00

So it's come to my attention, again, that people do, in fact, read my blog. I got in trouble for this today, for giving out some confidential information about a certain government institution. Oops. um. Confidential information edited out. I have to be more careful about this kind of thing now that i'm a big celebrity.

As a side note, a friend of mine recently told me he could see me becoming a minor celebrity, a big fish in a small pond, and then moving to New York. ...Then what? I asked. Then nothing: apparently I just get to be a big fish in a small pond. That's a depressing fortune, don't you think?

Anyway, I'll take it.

Have you been listening to my radio show, by the way? AudioText is on every Wednesday on CITR, 101.9 FM in Vancouver, or online at citr.ca. You can also get the links to the podcasts through my brand spanking new (and still kink-full, so be warned) website: jcpeters.ca. I promise I won't give out any of your confidential information on it. Or on the blog. You can comment. It's okay.

AudioText podcasts!

2009-01-29T14:55:00.000-08:00

Hey y'all,

It feels like ages since I've posted here. I've been really busy lately, with the new radio show, the yoga reception job, interviews, and writing projects. I got a little panicky yesterday, but now all is good again. There's time.

In other news, AudioText is up and running, and it's going GREAT. I'm having so much fun. And now, the moment you've been waiting for: the podcasts are working! It was all my fault they weren't actually, but I've figured it out, and now it seems to be working.

You can listen to the most recent show here: http://playlist.citr.ca/podcasting/audio/20090128-180000-to-20090128-183500.mp3

It was an interview with Kevan Cameron AKA Scruffmouth, and a reading from Jordan Scott's blert. It was amazing. But don't take my word for it....

wax poetic

2009-01-15T15:38:00.000-08:00

Hey all,

Yesterday I had the pleasure of being a guest on RC Weslowski, SR Duncan, and Diane Laloge's poetry show on CFRO 102.1, COOP radio. It was really wonderful for me to get to read some of my poetry on the air and be able to talk about it too, in terms of my influences, theories about what poetry is and means, and even some of the gnarly gender stuff i've been dealing with lately. I have this chunk of archive here, so you can just scroll to about halfway through and hear the interview. I'll make it into an mp3 somehow soon, but in the meantime:

http://cfro.virishi.net/mp3/t1231972558.mp3

show on COOP radio

2009-01-13T12:26:00.000-08:00

Also, this Wednesday Jan 14 (tomorrow) I'll be reading some of my own poetry on RC and Steve Duncan's poetry show Wax Poetic () http://poetryradio.blogspot.com/2009/01/upcoming-january-14-julie-peters.html

If you want to listen live, it's at 2pm on 102.7 CFRO or online streaming at http://www.coopradio.org/

Talk to ya then

AudioText at last!

2009-01-12T20:24:00.000-08:00

Dear friends,

Good news! The long-awaited new poetry show exists! In the real world! You can even podcast it!

AudioText is a show about Canadian writing. I will be playing interviews, spoken word cds, and recordings of poetry, short story readings, and whatever else I can think of. Check it out at 6pm every Wednesday at 101.9FM, or listen online at citr.ca, or podcast it at http://playlist.citr.ca/podcasting/xml/audiotext.xml

This week: an interview with Bonnie Nish from Pandora's Collective, some spoken word from the poetry slam, and a delicious reading (of my choice) by your lovely host, me.

2009-01-06T23:37:00.001-08:00

Last night, at Cafe Deux Soleils, I and 7 other of the top women poets from this season competed to represent the VanSlam at the Women of the World Poetry Slam in Detroit in March. It was a great night--Sasha Langford was the very deserving winner (she was freaking fantastic) and I won third. It was a great night for women's poetry. The lovely Warren Dean Fulton did this 'montage' of highlights from everyone--check it out here.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gc3a28gdsMg

Intentions for 2009

2008-12-31T11:35:00.000-08:00

Intentions for 2009

1. AudioText--make a great radio show
2. Make a chapbook for my myriad fans
3. Make a CD for my myriad fans
4. Complete my website.
5. Do yoga as close to every day as possible
6. Feel joy.
7. Get laid.
8. Spread the love.
9. Find the strength in vulnerability.
10. Get published (more).
11. Follow my path(s). Trust.
12. Lose the ego. For my myriad fans.

And you?

Third place!

2008-12-30T10:16:00.000-08:00

One more slam past, and I've apparently moved up the ranks from fourth to third, a spot I like well, especially when I win excellent prizes like my brand new nose- and ear-hair trimmer.

Also, scoring third tonight and last time secured me a place in the Women of the World Poetry Slam finals. Next Monday, Jan 5th, at Cafe Deux Soleils, me and 7 other top female slam poets will compete to be the representative of the Vancouver Poetry Slam in Detroit in March. It guarantees to be a good show, because the girls we've got are amazing, and they will show you the best they've got. You'll love it. You should go.

Last night I read two poems, the first of which was quite sexy and a bit sentimental. I wrote it for a certain ex-boyfriend, and it was just a little bit painful to memorize it and speak it on the stage. Still, every single time I slam I get nervous. It's such a beautiful exercise in vulnerability, and that's a quality I am trying to explore more in my life. The kind of vulnerability that has strength in it, of course, and the way slam poetry can empower you is, I think, a good way to get there. Anyway, it scored quite well, and I wondered for a moment if I shouldn't do another sexy, sentimental one for the second round. But I just didn't want to. And the thought of doing something I didn't want to do in order to score better at the slam went against all my better judgments. So I stuck to the one I wanted to read, and it felt good. It was a bit of a sadder one, and in the moment I was feeling it. It didn't score quite as well, but I have good reasons to be happy with third place.

Here's one of the poems:

Your poem

I’m trying to write you a poem.

I’ve been trying to write you a poem.

But all I can come up with is—

The scent of wet flowers

Or

That vibrating, lurching, earthquaking thing that happened when I put your hand on my breastplate and I gave you my heart

in beats like measured spoonfuls.

Or

That first day when we talked

over the café counter about

Poetry and philosophy and then you

Forgot your sandwich

Or when your friend told us about the ecstasy of Xtasy

and i could feel your story like the drug was on the tip of my tongue

Or that night when we saw

Stars, living stars and the space between them, negative space between

Binary stars

Or how I dreamed I was dancing and woke up like I was dancing because I could feel you in my

forearms

But that’s all wrong, I can’t write you that poem, that just sounds like poetry.

My vicious and voluptuous vocabulary

Betrays a dearth of words, a wealth of blanks, a lack of lexicon, a grammar that gurgles and garbles when I try to make sense of this

Make this non-sense!

But still

I want to write it all down.

I want to revel in remembering

To pretend this paper is your skin, to be inscribing this onto your body, until you can feel it, until it hurts, until you come in long, shuddering splashes of inky ecstasy.

I want you to hear this and feel me

In your inner ear

Pounding out beats on your eardrum till you are dizzy from

Spinning with me inside your head

So I’ll keep spinning with you, with your eardrums, your forearms, writing poetry on your body with my vocabulary.

I can’t write you this poem, I could never write you this poem,

Where would I put the commas, the semicolons; or worse, the full stops?

I’d just have to keep writing it, running off the page, spilling the ink, tearing up the pages.

This could never be your poem. I could never write you this poem. To tell you how I feel or who I am or what this means to me.

Cause a poem like that

Would never end.

the cruelty of weather

2008-12-27T09:48:00.000-08:00

Happy Holidays, blog readers. As you may have noticed, if you live in Vancouver, it SNOWED. Big time. Bigger time, actually, than it has in 40 years. i think this is mean.

I just left Montreal to escape the claustrophobia of snow, and the nightmare way it makes every step forward move back in space like you are trying to run but you can't. I literally moved to greener pastures for a reason. As you may remember from a much earlier post back when I was getting ready to leave Montreal, I saw the old girl as a relationship gone sour. Montreal was a crazy bitch who would rain on me, burn me with heat, dump snow on me, and whatever else she could pull out of her repertoire, and just as I was leaving her weather went as wild as it possibly could in fits of breakup rage. Well, I feel like she followed me all the way to Vancouver for one last fight. Well, i've refused to participate, and have been sitting on my parent's couch for the past three days.

I did take one break, however, to go cross country skiing around a park with my mom. It was actually empowering--if snow conflicts with walking, slide on it. Besides, Montreal is melting outside, and my new lover, Vancouver, is washing her away.

2008-12-22T13:34:00.000-08:00

And I've been published again! This is a fun game. It's a list of Christmas books, little capsule reviews to help you choose a book to give this holiday seasons. I wrote two of them.

http://thetyee.ca/Books/2008/12/18/HolidayBooks/

Solstice party!

2008-12-22T13:10:00.000-08:00

Happy Solstice everyone! Today is December 22, and yesterday was the darkest day of the year. Appropriately enough, it's brilliantly sunny outside. Every day after this one will be brighter than the last, at least until the Summer Solstice. This is something to celebrate.

Last night, my bar manager, Ian, and I decided to host a party at the [secret bar i'm not allowed to mention] to celebrate the solstice. We got together what we could, advertised the cheap beer, and set it all up. The snow was coming down hard in the morning, and I almost canceled, but a surprising amount of people showed up in the end. it was a great party!

My brother was in attendance, and mortified me with these words: "Dad tells me you are an 'erotic' poet. Is this true?" Yikes. Well, he found out for himself when I started reading a bit later in the evening. Zack couldn't get over the "package in my mailbox" metaphor. He then went on to tell all the guys in the bar about my man troubles and how I should date any of them because they are probably nicer than any of my other boyfriends. Thanks, Zack.

Artsy folks and Army folks together were listening and responding to the poems, even asking for more. They continued to listen to Steve Miller reciting a poem with the accompaniment of the Creaking Planks's saxophonist, Nathaniel, and accordionist, Rowan. Then Richard Lett made them laugh hysterically with some drunken comedy, and then the Planks kept the party going while people got drunker and drunker. Finally, Alla stepped in with a dance playlist and that gorgeous dance floor was finally being used. I'm so glad we didn't cancel.

I also used my newfangled recording device to get some of the performances on the radio. Keep your ear out for that!

2008-12-22T13:07:00.000-08:00

Difficult to believe, but this is Vancouver. I just freaking LEFT Montreal, city of eternal snow, and for the first time in forty years, Vancouver's got 10 cm of snow and temperatures of -12. I am not cool with this. White Christmas my ass.

One nice thing, though, is that when the city gets in trouble, people are there to help out. I was stuck trying to get up a hill in my parents' ill-equipped car, and a few strangers just started pushing me, without me having to ask, asking nothing in return. Later, when my pipes burst, a friend let me into their home at 4 in the morning. Kindness is a valuable thing at times like these. So are snowplows.

Book Reviews by JC Peters

2008-12-18T09:53:00.001-08:00

This is me, getting published. I'm like a real writer now.

http://www.mtls.ca/issue2/writings-review-peters.html

Note: George Elliott Clarke is involved in this journal. *Swoon*

3rd place!

2008-12-16T15:54:00.000-08:00

They say 3rd place winners are always happier than second. I agree. 3rd place is best. This is where I landed at the slam last night, which meant a whopping $15 for me, and an incense holder which I actually really needed.

I was stuck at fourth for a while, and then just wasn't placing, so I'm pretty happy to have gotten where I did. Also, being up on stage with a whole bunch of men always makes me feel good, like I'm representing the ladies. I also don't feel too bad about losing to Scruffmouth, the very deserving 1st place winner. I think second went to David Perez, who I've never seen before but who I thought was really great. So it's all good!

My second poem is one that didn't score too well last time, but I just believed in it. I still do, actually, even though I haven't gotten too much feedback about it in particular. Here it is--imagine me reading it full of passion.

Want

When I come home,
I want a package in my mailbox
that's full of secrets and so stuffed with stuff
it leaks with the scent of the person who sent it.

When I come home,
I want text messages and emails in my inbox
so jammed with jam I can feel the skin of the person who sent them
on my fingertips.

When I come home,
I want roses and lavender on my bedside table,
Calendula and lily of the valley
Queen Anne's Lace and broken
peony petals so brimming to the brim they fall from the box
with the desire to touch my fingertips.

When I come home, I want to be home.
I want to feel home,
with you in my bed,
waiting to hold me
with your hands in my hair and lips
so full with full they break over my fingertips.

When I come home,
I want to feel the universe
like I was skinny dipping in the Amazon River,
so ample with electric eels their
current slides over my body
until it becomes a part of me.

I want to touch my face in the mirror
so deep it breaks and
silver slivers of glass cut my fingertips
to draw blood so red its cardinal carmine wine

When I come home,
I want to veer voluptuously into the
screaming seams of the universe
on a shattered path of obsidian obstacles
and indigo indecencies
until I ignite with inchoate beauty
so awful it tears me from all four corners.

I want to feel lost until I feel found again.
I want to be blue until I can be aquamarine.
I want to lose hope
so I can find it again.
I want to forget the feeling of my fingertips til I can touch them again.

and then
and then
and then

when I find home again,
when I come home again,
when I come home,
so gorged with gorge i am lying on
broken shards of ultramarine fingertips

then

then I'll be home.

Radio Show!

2008-12-13T15:42:00.001-08:00

So the radio show is finally a go--or rather, will be a go, the first week of January if all goes according to plan. It will be Wednesday evenings, from 6-630pm on CITR 101.9, and you should be able to podcast it from citr.ca if you don't live in the city or don't have the time when it's on or want to hear it again or whatever.

