heading home

for the next four days, i will be here (props to anyone who can find me in the picture) -- henley island, in old port dalhousie, st. catharines, ontario, for the CSSRAs (canadian secondary school rowing association), the biggest high school regatta in north america affectionately known to all rowers as "the schoolboys". the girls i coach here in kingston are heading to the henley course to compete and in my capacity as assistant coach, i'll be there to cheer them on, duct tape, extra speed washers, and trusty wrench in hand.

as i've confessed in another post, heading home to attend a regatta is a strange sort of home coming. i always manage to fit in a visit with mom and time with my best friend, jenn, but the me i have to be while on the island is both foreign and familiar to the me i am in other st. catharines contexts. it's a blurring of two worlds that always sends me into a bit of a tailspin. throw in my recently sustained psychic wounding due to moving house, and all i know is that i better pack my running stuff -- the only cure for what ails me will be long runs on the trail that follows the curving path of 12 mile creek.

i'm back on sunday.

words of wisdom

there are times in my life when i receive words of wisdom from wise folks i admire and esteem. today, as i embark on the first day of the last stretch of my phd (yes, yes ... i'm settling in for 6 long, uninterrupted months of work on my dissertation), i am taking to heart the advice given to me by the beloved head of the english department here at queen's (and i quote): "you gotta bust some ass on your dissertation, girlfriend".

while the cold is still hanging on, i'm now sufficiently medicated -- picture me popping cold and sinus tablets and swigging cough syrup in the stacks of stauffer library (!!) -- and ready to give it a go. let the ass busting begin.

recipe for a sick day

on this most sacred of holidays for victorianists world-wide, i am taking a sick day. not sure that vicky would approve (definitely not an action of the stiff upper lip variety) but i'm afraid it's necessary.

recipe for a sick day

1 nagging, horsey cough
1 pair of jersey pajamas
4 packets of neo citran
120ml bottle of cherry cough syrup
2 chicken breasts
4 stalks of celery, chopped
1 onion, chopped
5 carrots, very chopped
5 cubes of chicken bouillon
5 cups of water
1 can of condensed chicken broth
2 cloves of garlic, minced
2 fluffy cats
1 copy of the new yorker
1 book tangentially related to one's dissertation
1 trashy movie
1 chocolate bar
1 blankie
1 favourite pillow

take 1 nagging, horsey cough and add 1 pair of jersey pajamas. after combining chicken breasts, celery, onion, carrots, chicken bouillon cubes, 5 cups of water, can of condensed chicken broth, and garlic in giant pot on stove in kitchen, let simmer, over low heat for 2-3 hours. while soup is simmering, position favourite pillow and fluffy cats on living room futon and mix with nagging, horsey cough, jersey pajamas, blankie and 1 mug of neo citran. nap.

upon awakening, add to pillow/cat/cough/pajama/blankie mixture 1 book tangentially related to one's dissertation, and 1 copy of the new yorker. check on soup. begin to read 1 book tangetially related to one's dissertation. nap. ensure that copy of the new yorker some how becomes crumpled up and sufficiently wrinkled through entanglement with 1 pair of jersey pajamas, blankie and 2 fluffy cats.

upon awakening add to pillow/cat/cough/pajama/blankie mixture 2 teaspoons of cherry cough syrup. check on soup. dish out 1 serving and add to pillow/cat/cough/pajama/blankie mixture. also stir in 1 trashy movie. consume soup. consume chocolate bar. hide 1 book tangentially related to one's dissertation under futon. nap.

upon awakening, continue adding chicken soup, neo-citran and cherry cough syrup to pillow/cat/cough/pajama/blankie mixture until cough subsides.

rainy day blues

i suppose it's inevitable that after the exciting week and a half i've had i would feel a little blue about returning to the world of the normal and every day. admittedly, the weather isn't helping. as i sat out on the bay this morning in a coach boat with shani in the pouring rain, inwardly cursing my leaky integrity suit and waiting to time 4.5K trials that ultimately ended up being cancelled, i mumbled something about how days like today just work to confirm my belief that a lot of the time life sucks. i know, i know ... dour, dark thoughts on life! but you just try and be cheerful when you have rain cascading off the brim of your baseball cap, shoes filled with water and a leaky all-weather suit that leaks primarily in one place: your crotch. following practice, as i clomped and squished my way around the boathouse, complaining that the integrity of my integrity suit had been compromised, i dreaded coming home and sitting down to work. there was nothing in me that wanted to either a) prepare my course description for the course i'm teaching next winter in england, or b) work on my dissertation. i momentarily thought about having scotch for breakfast.

