in the post

Exactly.

2009-12-28T00:29:00.003-05:00

Our very human essence is so damn undignified. And so uncontrollable. We spend most of our life working like fiends to maintain the illusion that we are in control, that we can tame and tidy nature. Let's face it: nature always has the last laugh. Nowhere does the old girl laugh louder than with disability and death. God forbid we human beings should ever have to get up close and personal with our unwieldy, messy, smelly humanness. In every way possible, this culture's rules and values distance us from the realities of our own bodies in all their glorious imperfection.

Cheryl Marie Wade, poet and disability activist

Okay, but...

2009-07-23T17:27:00.001-04:00

The Iqaluit I just left was 22 degrees and sunny.

The Ottawa I'm looking at through an airport window is 18 degrees and rainy.

What the crap, Ontario?

Happy Nunavut Day!

2009-07-09T22:21:00.002-04:00

Oh my god I love Nunavut so much today.

It's Nunavut Day, and the territory is celebrating its tenth birthday. Because I am horribly uninformed, this entire business was a surprise to me.

We started this morning with a massive pancake breakfast and a short speech from the premier... and by bumping into a bunch of other federal employees who don't technically have today off, although it's a stat holiday for territorial staff. We all jointly consider ourselves to be engaged in an important federal/territorial relations task. Alternately: flex time, baby. I got "I (heart) Nunavut" buttons in English and Inuktitut.

Then the gents from the office decided that we should probably go fishing this afternoon, purely as an engaging-with-the-land-and-its-rich-traditions exercise, and not at all because it was 16 C and beautifully sunny and fishing is really fun.

Fishing is really fun! And hard. We set up at a part of the river where the current slows a bit and apparently fish feed as the tide is going out. I blame the total lack of fish actually caught on the fact that the tide was coming in. For anyone who's never done it before (pfft, amateurs) river fishing is not like the stereotypical picture of lake fishing that you have in your head. It's way more active, and involves way more time spent trying to dislodge your hook from rocks in the middle of the river. Sometimes they just don't come unstuck. I lost one of each of my bosses' lures, which I'm told isn't bad for a first attempt. I suspect the person who said this was kindly lying.

But I really enjoyed it - actually I could see myself doing this recreationally. I guess I shouldn't make up my mind about that until I've actually handled a fish, which is probably pretty gross. Also I really have no desire to 'gut' anything, no matter how delicious it is... which tells me that I need to find a fishing buddy who's willing to do the gutting.

Then I found out there was a Nunavut Day square dance planned for tonight. Hoooo-ey! I was oddly excited about this - and about observing the town's rowdiest hooligans in action - but alas, it was not meant to be. It was held at the Legion, which bizarrely enough is the party hotspot around here, and you have to be a member or with a member to sign in. Apparently this is not a problem in general since everyone and their mother in Iqaluit belongs - joining only for the drinking rights, naturally. I, tragically, couldn't rustle up a member to take me and had to sit this dance out.

But! I did have a huge and wonderful chat with the family I'm living with which answered a lot of my questions about what the fuck is wrong with social services up here. That's a different, and immeasurably long, post. All this to say, I spent the evening learning some very valuable information about Nunavut, and now at the end of the day, my I-learned-a-new-skill buzz has been mellowed and fortified by an I-understand-some-importnat-things-a-little-better glow.

I'm starting to understand why people fall in love with this place.

I'm not going to dig into this...

2009-07-09T22:14:00.002-04:00

... but in short, why is an anti-choice group being given a public platform to slam the Pride parade? If the goal is to protect fetal life, shouldn't they theoretically be embracing the queer community?

Gayness is a great way to prevent pregnancy. Just sayin'. Makes you wonder what the goal is then, huh?

The start of summer

2009-07-04T20:54:00.009-04:00

The boss has helpfully informed me that we are in the tiny, tiny window of the year in which the weather is nice enough to be outside without a jacket but the bugs haven't arrived yet - and, even more helpfully, that they will be arriving any minute so whatever business I have with the outdoors I should take care of this weekend.

Today we got a full 12 degrees above zero and a whole day of cloudless sunshine. I took a walk over to Apex, a sister town about a kilometer outside Iqaluit, and down to the rocky beach on the other side. I have to say, as much as I love living in a city like Toronto - and I can't imagine myself being happy living any other way at the moment - it really is great to get out of it for a while. It's easy to imagine the air out here pulling the tar up out of my lungs.

It's getting green here, and there are odds and ends ground-cover flowers growing up out of the rock base. With the waters moving and the bay ice shoving off the beaches in shards, it's starting to get downright pretty up here.

This was taken looking out at the bay from the bridge into Apex. Iqaluit is up and on the other side of the hill on the right, and Apex spreads off to the left.

Some of the original Hudson's Bay Company buildings are still there. I think I remember someone telling me that this is the oldest one in Canada. The fine print on the front lists the date of incorporation as 1670.

As I mentioned, the ice is breaking up. That black dot on the upper-right-hand side of this photo is actually an Ice Breaker. There are two making their way around the bay right now. They don't even look like they're moving, but they must be (for example, they weren't here two days ago).

I went down to the beach for a while to check out the ice. You don't get a good sense of the size from this photo because I couldn't find anything to put in the frame for scale, but each of the blocks is about 2ft tall; those chunks that stick up are a little shorter than I am.

Pretty cool, right?

I'm bringing back my hiking boots in July.

Indexed

2009-06-28T14:52:00.002-04:00

Concept from.

Paternalism and prevention

2009-06-24T08:32:00.004-04:00

This appalling story comes via the Globe and Mail: medical supplies were withheld from Manitoba reserves while health officials debated the risks of sending alcohol-based hand sanitizer into the fly-in communities.

It's easy to make fun of the public work-up about H1N1, but in some places it really has reached the level of a pandemic; Northern provincial and Southern territorial reserves host the largest outbreaks in the country and some of the fastest transmission rates. The flu is travelling in Nunavut, and here as elsewhere it has been happening predominantly in the fly-in communities (although that description catches Iqaluit too - and there have been a few cases here).

No matter how you spin it, this delay should never have happened.

Alcoholism and other addictions tend to be major problems on reserves, but this is true of lots of other identifiable, easy-to-target communities in Canada. I don't think Health Canada would have hesitated to send these supplies into non-reserve Northern Ontario towns, or Vancouver's East side.

There are major problems with alcohol and drug abuse in urban centers too, but none of the provisions that I have found in the Canadian Pandemic Influenza Plan make any reference to limiting access to sanitizer to people with past or current problems with alcohol. If this is a legitimate concern - theoretically - then shouldn't Health Canada be as worried about non-reserve alcoholics as they are about alcoholics living on reserve? As a potential future white, urban alcoholic, I resent that!

Furthermore, this would not be the first time people living on these reserves were ever exposed to hand sanitizer. It's available in drug stores, and lots of people there probably use it. Anyone who was ever going to abuse it has already had ample opportunity, although I continue to think that most people - even First Nations people! - have the good sense to understand that drinking hand sanitizer is dangerous.

There is an Annex to the Canadian Pandemic Influenza Plan that deals specifically with First Nations reserves. It's here. I've skimmed it, and while it recommends in a couple of provisions that hand sanitizer be used, it does not contemplate complications arising from potential abuse. If concerns over abuse were based on good evidence from Health Canada, this issue would have been worked into the Plan. It's not.

Which signals, to me, that this is no more than paternalistic hand-wringing of the kind that so often plagues public health debates. These debates almost always have a racial/class-based dimension, which is only more explicit here. The same issues, manifested differently, arise in arguments about everything from condom distribution to public funding of methodone clinics.

But let's be cold-hearted about this. Let's permit the assumption that white and urban people understand the subtleties of hand sanitizer in a way that Canadian Aboriginal people don't. Let's take the human factor out and look at the numbers. Sure.

In the time these supplies weren't being sent out to communities, "dozens" (says the article) of Aboriginals got sick enough that they needed to be flown into more urban centres for hospitalization. At one point, the article notes, "two thirds of all flu victims on respirators in the province were aboriginal." So for all those people, the province of Manitoba flew them in for hospital treatment and has supported elaborate medical care for them, when prevention measures would have cost no more than a few dollars per person. Even if, theoretically, a small number of people got sick as a result of ingesting the sanitizer, I doubt this would approximate the financial or human cost of all these flu victims in either frequency or severity.

And this is why the paternalistic approach to public health fails and the harm reduction approach wins. Help people get what they need to protect themselves, and they will.

So. What's the stupid to evil ratio on this? I'll go with 50-50 - half ignorance, half indifference.

At least the G&M had the good sense to disable comments.

The locals are understandably excited

2009-06-23T10:02:00.003-04:00

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/tim-hortons-sets-sights-on-nunavut/article1192894/

I look forward to purchasing cucumber and tomato sandwiches for $12.

Show'n'tell'n'whatever

2009-06-04T23:23:00.004-04:00

Oh, alright. Here are some photos I took the day I arrived.

In sequence:

1. My house. Kitchen and living room on top floor with walk-out; my bedroom window is the bottom-left.

2. The view of town from my porch (I live on the edge of the city, at the top of the ridge above the bay).

3. The bay as seen from my yard.

4. A good approximation of how dark it gets at night. I think this photo was taken at about 1am.

Blogging is fun! Don't skip the serious post below.

Intro

2009-06-03T21:17:00.005-04:00

In Iqaluit, I live in a red house at the top of a hill. On the inside of my window is a modern, well-kept space with nice hardwood and a big kitchen; on the outside is Frobisher Bay, which will thaw over the next few weeks. On the other side of that are rolling hills still covered in ice and a smoky horizon that never blows clear.

In Iqaluit, I have my first legal job. I wear jeans and converse sneakers in the office and spend my days reading about aboriginal law and environmental regulation in the Canadian arctic. I feel very much like myself, only less inclined to complain about law school.

Except that I'm already leading you astray. Inuit are not aboriginals, for one thing, and aboriginal law does not apply to them. Their history is entirely different; no 18th-century collaborations with European settlers, no treaties made under duress in the 1800's, no reserves. While Inuit were classified as Indians for the purposes of the Indian Act and Aboriginal for the purposes of the Charter's s. 25 Aboriginal rights (and, over the years, pretty much whatever else they had to be classified as for federal development, military, and mining to go ahead unimpeded), in 1993 the Inuit of the area now called Nunavut voted to permanently exchange the majority of their legal entitlements (including all coverage under the Indian Act) for the provisions set out in the Nunavut Land Claims Agreement, a treaty negotiated over a decade by the Tunngavik Federation of Nunavut (on behalf of Inuit) and the federal government of Canada, which has found the NLCA rather hexing ever since.

That, it seems, is where I come in. The government committed itself to some pretty remarkable things (which, to be fair, were bought at a high price in a gesture of trust on behalf of Inuit that I can't quite wrap my head around). Some of those things have worked out better than others. Most major areas of governance in Nunavut are now subject to shared jurisdiction, with sovereignty by and large resting with a large network of joint Inuit/federal-government tribunals. If you like acronyms, this is the place for you. A little forbidding to the uninitiated. I'm starting to get my bearings.

In addition to this completely novel model of governance (which I will discuss at length with interested poli sci nerds), the government of Canada agreed to a few other things. One of them is to bring the representative levels of Inuit in government jobs in line with representative levels in the territory - 85% of the general population - across all types and levels of employment (Article 23 of the NLCA). Given that 41% of Inuit have not completed the eighth grade, one wonders what the crap our Dear Leaders could possibly have been thinking.

But here's the great part: they really have bitten off more than they can chew. What can you do, when you're committed by law to constitute 85% of your workforce from a broadly dispersed workforce that hasn't broadly adopted traditional education? You can do three things:

(1) Re-examine every position you have, question whether the educational and experiental 'qualifications' you've listed are really necessary, and strip all requirements down to their most basic parts;

(2) Create an entire system of targeted training, recruitment, on-the-job education, and innovative, flexible post-secondary schooling; and

(3) Look at other barriers that prevent your key demographic from taking the jobs you want them to take, and introduce specific flexibility measures that will allow them to live out their values while still getting the job done (eg. flex hours to accomodate family and elder care, and employee assistance program that is culturally appropriate enough to actually be helpful).

The federal government is trying to do all three. As a result, from what appears to be nothing more than a commitment to affirmative-action, Nunavut is getting a major boost in infrastructure, community support, and innovative education. Solid!

Of course, how well this all gets implemented depends on lots of things - in a very minor way, I'm one of them. Still, pretty cool.

--------------

Nunavut is really big. Like, really big. Like 2, 093, 000 km2 - roughly the size of Western and Southwestern Europe taken together (if you use the UN's definition). It's population is 31, 550. That works out to 0.015/km2 in terms of population density - or one person for every 67 km2. That means if the population of Nunavut was evenly distributed across the territory, each person would have a plot of land 20% larger than Manhattan.

The city of Iqaluit is on a small hill - like in Montreal, you're always walking uphill or downhill. People are beyond friendly - I've had 3 invitations to dinner from complete strangers, each of whom has insisted that that's normal here. I'm saving them for the weekends which I think might get a bit lonely otherwise. I'm alone in the house for another week and a bit until the owners return - a young couple with a three-year-old daughter who seem really great.

The roads are paved but the sides are sand and scree. Already a lot has melted since the day I arrived - even the hills across the bay are showing bare land. There is long grass everywhere but there are no trees. CanLit scholars, think A.J.M. Smith's nature scenes and Al Purdy's frontier towns. For a sense of what's been on my mind, think P.K. Page's "Stories of Snow."

There's more - there's always more - but I'll save it for later.

Let me know how you are.

I am so effing good at packing

2009-05-31T03:32:00.003-04:00

Non-exhaustive list of items currently in my luggage:

- work suit

- workout suit

- winter pyjama suit

- winter coat (full-length wool)

- winter boots

- business-lady boots

- converse sneakers

- 8 DVDs

- 6 books

- 2 jeans

- infinity shirts

- box mini wheats

- bag pasta

- pack of mushrooms

- 12 packets oatmeal

- a green pepper

- a red pepper

- 2 bags rice (brown basmati, jasmine)

- 1 lb carrots

- 700g coffee in a tupperware

- half-eaten brick of asiago

- 1.14 L Crown Royale

Giddy up.

May school math

2009-05-20T11:25:00.002-04:00

Good weather + good job - good marks + good man - good sleep + good friends = a good life.

On the road again

2009-05-18T08:57:00.002-04:00

Well, I'm moving to Nunavut for the summer.

Through a long and bizarre series of events which concluded a long and bizarre year, I've been hired by the Department of Justice and the public prosecution service in Iqaluit, Nunavut for the next few months. I'm very, very excited about this. I've wanted to see and learn more about the Canadian North for a while now, and this gives me a really great way to do that.

It's also been a fucked up year and I'm getting a little stir-crazy. I had been thinking over the last few months how great it would be to have an experience this summer rather than just a job - I miss the challenges of travel and the different ways of learning and being that happen in that context. So now it looks like I'll be doing some experiencing again, and that's feeling pretty good. I got in the habit of telling people I wasn't looking for a legal job this summer (which I meant at the time), and that my plan was to spend this summer working a normal job and "being a person again for a little while." I feel like this is the best of both worlds.

All this to say, I'll be living in a 5-bedroom house on the coast of Baffin Island, probably by myself but with fairly good internet.

All of *that* to say, I expect to be travel-blogging in here again.

Stay tuned.

Law Student State of the Union

2009-03-01T13:46:00.003-05:00

It's not that I've lost interest in this blog - that's not it at all.

