Soon my Saturn will fully return.

On my last river walk I came across a Jewish Cemetery & took a piece of a broken gravestone dumped on the side of the fence home with me.

It’s so boring and obfuscating to talk about Paris as a romantic city. The romantic Paris you think of, is not Paris, it is a fabricated created-by-someone-else fantasy that you believe and play into. Paris doesn’t really belong to itself anymore either, that stopped in the 70s. Most, if not all, Parisians will tell you that.

The day before my flight I am presenting at the Film Studies Association Graduate Colloquium. I am nervous as shit. My paper is scattered and more of a survey than any sort of deep insight I am used to presenting to the world. I will be judged so badly too, because I know all my peers will be there. I don’t know why I let Claudia convince me to submit an abstract (for a paper I hadn’t written no less). Probably because I didn’t think they would choose it, so I dreamed up the fantasy paper I would like to write. I guess I am really excited about my topic, “locative-media” and I possess a fair bit of knowledge about it; it just doesn’t seem to be coming out right now. I have to live with that.

Anne Sexton wrote that. I’ve blogggged it before. It’s one of the most perfect pieces of words brought together I have ever read so here it is again & again. Amsterdam and its constant downpours are almost over, a few more days until I have to go back to Toronto, and then I fly home (??), fly back to my city where I have no place to live, no potential roommates and the second year of my MA to start/finish. I have no home in Toronto, just memories. Where am I going? Maybe having no place to go opens me up to go anywhere, to have the potential for everything.

I am living with Rico, who runs IChione, and his family for the summer in their attic in Amstelveen. It is strange to have a peer that also has a 14 year old daughter. It is an interesting negotiation for me as a student but also an adult. At 23, Rico was on his way to be an ordained monk but then his daughter was conceived and he realized his way into it could not occur because he’d have to leave them both behind.

Here are some of what I saw yesterday in my new neighbourhood playing around with my UV lens. Flickr.

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MUSIC: Also, a few days ago one of my favorite music people in the world, Loops Haunt, posted a mix called Strange Fruit Vol 1. It has many wonderful old love songs on it. You should download it and have him be in your life too. OK? OH! And I just found out that he’s playing StekkerFest in Utrecht on August 14! I am there! Maybe this special person I know can come too? For his biiiiiirthday?

70 days in Europe. Summer in Europe (again). IF everything works out, I’ll stay a bit longer to go to Sun & Bass. Maybe I can sneak my way in to VJ somehow. I want to befriend some VJ’s and people who play with video in Amsterdam! WHOA! I am actually wanting to make friends?! Are you a Dutch friend? I need to be shaken up so much. The stagnation of familiarity has put up too many walls too high. I might go take the train to see some people while I am there if I can find some extra monies.

Things I want to accomplish there (while studying and raving):

• learn Max/MSP
• my Thesis Project Proposal
• bike around the northern Holland coast
• read a book in French (even a short one)
• go stalking in Warsaw
• re-form the whole way I approach taking photos
• make contacts for a PhD
• make a short film

Everything is in flux at this moment. I wonder if I will be able to produce an original piece of new media work to complete my MA for Summer 2011? All I have so far is rumination all day and night. How long did it take you to be sure? How long can you contemplate and research before you must put something down? When do you know this is it? Do you just feel it? I am skeptical of the transformative deconstructive ‘magic moment,’ even though it has occurred in my life a few times. What am I really wanting to know? What do I want you to know? I don’t have the answer.

Katharine Tillman, a woman from New York that I have been obsessed with for many years has been posting so many fascinating article links on Twitter. One of them was from Slate about Elizabeth Loftus and memory. My selective memory is one the things I am so proud of yet comes out of having serious difficulty remembering anything that follows a linear logic (such as names, tasks, directions, etc… even causal relationships). I think that is why post-structuralist theory and philosophy make so much sense to me, at least one of the reasons – because I remember and then can synthesize and understand it. How can I train myself to recall things and ideas that follow a successive order … ? Do I need to? … or am I doomed from playing with mercury as a child?

I am so glad I am leaving in time for the G8/G20 Summit in Toronto. Our streets have been taken over by cops that aren’t just for show but actually stop people at their leisure if they’re engaging in potentially ‘dangerous’ activities such as taking photographs of buildings. The downtown core has been stripped of newspaper boxes, bike locks and even trees have been uprooted to prevent protestors from using the branches as weapons. There’s a giant fence that keeps reminding me of the Jewish ghetto in Warsaw. I don’t have much thoughts on it because I’ve been so enclosed in my life of studying and packing, but mainly because I am in shock at the whole situation and what this is doing to my city and to us, and how can we have protocols in place to prevent this from taking over a city again. The amount of money that is drained from US, from all of us taxpayers that had no choice but to accept the Summit here. How can it be that the money I am giving to my government can be used AGAINST me (I am thinking particularly of protestors, people that live in the core, etc.)? FUCK.