days like today make me insufferably nostalgic for a time when books weren't "texts", underwear was dry, and mom kept the cupboard stocked full of lucky charms. thankfully, some of what i'm working on right now helps me to feed that nostalgia a little. rather than drown my sorrows in single malt, after enjoying a long, hot shower, and putting on some dry underwear (you'd be surprised how much dry, cotton knickers can suddenly make the world a much friendlier place!), i've spent the morning devouring tales from the hardy boys children's series, some of which will appear on the syllabus for my upcoming course. on one level, i'm excited by the possibilities these texts present for my course due to the way in which they appropriate Victorian discourses of detection, policing and masculinity, and on another level, i've just been laughing myself silly over some of the advice fenton hardy dispenses to his sons frank and joe:

"The trouble is, so often when a young man joins a group of hoodlums or racketeers, he's blackmailed for the rest of his life, even though he tries to go straight." The detective smiled. "The best way to avoid such a situation is never to get into it!" (Fenton to Frank and Joe in The House on the Cliff)

a timely warning, fenton, as just this morning, i was considering a career in hoodlumming and racketeering, to be taken up after my potent liquid breakfast!

the rain has stopped (at least for the moment), frank and joe are about to rescue fenton from the clutches of the evil, thin-lipped and cruel bayport smuggler, felix snattman, and i have a lovely, thick grilled cheese sandwich browning on the stove. the barometer in shannon-land is slowly starting to rise. as long as i can avoid another soaking, i think i'll be a happy girl.

my body is a cage?

last night, G and i made for montreal to hear the arcade fire play their sold out hometown gig at the maurice richard arena. we were psyched in that i'm a seventeen-year old groupie going to hear her favourite band kind of way. the whole enterprise involved (for me) a hipster t-shirt, (for G) some bitchin' black boots and (for both of us) copious amounts of black eyeliner a la napanee native avril lavigne. we both dug out our black leather jackets, fortified ourselves at the pub st-paul in vieux montréal and hopped on the métro with other devoted fans, intending to dance the night crazy and rock out to our favourite tunes -- you can read G's version of our plan here.

were we ever in for a surprise.

from years as a sort of working musician, i know that it can be tough to warm up a crowd. sometimes folks come and have other things on their minds and can't exist in the moment with the music in that way that makes for an amazing experience for all, both performers and audience, involved. what we experienced on sunday night wasn't quite that. the arcade fire were outstanding. it was a big space, larger than their usual venue, but they worked it, and though the acoustics left something to be desired, their energy was infectious. one song into the first set and G and i were on our feet, grooving and dancing like silly people. in the midst of our full body contact with the music, we both glanced around and were greeted by a strange sight: an auditorium of rock lovers dead still. i'm not speaking in my usual hyperbole when i say that these folks put some classical music audiences to shame with their decorum. neither G nor i understood what was going on, and after exchanging a few snide remarks about the stuffiness of our seatmates, who barely bopped their heads in time with the afire's complex rhythms, we went back to rocking out. this strange dichotomy of energy and chill characterized the atmosphere for the rest of the evening.

i'm still genuinely puzzled. how does one listen to a live performance of songs like "(antichrist television blues)" and "neighbourhood #2 (laika)" and not experience the music with one's body? or put another way, how does one listen to/make music, and keep one's body out of it? one of the first things i learned as a classically trained singer is that your body is your instrument. these questions were only intensified for me this evening when i holed myself up with my flute and beavered away at the swirling, swarthy melody of brahms's sixth hungarian dance transcribed for solo flute. i can't play that piece and not move my body as part of my musical expression any more than i could listen to win and his bandmates race through "keep the car running" and not be jumping and moving in time to the giant wall of lush sound.

needless to say, as the second set wound down with "my body is a cage", the final song of the afire's new album, neon bible, the lyrics hung heavy in the air with irony. "my body is a cage/that keeps me from dancing with the one i love/but my mind holds the key", indeed.

brooklyn

i honestly thought that upon my arrival in new york, i'd find my identity as a manhattan girl confirmed -- the heaven of shoes and other kinds of shopping, my fascination with the west village and washington square, and the nostalgia i have for 42nd street, gleaned from spending my formative years in the fantastical paradise of busby berkeley. imagine my surprise when, upon crossing the brooklyn bridge on an exploratory run early on tuesday morning, i felt the unheimlich slap me upside the head. i wouldn't go so far as to say i'd felt as though i'd come home ... but i did feel at ease in a way that i hadn't monday afternoon as i wandered up and down bleecker street.