It's just that... well, the post title says it all. Somehow being a law student has completely taken over my time, attention, and identity. I find this disturbing and uncomfortable, especially since I'm not sure I like law school. More specifically, I strongly dislike it in most ways.

I think later in life I will look back on this as That Time I Felt Confused For A Whole Year.

See you in June?

The difference, sometimes, between professional and amateur commentary

2008-11-26T20:23:00.002-05:00

Pearl Eliadis, writing for Maisonneuve, single-handedly reminds the world of why, delights of the blogosphere notwithstanding, it's so important to have a professional class of journalists.

Here she is with the absolute final word on the Macleans/CHRC issue, and why we should take media controversy-baiting very seriously.

AND she's a human rights attorney. Be still, my beating heart.

On Dalton McGuinty and gradual adulthood

2008-11-19T11:22:00.004-05:00

Impudent Strumpet has a post up about this stunner from Dalton McGuinty:

"Perhaps the most precious thing we have in society is our children, and that includes our older children," McGuinty said.
"We owe it to our kids to take the kinds of measures that ensure that they will grow up safe and sound and secure, and if that means a modest restriction on their freedoms until they reach the age of 22, then as a dad, I'm more than prepared to do that."

Essentially, the McGuinty Liberals have proposed a law that would place a number of further restrictions on drivers under the age of 22, including a blood alcohol limit of 0 and, for 16-19-year olds, a ban on having more than one teen passenger in the car at a time. New, special consequences for breaking driving regulations would also be introduced (including a 30-day license suspension for teens caught in their first instance of speeding, and growing more severe with each subsequent instance).

All of which seems appropriate and reasonable, unless you've been under the age of 22 recently, are related to someone who's been under the age of 22 recently, and/or think about it for half a second.

The article points out a few obvious issues, including the idea that 3 bone-dry 19-year olds (read: legal adults) couldn't share a ride to the movies (or church, or work). It points out that this means a group of 19-year olds, perhaps during their first year of college, would need to find twice as many cars and twice as many designated drivers every weekend, which can already be a difficult process.

I have a few more.

A 30-day license suspension for speeding. Let's think about that.

I'm one of 3 siblings in my family, all of whom are drivers, and two of whom, at 18 and 19, are both teens and legal adults. In the summers, when we're all at home, that's 5 adults trying to get to their 5 jobs (6 jobs, back when I had two), at least two of which are shift work, using two or three cars. That involves a hell of a lot of co-ordination, and a hell of a lot of dropping off and picking up and planning every evening. If any one of us had our license suspended for a month, that would be a huge deal. It's more than an inconvenience - it makes getting to work for whoever lost their license all but unfeasible. My 19-year old brother works a 45-minute drive away, in the opposite direction the rest of us go. No one could drop him off and pick him up every day.

And you know what? I worked all through high school, too, and volunteered and had a social life, and it wouldn't have been any better then.

It sort of seems like the more responsibilities you have, the worse this provision is for you. If all you do is go to the movies with friends, I guess you can probably work around a suspended license. The people who are most vulnerable here are those who do more - who commute to college or university from home, who work, who volunteer, who are helping take care of family members they don't live with, etc etc. That's right, young people do these things.

I suppose the argument is that this should be added incentive on my mature, responsible (and, I'll say again, legal adult of a) brother not to speed.

Again, let's think that through. The flow of traffic, at any given time, is generally speeding by a little bit. Like many Canadians, I took Young Driver's, back in the day, and they specifically teach their students to go with the flow of traffic, even if it is a little over the speed limit, because that's the safer option. Under these new laws, by doing what I was taught in driver's ed, I'm putting myself at risk of a suspended license.

And don't anybody point out that no one gets tickets for going 5km over the limit. We all know someone who's been nailed for 5-10.

I think the root problem here is that a lot of people generally don't perceive young adults as having the same needs as 'full adults' (which I apparently became on Jan 8, 2007). There's a reason why 'full adults' need to seriously fuck up before they lose their license* - adults need to be able to drive. They need to get to their jobs, shuttle their families around, etc. A lot of people don't really buy the idea that young adults need these things, too. They're wrong. Anyone who's had to finance any part of their post-secondary education will understand how catastrophic it would be to lose a month (or a summer) of work because you were caught doing 115 on the QEW. Young people need this autonomy in a very real way.

Impudent Strumpet, I think, hits the nail on the head when she raises this point:

I'm a horrible, nervous, skittish driver who hasn't been behind the wheel in a decade (aren't you glad?). I didn't finish graduated licensing within the allotted five years, but I have a G1 to use as ID. I also happen to be 27 years old. Under these proposed rules, I could go to one of those crammer driving schools that promises to get you through the road test in 24 hours, pass my G1 exit test and get a G2, and drive around with as many screaming idiots as I can fit in the car. However, a fully-licensed 21-year-old who's been driving every day since they were 16 (and who is, in fact, qualified to be my accompanying driver as I frantically practice for the road test) can't road-trip to the cottage or drive their whole band to the gig in the same van.

This is discrimination against youth.

McGuinty is not suggesting adding extra qualifications to graduated licensing - he's not saying, "Let's add another step where new drivers, for the first 5 years that they're on the road, can't have any alcohol in their blood at all, can't have more than one passenger, and will face heightened penalties if they mess up." He's saying youth**.

When unclear, I endorse the age equivalency test: what other legal rights and obligations do people of x age have?

Age 18: You can vote, go to war, become a sex worker, whatever sex you like with whoever you please, get married, be tried for your crimes in adult court, and receive an adult sentence.

But having two of your friends in the car with you while driving is, according to McGuinty, too much responsibility.

Oh, I see.

*Demonstrative sidenote from my Criminal Law class: driving more than 50km over the speed limit can get anyone's license suspended for a full year. Yet some people, when charged as such, will actually try to plead up to a higher-level offence like careless driving or dangerous driving as a summary offence which can yield a huge fine ($1000-2000) but has no suspended license provision. That's because having no license sucks, for most people.
**Interesting how he's arguing for harsher penalties for young people where generally the law thinks young people shouldn't be penalized to the extent that adults are. Cops used to scare the shit out of me when I was younger - now, not so much.

The very early morning of Nov 5, 2008

2008-11-05T04:48:00.003-05:00

It's almost 5am, I'm still awake from last night, and I'm wired.

It's a tense, artificial energy I'm familiar with, which always arrives around this time at the end of a long night.

I watched the election tonight with some friends, had a few drinks, didn't touch my assignment for tomorrow. I felt something lean and strong inside me pull taut as the evening progressed, and stopped worrying about getting it done; my nerves have carried me through far harder nights.

We watched CNN without flipping. We joked about their holograms, ogled Anderson Cooper, and coloured in a map of the US red and blue as the states were called. We made rude jokes.

At the same time, as that old something pulled taut inside me, it became harder and harder to ignore how much I had invested in this election - not only in the man I've never met but have a guilty trust in, but in the process that's unfolded over the last two years and in something even larger than that. That taut solid something could feel my eyes flickering across the screen, cracking my wrists and pulling at my fingers as I watched the numbers and, more importantly, listened to what was being said.

My search for decency in the human race is all-consuming. It is happening at every moment of my day. Every gesture of respect and compassion, from a nod between strangers to much larger sacrifices, gets tucked away and archived as evidence that the faith which sustains me is not a foolish one. My most fundamental faith is that, given two options or positions argued with equal skill, people will generally choose the more decent of the two. At moments like tonight, I realize how fragile and edifying that faith is, and how much it sometimes takes to maintain.

I think this is where my attraction to Obama comes from. His rhetorical gift (and maybe his political gift generally) is in reconnecting us with our place in the larger picture - of a community, a society, a moment in history. And reconnecting Americans with their finer selves. I guess I see in his approach to politics (or at least to this campaign) a mirror of my fundamental faith: that whenever it makes sense to do so, people will be higher, better, good.

I cheered when CNN called it for Obama. I teared up a bit. But I realized - after McCain's speech, which seemed so dignified after the last few weeks, after thinking of Obama's grandmother who missed this moment by only a single day, after seeing Jesse Jackson crying in the crowd - that for all the validation, the relief, the release of tension and the renewal, this moment was bittersweet.

We saw tonight the realization of dreams which were long overdue, hard-earned, and glorious in the truest sense of the word. But to be honest, to be selfish, I need to admit that around 11.30 I suddenly wanted to see Hillary Rodham-Clinton... badly.

I was really surprised to be having that reaction. I had a hard time getting too excited about Clinton during the primaries - too centrist, I guess, too 'establishment,' and of course a little resistence to the idea that I ought to support her for her femaleness - although I had no trouble getting worked up about the sexist bullshit heaped upon her. But god damn. God damn.

Some day I will get to feel what Jesse Jackson felt tonight. But not today - and possibly not for a long time yet.

I was moved when Obama came out with his family. I was choked up through the first part of his speech - choked up and reminded that there's a very, very good reason why this man won. He had no real reason to include Clinton in his acknowledgements, but I couldn't help wanting to hear her name. It didn't come.

Obama's acceptance speech was probably the most memorable public address I've ever heard. By "waited for hours," by "gay and straight, disabled and not disabled," by the time we were putting our hands on the arc of history and bending it towards a better day, my mind was blown. I laugh-sobbed at Sasha and Malia's puppy.

Mostly, though, this speech was remarkable for the things it put to rest. I have cringed, at times, at the way Obama rhetorically collapses his own electoral victory with the accomplishment of the "change we need" idea, especially when he links his own fortunes to those of the voters and his campaign volunteers. Tonight, somehow, the next step happened: he rolled that momentum seamlessly, self-evidently, into the idea that what began 21 months ago in the depths of winter cannot end on this autumn night; that what's been earned is not a victory but an opportunity; that the spirit of service is renewed not concluded tonight.

That this man will seek to belong even to those whose faith he hasn't yet earned.

Needless to say, by the time he got to Ann Nixon Cooper, the bittersweetness was gone. A good friend who I spoke to afterwards said it felt like watching the moon landing, and that's exactly correct. I caught myself mouthing "yes we can," I nodded and shook my head at the New Deal and the buses in Birmingham.

But it was a shot of a black woman nodding along in the crowd that made me break down and cry.

Smug Grammarian Joke Alert!

2008-11-03T13:10:00.006-05:00

... "Syntactic Time Travel" Edition!

Rupert Murdoch, after FOX called the election for McCain today:

"While Obama has run a strong campaign, what we have seen is that Americans have made a choice against socialist extremism and have voted overwhelmingly for McCain this coming Tuesday," said Murdoch. "We have always been correct when calling the winners of Presidential elections and we strongly urge Obama to concede prior to Tuesday to ensure that his supporters don't go to polling places and eventually riot. Obama must do what's good for the nation and concede."

Via.

(Cf.)

Because you need to know

2008-10-18T17:37:00.002-04:00

I love this man:

Viral Video Film School: Local Commercials
Campaign Update: 10/17/08
Viral Video Film School: Dorm Room Tours

And I love this woman:

Target Women: Birth Control
Target Women: Wedding Shows
Target Women: Yogurt Edition

(Free cross-over bonus: Target Women: Sarah Palin)

Trust me, you'll end up watching all of these.

InfoManiacally yours,

M. "The Hammer"

Random CanLit news spotting?

2008-10-01T18:37:00.003-04:00

Maybe I'm crazy, but what are the odds that the Marilyn Dumont in this story, who was told by her landlord that she'd be evicted unless she took down the partisan campaign sign she had on the property, is in fact Marilyn Dumont the formidable author of A Really Good Brown Girl and That Tongued Belonging? She's from the area of Alberta they discuss in the article. The Kegedonce website says in 2007 she was finishing up an MFA at UBC - she could easily be done that by now. I can't seem to find any updated information on where she is these days.

Anyone know?

Also, hey, go read some Dumont!

Just kidding

2008-09-30T22:23:00.002-04:00

The interview is actually this week, not last week. All other details still relevant.

I don't think it will be a call-in, only because I'm so painfully inexperienced at radio hosting that the idea of adding random phone calls into the mix makes me gulp with dread.

I've been doing some research and noticing that there are some pretty serious problems with, in fact, all of the parties' statements on the subject of arts funding. Some are wronger than others, as usual, but nobody seems to be in command of a terribly detailed understanding of how the whole thing works. Should be a good conversation.

Wish me luck!

Witness the birth of a Canadian pundit!

2008-09-22T17:14:00.003-04:00

This Friday at 1.30pm, yours truly will be grilling one Hawskley Workman on the Canadian issues of the day. Tune into CFRE to hear it live here.

Will he answer in freestyle poetry? Will the Canada Council receive the airtime it deserves? Will I resist the urge to crawl into his lap?

STAY TUNED

For too long, the serfs have diluted the vote of our great nation's landed gentry

2008-09-11T18:58:00.002-04:00

Man, what a dick:

"We will have a list of foreclosed homes and will make sure people aren’t voting from those addresses,” party chairman James Carabelli told Michigan Messenger in a telephone interview earlier this week. He said the local party wanted to make sure that proper electoral procedures were followed.

State election rules allow parties to assign “election challengers” to polls to monitor the election. In addition to observing the poll workers, these volunteers can challenge the eligibility of any voter provided they “have a good reason to believe” that the person is not eligible to vote. One allowable reason is that the person is not a “true resident of the city or township."

That's from this article, via Bitch Ph.D. Seriously, GOP, now you're just being assholes.

What's the relevance to Canada? Well, as far as I can tell, Harper's already borrowing pretty heavily from this party's playbook (in his very first speech after calling the election, he tried to dub Stephane Dion "Professor Dion,"* who presumably also eats arugula).

I'm not suggesting the Conservatives would pull any of this crap. I'm just saying, let's all stay very clear about the reasons why it's so important not to tolerate politicians doing the sneaky bullshit some of them do: because that slope slides, baby, oh it slides.

*Least successful meme ever.

A new study on young women and sexual violence, and some thoughts on language

2008-09-10T19:24:00.006-04:00

This repor t, by ChildTrends.org, is incredibly upsetting, but hardly news to those of us who have some familiarity, either personally or professionally, with sexual assault. While conservative statistics about rates of incidence of rape tend to put the figure at around 1 in 6 (North American women, at some time in their lives), I think it's becoming increasingly clear that, to get a real feel for how many women have experienced sexual abuse in their lives, the terms need to be broadened. This new study suggests that 18% of women aged 18 to 24 have had forced sexual intercourse. That's more like 1 in 5, by around the time most of us are finishing college or getting our first "real" job.

Which has got me thinking (again) about the role of language in how we talk about sexual violence, and about our experiences more generally.

There's a reason we say "sexual assault" and not "rape," why we say "survivor" and not "victim" or "accuser," and why we let women tell us when it was rape and when it wasn't, rather than us telling them. This is all Sexual Assault 101.

But in this specific context (meaning a blog generally, and a personal-politics blog more specifically), I think there's something else going on.

A few days ago, my dad and I got into a very heated conversation about the American election. At the end of a long series of frustrating back-and-forths, he informed me that Michelle Obama is going to cost Barack the election, because she's just so *aggressive*. "I heard her speech at the DNC, and I couldn't believe how aggressive it was."

I had kept my cool through the conversation until this point - through accusations that I was relentlessly partisan, that I had a personal vendetta against Palin, that the idea that Palin was anti-woman was laughable, that McCain's POW status prevented all criticisms of his foreign policy approach - and then I flipped my shit. With tears in my eyes and no embarassment, I told him that when you hurl a word like "aggressive" at a woman like Michelle Obama, you're hurling it at all of us. Us. Us. Me. Me as a professional-to-be. That word tears down my future. Mine.

