Thursday, June 28, 2007

a tick for the flattering tally? uk version.

as i made my way to the modern papers room at the new bodleian this morning, i was fairly confident that i was "passing" successfully. i was banking on the after-effects of an evening spent with G at her inlaws' house off of cowley road (i was tickled to find out that the bassist from radiohead lived just around the corner) -- somehow i *must have absorbed some of that excess authentic englishness that was randomly floating about! this spongy absorption, coupled with the fact that i was tricked out in flash duds procured during a brief shopping break in the high street, made me me feel not exceptional, but rather like just another reader, off to spend just another day at the library.

i contemplatively made my way toward the new bod, my stride bouncing along in time to the scissor sisters' "i don't feel like dancin'", when all of a sudden i was accosted by a guy, waving what looked like a guide book. "ooooooh," i thought, "here's proof of my successful passing. he's gonna ask me for directions." i smiled and pulled the headphones out of my ears.

guy: excuse me, miss.

me [smiling like an idiot]: yes? [internal dialogue: "he's gonna ask for directions ... just like that time in new york city, visiting L, when that guy stopped me by washington square park and asked the way to the financial district!"]

guy: you're here for open days oxford, right? here's a guide with a map and a brochure about undergraduate admissions.

me [shocked]: i'm not an applicant.

guy: oh. sorry. bye then.

even with the absorbed englishness, the new duds (they're seriously bitchin' jeans, if i do say so myself) & the freckles that have been fading due to lack of sun and balmy weather, i still can't pass for older than 18. i know, i know -- i can hear the echoes of the voices of several friends -- i should be flattered. on a certain level i am, i will freely admit, but on another level the fact that this seemingly endless youthfulness is valid worldwide is a little frustrating.

Thursday, June 21, 2007

songs of my childhood

sadly, i won't have time this trip to make a weekend jaunt to paris. the necessity of hitting the british library and dickens' world (shut up! it's all for an article on post-victorianisms ... really!) means that i'll have to save my frenchventures till i return in january. to solace mon pauvre coeur, i plan on attending the opening of la vie en rose when i get to london tomorrow evening as there's no telling when it will hit kingstunned.

here are vids of two of my favourite songs from la môme.



Tuesday, June 19, 2007

mecca(s)

every subculture has both its jargon and its mecca. i've mostly been about the jargons because jargons i can easily do. given what i will soon "profess" to do for a living, i suppose it only makes sense that entering into a strange, somewhat closed cultural space seems easiest to me via language. as i've confessed in other posts, i managed my initial discomfort in the hypermale rowing world by learning very quickly the necessary lexicon. it's difficult to disparage a woman's skill on the water when she's telling you that no, she's measured and set her outboards herself, thankyouverymuch, and then asking you to please pass the adjustable over here, 'cause the top nut on her oarlock needs tightening. the language of rowing, though the most familiar, is not my only jargon. as i embark on my next great musical adventure in the world of rock 'n roll, language has again proven the most comfortable entry point. i think G somehow sensed this (in one of those special wifi conversations ...) and thus helped mark my initiation into rock snob culture with my very own copy of the rock snob*s dictionary: an essential lexicon of rockiological knowledge (2005).

subculture meccas, at least for me, have been another story entirely. it's only recently that i've become somewhat obsessed with place and its relation to the various arcane little worlds that i inhabit. i chalk this up in part to being born and raised in the one of the few hotbeds of north american rowing. i passed the canadian henley course on my way to school almost every morning, and therefore it never seemed that special ... it was just there. even when i returned to that space with a more substantial knowledge of everything it stands for, it never really felt like a pilgrimage, but rather just another trip home. this sort of pilgrim's malaise extended to other areas of my life.

strangely enough, my first (recent) conscious pilgrimage was not to a rowing mecca, but rather to a place of primary import to a fledgling rock snob. during my recent visit to NYC i spent what seemed like hours wandering around central park, looking for strawberry fields. i had been toying with the idea, prior to my visit, of taking up a new, uhm, less classical instrument over the summer, and while much of nyc's rock scene was frighteningly impenetrable (hunting out the venue of the yeah yeah yeah's flashmob-type concert was just too intimidating for a newbie!), starting it all with a moment of contemplation at a flower-strewn memorial was both manageable and cliché in a way that i love.