The show will involve Canadian writing in its most general sense. I want to basically support the writing community in Vancouver and in Canada generally, whether it be exposing people to spoken word poetry, little-known page poetry, unpublished work, published work, travel writing, playwrighting, whatever you can think of. I LOVE having guests, so if you are yourself a writer or know someone who should get some radio play, get in touch with me at juliecpeters[at]gmail.com, and i'd love to have you on the show. Same goes if you are planning, organizing, performing, or hosting an event that has anything to do with writing. Also, please please please send me your spoken word cds and/or donate them to the CITR library so I can play them on the air.

it's going to be awesome. For serious.

Listen to the accordion poem!

2008-12-12T09:59:00.000-08:00

In other news, the guest poem I did on Accordion Noir a couple of months back is on their "best of" show. It's the one about the accordion player who seduces me from the stage. Not literally, Mark Berube's taken. If you didn't have a chance to check it out, the recording is here:

http://accordionnoir.org/drupal/node/126

Thanks!

2008-12-12T09:47:00.000-08:00

Hey loves,

I've had a pretty crazy week. Crazy in a good way, though I can't deny snapping at poor Eric from irritability, tiredness, and dehydration. Sorry buddy. The litre of wine really helped.

On Wednesday, I was featuring at Raw Canvas's Poetry Jam. They hold this event once a month, every second Wednesday, but this one was special because I was there (kidding). It was pretty much magical. Raw Canvas is a sweet place, first of all. It's a restaurant and cafe in Yaletown, but does not have Yaletown prices or pretentiousness. It's full of velvety antique furniture and interesting art, being as it is an art bar. For $35, you can get yourself a canvas and start a painting in the back with all the supplies they have laid out there. Super sweet vibe, very chill, described by Chris Gilpin as "the most romantic bar in Vancouver." I thought this would be the perfect place to come out of my shell a little.

It's become apparent to me that I am an erotic poet. I don't mean to be, and I've been told that even my poems that have nothing to do with sex have a sensuality to them. I've tried to resist this a little bit, because I love and respect really political poetry and wish I could write more about it. I'm also stuck on gender issues--I have a gender neutral academic name for a reason. When I was in undergrad, a male professor started paying attention to me, telling me we should work together because I have a lot of potential. The guy I was seeing at the time said to me, "If i were him and had a student that looked like you, I'd say the same thing." Nice. Also, when I won my first slam, my own father said to me, "You were probably the best looking one there." Thanks for the vote of confidence, Dad. Then recently, a friend explained to me that both when I score well and when I score badly, it's because I'm pretty. I hate those sort of comments--the people saying them think they are complimenting you, but actually they are telling you you might as well be barefoot and pregnant because you're only valuable for your boobs. Or whatever.

So what's a gender-conscious poet to do? Well, beginning with Raw Canvas, I decided to fuck that noise and just go with it. I write poetry because it feels good, not because I'm trying to make a point. As long as people let me read it to them, I'll do it. So the theme of the evening at Vancouver's most romantic bar (for my set anyway) was sex. and it was awesome! Felt really good to be myself, and I got a ton of really, really positive feedback. I even found out that I have a couple of fans--people who watch out for me at the slam and enjoy my readings every time! How awesome is that?

So welcome to my erotic world, readers. Expect more poetry and more honesty to come.

Adventures in Yaletown

2008-11-27T18:39:00.000-08:00

So I've finally, in the past two weeks, gotten myself a real job and a regular schedule. No paycheque yet, but one day that will come in and I can stop panicking about my visa bill. My mother, brilliant as she is, says to me: "Welcome to the real world." Thanks mom. Does this mean I have to cut back my drinking? Again?

Anyway, the job, receptionist at two different yoga studios, is brilliant. It's full of cool people, there's no gross food to deal with (though the occasional yoga mat so sweaty it drips on its way to the cleaning room--ew. Pools of sweat.), and I get FREE yoga at this beautiful yoga studio.

This morning, I woke up feeling a little gross and overtired. So I took a quick skytrain over to the big, beautiful studio in Burnaby, took a Power Vinyasa class, and then sat in the infrared sauna for a few minutes. It was HOT in there. Apparently infrared heat is supposed to go straight to your core, detoxifying you more than a usual steam sauna. I can't speak for other saunas because I'm a bit of a noob in the territory, but I felt awesome after, and couldn't wipe the smile off my face. Sat and had some tea with my lovely manager Debbie and a yoga teacher named Melissa, and felt much revived.

I also, however, work at a studio in Yaletown, the richest, yuppiest neighborhood in Vancouver. Yaletown people are notoriously self-righteous and bitchy, and carry dogs around everywhere with them. I got to my shift a little early, and took a walk around the neighbourhood. I passed by a store that sells nothing but $350 cartoon paintings of cats. Then a place that will wash and blow dry your hair. For $200. In half an hour. Amazing that these yaletown women have so much money and time that they spend it all on blowjobs. (badoom-ching!)

Sure enough, at my job I've encountered quite a few yaletown people. The surprise is that they are the YOGA TEACHERS. It's amazing--the clientele has been generally really nice and cool, and a couple of the yoga teachers (not all--most of them are really great) were just incredibly irritable and bitchy, getting stressed about the tiniest things. It's amazing what Yaletown can do to people.

More stories of my adventures in yaletown to come, I'm sure.

A letter for now.

2008-11-14T13:48:00.001-08:00

Well dear readers,

Things have been very very gradually settling down in my neck of the woods. It appears fate has a very confusing and inner-life searching plan for me over this year, and I'm trying to flow with it. I'm trying to find myself in the mess, the centre in the chaos, the answers in the questions, and all that good stuff.

For those of you that may have been worried I would turn completely hippie on moving out here, well, it seems to be happening. I've started working this week at a yoga studio, and yoga is becoming a huge part of my life. I do it almost every day, and I'm starting to incorporate meditation as well. I meet a lot of people at the studio who are into spiritual pursuits, and almost convinced me to burn some dried sage in my bedroom to get rid of the bad energy. Yesterday I found myself describing to a good friend how to energize his chakras. God help me if I ever lose my irony.

I'm still drinking enough, though, so that shouldn't worry those of you who thought I might change. This weekend is another episode of Winos United, and it looks like quite a few more people will be able to come, which means we can try many more wines!

Wish me luck as I wade through the karmic mess that is my life, finish off The Te of Piglet, and let my chakras guide me to the next step. Which at this point will be wine, I guess! No problem there.

Just as an aside, I really, really miss those of you who I left and may be thinking about me. Cristina, Alison, Krista, Kitty, Xavier, Rob, Chris, etc. etc....you're on my mind.

I'm tired.

2008-11-06T16:19:00.000-08:00

Darling blog,

It's been an embarrassingly long time, I know. Things change so quickly around here I can barely keep track myself.

I recently was asked by someone I had just met what I do. What a wonderful question! I thought, and proceeded to list off the things I've done since I've been here:

1. Bartending at wine bar
2. Bartending at army base
3. Bartending at filipino weddings, wasp weddings, loft parties at the warehouse where they keep all the movie set props and furniture, etc.
4. Life modeling
5. Writing bar reviews
6. Writing book reviews
7. Writing job application after job application
8. (pending) reception at a yoga studio in Burnaby
9. Poetry slam, women's slam, erotic zine launch, etc. performances
10. Radio interviews and a demo for a radio show (come ON CITR it's been long enough already)

I think that is enough for a couple of years of work. I'm getting so tired. And not really any closer to knowing what the hell I want to do with my life. I'm trying to quell the quarterlife panic and go with the flow here. Let's hope I'm learning things. And avoiding boredom at all costs.

Props? Clothes? No!

2008-10-15T11:55:00.001-07:00

So after a pretty bad week of unemployment and stress thanks to a certain boy who will not be named, I really missed my slam people. I wanted to slam, but it was the Alt slam, in this case the "prop slam" and I had nothing to do for that, so I thought I'd just show up and hang out with some of the people I really like and watch some poetry.

Considering it was Thanksgiving Monday, not too many people showed up, and Spillious begged me to think of something as he had only 6 poets signed up. I told him I'd take a look through my journal (I hadn't even brought my poems) and see what I could come up with. Spillious had brought a leather suitcase, among a whole bunch of other things, and I have a poem about a case of the blues, so I thought I'd go with it.

I actually had a great time, fumbling with the big case, pretending it to be very heavy, and revealing it at the end to be completely empty, just like a case of the blues should be (awwwwww).

I did so well on that poems--9s and 10s! That I was bumped into the second round! Oh shit.

So I pulled up one from memory, called Bombardment, and picked up every prop I could find and continuously picked them up and dropped them until finally dropping everything, and taking off my scarf and sweater. Taking my clothes off landed me second place (and $25), just behind the legendary comic Richard Lett, who, I suppose, was charming enough to compete with my stripping routine.

This is why you should come to the slam, people.

The whole thing felt great. It really cheered me up, and I definitely got some stuff out onstage. Continuing to drink with aforementioned slam people really rounded off the night.

Anyway, here are the poems, if you're interested:

A case of the Blues
Sept 4

I got a case of the blues, baby.
I got a big ol’ sack of the sads
just waiting in the middle of my room
sitting on my very clean sheets
to be opened and fill the place with gloom.

This case of mine, well baby, it’s gorgeous.
Dark oak finish, big ugly latches,
and just as heavy as a case of blues should be, baby.

I wish it were full of tools, though, darling,
I wish it had wrenches and screwdrivers,
thing to help me build a house, a big one,
with a library full of books and old chairs you can sink down into.

I wish this case were full of glassware, honey, bottle openers and scotch whiskey
tools to build a bar where me and my friends
can drink and talk and feel at home.

I wish it were a sack full of love, sugar, full of hope and trust, or a trust fund,
whatever people need to build a family.

It could even be full of spirits, sweetness,
ghosts who just want to talk,
so I wouldn’t have to feel so alone.

It could be a case of reds and greens, purples and aquamarine, any colour but the blues weighing down those very clean sheets.

Or forget all that, baby.
I just wish it were a case of wine.

But for now,
the blues will have to do.

bombardment

i’m being bombarded.
bombs of info are barding me
goading me, loading me up, linke some
information superhighway supersize me bucket of fries and lies.
explosions of knowledge go off in my frontal cortex
while my hypothalamus protests the barrage.

this rapid-fire world, these fast-traffic words,
the bodies and faces attempting to annex my brain—

violence in newspapers! sex on tv!
human drama and a middle of the afternoon beer and burger and beer and beer and beer
people and books just looking at me, waiting for
intuitive essays and analytical advice

my body disgruntles, it dis, and worse, it gruntles.
my fingertips echo, my thighs ask, my forearms want to know: what’s gone missing?

it’s your hands, you know.

that’s what they are all demanding, fingertips, thighs and forearms.
they are ganging up on me on behalf of my heart, which is just now
rallying against reading, objecting to noises, protesting distractions.
there is a revolution happening in my senses, and all they keep asking for is your hands.
your hands, and your mouth, your thoughts, your air, your chest, your words, your all.

but the bards keep on bombing. the dis keep on gruntling.

till i say, “just wait til those hands come back,” i say,
to bards and bombers and dis and dis gruntlers.
“just wait,” to the troops, the muscles in my ankles, the follicles of my skin, the enamel of my teeth.
just wait.
and the power will go out.

Divino is full of winos. Not the good kind.

2008-10-14T18:23:00.000-07:00

Hallo blog, and fans. Have you missed me? Many things have changed in my life. Here are a couple of updates.

Firstly, I lost my job at the good ol' wine bar, which I can name now: Divino, the devil's lunchbox. One week they were reluctant to schedule me, after having promised me whatever shifts I wanted (of course), citing some mysterious 'consultant' who didn't want to schedule anyone. Bizarre. I started worrying about getting another job, but thought, well, i've worried about this many times since I started working there. They are probably just disorganized, as usual.

Well, I show up for my friday shift and meet said consultant (who is actually a really nice guy) and he tells me that the mean chef/manager Hugh and the boss, Nicoletta, had been fired. Ted, the big bossman, fired his own daughter! Ah, it made me giggle for days. Donald (consultant) told me that they may or may not be shutting down, and may or may not be firing everyone and starting from scratch. He advises me to start looking for another job, and is kind enough to offer himself as a reference. I figure I've done my fighting for that place, and I'm done.

Now, I think what precipitated this was probably what happened on Wednesday night, the one shift that week I did work. Wine rep Paul came in with about 5 bottles of red wine, 3/4 full. They ranged in price from $50-$250, and he let my try them. Yum. Hugh and Nicoletta proceeded to stay there all night drinking the rest of these bottles. Hugh, plastered, with a big red wine mouth, decides it's a good idea to open a $90 bottle of wine, start making everyone cocktails with expensive lychee liqueur that can only be found in Vegas or somewhere, and giving everyone shots of his 12 year Macallan whiskey. Hugh proceeds to invite in Moe, the neighborhood urchin, for shots of tequila. The poor guy knows immediately he's being made fun of, and walks right out. I should have done it sooner.