Ok, my next post will probably be from Europe — I am including a photo of Sara and I from Montréal when we presented at Congress 2010 on “Digital Storytelling Pedagogical Intervention” and a photo of my dear friend Meichen showing off her culinary loves. Meichen is doing a residency at Parsons Paris this summer and Sara is travelling to Vienna to take part in the Ultimate Frisbee World Championships.

Also, do you follow me on your RSS reader? Just make it happen.

OK BYE! Now I am baking organic spelt flour oatmeal raising walnut cookies for my class tomorrow. I hope there is enough. I mean, I hope I don’t eat them all first.

This is me at Leslie Spit last year. It's my favorite place in Toronto!! The photo is all grainy because it had to be pulled to the extreme, because I opened the camera twice + it had serious light leakage.

I went out last night to see Hudson Mohawke. I have no money or time, but he was so phenomenal in New York last year, I thought it could give me some energy to get back to my school work and maybe make it okay to be out. Of course, it didn’t. The DJ before him was terrible (even though his taste in music is excellent), and it really upset me. The thing is, that people I know were all saying the same thing about how much he was just ridiculous but I’m the one with no social reservations posting about it on Twitter in public and to the said DJ. Of course, no one else would say anything but niceties, and I’m not saying that they should have to publicly confirm all their thoughts,  but it usually ends up being me out there, me, the asshole. I guess, I could just keep quiet, and only say things in private, and be one of those Yes Man’s. but that seems so weird to me. How can change ever occur without some sort of revolt? Of course my comments, instead of being productive get misinterpreted as bitchy opinions, and that’s partly my fault because of the way I communicate them. Opinions are pretty useless most of the time, because they don’t provide any new perspectives. To be concrete and not espouse a musical opinion of his actual performance (because shit, even though many people disliked it, maybe I don’t get what he was trying to do), the DJ lacked vibes and know-how, unable to do justice to any of the great songs. But, maybe he’s just having an off-night, maybe I should just not concern myself so much. Am I being apologetic for my comments now? Maybe not apologetic, but wishing I had reacted differently, wishing that I hadn’t gave myself over to the negativity when I decided to give a shit for a moment, but yeah, it was my money and time, so it makes sense I would, but then to give so much of my needed energy to it too? I guess that’s what I’m frustrated with. In a larger context, I’m trying to figure out why I get so enraged, and why I can’t just let things roll off me.

So no, I didn’t really get to dance, because by the time Hudson Mohawke came on I felt serious misanthropy and frustration. His set was also less than 50 minutes and totally disjointed. The tunes he has are amazing and he played this one tune that made me lose it with some crazy Enya type vocals and he did play Polkadot Blues (!!!), but I could have just stayed home and listened to song after song instead of giving myself all this anxiety. I wonder why it was set up like a concert, song, pause, song, pause, song. Totally different than in New York when it was a full 2-hour cohesive performance, and although the crowd was loving it, I think it’s difficult to lose yourself in the music with long silent breaks between. And I didn’t go to a rock concert, I went to a party, a party that I paid full price to go see, and this is what I get? People moshing. By the end of the night, the enemies I was making out of everyone stacked up high against me.

I really should not go out any more, I have lost the ability to ‘act’ within the social codes of conduct. I am alienating myself from all the people I used to know, ousting myself from the bare minimum of belonging I used to have. “I’m so horrible,” I said to j last night, to which he responded, “No, you are just passionate.” The thing is that all of this does come out of a need for good shit. When there’s something undoubtedly good, I can never fault it, despite personal opinion. I just can’t, and fuck, I throw all of myself into things that I love, giving them all of my energy zealously. But, maybe I should drop the expectations. But, maybe I want to have expectations of performance and of skill (not that I assume myself some ultimate judge but I can only relate to something through my interpretation). I would hope that people would have the same for me, that people would call me on any bullshit, or disagree with me. I want that. I am yearning for the battle, because I’m unsure of myself, and would love some productive honesty. Maybe all this rage is totally misplaced? I know it isn’t always, but this rage didn’t fuel me at all, just pronounced the disappointment I felt with the night.

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There’s a lot more things happening in my life, exciting things, but also many things I have to be responsible for and make decisions about, and I have serious problems taking on decisions even if once I have accepted the decision, I go head first. These are the many things to write about, not this ramble. Lesson Learned ya?

Would you also be okay in engaging with me about your on hypocrisy? Really? Really?