i'm not sure if standing there, gazing down at the "imagine" pinwheel on a sunny may day was the singular cure for my jaded place perspective, but yesterday, when i stepped off the train in henley on thames (the first leg of my three-week uk research trip) and was quickly greeted by the sight of a lightening-fast 8+ tearing up the water, i wouldn't have been surprised one bit to hear a corny choir of angelic hosts belting out a chord or two. after establishing contacts at the archives of the museum i'm here to visit, i spent a couple of hours wandering around down by the course, snapping pictures, my mouth appropriately agape, behaving in every way like a pilgrim newly arrived at her destination. returning from a long run beside the river last night, i experienced not only that lovely feeling one has after an extended bout of cardio, but also something else. i'm not sure i can quite put it into words, however i think a couple of snapshots might do it justice.


Monday, June 11, 2007

scary age

i think i have a new scary age. for those unfamiliar with the concept of a scary age, allow me to explain. it's that age at which you hope to have everything significant in your life if not accomplished, then at least humming along smoothly. for most of my teen years and into my twenties, 27 was my scary age. with the passing of my 27th birthday, i paused, took stock, and readjusted my scary age to 34. it seemed a sensible scary age -- not close enough to leave me with a feeling of unabated dread, but not far enough away that i could blissfully put off doing all of those things that i said i would do "one day" -- in fact, i recently confided to G, with full sincerity, that i was more than okay with my new scary age ...

until this morning.

as many of you know, today is my 29th birthday, and while i have postponed festivities until i return from my research trip to england, i was looking forward to some quiet celebrations today, beginning with a beautiful morning out on the water. i was going out sculling in a double with jane -- the water was calm, the clouds in the sky were a lush pink from the rays of the rising sun, and i felt myself slowly falling into the rhythm of the sculling stroke, something i've been struggling with the past few weeks. how great would it be, i thought to myself, if this was the morning when it all came together -- when my leading left arm buried the blade at just the right height, when the pressure on both sculls was equal enough to keep us from turning in giant circles, when our four oars fell into the water at the catch in perfect unison, making that satisfying swirling splash sound that meant we were now ready to take the next stroke. what a fantastic birthday present.

i suppose if i hadn't had my head quite so far up my own a**, i would have had a better sense of just how quickly things were coming apart at the seams. with a speed and smoothness i don't think i'll ever get used to, our shell flipped and jane and i found our selves struggling first to detach our feet from our tie in shoes, and thus not get pulled under, and then to hoist ourselves over the hull of the flipped shell, belly down, like a couple of beached whales (her simile, not mine). as i lay there on my belly waiting for leslie to zoom over in her coachboat and tow us back to the rowing club dock and the impending humiliation that would follow, jane valiantly dove into the cataraqui river in an attempt to retrieve her rowing jacket, in the pocket of which were her rapidly sinking car keys. i pushed my sunglasses up on my nose and tried to bravely keep myself from crying. i didn't succeed. after climbing into leslie's coachboat (and whacking my left shin against the still blades of the propeller -- that's going to be one attractive bruise!) and helping jane to hoist the flipped shell perpendicular over the bow of the coachboat, i sulked down in a wet, miserable ball and sniffled my way through the return trip. though i am fully aware of the way in which i often invest such events with far too much symbolic significance, i couldn't help but hear that ominous voice of doom laugh a little too much like orson wells while saying "your scary age is here".

an angry drive through the countryside beyond the rowing club, a long, hot, antibacterial soap-filled shower, and a birthday breakfast with good friends have all worked to somewhat quell my inner orson, however i still couldn't resist googling "rowing flip" on youtube in order to find this video.

Saturday, June 09, 2007

back in the saddle ... sort of

you'll have to forgive the title of this post. i'm hunkered down for a sam peckinpah-fest on the provincial public television station as i type. yeah, i know. a rockin' saturday night.

while a discussion of my love-hate relationship with what i consider the quintessential genre film (the western) could provide some fascinating reading (topics might include my somewhat dysfunctional television upbringing -- due to my mother's crazed affection for a "good duster", by the time i was 10 i had seen the complete john wayne oeuvre, some parts of it multiple times -- or the way in which i thoroughly embarrassed myself in my first undergrad film seminar when i horrified my classmates by reciting verbatim snippets of dialogue from stagecoach) watching ride the high country (joel mcrae *swoon*) made real some of what has been tripping through my subconscious over the past week in such a startling way that it somehow seems worth writing about.