As owner and manager devolve into children taking pictures of themselves lying on the floor, the sous chef has also polished off an entire bottle of white cooking wine, and the place is still full of customers. It's 12:30 at this point, door still wide open, blinds up, customers drinking, employees drunk, and past the liquor licence. The two of them kept singing "VIVAAAA LAS VEGAS" because the bossman Ted was on vacation there, thus leaving them to drink away the bar's profits, as usual. They must have forgotten the cameras.

Well, I polished off my expensive whiskey and got the hell out of there, just as the underage employee from the gelateria next door entered the bar. I don't even want to know what happened next.

In conclusion, I'm looking for a new job. I'd like a nice day job, one with a steady paycheque and fewer drunk assholes. I'm sick of mean managers who are misogynistic and usually homophobic, and dirty old men who actually hug me and kiss me on the neck (!!!) and I have to smile because they are the owner's friends. I've had enough of the industry, at least for now. Though of course I'm keeping my army bar job. That pays union wages.

Winos United

2008-09-21T18:03:00.000-07:00

So I've recently decided to start a club about wine called Winos United. The idea is that whoever is interested can show up at somoene's place with a bottle of wine they know something about and we will all just taste wine and get drunk in an unpretentious environment. It's a brilliant idea, I know, but its one flaw is dissemination of information via Facebook. I created a group, and people just don't seem to be aware of it. I will definitely work it out by phone in future, or some other more reliable information source.

In any case, the first meeting was last night, and I'd say it was quite a success, despite the relatively low turnout. It was kind of nice, actually, tasting three bottles between four people. I would definitely like to try a few more in the future though! So y'all better come out.

As for the three wines we tried:

First we tried Concannon, ($19) a petit sirah from California. This was my (Julie's) choice. I chose it because I remember it having a very unique, almost spicy aftertaste. Sure enough, the Petit Sirah (or Durif) grapes are known for their spicy sweetness. The taste wasn't there, though, so we decanted the wine, and an interesting date aroma started to appear after a few minutes in the air. I liked this one best, but it was deemed "uncomplicated" by the others, which is not necessarily a bad thing. It was certainly easy drinking.

The second wine we tried was Cono Sur ($17?), an organic cabernet sauvignon from Chile. I found it hit pretty hard right out of the bottle, and had a textured dry aftertaste. I found I liked it more as it mellowed out of the bottle for 1/2 hour or so. (This night was definitely a lesson in letting wine breathe). I think it was pretty well liked overall. This was Chris's choice, and he chose it because there was a bike on the bottle.

The final choice was Brent's, a Shiraz from Italy called Solo ($15). It was like no other wine I had ever tried. It had an almost gasoline-like aroma with strong overtones of pine needles (to my nose anyway). It tasted uncannily like olive oil, and apparently this is because many vineyards in Italy share soil with olive orchards. I didn't like it much, but oddly made the gouda we were eating taste like caramel.

For next time, I'm hoping for more wine and more cheese. Also I wish Cristina and Alison were here for this, but oh well.

If you want to join the group, check it out on facebook. If you want to host the next one yourself, you're more than welcome to. It should happen about once a month, giving everyone some time to pick a wine and research a bit about it, as well as save a few dollars for that little bit nicer bottle than you'd usually buy for those nights when you're all alone in your bed watching weeds and a $10 bottle is the best you'll spring for. Or is that just me.

Fringe?

2008-09-13T11:22:00.002-07:00

All right, so i may have been ambitious in trying to blog all my Fringe reviews, because I simply couldn't go to all the ones I wanted to with my evening work schedule. I tried valiantly to see everything that I could, but I missed a lot of the shows I wanted to see, and sort of doubt I'll get out there on the last day (Sunday) my only day off, and there are other things to do.

Besides, of the four shows I saw, three were mediocre. Last night I checked out Antigone, the only show playing at the time I could see it. It was fine. Three women in togas told Sophocles's story of Antigone, Oedipus's tragically doomed daughter, through dance and story. It was just fine, but not particularly funny or interesting or innovative.

I'm especially disappointed because I have all these starry-eyed memories of the Montreal Fringe last year. There were lots of weird and crazy shows, including some burlesque, some great comedy, and a foursome of Japanese aliens with furry vaginas that was creepy but also only 20 minutes long or so. The Vancouver fringe was also timed badly. If you put two one hour shows back to back against each other, how do you expect people to be able to see both? Very poorly planned, so despite my best intentions and a superpass, I only managed to see four. Lame!

Fringe?

2008-09-13T11:22:00.001-07:00

Miss Peters's Fringe Picks and Pans: Die Roten Punkte

2008-09-09T10:08:00.000-07:00

Two Australians pretend to be Germans in a punk band called Die Roten Punkte, or the Red Dots. The brother-sister duo bicker and squabble in between hilarious songs that could only have been improved if the words were a bit more audible. This show has been selling out and winning awards all over the place, and for good reason--it's hilarious. My favourite song was "I am not a robot: I am a LION!" This is definitely a fringe must-see, and they even have Tshirts with robots and lions on them, but they've sold all but the men's XL and XXL. What does that tell you about a show?

Shameless self-promotion

2008-09-08T10:55:00.001-07:00

Though I will never call myself a professional spoken word poet, I do write spoken word poetry, and since I will never be famous for doing this, I should be forgiven for shamelessly promoting myself and those that support me.

This past Friday night, I went over to Co-op Radio, right in the centre of the Downtown East Side, so be a guest on the show Accordion Noir, which is entirely devoted to accordion music and miscellanea. After deciding not to lock up my bike at the bike rack on Columbia and Hastings next to a dessicated bike and a lock without its bike and bringing the steed inside with me, I sat in with Rowan and Bruce and read my poem about an accordion player who utterly seduced me, sandwiched between songs by that very accordion player. It was great fun, and do you have any idea how awesome the accordion can be? If not you should listen to the show. You can download the episode starring ME here: accordionnoir.org.

Oh--Friday's episode isn't up yet. I will keep you updated. But you should listen to the show anyway.

Miss Peters's Fringe Picks and Pans: Mating Rituals of the Urban Cougar

2008-09-08T10:46:00.000-07:00

Andrea Thompson is a professional performance poet, and during her hour-long show, explained, among other things, how choosing this ludicrous career means you can do pretty much anything else and your family will forgive you since it can't be worse that professional performance poetry.

As I've mentioned, I'm not a huge fan of one-person shows. I like plays to take me away with them, not necessarily to be spoken to. This one came at a bad time, too, filled as it was with meditations on getting older, choosing a career, and breaking bad love habits, things I have been thinking about a little bit too much lately as another birthday is on the horizon for me, which always sends me off the deep end of an existential crisis.

That being said, she was funny, and her poems were great. One, called the Gospel of Thomas, has a guy at a New Year's party catching her pretending to talk on her cellphone as the clock strikes twelve to avoid the humiliation of not being kissed at midnight. He then goes on to peg her as a poet, the type that probably falls in love with a volleyball. You know the drill: "Oh perfect orb of light, signifying action and team cooperation! What a beautiful sphere!" Poets are the worst at falling in love, because they so hate to see the world in its mundane ordinariness, and this makes for a frabjus first two weeks into a relationship, and a devastating middle and end. I have been known to be guilty of this in my misspent youth (so quickly fading) and have certainly fallen for a few of said poets, who found me to be the most wonderful volleyball at first and then kicked me over the fence when they found out I was merely human.

Blogs are great because you can do things like write theatre reviews and actually vent about your own feelings.

Anyway--Andrea's show is recommended if you like one-woman shows, performance poetry, and life meditation. If you prefer one-man shows with sports and mascots (shudder), check out Mr. Fox. (See below!)

Miss Peters's Fringe Picks and Pans: Mr. Fox

2008-09-05T18:34:00.000-07:00

The beauty and the beast of the Fringe Festival is that you know almost nothing about a show before you go to see it, and it is usually either horrible or brilliant. I took just such a risk last night, the opening night of the Fringe, with Mr. Fox, a show by Fringe legend TJ Dawe, and Some Other Guy Craig Landucci.

Before I review the show, there are several things you should know about me as an audience member:

1. I don't much care for sports.
2. I don't much care for classic rock.
3. I really hate annoying radio djs.
4. I don't usually like one-man shows. You're stuck with the guy for an HOUR.
5. I have an irrational fear of mascots. A really big irrational fear.

This show was:
1. About sports.
2. Included copious amounts of classic rock.
3. Featured annoying (really, really annoying) radio DJs.
4. A one-man show.
5. About MASCOTS.

I hated it. I was convinced the one man was going to put on the mascot costume he was going on and on about in between annoying radio DJ impersonations, and was so nervous about that I actually ensured there were enough chairs and tables around me that if he did, he couldn't touch me. The show's one saving grace? He never put the costume on.

Caveat: if you like the aforementioned five things, you'll probably love this show. Then again, you probably also love beatboxing and killing kittens.

dirty girls!

2008-09-01T16:58:00.000-07:00

Right....the mud wrestling!

Thanks to my obliging commenters, who gave sound advice and reminded me about one of the most interesting nights I have been out to in a long time. Mudwrestling! Thanks Sean.

As a sidenote, thanks to the advice of said commenters, I will now need some company to "scout" new jobs, especially at the Railway Club, where they apparently have this thing called Cafe Scientifique on the third Tuesday of every month with various guest lecturers and academics and discussion. I need more quantum physics in my life. Who's up for some "research"?

Back to the mudwresting. On Friday night at the Wise Hall, we showed up to a sadly only half-empty club and an excellent DJ whose name I never found out. The cabaret opened with Jillian Deri (i think that was her name?) doing this thing called "curtains" where she climbed up and down and swung and twisted on these long red curtains hanging from the ceiling. It was incredibly hot, and I REALLY want to learn how to do that. She was followed by a string of burlesque performers, including Malaika Millions, who was surprisingly embarrassed when her cross-adorned pasty fell off to reveal her naked nipple! Later came Jenny Magenta, who pulled off her long gloves with a splash of glitter, at which Alla turned to me and said, "I wish all my clothes would do that when I took them off!"

All these wonderfully different shaped-and sized- hot mamas were incredibly inspiring. Especially sexy--it was almost impossible to get my jaw off the floor--was Diana something, who did a mix of Michael Jackson tunes and some amazing dancing. I thought immediately, Ok, where do I sign up? I want to be a burlesque dancer. Cristina, ditch advertising school and move here so we can start a burleqsue troupe together!

Anyway, topping off the already awesome night was some serious mudwrestling. The girls jumped right in, finally making way for the Slam's own RC Weslowski, who lost his pants in the mud pit (and didn't seem to mind), and S.R. Duncan, who I'd never met before but was pretty hilarious writhing around in a pit. That's about all the words I have left to describe this event, so I'll leave you with the videos.

Tea guy?

2008-08-31T15:36:00.000-07:00

I am currently sitting in the Bump and Grind Cafe on Commercial Drive (near Venables) and I have been given a huge french press pitcher of Irish Breakfast Tea by the in-house "tea guy" or tea sommelier. Said jug of tea comes on a silver tray with a creamer, a small mug, and a TIMER so I know how long to steep my tea. That's right, a timer. For $2.75. And there's free wireless. Ok, I have 12 seconds left. I have to try this tea.

Wow. It's....perfectly steeped.

discouraged in vancouver

2008-08-31T01:39:00.001-07:00

Though Vancouver has, for the most part, been good to me, my great plan of getting easy money bartending may have been entirely foolhardy. I can't seem to get a proper job in this city, in part due to the appalling lack of actual bars in this place. Sure, there are restaruants, and even cafes that have booze, but there are no actual, unpretentious, non-restaurant bars in the place. I find myself nostalgically pining for the good old days at Sharx, the incredibly sleazy pool hall where I could make $200 cocktail waitressing in one night. And I was damn good at that.

Here, I have three bar jobs: The wine bar, which is so unbearable that something like five servers have walked out, and I tried to quit last week but ended up staying because I have nothing else to fall back on! The army base, which is amazing, but not always open so I haven't been there in over a month, and finally, and most depressingly, catering, which is usually awesome and good money, but tonight was incredibly intense non-stop hard work very similar, i think, to working in a nightclub, which would have been awesome if we were getting tipped. Of the hundreds of drinks I served tonight, I made 15$, which was not enough to get me home in a cab. It cost me (not counting paycheque of course) $5 to do all this hard work. Brutal.

Hey guys, if anyone's actually reading this, let me know. I started updating again, but then I get lonely when no one ever comments and I feel like I'm venting into the void. Which means it could get weirder and weirder with no one to stop me. Oh god.

Oh, the rain...

2008-08-27T18:25:00.000-07:00

Well, it's August 27th, and it's already fall. We've had a couple of cool days here, and the leaves are falling off the trees giving off that very distinct fall smell. It's nice, actually, but it makes me want to stay home under a blanket cuddling and reading books rather than going outside to bike in the rain. I've been doing it anyway, of course, and last night found myself at a little spot called the Cottage Bistro on Main Street. Let me tell ya, this place looked nothing like a cottage. It was a bit cold inside, and held a grand total of about 10 poets, all of whom frequent the poetry slam, there to watch and participate in The Poetry Show, which apparently happens once a month, and might as well be in someone's living room because everyone there was already friends!

Well, Alla and I took a seat and I ordered a whiskey, asking the bartender to surprise me. He made a perfect choice, and I have no idea what the whiskey was. By the time we switched to red wine, we were feeling much cozier, and sitting at another table, where all the friends managed to pull chairs together.