And then I realized I should have been saying this all along.

Sometimes objectivity is necessary and helpful. Sometimes it's the only path to the truth. And sometimes it's not.

This isn't a newspaper, or CNN, and I'm not a politician. When I talk on this blog, or with people in my own life, I have no professional obligations to be neutral. I'm not campaigning, trying to win people over to my side with diplomacy. I have no obligation to be neutral when I have something at stake, or to try to make myself seem rational by going out of my way to grant points to the other side, even when they make me wince.

My attempts at objectivity, at not taking things personally or getting emotional, enabled my dad to treat the misogynistic language of this election as a purely academic issue. I enabled that with him, as I have in many other conversations. That might be a disservice to him, but it's definitely a disservice to me. I, and women in general, are not a theoretical concept. Once I teared up and said my bit, he refused to continue the discussion "if I was going to get all emotional about it." The truth is, I wanted him to see the emotion. I didn't want him to have the luxury of treating sexism as a purely rhetorical problem, when we are living it. I wanted to break him out of those habits of thought and into my world. It's not that he doesn't care, he's just never had it made real in this way by someone he loves.

Which is why I'm rethinking the way I talk about women's issues on this blog and in general. Let me take one more stab at introducing that new Child Trends.

By the time we are 25 years old, 1 in 5 of us will have experienced forced intercourse.

Because it's us that I really want to talk about.

(h/t to Feministing.)

Briefly

2008-08-24T18:44:00.003-04:00

Over the summer I've been keeping an eye on TheCourt.ca, the student blog of my new school, and although it's a little spotty, I wanted to pass along this awesome smackdown of the Canada Family Action Coalition's complaint to the Canadian Judicial Council. They're upset about Beverly McLachlin's approval of Dr. Henry Morgentaler's admission to the Order of Canada.

Extra timely in light of the two big legal sneak attacks on women's health this year, bill C-527 (link: We Move to Canada) and C-484 (Antonia Zerbisias for the Toronto Star).

I predict that the fall semester ends with me buying Christopher Bird a beer... and doing a formal "What's the evil to stupid ratio on this?" for legal action over reproduction in the last year.

Better late than never (for a principled stand)

2008-07-29T12:00:00.003-04:00

Apparently I'm the last person in the world to discover Common Dreams.

I stumbled onto it following this link on why one of my favourite bloggers, L-girl of We Move to Canada (linked at right), won't be watching the Olympics this year. There's been a lot of discussion about the benefits, drawbacks, and justification (or lack thereof) for a boycott of the Games: does the West have a right to throw stones? is it a good thing that the world will be taking a good look at China at this crucial moment? will a boycott only, in the end, hurt our own athletes and China's poor? Of course in each conversation you get the inevitable mix of quackery, non-sequiturs, and concern trolling.

The title story on Common Dreams today, "China Using Olympics as 'Pretext' for Crackdown: Amnesty," corroborates the worst of our suspicions about what's going on over there, and provides as good an occasion as any to share one of my many Stories From When I Was In India to explain why I will be joining whole-heartedly in the boycott - and why you all should, too.

When I Was In India, I met lots of other people who were away on Big Trips - many of which were much bigger than mine. One of the most interesting people was a Canadian woman in her mid-20's who I met in Dharamsala. She was on her second year-long trip through Asia. On her first trip, she'd come through China, among other countries, and when I met her, she was still debating whether or not she was going to return on this trip.

Her family was Chinese by background, and she spoke a little bit of Cantonese. We talked a lot about where we'd been - and she'd been everywhere - but she had a bit of trouble speaking clearly about her time in China. All her sentences seemed to U-turn mid-way, veering from rants about the poverty to rhapsody about the quiet generosity of the people she met, and then from romantic descriptions of the coast to terse protests against the uselessness of the newspapers. She sounded like she was scanning her own comments, maybe her own feelings, for the exact wording that would leave me with an accurate impression of her time there without falling into any of the many pits that we all tend to fall into when talking and thinking about China.

The last story she told me was this one.

She was on a train somewhere in the interior - I forget which province. It was packed. About an hour before she was supposed to be getting off, she looked in her bag and noticed that her iPod was gone. She reported the loss to a railroad employee in the car, who told her to sit still for a moment and disappeared into the front of the train. The conducter stopped the train in the middle of nowhere. A few minutes later, the conducter and the man she's approached for help climbed into her car and began searching people. They were doing a sweep of the entire train, looking for her missing iPod. In the car behind her, they found it. The rail employee returned it to her and told her the situation was being taken care of. Out her window, she saw the conductor pulling a young man away from the train. He was bleeding heavily from his face but was still struggling. Two other men in rail uniforms followed. One of them pulled out a gun and shot the man point-blank in the head. They left his body there, and the train kept moving.

When she told me this story, I was so shocked that I didn't ask her any questions. She said she almost ended her trip after that, even though she was only a few months in. But she felt like she couldn't leave.

I have no framework for thinking about what it must be like to live in a place where the state has that kind of power, or where one word from a foreigner can (unintentionally) get a man killed. I don't ever want to need a framework for that.

I know this story is undocumented, and that anyone reading it is automatically hearing it at least two times removed from its original source. It's anecdotal and unverifiable. But I remember so clearly what she looked like while telling this story - this petite Canadian girl who had no reason to lie to me.

I do think that some folks are onto something when they point out that the attention China is getting over the Games has the potential to help the Chinese people. A huge part of that will be education (at least of the West, most of which hasn't been following China too closely until the last few years) about what's going on.

On the 8th, my TV gets turned off. I hope yours will, too.

Pretty sure that's illegal

2008-07-29T11:31:00.005-04:00

I'm apartment-hunting in Toronto. I just had a landlord tell me over the phone that he wouldn't allow me to come view an apartment because I was living with three girls, and he wanted at least half of the tenants to be guys.

This was the place.

Fuck you, guy. Seriously. Just fuck right off.

Who wants to help me find out who to complain to?

My love-circus includes some hesitations

2008-07-25T19:34:00.008-04:00

I can't tell you how strange it is to suddenly see "The X-Files" everywhere.

I was a serious fan of the show back when it was still on the air and I was still just a pup (I was only 16 when the show ended, and 14 or 15 when I stopped watching). A year and a half ago, for reasons that were mostly about procrastination , I started rewatching old seasons after not having thought about them for years. Nabokov said that only the rereading counts,* and he was right.

In short, I was surprised how easy it was to come back to the series - and how rewarding. I became a casual viewer around the age of 9 or 10 and an afficionado by 12. The 22-year old me

Rebecca Traister owns up to her fandom and has mini-essay up about Dana Scully, crush object. Feministing Community member Starzki6 has a list of reasons why the character was great (both via).

Although I agree whole-heartedly with both articles, especially Traister's (she picks up on the sainthood arc, coins the helpful phrase "walking pheromone," and shares my opinion that Mulder 2008 would be in Guantanamo Bay right now), I'm a little surprised by the unequivocally positive tone of both pieces.

I suppose it's because in rewatching the series, I remembered what I think was my first self-consciously feminist moment - and it was in criticism.

There's an episode in season five called "Kill Switch," and in it, a hardcore-sexy techie named Esther Nairn helps the agents and their bizarro associates (the Lone Gunmen) hunt down a big artificially-intelligent eye in the sky that's trying to blow them all up. Turns out it lives in a trailer, go figure. Scully bristles in Esther's presence to the point of being catty, asking of her, "What was your role in this? Were you the bass player?". With all due respect to Kims Deal and Gordon, D'Arcy Wretzky, and Melissa Auf Der Mar, I remember thinking, "God, that's so typical. They've made her all territorial when other women are around." This feature of Scully's character - who could stare a sociopathic serial killer into the ground if he was a he - wasn't a one-time thing. In "War of the Coprophages," a series hilight, she doesn't give a thought to joining Mulder in person until she finds out Dr. "Her Name Is" Bambi Berenbaum is on the scene. Further examples exist; I'll have mercy on more casual fans by not listing them.

In my 'rereading,' I've found more than that to object to on feminist grounds.

This is the character who I still think of when I consider who I want to be as a professional woman. This is the character who helped me understand that there is sometimes reason in faith and madness in everything. This is the character who lived and thrived at the exact point where chaos intersects with order, who was able to find the infinite possibilities within the natural world both beautiful and horrible, who looked at a world governed by chaos and still saw human responsibility everywhere. I believe in the cosmology of this character, very seriously. She gave me the sense, back then, that some day, I wouldn't need to conceal my intelligence anymore,** and also that if you can run as fast as everyone else and are going to be the most competent person in the room anyway, you might as well wear those 3-inch heels; you go ahead and wear whatever you want.

But so many of the character's flaws were heavily steeped in gender stereotypes.

For one, she had a Daddy complex. I'm not referring to "Beyond the Sea," in which her father has just died - that episode is beautiful. I'll even forgive the uncharacteristically teary "Was he ever proud of me?". But he keeps returning, and with each stroke her family life (and its apparent effect on her psykollergy) gets a little more patriarchal - and pathetic. After she returns from being abducted ("One Breath"), at the moment she's closest to death, she has a totally non-sequitur vision of her father saying a bunch of crap that has nothing to do with anything except to present the possibility - assumption? - that the only reason she's thinking of letting go is that she wants to be back with him: "We'll be together again, Starbuck, but not now." No mention of anything she might have unresolved in her life, just a monologue about his feelings for her and then that.

And while I usually wouldn't dignify season seven with a reference, the episode "En Ami" has the single most cringe-worthy moment of the whole series, bar none, which completely reaffirms what I'm talking about here. You know it's bad because in the scene before, her building attendant provides totally unprovoked and irrelevant praise: "She's a great girl - independent as they come, you know, but a great girl." Nevermind what that "but" is doing there, we have a Smoking Man quote to get to.

And I quote:

"You're drawn to powerful men but you fear their power. You keep your guard up, a wall around your heart. How else do you explain that fearless devotion to a man obsessed, and, yet, a life alone? You'd die for Mulder but you won't allow yourself to love him."

Throw in the fact that her brother hates her boyfriend (yah yah, he's not her boyfriend, blah blah blargh) and that putting the star at the top of the Christmas tree is "man's work," and I rest my case.

Other than the Daddy complex, my major complaint about the way the character is written regards those few cases when she does start acting irrationally - and all of them, to a one, are about woman-stuff.

In season four's "Never Again," she begins to wonder if she's being held back by everything she's compromised for Mulder (the premise is appropriate and right), but explores it by maybe-sleeping-with a creep she meets during an investigation and getting a tattoo. Bad girl! (/sarcasm.) The episode ends by showing how much Mulder takes her for granted, but the writers just don't seem to be giving her any more credit than he does. She was always good with kids, right from season one, but after she finds out her cancer has left her infertile and her (suddenly found) daughter dies, the writers played up the children-make-me-vulnerable-and-a-little-over-emotional dynamic way more than was necessary to give the character depth and indicate that the loss of Emily was formative and profound: on the contrary, it was just about drama. Drama that, more often than not, just felt tacky.

I hesitate to even bring up the awfulness that is "Milagro," a season six trainwreck. But I will because it confirms my suspicions about the writers' discomfort with the character's personal side, and helps show the ways I think they did her wrong. I admit that consistent characterization had been all but thrown out the window by this point, but come on. A guy who claims he's a writer is stalking Scully. He leers at her nauseatingly in the elevator (the camera participates - we get close-ups of her eyes, her parted lips) and she leaves all aflutter, unnerved but more than a little flattered. He corners her in a church (having deduced from her muscular calves that she jogs and where her route would likely take her) and she flees, scared but turned on. The episode's 'narration,' provided by Stalky McCreeperson, tells us as much: "But if she'd predictably aroused her sly partner's suspicions, Special Agent Dana Scully had herself... become simply aroused. All morning the stranger's unsolicited compliments had played on the dampened strings of her instrument until the middle 'C' of consciousness was struck square and resonant. She was flattered. His words had presented her a pretty picture of herself, quite unlike the practiced mask of uprightness that mirrored back to her from the medical examiners and the investigators and all the lawmen who dared no such utterances."

Yes, Stalky McCreeperson, please, give me what all professional women want: break through my shoddy respect-wanting veneer and mumble inferior, mock-poetic prose about how much you know you turn me on. Give me a "pretty picture of myself," preferably one you painted, because the real one - the one that I call my life - is just so, you know, unsexy. And definitely move into the apartment next to my partner's so you can watch me more closely. (That happened.)

Eventually they get ahold of the guy's manuscript. Mulder informs Scully that it ends with her doing a naked pretzel. Let's ignore the fact that this means Mulder actually read the entire, graphic, sexy thing, because that's problematic itself. When Mulder dares point out the obvious - that the guy's a creep, probably dangerous, and in this case, probably responsible for a few deaths, she defends him: "Why couldn't he have just imagined it, like he said? Like Shakespeare or Freud or Jung? I mean, maybe he has a gift and has a clear window into human nature."

I seriously resent being asked to believe that such an awesome character could suddenly dissolve into this desperate-for-attention wreck who wants to believe her stalker is Shakespeare and imagines that people who have "a clear window into human nature" look through it and see that nice, put-together girls like her really just need a little intrusion. How funny that you mention Freud - he had some thoughts on this, incidentally.

I'm left with the sense that so much of what made the character of Scully so loveable for little proto-feminist me came not from the writers but from Anderson. The writers knew how to write Scully the professional but not Scully the woman. Sure, she had epiphanies, but the Big Ones, the ones that seized The Truth with a capital 'T,' whether it's The Truth About Aliens or The Truth About The Teliko, were almost always Mulder's. The show itself so often seemed to take delight in setting Scully up to be wrong, getting the audience to roll their eyes at her, and then shove the truth up in her face in the last five minutes of the episode. But in those same moments of revelation, we see Anderson's Scully, and Traister's:

Mulder's desire to believe was so expansive, his credulity so flexible, that it's not as though he was ever going to have either shaken from him. But Scully's surety was solid, stable, rigid; every time she saw something she thought she'd never see, we saw it crack, sparks fly from it. She was forced to question herself, grow, change. In short, she got the better arc, and her journeys were always, by dint of the setup, more intricate and moving.

Anderson's, and Traister's, and mine.

Of course, in all of these criticisms, I'm asking perfection as if it's a shame to be merely great. I just wish my Scully hadn't been as under-estimated by her writers as by the institutions they sought to villify.

And somehow I've ended up revisiting another tradition I haven't touched in a decade - spending upwards of an hour on a Friday night talking about the X-Files online. Ahjeez.

I'm 15 again, and I'm seeing "The X-Files: I Want to Believe" in 1 day, 23 hours, 36 minutes.

UPDATE: 1 day, 23 hours, 35 minutes.

UPDATE: 1 day, 23 hours, 34 minutes...

NB: All quotes and episode titles taken from Red Wolf.

*Michael Ondaatje agrees with him and uses a nice translation.
**Let's have the discussion about what it means to be a "smart" young girl some other time.

Sneaky activism

2008-07-25T18:22:00.004-04:00

So I've got this job. I work at a fairly large bookstore which I have nothing but contempt for, except for the part where I enjoy the work environment and get to borrow books for free.

And also except for the part where I get to passive-aggressively direct browsers to books I think they should read. The new policy, to get me through the day, is to shelve books that I don't like with only the spines facing out and to turn the ones I do like so that the whole front cover is visible. This practice does comply with proper merchandising procedures... more or less.