in part, i think this has to do with my obsession with the brooklyn bridge as both an architectural wonder and a cultural signifier. i couldn't take enough shots as i was making my way across. the smog was wonderfully atmospheric.


if this feeling of the uncanny had a soundtrack, it would in large part feature the brooklyn-based band, slavic soul party that L and i ventured out to see on tuesday night. they make their regular home at a club called barbès that has a performance space the size of a new york closet, ironically named the "hotel d'orsay". as we sat and listened to their two sets, i had to make a concentrated effort not to spill beer all over the pants of one of the trumpet players who stood less than a foot away from my rickety wooden chair. the bell of the sousaphone (yes, there was a sousaphone) was constantly straining against the tin ceiling. and there was an accordion. need i say more?

i'm sad that i'm going to miss the 3rd annual tour de brooklyn. i really like the idea of guiding my (still shiny and new) bike through the "the best of all the boroughs".

i promise i'll post some more pics from my trip to new york soon!

it's not easy being green

as i was confessing to G this afternoon, lately, i've been feeling very green -- a neophyte if you will -- i'd even go so far as to say virginal.

this past weekend, as i tricked out my new bike and talked cleats and pedals with the guy at the store, i was reminded of how it feels to be thrown into the territory of unfamiliar jargon. i'm very at home talking boats. i can debate the merits of an empacher vs. a vespoli; i can argue about the benefits of spaghetti rigging your 4+; i have my own theories about the strategy one should take when racing in the outside lane at the canadian henley; my coach boat driving skills may leave something to be desired *cough cough*, but throw me in a coxie seat (yeah, i know ... i actually fit!) and i'll 'sweet talk' your boat across the line in record time. years of having my bum on the seat, my feet in the stops and my hands on the blade have made me comfortable dropping terms like "speed washer", "hatchet", "rigger", "stay", and "footstop" into everyday conversation; i have also become acutely aware of the power such jargon bestows upon the user. when you talk the talk, navigating your way through the gendered pitfalls of a male-dominated sport becomes a lot easier. i was reminded of this fact as i stood facing the sales clerk at the bike shop, greenly asking naive questions about the pedal system i was about to purchase. as i wrinkled my forehead in confusion, i suddenly felt very much "the girl". had i not driven quite a distance to pick up the pedals and shoes, i would have daintily flipped him a well-manicured bird, spun around on my kitten heel, and tripped blythely out of the store. instead, not wanting to waste a 2 hour drive, i swallowed the lump in my throat, gathered up my shoes and pedals and headed for the register.

this morning i took my bike, with its newly installed clipless pedals, out for a spin on the two-lane highway that heads east out of town. pedaling hard on the flat stretches, slowly climbing up and quickly bombing down the many hills on my route, i began to feel more at home. very briefly i had that feeling that i often have in a boat -- that mystical sense of the machine becoming an extension of your body. clipless pedals, no big deal, i thought to myself, as i mentally tallied the number of successful stops and starts i had negotiated. i think i sat up a little straighter as i braked at the final stop light on the way back home, mid-way up a steep climb -- guy at the bike shop be damned. i wasn't just "a girl".

then it happened. i fell over.

it was one of those slow motion moments, much like flipping a rowing shell. you know you're going down (or under), and yet it seems to be taking oh such a long time. you exhale as you sink down, muttering "shitshitshitshitshitshitshitshit" under your breath. hitting the pavement wasn't actually that painful, but the road rash on my left knee (the knee that has survived being banged up in a car accident and bruised by a face-first fall off a porch) hurt like the dickens. i looked down at the bits of gravel, asphalt and skin all bloodily mixed up together and wanted to cry. it had only been in the past month or two that the scar tissue from my last "left knee incident" had begun fade. now, i angrily thought to myself, i have a new throbbing pink mess to deal with.

this new sport gig is tough. i'm reminded every time i look at my sweet new ride, that i've embarked on a relationship that is going to require time and effort on my part, and more than anything, a willingness to let myself be vulnerable. time and effort i have (okay, more of the latter than the former during this busy time of the academic year ...), but vulnerability ... well ... let's just say it's been awhile.