Considering the weather, I was ready to be entertained, not to participate in any way shape or form. I was not expecting poetry tag.

This is a game in which one person reads/speaks and then literally tags the next person. I told Chris, AKA Faust MacKenzie, that the last thing I wanted to do was play poetry tag, so of course he tagged me first. I begrudgingly went up and managed to speak one of the two poems I've only just memorized (by chance, I had no papers with me) and it went just fine! Being the attention whore and wine lover that I am, I was certainly ready for my second round.

In some ways, the intimacy of the night really made it. It was nice to be there with a bunch of poets, all incredibly supportive, listening to each other practice, play, whatever. And there was some beautiful stuff happening here, namely a certain poem by one Sean McGarragle. Other favourites were the aforementioned Faust, and, for novelty, the completely incomprehensible, sopping wet Kir.

I'll be back on the next rainy Tuesday for poetry tag, and come next time somewhat more prepared.

losing weight?

2008-08-24T13:39:00.000-07:00

Well, it's a lovely rainy day in Vancouver, and I'm getting a couple of things off my back.

1. I quit today. I explained to my boss that the manager can't handle his shit as a manager (though he is a great cook, I'll give him that!) and told her I would stay for another two weeks. She wants me to change my mind. We shall see. I feel lighter already.

2. I finally submitted my e-thesis, which is the penultimate step to actually having a master's degree (i think) and so McGill can shove it in just about a month and a half.

3. I have also shaved a hefty amount of dollars off my back over the past week, and quitting may have been highly unwise. I revel in highly unwise, and will throw caution to the wind as i start looking for a new job. Ohgod.

photos are a good substitute for feelings!

2008-08-20T17:49:00.000-07:00

So I've been trying to think of something interesting to blog about this week, but rather than having amazing adventures, I've been having lots of feelings. And no one likes to hear about feelings. The primary one, for those interested, has been confusabobulation. Not to be mistaken for whimsibotitudipline.

Luckily, last night at ukelele night, I bumped into Ivy, the older Chinese woman who thinks I'm beautiful and recently took a whole whackload of pictures of me in order to turn into impressionistic paintings. It was funny, she actually appeared when Eric went to the bathroom and just starting shooting more photos of me before giving me her cd from last time. She paid me for this modeling session with a giant jug of cashews and a bouquet of flowers. I sometimes worry she will try to kidnap me and cryogenically freeze me, so I haven't yet gone to do a second session with her yet. I do like cashews, though. Anyway, here are some of the pictures:

Naked!!

2008-08-14T09:56:00.000-07:00

So. What to write about this morning. What's new in my fascinating life...

Ok, how about trying my hand at life modeling? Tuesday morning I went into a gaming company called Next Level Games to stand around naked while people drew me for two hours. It was surprisingly fun, and $25/hr ain't bad. The guys (all guys of course) were very cool and professional, and I never felt the least bit weird or objectified. Though I was, of course, literally being objectified.

Staring into space was kind of nice, actually, and way easier than I had expected. The one-minute postures were particularly fun. I just pretended I was some sort of elf or something hunting in the woods and posed accordingly. It was like a one-woman improv game that no one was laughing at. During the 10-20 minute poses I was composing my next masterpiece.

The guy I had been corresponding with about this job is called Nigel. Nigel Quarless. What kind of face appears when you think of a guy called Nigel Quarless? A skinny, wrinkly, bespectacled gaming nerd for sure. Well no. Nigel Quarless was a tall, half black, extremely attractive and very cool man. After the session was over, he told me ou'd never be able to tell it was my first time and that I did great. Look--another thing I'm good at: standing around naked! Who would have guessed.

This has got to be the best company in the world to work for: you get to game all day, there's free coffee and a wii in the break room, and you get to draw naked ladies every other Tuesday. How awesome must that be for Vancouver's nerds? Another reason to move out here, gentlemen. And nerdy lesbians, I suppose.

So yes, I certainly hope to pose for Next Level again! Perhaps this is the beginning of an illustrious career.

I <3 Commercial Drive

2008-08-06T20:04:00.000-07:00

So I just got an email from a friend who is coming into town. He asked me the following thing:

hey lady
i'm coming in to vancouver tomorrow night and will have all day friday to explore the city. i was wondering if you could suggest a few places for me to go wander.

ideally i would like my day to consist of:

good coffee

a place where i can go and read a book/the paper with my coffee all the while people watching.

shopping. vintage, boutiques, good used book stores,music stores etc.

cheap/amazing sushi

a nice patio

a nice view of the rockies

any suggestions??

My response:

Jason,
So many suggestions. All on Commercial drive. I am working from 11-4, but anytime around that I can definitely help you out. If you want to have an early breakfast beforehand, we could do that too.

Good coffee: Turks coffee house has the best vibe on the drive, plus wireless and a sweet patio. Bump and Grind has better coffee and comfier couches, but isn't great for people watching. It's good if you want quiet (it's close to Venables).

Shopping: Retro rock is pretty good on Commercial. Mintage has vintage clothes by the pound. There are a ton of places on the Drive to check out. Audiopile is good for music (i hear--haha) and Bookophile I think it's called is good for used books.

Cheap/amazing sushi is definitely Brittania on Parker and Commercial. for 5.50 and surly service, you get a yam tempura roll, tuna roll, california roll and miso soup. I spend all my money there. Which means I'm full all the time.

Another nice patio for people watching is Havana's. It's right on the middle of the drive, and they have good food and booze, so it's good to hang out there. Fets, beside it, is also good for people watching.

As for a view of the rockies, well, maybe not so much on commercial, but why would you ever leave that neighborhood?

If you want some company, I'll be working at a wine bar (with no store sign) at the corner of Graveley and commercial. It's kind of lame and expensive, but hey, I'm there. I'll be done at 4, maybe a bit later if i'm lucky enough to have some tables.

Friday night there's a burlesque show I was planning on attending, and I'm sure some more fun festivities we'll have to clear with Zack on Saturday. Sunday is trivia night at my favourite dive bar.

Enough infomration for ya?? If you want to go wandering somewhere else, there's always kits beach, good for ogling, jericho beach, good for walking, main and hastings, good for crack dealing, gastown, good for...um, spending money, and stanley park if you want to be a real tourist about it.

Yup, I love my neighborhood.

I got slammed

2008-08-05T11:09:00.000-07:00

Ah, the Vancouver poetry slam. Such an excellent institution of Commercial Drive. I have been going almost every Monday for the past couple of months, and the first time I slammed, I won! The past couple of times i competed, I got fourth place, which was pretty awesome considering who I was up against. These people are amazing--funny, unpretentious, never what you would expect.

As a result, of course, I started getting an ego on me. I invited just about everyone I know last night, including my parents and my new roommate expecting to at least make it to the second round. I opened with a known winner--the poem I won with the first time. It did not do so well! I didn't make it to the second round. Luckily my parents love me anyway.

This is what happens when you start getting such a big head you invite your parents to things. What was I thinking?

For your perusal, here is the poem from last night:

On Musicians and their Mystery

Tonight you played, you played me
on your accordion.
You played me so good that according
to the flush I flushed pink I got embarrassed.
I don’t remember what you were singing but it shamed me
It really shamed me, you know, to my toes.

Your voice and your accordion
crashed through iron tonight, through my walls I built of iron
strong stuff, but you could tell me stories
about myself that even I wasn’t sure were true.

Just me and a plastic auditorium seat,
Jaw bones and rib cage threatening out
You made me feel things, I was feeling all these feelings,
but suddenly, so suddenly—
it wasn’t just me and a plastic auditorium seat
but a whole lot of strangers seeing me feeling me feeling
and I felt so suddenly so
goddamn
visible.
Divisible.
Devisably visibly uninvisible.

For the first time tonight I saw you,
for the first time I felt the raw power of your—
accordion.
Really, and what an instrument to shame me with.
You know things about telling stories that I,
with my total deafness of tone
and complete discord with accordions
can only tell about telling.

You were so loud up there though,
just filling the whole room with my
deepest, darkest secrets that I had secreted away
from you musicians and your magic tricks
even though you never knew me, will never know me,
your listener.
Your audience.
your disgraced, humiliated,
eternally devoted
one-night-only
forever and ever
listener.

I wanted to tell you—I planned immediately—
I imagined myself saying—
“Thank you. You shamed me. Take me home with you.
Fill all my rooms with your song and we
will try to understand everything together.”

But I left with the crowd,
too embarrassed to look for you
aware of what a weakness it was to be touched.

I have none of your talent
none of the access you seem to have to me.
I’ll never understand it,
not being a musician myself.

I’ll find a way to let you know, though.
I’ll use the word “transcendental.”
Maybe I’ll pour you a coffee,
or write you a poem,
and it will be so good it shames you to your toes,
and you will never forget that poem or cup of coffee,
not having poured it yourself.

Rough Night

2008-07-31T11:09:00.000-07:00

I haven't been sleeping well lately. I often don't, and a lot has been on my mind with my two jobs, starting up with the radio, possibly teaching a bellydancing class, friends from out of town, and of course, Kareoke night, Trivia night, and Poetry slams. Anyway.

In between my shift at Divino and my shift at the Army base, I stopped into Shopper's drug mart to get myself some vitamins, including some melatonin, and to indulge my vanity a little. Maybe I've been reading too many magazines at the gym lately, but I've gotten it into my head that I need to get myself some anti aging cream. You know, I'm almost 25! That's nearly over the hill. And of course it would be all natural antioxidant aging cream, probably made my Burts Bees or Jason. Even as I picked up the tiny $30 bottle of cream I thought to myself, "I can't believe I'm falling for this." Gotta love retail therapy.

I finished my shift at the [secret bar i'm not allowed to mention] at about midnight, very excited to go to bed and get a good night's sleep at my parent's place, where it is quiet and comfortable. I thought this would kick the cough I've been sporting and generally brighten up my dull, lacklustre skin. Right. So I get into bed, pop a melatonin, and slather on some $30 eye cream that smells like delicious flowers. I start to wind down and relax when I hear the oh-too-familiar sound of mosquitoes hunting me: eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee right beside my ear.

Ugh, I think. Bite me all you want, just please don't make that noise. ... eeeeeeeeeeeeeee. I smack my own face a few times. Silence. ...eeeeeeeeeeee. I get up and turn on the light. I wait. There it is. Smack. Got him. Lights out, back to sleep. Start to relax, wind down, when of course, I hear right in my ear: eeeeeeeeeeee. I cover my head with as many blankets as I can. Ouch. It bit my eye. I turn on the light again, smack another one dead. Back to bed. Start to relax. eeeeeeeeeeeeee ouch! Bit my same eye again! I get up, go find myself some off skintastic in the kitchen and slather it all over myself. Same thing again, and yet ANOTHER bit on the same eye. It's 230 in the morning, and my eye is puffed up like a scary monster. I start to cry. Then I grab my pillow and blanket and go sleep on the couch downstairs.

This morning, I smell like off skintastic, I have one giant puffed up eye, and my skin is certainly still looking lacklustre. Serves me right for being vain.

I'm getting old.

2008-06-20T11:11:00.000-07:00

It's official: I am no longer as young as I once was. I think, at least in the context of this story, that's probably a good thing:

A couple of nights ago, Alla and I went over to the Legion, a veteran's club that has karaeoke and VERY cheap drinks on Wednesday nights (3.25 for beer and highballs! Unheard of in Vancouver). The last time we went, we had a hilarious time meeting all the regulars who came up to say hi to us. One such regular, who claimed his name was "Roo", made an epic entrance on his motorized wheelchair, crashing so hard into the place that he burst a broom closet door open. The woman checking id's claimed that, like most Asians, he was a terrible driver. So you get a sense of the kind of place we were at.

A bit later on in the night, Roo appeared to be trying to get by our seats. We shuffled our chairs in to make room for him, but he just wheeled right up to our faces. "Hello."

"Hello!" we said, already giggling. "Are you single?" he asked. I told him no, that I was a big lesbian with a blonde girlfriend named Sarah.
He said, "I'm a drag queen you know."
"Cool!" I said. "That's nice."
"I won first place in the beauty contest."
We chatted about this for a bit, and he kept pushing me on the single/lesbian issue. He finally figured out that his penis was not something I was interested in. Having established this, he turned to Alla and poked her on the arm. "Are you single?" It was almost impossible to stop laughing. He went on to ask for our email addresses because he likes "to keep track of the women I hit on."

We finally got rid of him, and later in the night saw him hitting on one such woman, and standing up in his wheelchair! He didn't even need it, he was just using it to hit on women! Hilarious.

Anyway, that was last time. This time was similarly hilarious, but in a very different way. Alla, a few of her friends and I were sitting around, having a civilized drink, watching the ridiculous renditions of classic karaoke hits being butchered. Then we noticed two girls on the dance floor, both wearing denim short shorts and shirts that exposed their midriffs. One, actually, was wearing three shirts of different lengths, not one of which was long enough to cover her dangly belly button ring. We immediately determined them to be underagers, drinking at the Legion because who would check? THey proceeded to dance around awkwardly, sure they were the hottest little things in that place with their bellies and bums out. FInally, the moment came: the teen twins stepped up to the stage to sing their song. "Thish shong is dedicated to Shtuart," the twins slurred. "He's my best friend. He hash long hair, but he's not a girl, he just looksh like one." They then began to sing in a manner that was so drunken it was totally incomprehensible. We were laughing hysterically already, but it only got better: after humping each other for a bit trying to sing, they finally ended, and one of the two fell off the stage. The poor muffin face planted and then pranced away, not to be seen again.