So, new add-on feature: "Spined and Fronted."

Spined today:
Wendy Shalit, "Girls Gone Mild."
S. Fred Singer, "Unstoppable Global Warming: Every 1,500 Years."
"Gossip Girls": the entire series.

Fronted:
A bunch of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" books.
Marjane Satrapi, "Persepolis."
Tim Weiner, "Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA." (which I'm still reading and loving)

Been a good day. (See also: below.)

Slate and my literary education at their most useful

2008-07-25T17:40:00.006-04:00

There's something very Shakespearean about the Bush administration, isn't there? 7 solid years of arrogance* and finally we have an outside chance of maybe, just maybe, seeing this story of hubris conclude as all Shakespearean stories of hubris must: with an impeachment. Er, downfall.

Dare we dream? Dare we? It's probably too early to get excited about the judiciary committee agreeing to let Kucinich (glad to see he's keeping busy) and others make their case for holding a full impeachment hearing. Still, I admit, I'm surprised it even got that far. I thought impeachment was just for lying about sex - I didn't realize it could also be used for things like gross breaches of the constitution and lying to the public in order to start wars of aggression (which I think used to be known by another name: treason).

But lest thou, O committee of our hearts
Be phased by the sprawling and unweidly
Dramatis personnae of this long tale,
The team at Slate presents this helpful guide
To who is who and who is on who's side.
On behalf of Canada, may I say
The world is watching, so impeach away.
Only a sucker would let off Gonzales
And you don't want Canada thinking you're ballsless.

Slate's Interactive Guide: Crimes and Misdemeanors. I'm taking this as an apology for not firing Will Saletan.

Iambic pentameter is hard. Leave your Shakespearean plea for impeachment in the comments.

*I'm assuming that this is better classified as a Shakespearean tragedy than a comedy. Of course, at 11pm and 11.30 every Monday through Thursday, I'm reminded otherwise.

In which I claw my way back out of total mental stasis

2008-07-16T17:29:00.004-04:00

Alright.

Things have been a little slow since I've been home. I culture shocked pretty bad for about a week - every time I saw the colour white I was stopped in my tracks. Any street without pedestrians made me feel like I was living in a post-apocalyptic zombie world. For the first few days, I smelled everything - the Toronto airport, Canadian trees, my house, our car, you. Then, after it faded, I was desperate for days at a time to smell anything at all. I slept poorly, waking up in inky silence. One night, in a groggy half-delirium, I woke up thinking I should be able to hear my heartbeat, but there was just silence. I took my pulse at the wrist. Still there. Slid back into sleep, felt silly in the morning - silly, but also empty.

It's been more than a month since I got back and I've spent it unemployed and claustrophobic. I've been to Montreal and Toronto twice each, looking for company and a new home respectively. I've been job-seeking, emailing, sorting photos. I've done a little reading, but less than 200 pages. Mostly, 've been haunting the house feeling increasingly unsettled and useless.

All of which has reminded me that idleness one of the quickest harbingers of poor mental health... at least for me.

A few big things have happened in the last few days. First, I got hired. It's nothing to be of - just a lousy retail gig, actually one I was offered once in high school - but there's a paycheck coming in my near future. There's no emoticon indicating "sigh of relief," is there? I guess that's because 15-year olds rarely contemplate paying law school tuition and Toronto rent without any savings. Kids these days.

I also had my first orientation day at Osgoode, which feels too much like home for me to accept the nickname 'Oz.' Its homeliness is good and bad. I felt sincerely welcomed and inspired by what I heard, but not challenged.* I know without equivocation that I will eat these words over the next few months, but that doesn't stop the feeling now.

I also found my notes for a writing project I had started dreaming about during the months before I left. I still like it, and it still scares me. So, great. Included: a note from a former co-worker in response. "I think you're on to something." You know, I might be.

Perhaps most importantly, while I was in Montreal last weekend I made a pact with a friend. We both tried to think of something that we knew in our minds that we could do if we worked at it, but which seemed completely unimagineable at the moment. We both needed a bit of a kick-start in our lives, and this seemed like the way to do it. She came up with doing a triathlon next summer. I came up with running a marathon.

This, in 2009, is going to be my marathon. I have well over a year to train for it - enough time to prepare if I work at it consistently, not enough time to drag my feet. I have new running shoes and I've started my jogging training plan. I run three times a week for the next 8 weeks when I adjust my schedule based on my fitness level. By that time, my free York U gym membership will have kicked in.

So far I'm excited and feeling good - about everything. In this spirit, I present a new post tag, inspired by my unspeakable love for Simon Pegg: "Run, fatgirl, run."

All this to say, I'm resurrecting this blog. All previous entries from my India trip are now going to be tagged with "India" and archived. I'm hoping to post substantively at least once or twice a week, depending on how school is going. At the moment, I'm bursting with things I want to talk about - mostly the things I always talk about: politics, pop, and progress.

Stay tuned.

*Budgetary challenge not included.

Conclusive India posting

2008-06-09T00:43:00.004-04:00

It's my last day here, I'm checked out of my hotel, and apart from a few errands, I'm just biding my time until I leave for the airport (late this evening).

So, in the meantime a few Best Ofs:

Best attraction (architecture and culture):
- Taj Mahal (especially at sunrise)
(Honorable mention: the Golden Temple in Amritsar_

Best attraction (nature):
- the walk to Bhojbasa and Gomukh
( mention: the Pachmari hike)

Best interaction with the locals:
- Surya in Jaipur

Most appalling moment (nature):
- the army of leeches, Coorg
(Honorable mention: puppies harassing mother dog, also Coorg)

Most appalling moment (human):
- the men in the van, Mysore
(Honorable mention: the insolent rickshaw kid in Hampi)

Most unfortunate sickness:
- E: "My only symptom of _____ is ______."
(Honorable mention: me in the Thar desert, pursued by sheep)

Best liberty taken under the guise of being in India:
- Ali baba pants
(Honorable mention: chai chai chaiya chai)

Stupidest idea:
- the treehouse in Chinnar
(Honorable mention: not wearing my money belt on the plane)

Coolest place we stayed:
- the lodge over the Nepali border with the big clay oven, the first night of our Darjeeling trek

Finest moment in communication across a language barrier:
- The rickshaw driver trying to teach me to skip stones in MAdikeri
(Honorable mention: the richskaw driver in Dehra Dun who, delighted with my broken hindi, took me to meet his wife)

Biggest regret:
- not making it to Varanasi

Most persistent catch phrase:
- "Only one way to find out..."
(Honorable mention: "Eh, what are you gonna do.")

Funniest sexual harassment moment:
- to E. in Jodhpur: "Hello, hey! You! You look like Madonna! Too beautiful!"

Most memorable moment of fear:
- having to provide the name of a husband or father on my police report, first day in Delhi

Most memorable moment of joy:
- watching the stars coming out over the That
(Honorable mention: walking in the mist, first morning in McLeod Ganj)

Best food:
- Gautam's birthday party
(Honorable mention: Hotel Pearl Palace, Jaipur)

Soundtrack to our trip:
- the "RACE" soundtrack

Western cultural artifact I will now always associate with this trip:
- anything by Michael Ondaatje (Anil's Ghost, Running in the Family, or Divisadero)

Most memorable thing said by a travelling-Westerner friend:
- "In 50 years, there will be no more places like this, and it's our luck that we can travel it now. I meet the local people here and say, 'It's the luck of birth.' And they say, 'No, it isn't.'" (man from UK, Pachmari)
(Honorable mention: "No one really cares about McGill." (CDN drug lawyer, Udaipur))

And now you know all my good stories.

Well, not all of them.

See you all soon.

This Post: Now with even less content than the last post!

2008-06-07T05:49:00.003-04:00

It's too hot in Delhi to do anything but sit perfectly still finding things hilarious, which is what makes today the perfect day to discover Slowpoke Comics by Jen Sorensen (now permalinked in my sidebar, along with a few other ways to spend more time with your computer than you do with your friends).

It's day three of five for me in this stifling city, and I'm bored out of my mind. I've done some shopping, but as I mentioned, all those narrow, windless stalls aren't very inviting in this heat. Neither is the cramped and sun-blasted bazaar. I have planned a nice final day, though, which I'm saving for Monday - get checked out of my hotel in the morning, whatever last-minute buying I need to do in Pahar Ganj, then I'll spend the hot part of the afternoon in the National Museum of Modern Art, which I'm assuming is air-conditioned (this is, in fact, crucial to the plan), and then I'll drift up Janpath and eat dinner at Spice Route, which apparently is one of the finest restaurants in Asia (at which a full meal works out to about $20 CDN). After that, grab my bag and head for the airport. Beautiful.

So who wants to have a beer in a few days?

Conflicted Delhi posting

2008-06-05T11:05:00.003-04:00

Well, I arrived in Delhi at 6.45 this morning, and by 1.30 pm I had my exit visa in my passport.

Touché, Indian bureaucracy, way to keep me guessing. Well done. Now what the hell am I going to do with the next four days?

Conclusive Dharamsala posting

2008-06-04T02:05:00.003-04:00

Thanks to this town, I'm one of the few people in the world who's ever spent two full weeks organizing her days solely around the changing light.

Today I've stumbled on a quote from Jean Renoir in a commencement address by Samatha Power: "The foundation of all great civilizations is loitering." (Read the entire, phenomenal, thing here.) Well, I've put in enough of that to start my own nation, and frankly, I see the advantage.

See y'all in Delhi.

Insensitive but Hilarious Bonus:
Headline of the Day:

Cheney Apologizes for West Virginia Inbreeding Joke

Jesus H. Christ....

2008-06-03T06:49:00.003-04:00

Did you all know you can download whole lectures, whole lecture serieses, and occasionally recordings of whole courses from universities like UC Berkeley on iTunes? Most of which are free?

Can you imagine how much free information there is here? I feel like I'm having a heart attack, or discovering the internet again for the first time. This is a really, truly, for-real, god-given miracle. I really might buy an apple laptop now, purely out of gratitude. Steve Jobs needs my money.

Looks like we know what I'll be doing for the rest of the summer!

Of course I didn't just come here to share my excitement about aspects of iTunes that most of you probably discovered 5 years ago. Mostly I came to share my excitement that I bought myself two more days in Dharamsala by swapping my train ticket to Delhi for a much less comfortable overnight bus ticket, meaning I'm still in sunny, temperate Himachal Pradesh and not in sticky, sticky Chandigarh. Meaning it's a good day.

But meaning also that I'm coming to the end of my relaxing shopping from Tibetans rather than Kashmiris (sigh... it's been so nice...) and that I'm already choosing where to eat my last Dharmsala lunch. This town's been good to me.

Alright, so I have nothing to say, and I really did just want to share my excitement about free iTunes lectures. Sue me.

In which I beg

2008-05-31T07:22:00.004-04:00

By the way,

Law student-to-be requires summer job through end of August. PT/FT, anywhere in GTA. Extensive experience in writing, communications, administration, social justice, sales, customer service, event co-ordination, ice fishing, and Sanskrit. Will work for minimum wage OBO.

You may recognize my name because of my more successful brother, Mark...

Have pity, world. If anyone's looking for some summer help, or knows anyone else who is, please drop me a line. Surely someone out there has a restaurant...

Been away a few days

2008-05-31T06:31:00.004-04:00

Walking, being social for a change, etc. I know, I'm as surprised as you are. Four days ago I met Connie, a girl from Mississauga, totally by co-incidence, in this little Tibetan lunch place, we ended up hanging out that whole night and most of the next day - she'd found a place in Bhagsu, a few km up the road, that had avocado sandwiches. That night we bumped into Kelly and David, when Kelly heard me talking trash about a book he'd read recently. All it took was him eavesdropping my dropping the word "narcissistic" and that was that. 5 hours later, realizing that Connie and I might now be locked out of our respective hotels due to the late hour, we all stumbled out of the only joint still open in McLeod Ganj, this neon monstrosity called McLlo's, the menus of which have a bizarre full-page photo of Pierce Brosnan eating what we think was an omelette and giving a very suave thumbs up. Connie left the next morning but I spent the next 48 hours hanging around the Yanks. Those were some great folks - the kind of people who open the conversation with a story about an ex, make a joke about murdering someone, then jump right into nuanced arguments about your religious and political beliefs. (Okay, that was all just Kelly.) I've basically been laughing my ass off and talking about the primaries for four days - amazing. Yesterday we hiked to Triund, which might be Tibetan for "little patch of grass on the top of a pretty big mountain." Beautiful, I know it was, but underwhelming; mountains don't look like they used to, and that's how I know that it's almost time to come home.

Unfortunately, I lost Connie without getting/giving emails, which is too bad. Unforeseen circumstances. David I'm keeping - I'm very happy to have met him. The next time I'm in New York, I'll be visiting. He'll be at Columbia for another few years at least... Ph.D. in Political Economy. Can show me around the city once I get into that NYU program. Cough.

The Yanks took off this morning, so I'm on my own again. Where has the time gone? I only have three days left here before I have to head for Chandigarh to catch my train to Delhi, that stink-hot people-bog. You know, McLeod Ganj is really only about 3 streets about 500m long each, dotted with hotels, restaurants, and shops, and when I first got here, I was happy but couldn't understand how anyone could spend two months here. Now I feel like I could get through that time easily. I ran into Momo again today - the girl I took the bus here with. She's changed her mind, she's staying for a month. She says the community pulls you in. I don't disagree. Everyone here is just friendlier and... better. Just better.

So now I'm thinking: what is it that I'll want to take with me? Something in scarlet and saffron, to remind me of the monks' robes; something forest green, something slightly iridescent. A string of prayer flags, and something in silver.

And something for you!

I keep meaning to tell you

2008-05-25T08:56:00.003-04:00

In the restaurant attached to my hotel is a poster. It is a custom-printed poster. In a column down the right hand side it reads: "Green Hotel: Where the World Meets Tibet, Where Tibet Meets the World." The rest is covered, in a grid, with flags of nations from around the world, labelled, and beside each flag, a few coins from that country are taped to the poster. I gather that these have all been left by travelers who Met Tibet at the hotel. There are probably 50 or 60 flags, from everywhere - South America, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, North America. The poster and coins are behind glass.

There is a small band of white space at the bottom, left (I assume) so that more flags and coins could be added when appropriate. And so, drawn up clumsily in marker and taped to the outside of the glass, are a few more: Turkey, Columbia, and one with no label.

Red background, quarter-circlet of yellow stars around one larger. In rough marker, and the coins are there, this small gesture of sympathy and hope.

I started thinking, maybe there's still time to do all of this right.

You scoundrels!

2008-05-25T07:25:00.004-04:00

No one told me the Bouchard-Taylor Commission report was out!

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/montreal/story/2008/05/22/qc-boutayreportadvancer0522.html#socialcomments

Of course you know by now that any time an article vaguely addresses race, you wade into the comments section at your own risk, but if you're feeling adventurous (and have a shovel handy) this one's a doozy. If you go quickly, you can get all the way to page 3 before the inevitable invocation of FREE SPEACH MAN to justify their bigotry by someone who clearly has no idea how free speech works - like how it stops the government from putting you in prison for being an asshole, but doesn't stop your fellow Canadians from telling you to shut the hell up when you really ought to.

Still waiting on one solid example of Canadians being forced to 'cater to the whim of every new immigrant.' They chained me to their golden palanquins and force-fed me rotis, I swear! I didn't drink all that sake till after.... *

Here, I made you all a StupidityQuilt from the comments on that article:

Special asshole mention to Justme7, for this:

This is all too funny. In 100 years the overwhelming majority of people in Quebec won't be of French decent or Catholic - but they might speak French.