westerns, especially westerns from the 1960s, are often about returning -- think the man who shot liberty valance -- and lately, i've been returning more often than a tennis ball in the french open.

this week marked both my return to the boathouse as a rower and my return to the full-on writing of my dissertation, and while i'm thrilled to have my hands on my blade(s), and my fingers on my keyboard (and to have both enterprises clunking along surprisingly well!), i'm finding the return unsettling in much the same way that the ex-sheriff is unsettled when he returns to the town he "cleaned up" a decade ago to confront a double-dealing partner.

i've done everything i can to make my coming back easier. i've dug out my lucky unisuit, the one with "power" embroidered on the right thigh, and i've hooked up my housemate's new dvd player in anticipation of needing to break out the adam's rib at some point in my writing process, however none of this prep has settled the unsettled parts of me.

i think this is a product of the fact that i'm just not the same person i was, even a year ago. as i've discussed in previous posts (perhaps a little too much, with a little too much evangelical zeal), the start of the rowing season marked a long process of gathering up bits and pieces of myself that had been scattered in a very painful break up, including those parts of me that make up who i am as a scholar. thus, while the environs are familiar, the perspective from which i'm seeing them is not, and at the moment, things look a little topsy turvy. yes, rowing is still rowing, and my dissertation is still a central focus of my day's thoughts -- my feet still drive down against the foot stretchers as i come out of the catch, and i still do my best writing on scrap pieces of paper with a favourite pen -- but i'm seeing it all with different eyes, and thus, along with rediscovering the joy that motivated me to do all this in the first place, i'm finding new pitfalls and blemishes.

like a wary alan ladd cautiously throwing off the comforts of a pastoral domestic life with jean arthur in order to return to his life as a gunslinger in shane, i'm just a little twitchy right now as i confront familiar experiences with altered vision. somehow, i think the only thing that would help is a great opening credits sequence like the one from the magnificent seven. yeah, okay. and having yul brynner as a co-star wouldn't hurt either.

Monday, June 04, 2007

moving props


last week, i moved house, a traumatic experience if there ever was one. though the process of packing up all my stuff revealed a multitude of sins (i seriously had no idea i owned that many shoes!), it also proved an occasion where the generosity and kindness of my friends shone blindingly through.

so they are, folks, my 2007 moving props ...

props to:

J&J, for box-gathering, moving muscle, much-needed chocolate, and the stern warning to *never pack alone -- remember what happened to agatha christie! (more on that in a future post!)

andrea, the fun one, for moving muscle extraordinary, for playing a giant game of catch with me on colborne street using my yoga ball, and for not thinking me a cheapskate when we showed up at harvey's for a celebratory hamburger on free hamburger day! i swear i had no idea! oh, one final note ... she's fun, but i'm funner ;oP.

KB, for übermoving muscle, for blithely agreeing to take on nemeses in the octagon, and for a fantastic journey to the O to fetch new ikea furniture.

CM & dan the man from newfoundland, for moving company (again, never pack alone!) and hi jinx and for haulin' ass and my stuff ;oP.

G (and W, B & O), for sane and witty conversation on moving day, for the offer of lunch, for heart-warming e-mails, & for the van (oh, the van!)

shani, for her patience, as i clomped all over the house in my shoes, upending furniture in my whirlwind of moving in -- you've already proved yourself an awesome housemate!

(shani's) john, for helping an almost complete stranger move into your girlfriend's house, and for arranging the boxes in my bedroom in perfect engineer order!

Friday, June 01, 2007

a flattering tally?

number of previous CSSRA regattas attended as a coach: 0

number of high school girls i'm in charge of: 6

getting mistaken for a high school rower not once, but twice: priceless.

the conversation goes something like this:

the first time:

lady at the admission gate: i'm sorry, but we can't let you through the gate without a wristband

me: i'm with the kingston rowing club/holy cross secondary school. (said while carrying all necessary coaching paraphernalia including a cox box and a binder full of official looking paper, including race plans).

lady: it doesn't matter. you don't have a wristband. look sweetheart, why don't i call your coach and she can come and identify you. do you have your school ID?

me: (angry, but somewhat amused): i'm not a competitor ... I'M A COACH.

the second time:

lady at the cash at regatta sport, pointing to the weight stamp (64kg) on emily's arm: so why don't you have a stamp on your arm?

me: because i'm the coach.

seriously, folks. i put on make up this morning and everything.