The ridiculousness was certainly entertaining, but I came to a conclusion with was half relieving and half depressing: for the first time in my life, I was a spectator to that kind of antic, not a participant. I'm not sure I've ever faceplanted off a kareoke stage, but i've certainly made an ass of myself dancing with adandon in inappropriate outfits in my younger days. Suddenly I'm on the other side of it. At the very least, I do not envy Stuart, the best friend with the long hair who is certainly not getting laid, and will certainly have puke on his carpet in the morning.

Trouble in the urban zoo

2008-06-16T17:39:00.000-07:00

Lately, I've been having some issues with the critters in these parts. Maybe they are trying to drive me out of the city, maybe they liked my shiny scarf, or maybe (according to one source) they are secretly my spirit guides trying to give me a message. Right.

First issue: crows. They have been SWOOPING at my head over the past couple of weeks. Apparently they are nervous because their little crow babies are vulnerable in their nests, so obviously a tall brunette with a houndstooth jacket would be a threat to said babies. THe first time, I was walking alone my street over to Commercial, and they starting cawing and coming at me. Twice they hit my head, lifting my hair in their claws, and I started jogging, then running, while they chased me down the street! I passed by a group of neighbors hanging out on their lawn looking at me like I was crazy, and all I could think to do was yell, "Crows attack!!!" Humiliating. Crows 1, Julie 0.

The next week, I was walking down busy Commercial drive, with plenty of other people around, and they start swooping at my head again. This time I can feel claws in my scalp. I turn to the guy beside me, walking calmly along, and say, "Did you see that? Why are they attacking me? Why don't they attack you?" He didn't know. I've been avoiding tall trees and metallic things since, and the cawing sound they make startles me every time. I think the babies are bigger now, though, so THEY can attack me this time next year.

Second critter conundrum: mice. We have a shitload of mice in our house. There was mouse poo carpeting the bottom cupboards, and there is a huge amount of it in the front room carpet. It grossed me right out when I realized what that was. I have not been able to spend 5 quiet minutes alone in my house without seeing a mouse darting underfoot, along the wall, or popping out from inside the . The drapes. THat's a lot of poo I have to clean up.

The other day, I was trying to relax and read in the house, and the mice just would not give me a break. Thoroughly unnerved, I went out to get some poison or something before my roommate Elliott's contemporary classical music show (he plays the viola). The combination of the mice with the crows left me jumpy and shit and on the verge of a panic attack, so I thought some classical music would be the ideal place to forget it. Not to be. Elliott had composed a piece called Creep/Melt, which was actually pretty cool, but incorporated the sounds of things scratching and creeping like, you guessed it, MICE IN THE DRAPES. This did nothing to assuage my slow burning panic attack. I wonder where he got the idea. Next up: an improvisational piece that involved a strobe light, screeching music, and disturbing images. The world was certainly against me that day.

I got these ultrasonic high frequency sound emitters that make the little bastards uncomfortable but don't hurt or kill them. I hope it works, because the last thing I want to deal with is dead mouse bodies all over the house. Wish me luck, or if you can see a psychic message in there, let me know and maybe this urban zoo will give me a break.

Buttery spread?

2008-06-05T00:51:00.000-07:00

So I come home from a night at the bar--an amazing night at the Legion, actually, a cub for veterans that holds karaeoke on Wednesday nights, and more on that later--and I get home, just after midnight, worrying that it's so late my roomates will be mad if my stumbling in the kitchen wakes them up. To temper the $3.25 vodka cokes I've been drinking all night, I put some of my rice flour bread in the toaster and search for some butter. Butter. Anyone? Butter? You know, that delicious, slightly salty dairy product that is sometimes spread on toast? After searching t no avail and being thisclose to resorting to all-natural peanut butter, I finally find it: all-natural, vegan,buttery spread. Truly, I am in Vancouver.

Vancouver's weird.

2008-06-02T17:21:00.000-07:00

Alright. I've been in Vancouver for about 2 weeks now, and I've come to a conclusion: Vancouver is weird.

People have this strange tendency to rave about it when they are not there and complain about it while they are. Everyone I spoke to who was from the West in Montreal or Toronto would get this misty look in their eyes when I told them I was moving out here, and they'd muse wistfully, "Oh, i miss the beach/tree/sea/climate/people/good restaurants etc." Talk to them here, and they say that it's hard to make friends here, that the nightlife is bad, the transit is terrible, etc. etc. My suspicion is that there are good things here and bad things. So far I like it.

One thing about Van that I've found particularly bizarre is the way the place seems to be separated out into these very different little pockets. Supposedly this is a small city, but I just took the bus from my new neighborhood to my parents' place, and it took me 1 1/4 hours. Nowhere in Montreal or Toronto would take that long by transit if they are still in the city. People don't really walk around here, and it's true the transit's not great. Hence all the BIKES.

On my trip over here to Kitsilano, aka dog- and baby-town from East Van, aka druggie- and hipster-town, I took the Hastings bus through the infamous intersection, Main and Hastings, which has the highest concentration of intravenous drug users in North America (take that, USA!). Many parts of Vancouver are full of beautiful gardens, high schools, organic food shops, and celebrity-chef owned restaurants. This strip looked a lot more like Mexico. Boarded up buildings, pubs, secondhand stores, women's drop in centres, urban native youth centres, unemployments centres and a whole lot of sad looking people. There's something wrong with the infrastructure here that this whole area is just around the corner from everything else, including, for example, that place I went to recently that was frequented by "shrivelled yacht jockeys and cougar-mistresses-in-waiting." Like I said. Weird.

A real update!

2008-05-29T15:04:00.001-07:00

Alright blog. I'm back again. I'm an incredibly neglectful blogger (I blame facebook) but I figure, I'm new in a city now and lots of my friends are far away, and plus i'm bored, so why not start up again and make more promises I can't keep to this poor neglected blog that just WON'T break up with me.

Yes, so, new city. Here I am in Vancouver, currently sitting on my parent's couch, planning on hitting up some hatha yoga in about half an hour. I'm here until Sunday, when I move into my new place near Commercial Drive, the up-and-coming neighborhood full of hippies and lesbians that I've been dreaming of living in for a while. I've been checking it out a bit, and while people certainly go to bed a lot earlier here, so far it seems really cool. The poetry in this city seems a lot better for me at the very least: there's an awesome slam night every Monday at this place called Cafe Deux Soleils (but it's not in French, thank god). I'm hoping to hone my poetry skills and get myself onstage there again sometime soon. I have been writing more, actually. Poorly, but more.

Until I get out there, though, on Sunday, I'm not doing much of anything. I've been watching a lot of Battlestar Galactica and Gossip Girl online, and reading Ayn Rand's the Fountainhead, Dave Eggers's How We Are Hungry (brilliant book, by the way), the Cellist of Sarajevo by Stephen Galloway (for my mom's book club--tonight!) the Golden Spruce by John Vaillant, various time magazines floating around my parents' place, and the free Vancouver weeklies to try to figure out what's going on.

Aside from all this nothing-doing, I've also had kind of a rocking social life. Surprise! There are so many more people out here that I'm friends with than I ever would have thought. I caught up with old friend Kia, a friend of my brother's Eric, Alla, who also just finished a Master's at McGill, and my old friend Allison who I met in California when I was 5. This girl has been taking me to some pretty crazy parties. The first was at a place called Cardero's, described in the WestEnder as being full of "shrivelled yacht jockeys and cougar mistresses-in-waiting" (SO true) and, most recently, this anniversary party at a club called Republic that was just full of hot women and ugly men. That was a wild Tuesday night. I'm still tired.

Well that's enough for now, and I'll keep you all updated on how my bartending lessons, starting Monday, pan out.

Love Julie

The Incidental Glutenarian: Quinoa Meal Salad

2008-05-29T15:00:00.000-07:00

What an unoriginal name.

This is just about my favourite gluten-free lunch food. It's fast, easy, very healthy, and very delicious.

Put in 1/4 quinoa with 1/2 cup water. Bring to a boil, and then lower to simmer for about 10 minutes, or until the cute little curly quinoa tails come out to play.

meanwhile: search for salad veggies. Cut up:
tomato
avocado
cucumber
baby carrots
bell peppers
baby spinach
small cubes of the cheese of your choice

Throw all this in a bowl with the warm quinoa and add some salad nuts like sesame seeds, flaxeeds, or whatever you've got and stir up with a couple of tablespoons of hummus.

Sounds weird, I know, but trust me. It's freakin' delicious.

Oh, blog.

2008-04-28T10:18:00.001-07:00

Why is it so hard to keep up with a blog? Maybe it's because I spend so much time working on my computer that I don't want to spend the time 'playing' on it. That's so false, I'm constantly wasting time on the internet. Who knows. In any case, that situation is about to change. My tired, overworked computer is going to get a little break, because my thesis, and thus master's program, is just about done, and soon I will be looking at real live books and maybe even people for the next little while.

It's April 28, 2008, and I am moving in about three weeks. I'm having a ball throwing out all the random crap I've collected over the years, and dropping a lot of my baggage. I'm selling all my furniture and as much other stuff as I can. Including my rollerblades. Big deal, I know, but I think it's time I upgraded to the more mature vehicle, the bicycle.

When I get to Vancouver, I plan on living the artist's life for a little while. Well, sort of. I'm going to waitress or something for the first couple of months while I get settled, get a regular volunteer job in the radio, find myself a dance class and troupe, and look into other ways to perform more--like maybe even some community theatre. I'll consider getting a 'real job' in the fall, depending on how I'm feeling and how much money I have. I will also then reconsider plans for a future PHD, if I'm ready to think about it, which I may not be. Anyway, onwards and upwards.

Barack's music video

2008-03-31T20:38:00.000-07:00

I think this video really speaks to Barack's charisma, and the buzzword of the US campaign right now: "change." This election is giving Americans, and many other people in many other nations, a hope they have not allowed themselves to feel in a long time. It is meaningful, and it's hard not to be a bit inspired by it. The millenium has come, and we survived, so we'd better do our best to make it better.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jjXyqcx-mYY

Just as a caveat: I still don't know if I prefer Barack over Hilary, but I think they'd both give the good thing: real, solid, steaming, fleshy change. At least I really really hope so, and for now, hope is enough.

The Incidental Glutenarian: Bad Thai

2008-03-16T16:10:00.000-07:00

This is one of my classics. It's easy, delicious, a crowd-pleaser, and you can improvise quite a bit until you find the version you like best. It can be vegan if you omit the Cock Sauce (which, come on, who wants to do that?). You can also add in chunks of meat if you want to up the carnivorous quotient. It's not like the pad thai you find at restaurants, but it's a good deal healthier and you can vary the ratio of noodles to vegetables.

Ingredients:
Thick Thai rice noodles
sesame oil
olive oil
garlic
onion
fresh ginger
firm tofu
bell pepper
broccoli (or whatever other veggies you have lying around)
green onions
cilantro
an egg

chopped, toasted peanuts or crunchy peanut butter
3-4 tbsp ketchup/tomato sauce
1/2 cup apple cider vinegar
1 tbsp brown sugar
tbsp Cock Sauce aka Fish Sauce
sambal oelek/chili garlic sauce/chili peppers
fresh lime to squeeze on top

Directions:
Soak the noodles until they are al dente. It's important they be not too done, because they'll cook more with the rest of the ingredients and you don't want them to get too soggy. Watch this, because it only takes about 10 minutes for them to loosen up.

Chop onion and garlic, and grate or chop fresh ginger. Heat sesame oil with olive oil--about 1-2 tbsp--and throw in chopped veggies. Saute for a couple of minutes until onions get translucent.

Cut tofu into cubes. Salt it a bit and throw it in the wok/large pan. (I'm actually crap with woks, so I just use a large pan). Let these cook together for a bit so the tofu absorbs the flavour.

Stir together cider vinegar, peanut butter, tomato sauce/ketchup, sambal oelek, Cock sauce, and some of the cilantro. Pour some of this on the tofu mixture so it gets all tasty. Save most of it though.

Cut bell peppers and other veggies into strips or cubes, depending on your preference, and add them in. Add more of the sauce mixture. When veggies are cooked almost to your liking, add the noodles and the rest of the sauce. Mix them together quickly so the noodles don't get soggy.

If you are using an egg, scramble it with a fork. Push aside the noodles and veggies, and scramble cook it in the pan. When it's solid, mix it in with the rest of the food. If you are making a lot, 2 eggs might work better.

Put in on plates and, on the table, have cute little dishes with chopped fresh cilantro, fresh limes, and toasted chopped peanuts. Voila! Bad Thai that tastes great.

The Ice Queen AKA Frigid Bitch

2008-03-12T09:25:00.001-07:00

Montreal and I have been together for a long time. 6 years ago, when we first came together, I was feeling all the blush of first love. She was all I could talk about, and I hated to leave her, even for a weekend trip to Toronto or Ottawa to see friends.

Now, 6 years later, all those little things about her that I used to find cute are starting to drive me crazy. The constant construction. The knee-deep snow. The summer nights so humid you can't sleep. The constant drinking and smoking. The maddening insistence of Montrealers to look good even when it's -25 and snowing. She's so hot and cold, I just can't take it anymore. Talk about a brooding poet: she's beautiful but hopeless.