Dude. I know there's an outside chance he's not talking about immigrants from French-speaking Africa, but.... but I can't think of a way to finish this sentence.

I'm glad the Bouchard-Taylor commission basically told everyone to chill the hell out. (I'm trying not to use the f-word so much anymore, but it's just so hard sometimes.) It's a response worthy of its commissioners, who are both respectable intellectuals.

I would, however, like to draw everyone's attention to one minor point in the article: the PQ, unlike Charest's Liberals and the Dumont ADQ (really? are we still listening to him?), are waiting an extra day before making any public statement on the commission's findings. I know a single day is minor, but this is bullshit. Other than Mario 'the Q is for Quack' Dumont**, the PQ whole has been one happy bunch of mud-slingers in all this reasonable accomodation crap. Fine, it's mostly them agitating for a QC constitution, but what a hideous political maneuver, waiting to see what statements the other parties give first - and, more importantly, what the reaction of the Canadian public is. Shame on them; je me souviens, Mme. Marois.

To sum up:

Yeah! 'zactly. Quebec totally needs a Charter to let all them immig'nts know what Quebec's all about!

Oh wait, here it is, except that it's all full of this bullshit about equality and opportunity.

We need, like, one to protect French Canadians specifically!

Oh wait.

*Actually, this situation would be fine with me.

** The quotation marks key isn't working on this keyboard. Scare quotes for all! .... yeah it's driving me crazy, too. Sorry.

It's a good day today

2008-05-23T08:51:00.005-04:00

Feeling all connected and stuff. Got to the Tibetan Museum today, a really wonderfully well-put-together archive of Tibetan history pre, through, and post-invasion. (Oh, that prefix, "post," you rascal, you never tell the truth.) It was extremely affecting.

I'm amazed by the depth and duration of the freedom struggle. Under immense brutality and oppression, in a country where "legal action" means something very different than it does in Canada, people have been organizing and demonstrating and resisting for more than fifty years. Multiple generations - people born twenty years after the Dalai Lama left Tibet - fighting the same battles, facing the same hostility. I read a first-hand account today of a nun who, with six other nuns, knew what would happen when she planned a demonstration outside her convent in Lhasa: they peacefully demonstrated for 15 minutes, then were arrested, beaten by the Chinese police, and sentenced to 7 years in prison. During this time, she and the others were regularly suspended by the wrists, denied food, kept from sleep, and two of her 6 companions were raped with electric probes. For 15 minutes of peaceful demonstration. 7 nuns outside a convent. Millions of Tibetans, over the last half century, have made the same choice. Millions more have fled their homes, over the highest and most dangerous mountain passes in the world, rather than say (at gunpoint) that they denounce their spiritual leader. Believe me when I say that seeing all of this in photos is much more effective than in writing.

We're all finding our way back into history, aren't we? We lost the thread for a while. The Cold War ended and we weren't sure where we were going. I wasn't there, not really - too young - but it's the feeling I grew up in. All that is different now, or at least it should be. I flatly reject the concept of a "post-9/11" condition - I am one of the many who believe that the rights we should have had on Sept. 10 2001 are no different than the ones we should have today, and by "we" here I mean everyone, everywhere - but if there is a single change in our collective awareness, I think this was it: we got pulled back down onto the timeline, where everyone else was all along.

There was this long period where we thought nothing meant anything, that we could never hurt the world enough that it would come back on us. We were sort of floating in it, and we kind of stopped being able to see each other; these long years where we weren't talking about race, about class, about women or gays, or the uncountable brown people we couldn't name - how passe, to be a feminist, to eat brown rice, how old-school. The few voices shouting in the background, the butt of jokes, the slur returns as a major genre of popular comedy - nigger, paki, faggot, bitch, scheister, hippie - history itself becomes unfashionable, and suddenly that damned prefix "post" is popping up everywhere, telling us all kinds of bullshit we won't see through till later, if we see through it at all.

2001 called bullshit on all of that, I think, and everyone did one of the three things people can do when something seriously calls bullshit on the tidy narrative (or lack thereof) they'd organized their life around:

Some ignored it entirely.

Some dropped off the scene for a bit, staggering, came back knowing they needed to get in this more than they were before - those of us (yes, us, this is me) who hadn't yet figured out how they fit into the big picture realized there was no path they could take that didn't lead them into the center of this clusterfuck, that each step they take, in any direction, is a step forwards through time and therefore towards the culmination of the last century, the sum total of everyone's choices all over the world, and that they better get the fuck in there and start helping out where they can - not to save their own asses, or those of their loved ones, but because it's about fucking time we did. It's just our turn. We got ripped back into history, like I said, and now we know we were here all along, and always will be, so we need to start being smarter about it.

Some, those (often) with the most invested in all those bullshit "posts" - post-racism, post-feminism, post-colonialism, post-communism, post-responsibility, post-capitalism - initiated what can only be called The American Beserk. Here you find, among other things, the Patriot Act and its correlated bullshit, this suddenly renewed (or, I should say, suddenly legitimated) hostility towards immigrants, these mouthpieces on wingnut welfare unleashing this avalanche of crap on the rights of women, gays, minorities. A new, more aggressive phase in the American theatre of neocolonialism dressed up as development, or not: a war that could never be won, paid for with money and lives that will be horribly missed.

Maybe that's what this trip is really about, for me. I've looked around, I see where we are in our history... Canada, the States, Western Europe (to a lesser extent). I feel where I am in it, and I'm starting to see how I fit in, where I can go. And in all directions, I feel live wires tentacling out into darkness, hot pulses of white light sent shooting off every time any one of us moves. But I can't see where they go. Maybe this trip is about being able to follow just a couple of them, out to wherever they're grounded. This is where we are; where are you?

Plus I learned how to embed YouTube video in my blog posts, so, good day.*

*Yeah, I know, you just copy-paste the embed code. Quiet.

In this post, I hoot at Keith Olbermann

2008-05-23T08:38:00.003-04:00

... and then wonder how he keeps his job.

You know, sometimes things just come to you. Today, it's phrases, which are going to become blog tags as I (hopefully) keep this thing going as a Canadian politics blog once I'm home.

The first is lifted shamelessly from the back cover copy on an edition I found of Philip Roth's American Pastoral: "the American beserk." Pictured above.

The second is from Amanda Marcotte at Pandagon, who puts so succinctly the question that plagues so many Canadian followers of the more baffling elements of American politics: "What's the evil to stupid ratio on this argument?" What indeed.

She brings it up in relation to the group hysteria and conservative pearl-clutching in response to the California Supreme Court ruling in favour of treating gay people like human beings, and points out (wisely) that the bullshit "states' rights" rhetoric only comes out when the states are doing a better job that the feds of keeping uppity your-minority-group-here's from gaining/keeping the right to thing-thats-totally-legal-everywhere-else-in-the-developed-world-here. This will now be the question I ask as regularly as possible of not-right-rhetoric on both sides of the border. It's hard to know what to hope for, in terms of answers.

"No momo" no mo

2008-05-22T10:51:00.002-04:00

My long weeks of trying to get momos from Indian restaurants are over.

I have arrived in Dharamsala, what feels like yesterday but was really at 5am this morning. On the long overnight bus ride from Rishikesh (via Dehra Dun), I met a lovely girl from Austria and an absolutely radiant man who was returning to his adoptive home - he fled Tibet 12 years ago.

I was expecting a heavy Tibetan presence, but this is even more than I was expecting. I've barely seen any Indians since arriving here... the population seems to be almost entirely Tibetans (many via Ladakh), mingling with just hordes and hordes of foreigners, some of whom don't seem to feel like visitors here anymore. The expat community is pretty stable, as far as I can tell.

What's nice here is everything. The people here are by far the warmest of anywhere in India I've been. This morning, waiting in the square for our hotel to open, we bought Tibetan bread and chai from a street stall - and then were offered more, home-made, by a quiet girl in the crimson robes who'd been in a taxi with us, and whom we'd thought couldn't speak English. At 6am I was put into a bare but warm single room with an entirely unblocked view of the Dharamsala valley. I finished Ondaatje's "Running in the Family" with the windows open, smelling the morning fog and waiting for the restaurants to open. At 7 I was wandering the streets, mothers tugging their children along beside me, humanity piled on top of itself despite the stillness. Book shops, chai stalls, long narrow stores full of warm clothes, cafes putting out cakes and sweets I didn't recognize. The smell of real coffee. The valley right there. My mind gone quiet and no pictures popping up of personal car wrecks. A cautious, rich peace resounding around the cavern hollowed out by years of anger and loss.

I think it's too bold a comparison to say that I see a similar peace in many of the people here. Anyway, I haven't felt that fine in a long time.

Breakfast of tsampa porridge with banana and honey (okay, so I wish E. were here) and coffee. The restaurant had a copy of the official journal of the Tibetan government in exile. They are keeping a detailed and, I imagine, invaluable history of their unfolding conflicts; there were 25 pages of newsbrief-short reports of monks being arrested, peaceful protests broken up with big guns, spiritual leaders of communities being subjected to "patriotic re-education," which consists mostly of swearing oaths to China at gunpoint. NGOs informed that their communications with all bodies outside China were being monitored, and that any complaints - anything, actually, other than reassuring the world outside that all is fine, yes, the protests are dying down, thank god, the Chinese are handling it wonderfully - will become the subject of immense legal trouble. I bristled, and remembered an article I read in The Economist a few days ago: China making mining deals with the Congo, its own unprecedented growth, its search for resources sending it everywhere. It now consumes a third of all the world's steel. What are these people going to do?

Bittersweet, being here, but I feel at home. I need to learn how to stare directly at conflicts that seem impossible to win. We all do.

If you ain't got no money get your broke ass home

2008-05-19T04:30:00.003-04:00

That was close... down to Rs. 600 in cash and unable to find a bank machine that would take our debit cards. I thought I was going to have to pack my shit up and drop my last rupees on a bus to Delhi and go home.

But no. We found a money-changer. No problems, no heartbreak.

This would have been an especially terrible time to run out of money. There's only 1 day left in my Dharamsala countdown! Tomorrow night is my hideous 14-hour bus ride from Dehra Dun. It takes a hell of a place to deserve a 14-hour bus ride on a North Indian government bus, but I think Dharamsala might be that kind of place.

My mom points out via email that I haven't updated in a while. I thought I mentioned that I was headed for a week to Gangotri to do a trek to the source of the Ganges at the Gaumukh glacier. Apparently I didn't.

Well, that's where I was, and it was even cooler than it sounds. I'm taking my sweet time this afternoon uploading some photos, so those of you with facebook can check it out. I'll email the link home as well.

The Himalayas are really something. I'd love to give you more detail than that, but I can feel a teenager's arsenal of hyperboles creeping in. I guess I'll stick to the facts instead.

Gangotri is a small town in northern Uttaranchal which is regarded as the spiritual source of the Ganges. There's quite a temple there. It's about 12 hours from Rishikesh by bus. The physical source of the Ganges is the Gaumukh glacier, which is about 19km past Gangotri. Gangotri is surrounded on three sides by rather large snow-capped mountains from the Himalayan range, featuring Shivling Peak and Bhagirath I and III (all around 6500m). We did a 3-day trek to Gaumukh, resting at the end of days 1 and 2 in the hamlet of Bhojbasa, which is really just a guesthouse and an ashram in the bottom of a valley. We stayed in the ashram. You meet interesting people in those. The kind of interesting that you put in scare quotes.... 'interesting.'

The glacier itself is retreating, now, hundreds of metres per year. As you walk along the trail out to it from Bhojbasa, you pass rocks where people have marked "Gaumukh, 1935," "Gaumukh, 1966," and it's really shocking. When the town of Gangotri was founded (meaning within the last 3500 years), the glacier reached its edge. That means 19km of retreat in 3500 years. In geological time, 3500 years is a heartbeat. That's a mind-blowing amount of change. Additionally: if the markers are accurate, it seems that the vast majority of that retreat has happened in the last 150-200 years. Hrm, what happened 150-200 years ago?

Shameful, and painful. As we sat in the snout of the glacier, we could hear the ice cracking deep in its heart, ripping out through the crevices. Periodically, slides of ice and rock crashed down the side of the ice face. Really surreal.

Anyway. Some difficult travel later, we're back in Rishikesh, and having a recovery day before leaving for Dharamsala.

Up next: Dharamsala blogging!

Free Tibet indeed.

Briefly

2008-05-06T09:41:00.002-04:00

I am exhausted, wet and tired, and my god do I love these mountains. Deep-down happy, even though my skin is freezing.

Also: guess who's going to York! The dream of the NYU LL.M. within four years survives!

And, bonus, no further ranting about McGill is necessary.

Now accepting your congratulations.

Greetings from sunny Darjeeling!

2008-05-01T08:40:00.003-04:00

Just kidding, it's actually a dank fog-pit with no running water.

Alright, just kidding again, it's not that bad.* But we are surrounded my cloud, which makes it a little hard to tell you what Darjeeling looks like since we haven't actually, really, totally seen it. From the 20-feet at a time that I can see, it looks pretty nice. One half European ski village, one half Nepalese market place.

Again I seem to have ended up with more stuff on my mind that I have time or space to sort it out in. Also I spent like a half hour emailing Cindy, another 20 minutes on facebook, and this internet ain't free. So, quickly:

There is a burgeoning separatist movement in the greater Darjeeling area, wanting to become a separate state (possibly a separate nation... I'm just learning about this now) from West Bengal. I won't even pretend to know the history behind it, but I will say this: there's a pretty clear ethnic difference in the population of this area vs. the rest of West Bengal. Darjeeling feels totally different than the rest of India, which probably comes from its huge Tibetan and Nepalese (Nepali? God, that's embarassing...) population. Names here sound like "Kalimpong." Names in the south of the state sound like "Howrah" and "Malda." This morning, during our breakfast in a hotel restaurant, the owner of the establishment got everyone's attention and told us - loudly - about the blasphemes of a Calcuttan minister who'd just published an article in a major newspaper (government officials in this country seem to have unlimited access to publication in the major media outlegs) about how the Darjeeling separatists are wreaking havoc on the region, with strikes and violence everywhere, and warning tourists not to go there. He asked us to tell other tourists we meet what we've seen here - that there is no violence, that there are small strikes but nothing that stops the tourist trade. Completely surreal. We leave tomorrow morning for our 5-day trek along the Singalila Ridge, but we're supposed to have one more day in Darjeeling afterwards, for recovery. I'm hoping to use that day to figure out what the hell is going on here. Suspect it will take longer than that.

So tomorrow is day 1 of the trek. Day 1 involves 14km of hiking with a total ascent of about 1k. The next day is... well, one day at a time. How about that?

Bengali food is freaking amazing. A-mazing. Too bad our only stops in West Bengal were Calcutta (oops, Kolkata) and here. Tibetan food, apparently, is also incredible. Which brings me to my next point:

Dharamsala arrival countdown: 19 days!

Which brings me to my final point:

It's May! Wish me a Happy Actually Finding Out About Law School Month (Well, At Least York, But Really Who Cares About McGill Anyway, If They're Going To Be Jerks Like That)!

Gonna have to find a snappy acronym for that. Who's for tea?

* It really is dank, though. That part's true. Oh, and about the lack of running water.

Why so quiet?

2008-04-27T08:28:00.005-04:00

Those questions weren't rhetorical!

We're in Hyderabad at the moment, killing time on the intraweb until we catch our plane to Calcutta. I'm appalled that we're flying; add this to the number of trains and buses we've taken over the last three months - nevermind the flight to Delhi in the first place - and we've racked up so many enviro bad-karma points that we'll never recover. There's nothing like knowing that you've caused irreparable damage to the place you came to see and appreciate to make you feel like... well, like a spoiled jerk.

And I forgot to remark on Earth Day, which was April 22. We were trekking through the Western Ghats in Karnataka. Thinking back, we got lucky and managed to go the whole day using barely any electricity (no more than two hours of a single light bulb, in the homestay we stayed at that night), if you cheat and don't count the energy that went into making our food. Or the 6 plastic bottles we only reused twice each before throwing them away. Like I said, we'll never be able to atone for the damage done in this trip.

And yet, it's still probably less than the damage we would have done in Canada. Of course that's not what I meant to Earth-Day-post about.

Some handy enviro links:

- your personal carbon footprint here, in relation to global averages and to the world's total resources. how many earths would we need if everyone lived like you do?
- everyday activist, one of the most useful sites on teh web; suggestions for small changes that everyone can make, more or less effortlessly, to improve the way they live. devoted especially to the generations who think they're too old to change now.
- philobiblion, for green politics (plus books and feminism. word.)
- some helpful information about the ideas behind fair trade, its effects on communities and the environment, and fair trade product certification

Alright, enough. I'm just going to feel guilty, and that's that.

Hyderabad is interesting. It's quickly surpassing Bangalore as the IT-tech and financial hub of India, which means a sort of westernization that, as it tends to do in this country, only makes the whole thing seem more fundamentally Indian than it otherwise would. Those unique types of Indian wealth and poverty, of modernization and tradition. This is a very, very interesting time to be in the East.

That said, I think we're all starting to think about home a little more than we have been. Between today and tomorrow, we're saying goodbye to the plains; the rest of our trip will be in the Himalayas, which is a little surreal. We've been on these plains for two months, which I guess isn't all that much time in absolute terms, but has been long enough that it started to feel like it wouldn't end, like this is just how our life is now: moving from place to place every few days, finding a new hotel and new places to eat, things to see. Occasionally joining another pair or group of travelers for a day here and there. But, it's not.

Next stop: Calcutta. We barely have 24 hours there before we get on a (painfully long) train to New Jalpaiguri, where we'll wait out the night and then take another, 6-hour train (of the old-fashioned steam variety this time) to Darjeeling proper. We've given ourselves one day there to put together our 5-day trek, and then we're off along Singalila Ridge. We have a total of about 8 days in Darjeeling, to give us some time to let our sore legs recover and to see the town a bit. After that, S. will be off into Nepal; E. and I are hanging back, E. because she's running out of time, and me because I have no visa to re-enter with. So together we'll be going by bus under the Nepalese border, across to pick up the mountains as they re-emerge on the other side of Nepal, back in Uttaranchal, above Delhi in the West. From there (well, from an 12-hour bus ride from there) we'll be doing a 3-day trek together to the source of the Ganges. This trek features glaciers, which is in and of itself exciting.

All of this may or may not be followed by a trip to Lahaul and Spiti valley, which is a poor substitute for where I'd really like to go: Leh, in the Ladakh region, which is still snowed in an inaccessible except by flight from Chandigarh. And I'm done with flying for this trip. Still, Lahal shares the high-altitude desert, the snow-capped vistas, the strange and barren moonscape. And I suppose that's the point.

Either way, it ends in McLeod Ganj.

I would expect that I'll have time to post from Darjeeling, but I'm not sure whether it will be before or after our trek, making it somewhere between a few days and a week and a half from now. So, be good. My dad tells me you have a (ha!) heatwave coming, up to 22C. I laugh with contempt at your 22C. Ha ha ha, that's my laughter. At you.

It's 41C here. That's without factoring in humidity. The breeze is like having a hair dryer blown in your face. Like outdoor shopping in an oven. Seriously, there is nothing in the Canadian vocabulary that can accurately capture exactly how hot it is here. Don't even get me started on the Madikeri trek. Gorgeous, yeah, but now my sweat valves only have two settings: resting, and pouring like a stuck faucet. Have you ever gone from bone-dry to dripping sweat in under 5 minutes? Because we have.

And yeah, one of these days I'll get a good post in that has some, you know, actual thought content in it, rather than just exposition. But, friends, that day is not today.

Behave yourselves. Everyday Activist can help you do that.

(Addendum: We Move to Canada has a post up about recent good stuff Canada has been doing on the green front.)

Oh yeah...

2008-04-23T07:18:00.002-04:00

Wait listed to both McGill and York. Will get a final answer from York some time in May, from McGill God Knows When. (My friend who went through this process last year didn't hear back from McGill until the third week of August, which is... well, you know how I feel about McGill.)

Who wants to help me find a good job in Toronto?

Karnataka and all the rest

2008-04-23T06:40:00.003-04:00

Where was I?

Oh yeah, I gave you a cheap, point-form update on what we've been up to. Well here's another:

- moved states; we're in Karnataka now (if you've looked at a map of India and noted that our travel route makes no sense and never has, you're right)
- Mysore! A palace! Sandalwood and crappy internet! A random guy who groped us! E.'s catlike reflexes in throwing a half-full water bottle at him and asking very loudly what is wrong with him!
- seriously though, Mysore was nice
- the Coorg region, coffee and cardamom plantations, and a two-day starter trek
- kinda nervous about the Himalayas; I'm coffee-shop-in-Montreal shaped, not necessarily 5-days-of-intense-mountain-climbing shaped
- keeping tabs on the Tibet situation, dying to get to McLeod Ganj already
- en route to Hampi, a huge ruined city

Yeah, there's really not much. Let's talk about what's going on on your end.

We Move to Canada is telling me some scary stuff today, among which is the fact that suicide rate in the Canadian military doubled between 2006 and 2007. What's going on out there, Canada? What are all these bills? And what the crap is this SPP?

Information, please! Especially about the SPP.

Seriously, I leave you guys alone for three simple months....

Blah blah

2008-04-19T06:36:00.000-04:00

Am fine, talk later.

Some Things That Happened Since We Last Talked

2008-04-13T03:16:00.003-04:00

- dolphin-watching on a formerly Portuguese beach in Goa
- sunrise at the southermost tip of India, which was about the time we began dripping sweat
- rode one of these through here
- tata makes tea! who knew? and they couldn't have chosen a nicer place to do it
- finally got the rats (and, we think, bats) out of our abyss-black treehouse in the central Indian jungle at about 5.00am... and then played cards on our mattress on the floor (by flashlight)
- swore never to sleep in a treehouse again
- struggled to find a language to describe just how hot it is on the plains
- nearly stampeded by a herd of spotted deer
- our hiking guide: "be careful, the elephants sometimes run through here"
- ran after our guide who bolted when the elephants we were watching (distance approx. 40 feet) did, in fact, make like they were about to run
- a little bit in love with Kerala
- seriously, it is so hot
- concretized pretty much all of our plans for the rest of the trip.

Here's what that looks like (wikipedia reading a google-image-searching provided by you):

After Cochi, where we are now, we're headed to the Wayannad Wildlife Sanctuary (which I'm praying is at least a few thousand metres above sea level) for a few days. From there, we're going to Mysore, then Madikeri in Coorg (coffee and cardamom plantations in bloom at the moment), then hopefully Hampi (though the heat is making that seem less and less attractive), then cutting across the continent to the Bay of Bengal coast for Konarak, and then a two day (minimum) journey up to the blissful 19C air of Darjeeling. We'll be there for about a week, including a 5-day trek. After that, we're cutting back West towards Uttaranchal to do the three day trek to the source of the Ganges (which also features some West Himalayan glaciers).

That will be about the end of E.'s trip, since her plane is leaving the third week of May. S. and I are still working out the details for the last leg, but I'm pretty sure I know how it ends.

Unfortunately I have to be back in Delhi by the 4th of June even though my plane doesn't leave until the 9th so that I can get my exit visa cleared up. Delhi, by the way, will be 43C at that time before adjusting for humidity. So for the week or so before that, we should be hiding out in McLeod Ganj, the home of the Dalai Lama and the center of Tibet-in-exile. It's also an extremely safe and popular backpacker's haven. To seal the deal, I found a highly recommended three-day cooking course there for Rs600 (about $16) - that's three days for North Indian food, and then you can attend random afternoon/evening courses for South India, Tibetan, and even Nepalese. And it's high altitude, so the temperature will be reasonable. I pretty much can't wait.

Have any of my postcards arrived yet? My faith in the Indian postal service is growing shaky...

One more time

2008-04-12T04:30:00.001-04:00

Fine, more later, getting another bus.

Be good.

And again

2008-04-09T01:55:00.002-04:00

We're fine, too much to say at the moment in my meager internet time. In Munnar, in the drop-dead gorgeous state of Kerala (non-exaggerating tagline: "God's Own Country"). We're headed to the Chinnar wildlife reserve upstate in an hour or so, where we'll be for a few days, then in Cochi. Hopefully I'll get some time for a decent post from Cochi. Just, again, letting you all know that everything's cool.

And, no word from schools yet. Why oh why must I wait to know what I'm doing in September?

Yup

2008-04-03T02:58:00.002-04:00

We're alive, we're in Goa, everything's fine. I've been trying to get to the net for days now but internet cafes are few and far between here, and all the ones we had found (until now) had been closed for reasons that are mysterious and unknowable.

There's too much to really update on at the moment, so I won't. We're getting a train tonight to Varkala, Kerala, from which we'll be headed Kaniyakumari, the southernmost tip of India. After that we're working our way up through Kerala, cruising the backwaters, and then (after maybe 8-10 days) until Karnataka. For the next little while we're going to be super short on internet time, so this is a heads up to all family members that we'll email you as soon as we can, but that's not going to be very soon. S.'s cousin and his friend are with us as well, and having actual Indian people to help out with stuff is... helpful. It might easily be more than a week before we post/email again. That goes for E. and I both.

So, have a great week or two. Wish me a Happy Finding Out About Law Schools Month, it's April.

Be good.

Oh yeah, one more thing

2008-03-23T03:11:00.002-04:00

Could this be any more patronizing? New in MSN Headlines this week: Old School Bullshit Plagues New Generation.

It basically talks about how teen girl online diarists are the hot new bloggers (untrue), and how women are, like, totally getting into tech finally so we can, you know, share our feelings and stuff. Totally makes up for the abysmal showing of women in tech jobs. Because we don't want the jobs or the pay or whatever, we just want to express our selves, you know, socially. According to our natures.

And, of course, the article ends with a girl realizing that, now that she's gone to university and made real friends, she can close up the blog, which was just a surrogate for other people.

Luckily it was on MSN, so no one read it.

Well, look who's back on the intraweb

2008-03-23T02:10:00.002-04:00

Mood is a fickle thing, and it looks like I'm going to be blogging Udaipur after all.

You may actually recognize Udaipur; it's the city where the Bond movie "Octopussy" was filmed (as about a million signs and restaurants remind us daily). It's got the white palace floating on the lake, etc. Beautiful, but we're definitely getting a little too used to Rajasthan and the northern architecture; we've been here for three days, and only spent one morning doing anything especially proper-touristy (the City Palace). The rest we've just been enjoying the town, which is a little pricy but very laid-back and comfortable for us Western types because it's absolutely overrun by tourists. That's unfortunate - a town this nice should belong to its people - but it is nice to be able to sit on the rooftop in a tank top for a change.

Mostly, what we did here was Holi. I'm going to write a bit more about it in Mumbai (tomorrow) or Aurangabad (the following day), because some very interesting things happened that have got me thinking, and I know I'll need more than a half hour or so to get it out properly. But, in the meantime, a bit about Holi. (Skip the part of that wikipedia article on the health hazards. We did.)

It starts with a huge serious of bonfires in the streets just after sundown on the night before. Stacks of wood, tented together, reach 12 or 14-feet high in small squares (about the size of 3 driveways), and 6-7 feet in the smaller streets. Firecrackers and cherry bombs are thrown into the blaze or launched into the sky. The noise, in a town the size of Udaipur, was tremendous - as was the fireworks display. (Fireworks are legal here and easy to buy year-round because they're used in weddings and on other auspicious days.) Then, a good chunk of the population starts drinking; for most of the residents of a town like Udaipur, Holi is the only day of the entire year that they won't have to work. The enthusiasm is contagious, and there's no argument about it - they deserve it.

Revelry in the streets is over before midnight, but starts again early the next morning. By 9am, the streets are full of people moving in big groups, swarming through each other. Everyone you pass, you say "Happy Holi" to each other and throw a handful of coloured powder (or water) over each other - sometimes you put it directly on each other's faces. Sometimes hugging follows. The result is an incredibly congenial, hilarious atmosphere in which you can't stop laughing and end up with colour in your mouth as well as everywhere else. People are almost unrecognizeable - after about 20 minutes I could only pick out the other people in our party by height and stature, as even our clothes were so covered in bright colours running together that you couldn't tell what they originally looked like. My skin is still stained in a lot of places (all visible, unfortunately), and my clothes are absolutely ruined.

All of which is fine, because it was so much fun. S. and I went out with a couple we met from Toronto named Aaron and Marion, who are maybe 10-12 years older than us but very fun. (Bonus: he's a criminal lawyer who loves his job, and loved law school, and wasn't a jerk in the least. There's hope!) We'll post photos once we get them from Aaron, who was the only one brave enough to bring a camera into that mess.

There were some tourists who were not loving it - which was maybe the most hilarious part of all. Every once in a while you'd see some sour-looking European in khakis and a white golf shirt lurking around with an expensive camera giving death stares to anyone who approaches them with powder. Imagine coming down from your hotel into that chaos - just a huge mob of people greeting, throwing colours and paint everywhere, hugging, laughing - and expecting to be left to yourself on the sidelines. It doesn't work like that. Like I said, there is no solitude in India - and definitely not on Holi. Did I mention there were people walking around with drums, stopping when they met other drummers to play together, and people came running from the sidestreets to dance in big groups wherever they were?

All of which has reminded me that joy can get you through a lot. Again, I'll save some of the details for a longer, later post, but the last few days have been extremely instructive.

Gordon, a British man we met in Pachmari who has been coming to India for 15 years, said over and over again that India is the great teacher about humanity, and that whenever you start to get it wrong, India will correct you. That's certainly what's happened here. Just when I've had all I can take of touts and aggressive salespeople and everyone trying to squeeze every penny they can from you, staring at you, talking about you, and giving you wrong information, you meet a young shop worker who stops you with a glance and all but closes up his shop to sit and talk with you - and then refuses to sell you anything. That's what happened the day before yesterday, to E. and I., when we were out in the market. A man named Surya (appropriately, he's named after the sun) started the conversation the way most touts do - "From which country?" - but ended up being so sweet and so interesting that we spent a few hours with him drinking chai and talking Big Ideas. He grew up in an ashram in Kerala, but when he was in his teens his guru told him he needed to see the world before he would understand anything. So she gave him Rs. 2000 (about $50) and sent him on his way. Ever since then (about 10-15 years ago) he's been moving from place to place every few years, working two jobs for 11 months of the year and then using his 12th to travel around India. He had a really interesting perspective on the world. Although astrology is Not My Thing, he was talking to both E. and I about our signs and whether we match with them (it seems like everyone here takes astrology very seriously), and suddenly got very intense about needing to read my palm. He told me a pretty good story. A lot of it was familiar. With these things, it's not so much about the accuracy or inaccuracy of what people can tell about you; it's about paying attention to how you react to the news. Your own response can be highly, highly instructive. Mine was.