We've come to the end of the road. I'm leaving Montreal for Vancouver, a warmer, more welcoming, less schizophrenic place. I can understand why people settled in Vancouver. Montreal must have had some kinda voodoo to make people think they could actually survive here. Walking to school is fraught with dangers: slipping on ice, drowning in a snow drift, inciting murderous rage on slow walkers you can't overtake in the snow...

The problem is, I think Montreal can tell we're about to break up, that I'm leaving her for another city. Suddenly, she is venting her jealous rage on me by pouring out snowstorms and remaining frigid until well into the summer.

All this is to say, I'm sorry, citizens of montreal, this hellish weather must be all my fault.

Th Incidental Glutenarian: Omelette

2008-03-09T16:39:00.000-07:00

Mmmmm ommmletttess...one of the best I've made yet!

Step 1: Cook up
1 clove garlic
red bell pepper
green beans
mushrooms
kale
grape tomatoes
pinch of basil
salt and pepper

with a bit of olive oil. Make sure they are nice and cooked.

In the meantime, stir up
2 eggs
a spash of milk/cream
1 tbsp or so of parmesan cheese
salt and pepper

Cook the eggs on medium in a large, flat, nonstick pan. Lift up the edges after the eggs solidify for a while and let liquid slide underneath the cooked eggs. When the eggs are almost cooked, put the veggies onto one side. Cover with some grated cheddar cheese. Fold eggs over top.

Let this chill for a bit on med-low, and Voila! Delicious omelette. Have it with wine, as always.

The Incidental Glutenarian: Part 2 in a Series

2008-03-08T15:52:00.000-08:00

This meal has two parts. There is a gluten-free alternative in one of them, but gluten-free soy sauce/tamari is easy to get and actually MORE delicious than regular soy sauce (at least in my opinion).

Roasted Veggies and Delicious Tomatoed Chicken

Chicken:

1.5 kg chicken pieces (I used two breasts, which was more like 1.2 kg)
1 onion
2 garlic cloves (or more if you're like me and like it stinky)
Juice of 1/2 lemon
2 cups tomato sauce
2 tsps dry mustard
2 tsps curry poweder
4 tsps vinegar
2 tsps GF soy sauce
olive oil

I know the ingredients don't sound like they go together. Trust me.

Directions:
Cook chicken pieces in some oil. Set aside. Cook onions and garlic in a bit more oil, and add in the rest of the stuff. Give it a minute or two and throw in the chicken. Let it simmer for, let's say, 10 minutes, until it thickens up or you get hungry enough to eat it.

This chicken would go well on rice, but we had it with

Roasted Veggies

Ingredients
Your choice among:
sweet potatoes
red/new potatoes
portobello mushrooms
green beans
cherry tomatoes
bell peppers

olive oil
fresh tarragon
salt and pepper

Cut up veggies small enough that they'll cook at the same rate. Potatoes should be especially thin. Douse with a bit of oil and seasonings, and cook at 350 degrees for a while...maybe 1/2 hour? You want them nice and cooked.

Go for it! I'm eating leftovers right now.

I'm going to start takign pictures so you can get a sense of the yumminess with visuals.

The Incidental Glutenarian (Part 1 in a Series)

2008-03-02T22:42:00.000-08:00

I am gluten-intolerant, as are many people in the world, and it's not nearly as hard to cut out wheat, rye, barley and triticale (whatever that is) as most people think. Yes, eating out can be hard because gluten is a sneaky little sucker, but cooking at home is easy, and you don't need to go out and buy all kinds of crap like xanthan gum (whatever that is) to cook gluten-free.

By the way, even if you are not intolerant, it tends to be a healthier diet that's easier on the ol' g-i system if you want to give it a go. A hint: corn, rice, and potatoes are all gluten friendly. Or rather, gluten-unfriendly. Gluten free. You know what I mean.

For these reasons, I've decided to post recipes of the easy and delicious stuff I sometimes make that doesn't require gluten or xanthan gum.

First recipe: Tofu and Quinoa Mash

Ingredients:
1 cup quinoa (red or white)
1 pkg firm tofu
1-2 cloves garlic
1 small red or white onion
1/2 large green pepper
1/2 large red pepper
1/2 pkg spinach
salt
turmeric
cayenne
butter
salsa
sour cream
cheddar cheese

Directions:
Put quinoa on: 1 part quinoa to 2 parts water. Bring to a boil and then simmer for 10-15 mins depending on the kind you got (red quinoa takes longer and is damn pretty)

Chop tofu into cubes. Salt the crap out of them (well, maybe 1/2-1 teaspoon) and add a pinch of turmeric and cayenne. Throw a pat of butter in a saucepan, and when it melts, throw in the tofu. Here's the tricky part: periodically press the water out of the tofu with your spatula, and let one side get nice and crispy before you turn the tofu over and do it again. This makes for an interesting and delicious texture (an example of tofu made right!)

Chop garlic and other veggies. Throw them into a buttered or oiled saucepan, leaving quick-cooking spinach for last.

When all has cooked properly (veggies should be crunchy), put some quinoa in a bowl, layer the tofu on and then the veggies. Cover with a couple of teaspoons of salsa and a nice dollop of sour cream on top. Sprinkle grated cheese around the dollop for a very pretty and elaborate looking but extremely simple meal.

Leave the salsa, sour cream, and cheese on the table so you and/or your guests can add to taste at will. Serves about four.

Seduction on the West Coast

2008-03-02T10:12:00.000-08:00

I am coming to the end now of a very fast and very wonderful week in British Columbia, surely now my future home.

The first couple of days we were here, my brother, his girlfriend Elspeth and I drove/ferried out to Vancouver Island to spend a couple of days in Tofino, BC's paradise of beaches, rainforests, and giant cedars. We stayed at this great little guest house called the Lost Sailor: they had a kitchen, TV, a bunch of movies (including Aladdin), a bunch of games (including Scrabble!), a hot tub and a pool table. My mom graciously packed us two bottles of her wine, which was great with dinner, and the next night out in the hot tub.

We got an incredibly rare day of sunshine for walking in the woods, and we did something like seven walks under my brother's iron fist. As soon as I get back to Montreal and my camera cable, I'll upload some pictures of the Bog walk, the rainforest walk, and Amphitrite Point, where my grandfather served as a lookout in the war. Family lore has it there's a memorial there which is a statue of Grampa with a machine gun and a rifle with a pile of Japanese bodies at his feet. We couldn't find that particular statue, but the walk was lovely.

May I also point out that I DROVE the entire way there and back? I only took a break after dinner the second night at the lovely and expensive Raincoast Cafe, after a couple of glasses of wine, when my teetotaller brother took over for me. Sure, I got stuck in an intersection and stalled at a left turn in Vancouver, but nobody's perfect. I'm getting better at this I swear. You should have seen me on those winding roads on the coast. Elspeth didn't even get sick this time!

Mark Berube

2008-02-26T21:10:00.001-08:00

Mark Berube is a singer/songwriter that I will be interviewing this week on the radio show. I saw him recently at a poetry event and was totally blown away--I ended up writing him a poem which, in a moment of ballsiness, I sent to him. Rather than thinking I was crazy, he agreed to do an interview with me.

All that is to say that I'm doing some research on him before the interview, and came across this poem on his website:

Tuesday, June 12, 2007
Standing on the edge
of something unspoken
in San Vincente Square

the words don't come easy
when your heart's been cracked open
at that critical moment
where the past means nothing
and all the words you've prepared
are the one's you've forgotten
so all you remember is
that you are....
in San Vincente Square

She pulls our your fears
and gives them each names
that really mean nothing at all

she seals them in an envelope
mails it to your childhood
where they meet their creator
and become guards that stand
at the gate to your happiness
where they strip search the shadows
you've been running from on
your way down...
to San Vincente Square

She takes your hand
and you walk to the harbour
close to San Vincente Square

Where the men of the ocean
hold lovers and paychecks
so she gives you ten dollars
and asks you to burn it
but you tear it in two
and give half to the sailor
who doesn't like the reminder
and says
go back down...
to San Vincente Square

You sit and watch the sunset
from the docks
where the sailor waved his goodbye

As the sun cuts its head off
and it bleeds on the water
the heaven you believe in
seems to feel closer
so you swallow a prayer
your tongue can't hold on to
and spit out what's left
as you think about....
San Vincente Square

Now San Vincente
is just some square
you fell upon

it was that critical moment
where time was useless
like jealousy and doubt
and the tears in your eyes
felt like cannons in water
you sank to embrace
what your happiness left you
at your feet....
in San Vincente Square

Fribourg/Barcelona, June 2007

Canadians, I'm telling you.

I feel like such a wizened old feminist...

2008-02-25T14:11:00.000-08:00

This post is actually the reason I wanted to start writing again, but i thought of it a while ago, so ignore the temporal proximity of these updates.

I've been noticing something very peculiar in my conferences this week. We have been talking about the play A Moon for the Misbegotten by Eugene O'Neill, which I find quite misogynistic, and there's a lot of sexual assault discourse in it that I find very problematic. Before the conferences, I thought my work was pretty much done for me because usually all you have to do in class to get discussion going is say the word "gender" or "feminist reading" and hands go shooting up into the air. Well, apparently I'm older than I thought, and I am missing a generational sea change in interest in feminist issues.

Back when I was a young one in first year (barely 6 years ago) it seemed all anyone wanted to talk about was feminism. Not having discussed it much in high school, I took every opportunity to write my papers about the "woman question" whenever there was one on the list of topics. After an illuminating conversation with my dad, I decided that choosing to focus my work on women's issues was a form of self-marginalization, and if I wanted to be successful as an equalist (as opposed to feminist?) I would focus my attention on anything BUT feminist issues. I thought this was revolutionary; turns out it's what everyone's been doing.

I brought up these issues of gender in conference, and no one wanted to say a word. They couldn't have cared less about the feminist reading of the play! In the final conference, I asked the small group what the hell was going on--"Don't you guys care about this stuff? Is feminism passe already?" Apparently they had all been over and over it in high school and found the whole thing boring. They are ready to talk about something else.

Excellent! Ecocriticism anyone? Shall we replace the woman as marginalized subject with non-human nature, an often ignored and misused subject position in literature?

No. They weren't ready to talk about that either.

I let them go home early.

I'm back!

2008-02-25T14:05:00.000-08:00

Well, it's been a very very long time since I've updated my blog, but I figure, why not keep doing it anyway. When I'm spending all day writing and researching, I don't always feel like recording my thoughts. I feel like staring at the wall, which feels GREAT!

Of course, now it's reading week, which means I get a break from TAing and can focus on my thesis. Right. The mental switch has already started happening, and it's been all I can do today not to sit on the couch and watch movies until it's time for me to jet off to the West Coast.

That's right, I'm escaping this winter nightmareland for warm and rainy spring in Vancouver. I will also be spending a couple of days in Tofino, walking in the rainforest and chilling at a B&B to get some much needed rest and mental space from my life in Montreal.

In fact, I'm thinking increasingly that it's coming the time for me to move to Vancouver. I don't love my parents's neighborhood, Kitsilano, yuppie central (and SUV central) for Vancouver, but I think other neighborhoods will be full of the hippies and flowers that I so desperately need in my life. I have a fantasy about working at a hippie bar or cafe, doing yoga and writing all day, volunteering at a radio station, and chilling out a whole heck of a lot. Ah yes. I need a climate change, and not in the scary apocalyptic sense.

oh, gazette

2007-08-10T17:04:00.000-07:00

I've been reading the gazette quite a bit lately, which is always an interesting social experiment. There's been coverage every single day about this missing 9 year old, Cedrika, who is from Trois Rivieres or somewhere near by. Fair enough, the poor thing is missing, and it's scary for the family. It's also local news. But beyond news like, "she's been found!" or..well, that's it really--what else is there to cover? Every single day there's been an article about this girl. You know, we also hear in the paper stories about other little children who go missing, but the coverage is not similar at all. I have a strong feeling that she is rich, white, and pretty, and that's why she's in the news so much. Ethnic families with fewer resources wouldn't get that type of coverage.

In other news, a network of websites that connect pedophiles has been discovered in Montreal. The Gazette has been pretty judgmental about it, suggesting in its biased newspapery way that the people behind these websites should be put behind bars.

Don't get me wrong, of course I don't agree with pedophilia. But I'm not sure pedophiles choose to find small children sexually attractive, and pretending they don't exist and cutting off their resources is only going to make it worse. These websites, apparently, as I haven't seen them, suggest places where young children can be watched, and have message boards where people can discuss their pedophilia. Nowhere do they suggest or encourage acting on pedophilic desires, and everything is technically legal. I think there should be a place for pedophiles to talk about this stuff, although of course it would be better if the websites were to suggest ways to get help or counselling or something, though I suppose that would be preachy and not free speech. In any case, ignoring the problem usually doesn't help things too much.

endovaginal ultrasounds

2007-08-10T17:00:00.000-07:00

The other day, I went for an ultrasound my doctor had recommended for me. There was some mysterious pain in the abdomen happening, and I was terrified my liver was blackened from the strain of living what my mom calls my "champagne lifestyle." Well, not only was my liver fine, my uterus was the "most perfect" the technician had seen in years!