(Actually, this is the second time a relative stranger has singled me out to read my fortune for free. The first time was years ago, and it was helpful too.)

A wave of goodwill can carry you for a long time. I'm hoping mine carries me through Mumbai, but I'm dumping it there, because I have things to do and some serious business to write about. As always, the last few days weren't all rainbows, and I think there's some big shit brewing here. Holi, joy, and the British travel warning released last week about Goa - and, for good measure, how all these remote things on the other side of the world help shape how we perceive our communities at home.

Be good, all.

Just a quick note

2008-03-22T10:35:00.003-04:00

Everything's fine, we're in Udaipur. We're leaving tomorrow for Maharashtra. Today was Holi. It was amazing, really really fun and amazing. I laughed all day. But now I'm hungry and out of internet time, because I was catching up with the news (Bill Richardson endored Obama! Holy shit! After going to the superbowl with the Clintons...), so I'll blog it fully later.

Was the last thing I posted on the Taj?

2008-03-15T04:38:00.003-04:00

If so, you're all way behind. And whose fault is that, really?

After Agra, which by consensus is one of the worst places in India to be a tourist (after Varanasi, central Rajasthan, Delhi, and all the other cities along the Ganges), we headed into Orccha, which as far as we can tell is one of the best. We're now three cities deeper into Madhya Pradesh, and noticing how the quality of everything improves the further we get from the main tourist trail, especially the "Golden Triangle" (Agra-Delhi-Jaipur) and its two tourist tentacles, tourist Rajasthan and the Varanasi route. People are nicer to us here, the scams and touts have all but vanished, and we're even being offered reasonable rates on rickshaws without having to negotiate. Additionally - and I found this very interesting - the extremes of poverty seem to be less here. Of course, the vast majority of people we see from day to day are still doing more or less subsitence-level work - which, in Canada at least, constitutes living below the poverty line - but next to no one is begging, and even the rural parts we've driven through seem to be, to varying derees, okay. Nothing like Uttar Pradesh, which has clearly, for one reason or another, been absolutely ravished by economics. Bizarrely, we even get stared at less (creepy bus passengers excepted).

But I'm jumping ahead.

Orccha. Strictly speaking, Orccha is a tiny town, basically just two intersecting streets. What you're there to see flanks the towns on all sides and spreads for miles around it: an elaborate and humongous series of medieval ruins. On one side of the town is a set of huge former palaces, and the other is temples. From a high vantage point on either, you can look out and see more buildings, most (like the palaces and temples) crumbling, scattered across the landscape as far as you can see. In the post-monsoon season (meaning Sept-Oct), the area is matted with jungle, and only the tops of the buildings are visible. Before the monsoon, the area (like most of central India) is arid and most leafy trees drop their leaves to conserve water, so the landscape we saw was more like badlands and rough brush, punctuated by the occasional still-leafy or still-flowering tree, a hysterical green against the dust. It was amazing. We spent a day or two scrambling through the palaces and temples, exploring the ruins of the old town (you can still see at least the foundation of the old buildings, where the roads were, and two pleasure gardens have even been maintained).

It's also where I ran into serious technical difficulties. My camera is messed up; it just keeps saying "Lens error" and refusing to turn on, so I have to find an authorized Casio dealer in Delhi and see if I can get it fixed. You know how I feel about Delhi. Also, I realized I forgot the cable I need to recharge my iPod, which is almost out of battery after saving the lives of several Indian bureaucrats in the Visa office when I was there last week. I have another two days of line-standing ahead of me starting Monday, so I'll be needing it again. More work in Delhi. Joy.

Anyway. After Orccha we took a brutal bus to Khajuraho, which is by far the most inaccessible top-10 tourist attraction in India. The temples, as I think I mentioned, are famous for the quality of their sculpture, some of which happens to be erotic in nature. I think it's from the 17th century again. That was apparently a good century in India if you're the type who likes architecture and art, and if you happen not to be stuck in the massive-stone-brick-hauling profession. The temples were very memorable. I think the photos will speak for themselves.

Did I mention that it's gotten hot? In the shade it's somewhat reasonable, but the sun here is so powerful. In Khajuraho we gave up on afternoons and shifted to a schedule that gets us out of our hotel by 8 or 9 am and back into it with a cold drink in our hands by 1pm at the latest. Life resumes at 4pm. As you'll note, it's only March. I'm here until mid-June. Let that simmer for a bit; this is going to get insane.

So, exhausted by the heat, we did what most middle-class Indians do to get out of the proverbial kitchen; we boarded a nauseatingly cramped bus for a hill station, where, oh, let's see: 1 degree C cooler for every 100m in altitude, and Pachmari is over 1000m above sea level, so that gives us a break of about... 8-9C. Which makes all the difference. The trade-off, we're learning, is that higher altitude also means more powerful sun. I've gotten a little pink despite being pretty careful with the 45 SPF sunscreen. I just can't do any better than that. Which is too bad, because until now I haven't burnt, and attained a colour E. charitably describes as "positive golden... for you."

Pachmari, however, is lovely. It's almost smack dab in the center of India, in southern Madhya Pradesh, and is a huge pain in the ass to get to. From Pachmari, we had to take a 3-hr bus, then a 9-hr overnight train, then a 6-hr bus, then a 1-hr shared jeep ride. Both of those buses sucked. Buses here suck. We got stuck with a real creep on one of them, but nevermind that. We arrived in Pachmari, where we've been settled for about 5 days. We sorely needed a break from the road.

Pachmari is small, on a plateau in a hill range, and friendly. We have had food that seriously makes me wonder why we bother with food at all in North America. You can't buy postcards anywhere, which is too bad, because the area is beautiful. Maybe the nicest change, though, has been the shift in what we're doing; there have been a lot of buildings and cultural-type-stuff lately, and Pachmari has been all about the outdoors.

Our first hike, the day before yesterday, began with the worst rental bikes you've ever seen (no gears, loose breaks, solid metal frame, off-blanace), and later took us through parkland, past a 300-m waterfall (plunding down into a worn-away fissure in the rock), down to a tiny, secluded pool fed by a smaller waterfall (which we semi-swam in), and along a really beautiful natural escarpment. At S.'s insistence, we also did some... less-traditional woods-walking. All of this is why we were already a little tired when it came to... yesteray.

Yesterday was phenomenal, but might be the most exhausting thing I've ever done in my life. We did a 24-km, full-day hike out of town and across the hills, and up to an ancient Shiva temple at the top of Chaurgarh, the next-to-highest peak in the range (Pachmari's hill is much lower). Again, I'll have to show you in photos where we actually went, but I think it gives a sense of the walk to mention that almost none of it (I would guess around 5%) was across flat land, and probably at least a third of it wasn't even on a path. Although, again, a lot of trees had dropped their leaves for the sake of moisture (which left a thick and omnipresent layer of yellow leaves across the forest floot), the area we walked through yesterday was truly Kipling country, complete with panther dens and little ferny creeks through the valleys. In all, we figure we probably ascended about 1000m over the course of the day, given all the times we dipped down steep slopes and had to re-ascend. In the valleys, we stopped and put our feet in the streams, splashed the water over our heads and faces. Little fish, frogs, water-beetles. We picked up walking-sticks at our guide's suggestion; I finally understand what those are for. Some of the steepest parts, both up and down, were directly through the brush, with our guide trying to swat apart and stamp down the net of branches we were cutting through. Usually, though, they all still swung past one person and swiped the next across the arms, shins, face. It was pretty intense, and long - we left before 9am, and hailed a jeep on the other side at about 4.30.

The temple at the top of Chaurgarh was small, but really remarkable. Surrounding the grounds is a barrier of tridents carried up by pilgrims (Shiva is usually pictured with a trident, and often with snakes, which were also everywhere around the temple). They were, without exception, a heavy iron that I cannot imagine lugging up that route. (We realized on the way down that there's a new, more common, pilgrimage route, that skips all the bush stuff - you take a jeep to its entrance and then just climb a bunch of stairs up maybe 150 feet, no more. Cheaters.) The Shivratri Mela, which celebrates the wedding of Shiva and Parvati (as far as I've been told), wa just a few weeks ago, and so before the temples was a huge pile of erect tridents of all sizes, materials, and decorations, which (again) were carried up by devotees of Shiva. The view of the area is really sublime, but I was more interested in the tridents. One especially big one had a scrap-metal cobra wrapped around it; so resourceful. Some were painted, a few carved. None of the painting seemed to have been done professionally. One in particular I thought was really touching: it had a clearly amateur (and pretty rough) painting of Shiva kissing Parvati on the cheek. Someone put a lot of time and effort into painting that, as well as they could, by hand, before lugging it all the way up that mountain. Something about the humility of that, as a devotional gesture, set against the absolutely awe-inspiring power of the surrounding mountains, I thought was really beautiful. Again, as I said of the Taj, really human.

Tomorrow we leave Pachmari, making our way back to Delhi so I can finish this Visa crap off once and for all. We're headed there altogether, arriving Monday morning, and then splitting up for a few days. E. and S. are going to Jodhpur - S. hasn't seen it, and we think he should - and I'm staying two nights in Delhi to get my Visa business finished, then we're all reconvening in Udaipur (also in Rajasthan) at a pre-selected and pre-booked hotel. I'm not concerned about it. I actually feel quite comfortable with Delhi - I know the geography, I know how things work and how much they should cost - and I've booked a higher-class train for myself to Udaipur. E. and S. will be together, so they will be fine too. Hopefully E. will get back on here to let you know how that goes. I've been having a really great time with both of them - E. and I are becoming truly Patty-and-Selma-esque - but the idea of a few days alone is sitting well with me. In addition to my bureaucracy, camera, and iPod cable tasks, I'm going to find a nice bookstore to browse (I'm out of reading material, having also blasted through Lisa Moore's Open for the second time and Salman Rushdie's Haroun and the Sea of Stories, which I picked up second-hand in Khajuraho), pick myself up something nice and maybe sell one or two of the ones I've been carrying with me, and then find a nice magazine stand with some American publications - I'm hurting for a Harper's or New Yorker or something.

Also, I might become a journalist instead of (or in addition to) a lawyer. Surprise!

Last call: send me your address if you want some mail.

Catch-up reading: Crime and Punishment edition

2008-03-12T05:10:00.005-04:00

The New Yorker on families of illegal immigrants in a private-run prison in Texas, featuring a family who tried to claim asylum in Canada.

Unspeakable alleged abuses of power from the Albany police.

Even more reasons to be afraid of McCain.

The writers of The Wire, the smartest show in the history of television, on what's wrong with the War on Drugs.

And respect to Pandagon for being so awesome the last few weeks.

International Women's Day, my Dad's birthday, and Khajuraho

2008-03-08T11:12:00.005-05:00

Kind of hard to bring those all together, so I won't.

Happy International Women's Day, in which, among other things, I pause and offer respect to the long line of smart, brave, and righteous babes, including our mothers and grandmothers, who've given us everything in the world. I'm grateful to inherit what they worked for, and to be part of the next generation (along with almost all of my friends) to use the F-word with pride. Check out what us smart young bitches is up to.

Happy birthday, Dad, and congrats on all the new directions the new year is bringing.

And I'm in Khajuraho, having a beer and a bhang lassi for all the girls back home, and for my Mom. You guys are amazing. Please be in Canada when I get home.

Mom, this is for you. Dolly never lies.

Real post in a few days.

Things I liked more and less about Agra

2008-03-05T06:18:00.005-05:00

One minor train problem later, we're in Agra. This city is gaudy, at least all the areas we've seen, and I kind of like its total lack of tact. Congratulations to the touts at Fatehpur Sikri for being, by a wide margin, the most persistent we've seen so far. I seriously thought S. was going to smack this one kid, and was trying to figure out how to say "You are putting yourself in physical danger" in Hindi when the tourist police came and shooed him away. (Yes, there are special tourist police in India. They're the ones dressed like police, but not carrying AK-47-style guns.)

The Hindi is coming along, slowly. I can construct simple sentences and understand some of what I'm hearing if the speaker isn't talking a million miles a minute. They all speak directly to S., right away, barely acknowledging E. and I sometimes. I know it's probably mostly because he's Indian, but I get the sense that his being a he has something to do with it as well. The good thing is that it lets me sit back and listen to them trying to speak so that he can understand them. The bad thing is that it gives me few opportunities to speak it myself. I'm getting used to the pacing, the bubbling, front-of-the-mouth sound streams, catching the beats and the intonation. But it still feels like double dutch, and even though I've got the rhythm of the ropes clicking on the pavement, I'm stuck rocking back and forth and waiting for one opening big enough to jump in. Still, it's coming along.

I got really serious about it a few days ago in response to a straw-that-breaks type incident on our "7k hike" (truth: grim, shadeless death march at a 30-degree incline which we gave up on halfway) in which the three of us ended up surrounded by men who were transparently talking about us. I could understand some basic parts ("Two girls, one boy," "Where do you think they're from?") but couldn't follow it when the tones changed, got quieter and bolder, and into what S. assures us was very, very crude - not that we didn't know what was going on anyway. It drives me insane that people always think that speaking in another language means that no one can tell that they're being discussed; it's not true, you always can. Always always. Anyway, it really burns me that people can openly show us disrespect and we can't do anything about it, so I've gotten serious about learning the language. My goal is to be able to shock and humiliate one person before I leave who says something exceptionally disrespectful to us. (Of course, if no one else talks rudely about us, I won't get the chance - and no one would be happier than me if that were the case - but in the meantime I think I'll try to be prepared.)

Anyway. Agra.

We spent yesterday at Fatehpur Sikri, which was ultimately not that enjoyable. It's not that the buildings weren't great - they were - but between the heat (yeah, uh oh), the touts (as I said, in a class of their own) and the bugs.... good god, the bugs.... I was too distracted and uncomfortable to really absorb the scenery. I speak for myself here, but I think it probably applies to all of us. The entire place was like a solid, dense cloud of these tiny, fruit-fly type bugs. Because we were perspiring and wearing sunscreen (okay, only E. and I), walking through a cloud of them meant getting them stuck to your face, your neck, your arms, and all over your clothes. I have never seen so many insects in one place. The clouds were so dense they were a permanent haze across the complex. I made the mistake of wearing yellow, which apparently they were attracted to, so I ended up absolutely covered. It's taken two washes to get all the bugs out of my shirt.

But, nothing a cold shower didn't fix. Every shower here feels like the Best Shower Ever. People in Canada don't really need to shower, ever. They don't get dirty. Not actually dirty. You don't really know how dirty works until you come somewhere like India. You don't really need to wash your clothes, either. We do.

Had a mediocre dinner last night and a beer that the restaurant had to send a boy on a bike to go buy, and made us keep under our table when we weren't refilling our glasses. You can get beer everywhere here, but no one has a liquor license. I can understand that (cf: my previous post on Indian bureaucracy). It was hilarious, we felt bad. Kingfisher is the only widely available brand here, which - like most of what Indians drink - is sugary as hell. It also comes in 650ml bottles, so I suggest that any blossoming alcoholics steer clear. Came back to the hotel and stayed up late watching old American cartoons dubbed in Hindi - Johnny Bravo, even, and Tom and Jerry.