Let me tell you though, endovaginal ultrasounds are not that much fun. They are not painful, but you get covered in a clear goo, and there is a big camera up your vagina for many minutes. The doctor came in after the technician to check on everything, and she was not very gentle! First she slapped more goo on my body to check out my innards, and then she couldn't find my vagina in the dark, and almost took a wrong turn, which did not make me very confident in her. Her only comment was "It's dark in here."

2007-07-23T15:38:00.001-07:00

I got bangs. Now I look like a true hipster. Or, with certain glasses, my grandmother in her younger days.

SEX SEX SEXISM!

2007-06-19T07:31:00.000-07:00

On recent mornings on my eminent radio show, the Wednesday Morning After on CKUT (90.3), my co-host Neil and I have started to implement a morning news clipping segment. We'll bring in a piece of news or an article that we find interesting, and discuss it and, often in my case, why we find in problematic.

An example from last week was an article in the Gazette about how Saudi Arabian women were reconsidering and refashioning their abayas, the head-to-toe, traditionally black garment that women wear. Fine, if that's happening, but the article itself was extremely judgmental, claiming that the abayas were "universally considered a mark of oppression." What a ridiculous thing to say. Firstly, who are you to say "universally considered?" Secondly, what does the world think of Western clothes like short skirts and high heels? I feel pretty oppressed in an underwire bra, to be honest about it.

Then the article went on to connect the conservative values of Saudi Arabi with the 9/11 attacks! Talk about perpetuating a fear of otherness. Next time you see a woman in an all-covering garment, she might be trying to blow up a building.

On the more positive side of the news angle, however, I did see an ad in the gazette encouraging people to complain to the Ethics Council of the alcoholic beverage industry in Quebec if you ever see an ad for booze that sexually exploits or objectifies people, encourages sexism, link drinking to popularity, success, and sexual prowess. I encourage everyone to do it! Email them at info@conseilethique.qc.ca or check out the website at www.educalcool.qc.ca/ethics. Here is a tiny little forum to let people know that it's not okay to objectify people in advertisements, and if we use it as much as we can, it just might bleed over into the makeup ads, clothing ads, and cold medicine ads that do this, too. Complain! Let your voice be heard! This is a place to start.

FRINGE!

2007-06-14T12:26:00.000-07:00

Well, it's Fringe Week again as the fringe festival graces Montreal with its presence. Because I am a CKUT celebrity, I got to have a SUPERPASS and free entry into any show, anytime. It's been really excellent, and I've seen a few great shows.

HANAKENGO/SHOSHINZ! is one of the weirdest things I've ever encountered, in a funny, excited, Japanese sort of way.

THe Haunted Womb Tour was weird in a very good, slightly disturbing, Japanese sort of way.

FOund and Lost: Goals for 2002 was an amazing dance show put on by Influx Dance. It was a collection of dances that all flowed together really well, were at times funny, and at times sad. One involved two dancers who appeared to be lovers. Words were being put up at the back of the room, starting with I GET YOU. As the dance began to change, and more words were added, the sentence read THE CLOSER I GET TO YOU THE FURTHER I FEEL FROM ME. It was an incredible representation of an abusive relationship that hit really close to home.

Another recommendation was the Dancing Cock Brothers sketch comedy show. Offensive, hilarious, and often, dead on. One of the sketches involved a girl who had just broken up with her boyfriend and was crying on her couch. In bounds Emotional Stand In Rebound Boy! A superhero who comes in to comfort her in her time of need, and hopefully for him, get laid. I found this ridiculously funny since I seem to have attracted a few of these 'superheroes' into my life since my breakup. I'm hurting, I'm sad, these male 'friends' of mine try to be there for me and express their indignation that someone could ever treat a woman so badly, and then promptly try to get me into bed. Girls, I'm sure you've been there. Boys, I know you've tried it. Hell, I know girls who've tried it too. It's a good srategy, but not one to rely on in the end. At the end of the sketch, the girl storms away from ESIRB, saying, 'You creep me out.'

Word.

Je ne longboard pas.

2007-06-06T08:06:00.001-07:00

Well, I'll admit, it's been a frustrating morning.

i had to get up early as I do every wednesday to do the radio show on CKUT. This morning I read a chapter from George Elliott Clarke's novel George and Rue, a beautiful but sort of upsetting chapter about domestic abuse. We also have decided to start bringing in news articles we find problematic and complaining about them. My chosen piece was about how Saudi women are rebelling against the black abaya (cloak)--an article of clothing "widely considered a mark of oppression." By whom? What kind of oppression? Are western clothes somehow more free because we are allowed to sexually objectify ourselves? The article went on to connect restrictive clothing laws with Sept. 11. Not good. There were other things I wanted to talk about--like how you can apparently complain to the Quebec government now when you see any alcohol ad depicting sexual objectification or the assumption that alcohol will make you cool. Hilarious!

The show itself was fine, but because I'm alone in the house for the week, I mananged to drink half a bottle of wine while watching Save the Last Dance late last night. Again, not good.

I thought I was going to be late, so I brought my longboard with me to the station, my rollerblades being out of commission. I hate that damn longboard! Cheyne made me buy it because he wanted me to look like more of a skater chick. Why, I will never understand. I think he wanted me to fit into some stereotypical image he had in his mind of what his girlfriend should look like. Really, I take it as a compliment that I don't fit into any one "image." One thing you can say about me, I certainly have my own style. Skater it is not. I am far too gangly to own a skateboard.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not against skateboards per se--I could even ride it properly, though hills scare me, and i'm really much better on rollerblades. It's just that this skateboard represents 1. Cheyne, and 2. my failure (or success, depending on how you look at it) to fit into an image of someone I'm just not. That longboard is just covered in slippery, disgusting feelings, and riding it is thus sometimes difficult. I also fell for the second time off it this morning going down a hill because I don't know how to stop! Humiliating, and really, just so uneccessary.

Anyway, I'm selling it. It's a great board, if that's your bag, it's just not mine. Look how awkward I am in the photo!

2007-06-05T07:18:00.000-07:00

My new roommates and I have been thinking about getting a house pet. We are all commitment-phobic, but want something cute for a while that appears to love us but doesn't really care if we leave it. I wanted a snake, and Kitty wanted something furry, so Krista's boyfriend Dave suggested a ferret--like a furry snake!

Ferrets last 8-10 years, so we are thinking of rescuing an adult one from the shelter (also we wouldn't have to house train it). From what I've learned, there are several things I like about ferrets:

They like to play 2-3 hours everyday and then sleep for 18 hours. Once they fall asleep, they are hard to wake up.

They have a 'war dance' that they do after capturing a toy, wherein they jump up and down ecstatically.

They like to sleep in hammocks.

They like hanging out in shoulder bags, so I could take our ferret with me to school!

They like going for walks in cute little harnesses.

They are CUUUTTE.

Here are some things I might not like about ferrets:

They like getting into tight spots, and they are mischevious and curious, so preventing strangling, electrocution by wiring, and getting lost down a rabbit hole are somewhat difficult to avoid. Apparently they like playing in warm laundry, and might get stuck in the spin cycle.

They have a musk, apparently, which some people don't much like.

My problem at this point is that if we commit to a ferret now, it's going to be my responsibility when we move out. My tentative plans are to move to Toronto for a while, then travel for a while, then ?, then get my PhD in California? Do ferrets like california? What if it had to change owners? Do they travel okay? These are my worries. Ponder them, and send me your advice. In the meantime, some adorable ferret pictures, including one of Hugh Jackman, with ferrets.

Juliepalooza!

2007-06-02T15:36:00.000-07:00

Paloozas, as it turns out, are the wave of the future.

Last night I had a giant group of friends come over to my place and then to go dancing for a Juliepalooza! The idea is that when you go through a bad breakup, or end a bad job, or feel bad in general, you can have a party to counteract it. In my case, I wanted to show all my friends how much I appreciate their support through this breakup by giving them another opportunity to support me. I asked everyone to wear unitards and armwarmers and other clothes they think I'd like, and bring booze they think i'd like, and generally pay me lots of attention and make me feel good. I wore my most ridiculous high heels, constructed an outfit from a multipurpose tube and an old scarf, and drank mojitos all night. No one wore unitards, but everyone generally looked great. The dancing was highenergysweaty funk night at Korova, and it was excellent. I was told by several people it was the best palooza ever.

The trick with paloozas, I think, is to time them appropriately. You need to be at a place where you are ready to stop feeling about the bad thing that changed your life, and let it mark a new time. It's kind of like a coming-out party--if done too soon, you jump the gun on being back 'out there.' If done too late, you are stuck in the post-breakup (or whatever) closet too long. I think it's great to throw parties for yourself so everyone can tell you how much they love you, you can time it better than a birthday, and there is no pressure on buying you presents. It's generally a win-win situation. I greatly recommend them, and I must say, I'm feeling pretty good about being back in the game!

thinking/art/yoga room

2007-05-27T15:35:00.000-07:00

This afternoon, my lovely roommates and I took a look at our freshly painted extra room and decided to do something fun with it. We put up a gorgeous piece of art that my friend Erica made for me, based on a poem I wrote. I could never figure out how she had put the pieces together initially, so Kitty and Krista and I rebuilt in in such a way that we can switch the panels around to create new colour combinations. Inspired by this, we sat down in a pile of poetry books and picked out favourite quotes to paint on the walls. My first was written by Dennis Lee, and completes the phrase I have tattooed on my back. The second was a line from another favourite writer, George Elliott Clarke (the cutoff word in the picture is Respect). Krista is in the process of completing a visual poem by Ondaatje, and Kitty is going to pick something from Dionne Brand or Sylvia Plath for her quote.

Living in a house full of English majors is great. To add to that statement, earlier this morning I was sitting on the patio, drinking tea and sadly staring at the rain, when Krista came out and said, "Hey pathetic fallacy face." It was very apt.

Here are some pictures to give you an idea....but it's nothing like being in the room.

This is my now!

2007-05-24T07:40:00.000-07:00

Well, it's certainly been a long time since I updated this guy. I was working so hard in the first half of the semester that I stopped using the internet except for research purposes, and in the second half it was difficult to get it up to do anything at all, including shower.

A lot has happened over the past few months though. I got through my first year of MA, switched supervisors, and switched programs, so that I will now be writing a 100 page paper by next april. One of my papers, about typos, is going to be presented at a conference in Toronto in October, which is terrifying and very exciting, and my professor told me she thinks I should try to get it published in a scholarly journal, so I've been slowly trying to put that together.

In less good news, the boyfriend, Cheyne, came and left unceremoniously, leaving me single again in the spring, (as I am so often, it seems!) The season of twitterpation has come upon me free and able to twitterpate as I choose. Since this traumatic split, I have been finding myself relating to the strangest things. On driving with my mom:

mom: There's so much construction in Vancouver. Last time I was here, there was a building on that corner, and now it's gone!
me: [in my head] That's how I feel about my life.

Dear god. Even worse, I was watching Jordin Sparks sing the Martina McBride song "This is My Now" on American Idol, and found myself tearing up. A sample of the lyrics:

There was a time I packed my dreams away.
Living in a shell, hiding from myself.

There was a time when I was so afraid.
I thought I'd reached the end,
But baby that was then
I am made of more than my yesterdays.

This is my now, and I am breathing in the moment.
As I look around I can't believe the love I see.
My fears behind me, gone are the shadows and doubts

That was then, this is my now.

How will I ever live that down, just to myself?

Anyway, time to get it together. I'm feeling great in the Montreal heat, and I'm honestly feeling quite good about everything now. Wish me luck, and i promise to avoid American Idol at all costs.

Canadian erotica on the radio: good way to start a day

2007-02-14T03:04:00.000-08:00

Oh Blog, again, it's been a terribly long time. I have to admit, updating my blog is not my highest priority. But I'm just at the tail end of a giant-all-consuming, soul-sucking project, so it's time to move on to bigger and better things. Like my hair! Literally--I just got it cut, and it got BIG.

In other news you might actually be interested in, it is currently 6am, and I am drinking tea before heading over to CKUT for the Wednesday Morning After show. Today's show is special for a ocuple of reasons: I will be teching and hosting the whole thing, firstly, which means I hold control over the airwaves! There is a little mystery in today's show, and I might play an interview from the Real News network (which is excellent, and everyone should check it out: http://www.iwtnews.com/

But also, it is Valentine's day, that most dreaded of holidays, and in celebration of love, I have decided to read some of the sexiest love scenes in Canadian lit. This will include the Danish Vibrator scene from Leonard Cohen's Beautiful Losers, in which a vibrator comes to life and starts fucking everyone uncontrollably. It's hilarious, and also terrifying.

I'm assuming you all missed it (jerks), so you can donwload it at wwww.ckut.ca under programming and archives: click on the Wednesday Morning After audio button and listen to the second hour.

Happy v-day, try not to drown yourselves in fruity cocktails.

duh...

2006-12-22T17:16:00.000-08:00

Dear Blog:

it's certainly been a while. My brain has been a bit full to brimming lately so i haven't really been in 'reflective' (read: blog) mode.

I have been in Vancouver since Dec. 1, but it feels like about 5 minutes. I've been struggling to write entries on various Canadian writers for RObert Lecker's forthcoming anthology of Canadian literature. A very exciting and interesting job--but it's HARD! I finally sent in something he liked today--my-what...fifth? try. Rohinton Mistry.

I've also fallen in love twice in the process. John Steffler blew my mind--I actually started to cry in the library reading from his That Night We Were Ravenous. Incredible, gorgeous ecopoetry. In the same vein, the incredible Di Brandt has reinforced for me the truth that poetry is revolutionary. She was one of the first Mennonites to speak publicly about the abuse she faced as a woman and as a child in her community. She's also a feminist, a mother, and an eco-poet who gets me all riled up. i LOVE her.

I've also been with Cheyne almost 24/7, which has certainly had its ups and downs. Mostly really high ups and a couple of plateaux, not much in the way of downs. He's going to meet everyone and my city in a couple of weeks.

I miss everyone terribly--I forget how much I need Alistunalie. It's the best entity ever, and I can't wait to get back into the warm fuzzy glow of 239.

Don't forget: It's global orgasm day. have an orgasm and think about peace.

Ambush French Interview!

2006-11-28T11:14:00.000-08:00

I just make a big giant fool of myself on French television.

I got ambush-interviewed by these two men on the street with a video camera, who asked me if i spoke French. I said, 'un peu?' and they went ahead and asked me anyway what I thought about the name change of Parc Avenue. I had heard about this, but my research had gone as far as the signs I saw on the street and people telling me about it. So I said, "oh, I know--oh wait--decided?" and I was so bumbling that the interviewer said "C'est fini, c'est decide--it's done." There's nothing more humiliating than being talked at in English when you are trying to have a dialogue in French. So I go on, in French,
ME: "Oh, well, you know, I think it's pretty stupid. Why change the street? We already have a metro station called Henri Bourassa, so it's just going to be confusing for everyone."
HIM: "It's going to be Robert Bourassa Street. Henri and Robert Bourassa are not the same person."
ME: "Oh, uh, oh, I thought it was. So, Rue Bourassa? That's still confusing."
HIM: "Rue Robert Bourassa."
ME: "Oh. Well, anyway. I think it's stupid. it's not a huge political issue for me."
HIM: *blank disapproving look* roughly translated as "stupid Anglo skirt."
ME: *realizing i'm acting like a total n00b: "Well, except for the history! Lots of history! and history is important! So, uh, I'm not happy about it!"
HIM: "Thanks."

Oh man. I can't believe I had a television interview about something I knew absolutely nothing about that changes the city's face, political statement and history, *IN FRENCH!* I managed to come off sounding like I cared more about the difficuly for tourists to get around in a place that had more than one Bourassa than the political implications for Montrealers. At least my French was good. Ironic: my French gets brilliant as soon as I start talking like a retard.

if any of you get ambush-interviewed in the next few days, prepare yourselves!

makeup is the devil! aaaaaah

2006-11-23T17:20:00.000-08:00

I've decided to go makeup-free.

it started out as a week-long experiment, to see what my skin would do, but I am never going back. I was just thinking that maybe my skin was reacting badly to some chemicals in my makeup. I checked out the label and--first strike--the letters were tiny and white on a clear bottle full of light-coloured liquid. It was impossible to read. Strike two--whether or not this particualr makeup had any 'bad' chemicals in it, there is a whole buttload of scary chemicals in there that I do not want on my face!

Strangely, there just happened to be an interview on the Wednesday Morning After show (which I am sure you have all been listening to regularly) about cancer and makeup. Apparently, there is a ton of stuff in makeup, lotions, and haircare products that can be poisonous and that are unregulated. Did you know that 'non-toxic' is a marketing term, and it's completely unregulated? Apparently some makeup contains 'parabins' and 'bisphenols' that are estrogen-mimicking and have been linked to cancer. The connection is too tenuous to cause any changes in the market, but as of last week, all makeups are required to display their ingredients. the toluene and formaldehyde in nail products are also big culprits. Scary.

Anyway, fuck makeup. I'll still wear mascara and stuff when I feel like it, but foundation and cover-up is out of the question. The other issue is that when you wear makeup like that, you are effectively hiding--i'm trying to get used to being myself, au naturel, and not being afraid of that. I'm more awesome when I'm more me, right?
...right?

One thing--if I stop shaving my legs and wearing deodorant, i've crossed a line. Stop me. I'm going to go wash my face.

pretentious people suck my epistemology

2006-11-23T17:11:00.000-08:00

I had an excellent moment at school last week. There's a thoroughly annoying kid in my MA1 English class who likes to use 'epistemological' 'pedagogical' and 'ontological' as often as possible--preferably in the same sentence. It's unbearably funny trying to listen to him communicate in class. He might as well be saying, "I'm smarter than you. Just so you know. All of you. I'm smarter." As Rob says, he pulls out the $20 words, when a $1 word would do.

Well, we were talking about Dracula, and the connection between technology and one of the main characters. Just for a lark, I decided to actually listen to him for once and respond instead of giggling quietly to myself while he struggles his way through all the words he knows.

I responded by saying something about how Dracula is in general about the fear of emasculation, and how that's tied to the technological revolution, where women can now type and use technology the same way as men.

He snips right back, 'but don't you think it's actually about the fear of going crazy? I think to say it's about the fear of emasculation is just a really vulgar psychoanalytic interpretation." Which is, of course, MA-English-speak for: I'm smarter than you.

But then, i came back with, "But isn't going crazy always gendered female?" Which it is, and everyone in the class murmured assent. Quietly, the girl next to me says, 'That was really good.'

I love getting in intellectual fights with pretentious people.

Ironically, I must sound pretty pretentious for even telling this story, but we'll let that go.

everything's coming up milhouse

2006-11-19T07:39:00.000-08:00

In other, more personal and less poetic news, I'm leaving for Vancouver in less than 2 weeks! I can't wait to get a unlimited month of yoga at Semperviva, eat good food and drink good wine with my parents, bask in the slightly warmer december weather, not be stressed out for a whole month, and, of course, cuddle up with my love. I'll also be hanging out with his parents in North Battleford, Saskatchewan, for a week.

But even more exciting, (i am just bursting with news today), Cheyne is coming back with me! He's takng some time off from his horrible and stressful massage school (ironic, I know), to come live with me in Montreal. He's already heard back from a spa that is willing to interview him even though he doesn't speak French. Granted, he is coming during the worst possible months of the year, so it will be a hard sell tomake him fall in love with Montreal and then stay and get his RMT here. April better be nice.

Anyone know of a sublet opening up around the Plateau for the winter semester?

poetry: 1 philistinism: 0

2006-11-19T07:29:00.000-08:00

Well, poetry on the radio has been going swimmingly. The other day, I found out that people were listening to it. And not only people, but people i have never met . Point for poetry!

In other good news, last night, the poet I have the biggest crush on, and on whom I will be writing my MA thesis on, George Elliott Clarke, came to read in Montreal! Not only that, but a bunch of my friends actually wanted to come with me. Four out of five of us loved George as much as I do, and the one straggler had never seen any poetry before.

Also, my plan to slowly take over CKUT is is motion. This week on the show Neil and I are planning and hosting it. I will be doing an interview about cloth diapers and reusable menstrual cups lie the divacup (), which I will fortuitously be waring during the interview.

My hour-long dromotexte show is also coming up pretty soon--in ten days or so. I'm learning how to operate the board tomorrow, and I'm getting some pretty excellent poetry together.

I hope you all hear it and love it as much as I do.

The Internet is for Porn.

2006-10-26T15:45:00.000-07:00

In other news that outs me as the giant nerd that I am, my most recent project is to create a publishing house for my canlit class. I have a few excellent book ideas:

1. The Real World of Warcraft
A collection of the best and most scandalous gossip going on in the Warcraft world. Complete with links to footage from the events in WoW and players who were involved.

2. The Internet is for Porn
A sex-positive guide to the best porn on the internet. A great way to avoid spamware, adware, and hidden fees. The best and only source for porn by and for women, lesbians, and gay men. Also an excellent list of the funniest porn satire on the internet, so you can say you just bought it for the comedy.

My professor hinted in class yesterday that he had heard one of our ideas and wants to put it into business because it's such a good idea. I have a feeling it's one of those.

Any other ideas?

spreading that spoken word like a virus

2006-10-26T15:36:00.000-07:00

Things have been going along swimmingly on the spoken word front. Wednesday mornings are increasingly fun. Yesterday morning I read some serious and some funny Leonard Cohen that went over pretty well. Margot added her comments, as she always does, and confused us all into being completely unsure what to say. It was certainly fun, though.

I've been doing my official-sounding MCR trainings at CKUT, which means that on November 30, Thursday, at 8pm, I will be replacing Fortner Anderson for his Dromotexte show. I will have a whole hour all to myself, and i will be doing all the tech stuff too. I'm thinking I'll read Civil Elegies (a poem that becomes increasinly important to me as it is in my life), and play some excellent spoken word that i found in the bowels of the CKUT music library. Should be a good time.

My friends keep asking me when to listen to my morning after show, so I'm going to give the details again: CKUT 90.3 FM, Wednesday mornings usually between 8-830 am. If you don't live in Mtl, you can listen live at ckut.ca/listen, or you can download it and listen to it anytime. Just go to the archives and click on the show the Wednesday Morning After.

2006-10-17T11:04:00.000-07:00

I recieved a comment on my last post that I'd like to address more openly, having already responded to it. The anonymous poster wondered what the point of poetry is in a world full of genocide, poverty, AIDS, and terrorism. He or she would like to know if Canadians, like me, don't have something more important to think about than writing poetry.

Dear anonymous poster, it is for you that I do everything I do in Canadian literature.

Yes, Canadians face a host of global political problems today. We live in a complex world, and it is poetry, not newspapers, that can teach us about it. I am assuming that this poster, like most Canadians, has only ever been exposed to the boring, nature-loving, apolitical, pretty poetry that I believe threatens poetry today by ignoring its political responsibility. The reason I want to expose Canadians to the poetry being written in Canada right now is because it is about some pretty volatile stuff. These poems ask us to face the issues rather than hide in the newspapers, which really don't tell us that much anyway.

I wonder if this poster had heard any of the poems I have read on the show so far. If not, I urge him or her, and everyone else, to listen to the show tomorrow (or download it whenever: http://secure.ckut.ca/cgi-bin/ckut-grid.pl and go to the Wednesday Morning After). I will be reading one of the most politically volatile works of Canadian poetry I have ever read. It is called No Language Is Neutral by Dionne Brand, and it asks Canadians to look at their society beyond the idealistic image of multicultural harmony we have going on. The speaker's experience, as a Caribbean Torontonian immigrant lesbian, is one of racism, sexism, and oppression, and yes, this is Toronto in the 1990s. Poets like Brand ask us to look more closely at our society from a different perspective from what the newspapers would like us to see.

For this reason, my anonymous poster, we must do more than "read the newspaper" as you so kindly suggest. We also need to read the poetry that is showing us what's really happening outside what the general Canadian media would have us believe. Maybe then you could make a more intelligent response to something you are ignorant of.

Thanks for the comment.

What do you think of the title: "Naked on a Park Bench?"

2006-10-14T17:13:00.000-07:00

This post is a little belated, since it's been 'news' for about three weeks now, but I have, in fact, started reading Canadian poetry on CKUT on Wednesday mornings. I have a ten-minute segment on the Wednesday Morning After show, usually between 8 and 9. Last week I read some stuff by Karen Solie and Donald Hall, and the week before that, I read some stuff by Canadian poets against the war, including my mom's cousin Peter Jaeger, who's excellent. Upcoming this week: everyone's favourite Leonard Cohen. This is the man that can change your mind if you think you don't like poetry. Or I might break down and read some of Dennis Lee's Riffs instead because I miss Cheyne, and I can do whatever I want because it's my show. Segment. Whatever.

I was sitting in my Canadian literature class learning about the life-threatening situation facing Canadian literature and Canadian publishing today. Apparently Canadians could care less what their literary culture is doing, and probably figure Margaret Atwood has it covered. It terrifies me that all the excellent, intelligent, and political poetry Canadians are writing right now is slipping through the economic cracks of the conservative government and the general apathy of Canadians to do anything about it. And plus, it hurts me that so many people think they hate poetry, because high school totally ruined it for them. I hated poetry when I got out of high school too, and now I love it. The radio show is just meant to be about someone who likes poetry and wants to share it, and the possibilities of broadening that community through the airwaves. Last week, Neil, who does the music and tech on the Morning After, said he stopped paying attention during one of the poems. i was so glad he said that, because it gave me an opportunity to say that that was okay--for the poems to be boring, or pretentious, or to not like them. that's hwy the discussion is there.

I'm not going to stop here, either. I'm hoping to help out with another poetry show on the station, Dromostexte on thursday evenings at 8, and do a canadian version of his show. I also hope to make it into a full-length show, so i can have people come in and read their favourite poems and talk about them.

Up next: podcasts. I'll keep you updated.

Who uses paper anymore?

2006-09-30T08:46:00.000-07:00

I've realized that packaging makes me regress approximately 2000 years. I feel like a primate when I am sitting at my desk, working on my Master's courses, and then have to face opening a new cd case. When was the last time you had to get the cellophane off a new cd case? For me it's been a long time. I'm sitting there clawing at it stupidly, biting into the sides, like a mongoose trying to get at the inside of an egg. I know there's something good in there, but I have no idea how to get at it. I'm hitting it on the wall, scratching it, yelling at it, and still the thing won't open. Computers may be a great revolution in technology, but it makes me stupid at packages.