Got up at 5.30 this morning to be at the gates of the Taj at 6am when it opened. (Okay, 6.15.) May I recommend the Taj Mahal at dawn? It's hard to imagine a time that wouldn't be worth rising to see the building described by Nobel winner Rabindranath Tagore as "a tear on the face of eternity"* shift from muted pink-blue-greys in the predawn twilight through the autumnal colours of sunrise and into the blaring, pearly light of the daytime sun. The play of light, which in Moghul (Islamic) architecture is used to signify the presence of God, who is never directly represented, is one of the most interesting features of the Taj. It seems flat without the sun, all grey. From what we saw, I think it's at its best when the first bits of direct morning light hit it, giving it a third dimension and illuminating the Koranic script around the main arches. It's definitely the most subtle, and makes the brassy major chords of the full sun** feel a bit garish. Of course, that's only until you actually enter the buildling - when you come back out and look again, it's so white and so fine that you can't imagine it in any other lighting. I know I'll forget all of this, and the photos won't help at all.

In the inside of the mausoleum, you can't take photos, and that is a damn shame. You've seen a hundred photos of the Taj and you haven't seen the most beautiful part. Inside is a replica of the tombs of Shah Jahan, who built the thing, and his favourite wife, whose death inspired it. They're surrounded by a wall of carved marble that's cut so thin it's translucent, with incredibly detailed inlays of precious and semiprecious stones in long floral motifs that echo the ones on the front gate. There are also panels in this wall that are carved right through, and through which you can see the tomb-replicas - for such a hard material, the marble here managed to look incredibly soft, even malleable. The walls of the interior, which sit back about 15 feet from the wall around the tombs (which is only 5 feet high or so) are all, again, inlaid marble and Koranic text, rising right up to the full-height dome ceiling at the top of the structure. Beneath the replicas, the real tombs lie in the same positions, in undecorated wood coffins, in a permanently sealed and inaccessible room that, my guide says, smells of incense and roses.

The thing you can't capture, in photos or words, is how much soul is in the building. The expressiveness of the work is completely unlike any other building I've ever been in, and it's hard to explain exactly what that means. The thin alley of water in front of the Taj (in which you can see a reflection of the building, in a lot of famous photos) is actually just the North stream of four, which extend in four directions from a raised platform, and represent the four streams in the Muslim paradise. Apart from the restrained elegance of the detailing, which itself speaks volumes about beauty and loss, the interior layout of the mausoleum follows an old Islamic text about the layout of paradise - the sum of all of these details is that Jahan and his wife's tombs lie at the seat of God, but for one detail: they are slightly off-center, and in an obsessively symmetrical structure, we had all wondered why. I have a guess, on further thought: to lie beside, rather than in place of, the throne of God.

To say the least, I was moved by the interior. A little choked up, actually. There's just so much feeling coming together in such a small space: of love, of faith, of loss, of joy. All I could pull together in my mind at the time were random strands of poetry from god knows where... well, some I know. "where leap the wild, bereft deer" is from one of Phyllis Webb's Water and Light ghazals, for example. But I think the truth of the building reveals itself like that, like those strange flashes of recognition that happen in poetry, where something far too big to ever be articulated is channeled into a narrow phrase, a shorthand for the human, or even the sacred. My experience of the Taj had a lot in common with my experiences of poetry, at its best.

Well, this entry has gotten really out of control now, so I'll cut it off there, except to say that I've also finished Anil's Ghost and strongly suggest that if you haven't read it, you should, and that if you have read it, a second reading is definitely needed. I'm considering a third.

We leave tomorrow for Orccha, in Madhya Pradesh to the South, after which we'll be headed to Kajuraho and Pachmari, then hopefully back to Varanassi, if the trains work. We've had a really hard time working the trains to Varanassi, and the buses are just unsafe there. It's also a theft-heavy city, and E. and S. want to skip it entirely. I'm torn. Getting there really will be a nightmare. We'll see what happens.

Take care, all.

*Thank you, Rough Guide.
** Thank you, P.K. Page.

Dear Indian bureaucracy (language warning)

2008-03-05T06:06:00.003-05:00

(The content of this post has been removed because it has been deemed inappropriate for children, Christians, the elderly, and everyone else. Sorry if you read it before I got to it. For real, though, they deserved it.)

The talking is free

2008-02-29T11:12:00.003-05:00

... but the content you have to pay for.

Meaning, this is going to be another rambling post. (Official tag: 'blah blah blah.')

New photo albums of Rajasthan from both E. and I on facebook, so check it out if you can. I've tried to label things somewhat clearly.

So, Western news. Edwards really did the Clinton campaign in when he quit, eh? She probably would have taken the next few states if the leftist dem vote wasn't being split between him and Obama. I think it's a good thing overall - not just because I more or less, given the three major options, like Obama, but because I think he'll cut deeper into the GOP voteshare than Clinton would have, and that might be a big issue with McCain since no one seems to be noticing that he's every bit as batshit crazy as the rest of them. Evidence provided upon request. Or just click any one of those links over there ----->. There was a really interesting post up at Pandagon from a few days ago about an interview in which McCain pretends not to know whether condoms help reduce transmission of HIV. And that, friends, is really, really bad news.

There are these ads here, for I don't know what, but they're these huge billboards with a huge cartoon of the US, the geographical outline dressed in the stars and stripes, and it has a cartoon of HRC and two anonymous men in suits and the headline "Auntie Sam?". I cannot figure out what it's an ad for but I've seen it multiple times. There's something else on it about "the democratic choice" and then the logo of some product we don't recognize. Of course that's nicer than she's been addressed as by most of the US media in years.

But I was talking about gurudwaras. Or I was meaning to. And Amritsar.

Going to the gurudwaras was incredibly interesting, and being now on the Ganges, even more so. I'll be spending the rest of tonight doing some contextual reading about both Hinduism and Sikhism. I shortchanged Amritsar a lot, in my previous entry. It's just not quite enough to say that the Golden Temple was amazing, beautiful, etc. When we first saw it, it was already edging past dusk, but there were still prayers being sung. When you see it, it's floating in the middle of a square, still pool which is surrounded at some distance by a walkway of marble. You slowly make your way around the entire structure, and you stare. I would have sworn it was lighting itself. It was so phenomenally serene. I could have sat there for a long long time.

To enter, like all gurudwaras, you remove your shoes and cover your head. Before entering the complex you wash your hands and dip your feet in a shallow pool at the entrance. You walk down a few steps, which is meant to remind you of the humility needed to approach God. Then, in the Golden Temple, for about 20 minutes you're knocked on your ass by the beauty of it all. I'll share the details of how you proceed through a Sikh shrine once I've got my background information straight, so in the meantime you'll have to take my word for it - it's amazing.

Tonight we've taken a walk and seen the evening arati, though from more of a distance than we were hoping - we might try again tomorrow. We're getting up early to do a (beginner's) yoga class (embarassing) tomorrow. I'm looking forward to showing off my utter unflexibility and lack of co-ordination in the early hours. Then back to ogling the mountains. I said I was enjoying the Himalayas, right? We're doing a 7k hike tomorrow and then in the afternoon.... possibly reading.

I know, blah blah blah. I know it's a vacation, but I haven't been idle in a while.

Hi, we're alive, and we're in Uttaranchal

2008-02-29T02:17:00.005-05:00

Yes, that Uttaranchal.

There's a lot I skipped over before, about our time in Punjab. Like being shown how to behave properly in a gurudwara, for one. But again I'm short on time. I'll have it all down pat by the end of the trip and discuss it when I'm home.

We've just come from Dehra Dun, Uttaranchal, where we stayed with yet another generous member of S's family's community. Again it was lovely. Uttaranchal is quickly catching up to Rajasthan and Punjab as my favourite Indian states (sorry, Delhi). Of course, that's all the ones we've been to so far. But at some point between the tucked-between-mountains-on-three-sides Ayurvedic Medical school and the life-in-your-hands, lump-in-your-throat bus ride up the cliffs to the Mussoorie hill station (a small town at a great altitude where people come to escape the heat in the summer), it's becoming clearer and clearer that wherever I settle down will have to be in a valley. Or on a mountain. I haven't been around hills of this size since New Zealand.

We're in Rishikesh now, taking our first look at the Ganges - which somehow, for some reason, totally lives up to expectations. We might take it easy today, since we've had a busy few days leading up to now. Either today or tomorrow we'll go to watch evening puja on the river, take a walk around town, who knows. We'll be between here and Haridwar for the next two days, until we take an overnight train to Delhi on the 2nd-3rd to go pick up my passport (woot!). Then we're going poking into Uttar Pradesh. Figure while we're here we might as well go look at this.

Needless to say, I'm pretty excited for the next two weeks or so. Back to Delhi (which, oddly, I'm looking forward to - although most of the Indians we've spoken to about it refer to it as things like "awful," "nightmarish," and "hell"), then Agra (for the ghost city of Fatehpur Sikri as well as the Taj, which is getting and entire dawn-to-starlight day for itself), then Varanassi (of the famous ghats), then Khajuraho, then back across into southern Rajasthan for Udaipur and, hopefully, Pushkar.

In Patiala we were invited to a wedding on March 15 (I think I might have mistakenly told some people we were seeing one in February - we're not), so we'll be headed back up into Punjab for that in another two weeks. After the wedding we'll go down past Mumbai into Maharashtra, spend some time around Aurangabad (for the cave temples at Elora and Ajanta) and at the citadel in Daulatabad, and then down into Goa, Karnataka, and Kerala. The next few weeks are going to be just amazing.

Argh, internet time is up. I was going to link you photos to all of the above, but y'all know how to google image search. Go spend some time on wikipedia. We'll talk to you soon. Once again, wish you were here.

Atwood, "The Loneliness of the Military Historian"

2008-02-24T11:39:00.003-05:00

Confess: it's my profession
that alarms you.
This is why few people ask me to dinner,
though Lord knows I don't go out of my way to be scary.
I wear dresses of sensible cut
and unalarming shades of beige,
I smell of lavender and go to the hairdresser's:
no prophetess mane of mine,
complete with snakes, will frighten the youngsters.
If I roll my eyes and mutter,
if I clutch at my heart and scream in horror
like a third-rate actress chewing up a mad scene,
I do it in private and nobody sees
but the bathroom mirror.

In general I might agree with you:
women should not contemplate war,
should not weigh tactics impartially,
or evade the word enemy,
or view both sides and denounce nothing.
Women should march for peace,
or hand out white feathers to arouse bravery,
spit themselves on bayonets
to protect their babies,
whose skulls will be split anyway,
or, having been raped repeatedly,
hang themselves with their own hair.
These are the functions that inspire general comfort.
That, and the knitting of socks for the troops
and a sort of moral cheerleading.
Also: mourning the dead.
Sons, lovers, and so forth.
All the killed children.

Instead of this, I tell
what I hope will pass as truth.
A blunt thing, not lovely.
The truth is seldom welcome,
especially at dinner,
though I am good at what I do.
My trade is courage and atrocities.
I look at them and do not condemn.
I write things down the way they happened,
as near as can be remembered.
I don't ask why, because it is mostly the same.
Wars happen because the ones who start them
think they can win.

In my dreams there is glamour.
The Vikings leave their fields
each year for a few months of killing and plunder,
much as the boys go hunting.
In real life they were farmers.
They come back loaded with splendour.
The Arabs ride against Crusaders
with scimitars that could sever
silk in the air.
A swift cut to the horse's neck
and a hunk of armour crashes down
like a tower. Fire against metal.
A poet might say: romance against banality.
When awake, I know better.

Despite the propaganda, there are no monsters,
or none that can be finally buried.
Finish one off, and circumstances
and the radio create another.
Believe me: whole armies have prayed fervently
to God all night and meant it,
and been slaughtered anyway.
Brutality wins frequently,
and large outcomes have turned on the invention
of a mechanical device, viz. radar.
True, valour sometimes counts for something,
as at Thermopylae. Sometimes being right --
though ultimate virtue, by agreed tradition,
is decided on by the winner.
Sometimes men throw themsleves on grenades
and burst like paper bags of guts
to save their comrades.
I can admire that.
But rats and cholera have won many wars.
Those, and potatoes,
or the absence of them.
It's no use pinning all those medals
across the chests of the dead.
Impressive, but I know too much.
Grand exploits merely depress me.

In the interests of research
I have walked on many battlefields
that once were liquid with pulped
men's bodies and spangled with exploded
shells and splayed bone.
All of them have been green again
by the time I got there.
Each has inspired a few good quotes in its day.
Sad marble angels brood like hens
over the grassy nests where nothing hatches.
(The angels could just as well be described as vulgar
or pitiless, depending on camera angle.)
The word glory figures a lot on gateways.
Of course I pick a flower or two
from each, and press it in the hotel Bible
for a souvenir.
I'm just as human as you.

But it's no use asking me for a final statement.
As I say, I deal in tactics.
Also statistics:
for every year of peace there have been four hundred
years of war.

A careful, nuanced discussion of Punjab so far, and life in the care of S's wonderful family

2008-02-24T11:24:00.003-05:00

Ohmygod, FOOD.

Standing policy at the moment is to eat whatever is put in front of you, and so far it hasn't steered us wrong. Not... even... close. All I can say is, Amritsar better be one hell of a place.

We love you, family of S. Please come to Canada some day so we can make you easy-scramble tofu and potatoes with garlic.*

*Maybe not. Maybe we'll just say thanks.

Rajasthan and on and on

2008-02-23T02:59:00.014-05:00

So while we're slacking off at the Tandon residence in Chandigarh, we're taking advantage of their fast internet connection and computer to offer some photos. Quickly. Here: This is Jodhpur, the city with the major fort we visited and the blue buildings. This is also E looking happy. You can't see the blue of the city too much, and unfortunately uploading photos takes a long time so we'll show you all the actual city when we get home.

(Sorry in advance for the wonky spacing on this entry, I don't know what's going on...)

This is a shot as we were approaching the fort on the hill, which is in the top right corner of the last photo. It was really imposing.

Rajasthanis have a real flair for detail, in architecture as well as elsewhere. The entire exterior of the citadel was all latticework, and no two panels on the entire structure are the same. Below is the interior of one of the major rooms of the palace part. That's real gold, and detailed paintings of the various rulers who lived in the citadel.

This is part of the exterior in a small courtyard where the women lived and spent their time. You'll see the latticework panels here. They're not actually lattice, I just don't know how to describe them. Carved, I guess. They look better when the photos are bigger.

Below is a view of Jaisalmer, the last city we stayed at in Rajasthan, which was the honey yellow sandstone. This is the view from our hotel room, looking out over the main gate to the fort and over the city. Jaisalmer, of course, is where we took our camels from:

They had a fairly nice temperament; were huge; posed happily for photos.

The desert, as we mentioned, was beautiful. Again, I wish this photo was bigger. These are our camels at rest.
(Okay, I accidentally deleted the photo this referred to, and I've been fighting with this post for over an hour now, so the desert is just going to have to wait. I hate you, blogger.)

Anyway, this is from the Rock Garden in Chandigarh. This random guy started building quirky sculptures out of trash from the city, and eventually the city found out and gave him a grant to work on it. So it's all made from reused materials. As you can see, it was pretty interesting.

So, sorry this entry is so patchworky. More, better, later.

Alright, let's make a deal: if this isn't the best vacation ever, we'll all agree to disband and join other families.

2008-02-21T22:40:00.003-05:00

We've got S. Or, rather, he's got us. Thank you Tandon family for your hospitality.

3 different kinds of pain

2008-02-20T09:11:00.003-05:00

Oscular pain, muscular pain, and dermatological pain!

All in what you would technically describe as the "assal" region. Camels are boney, rocky, chafey, smelly buggers, but oh man was that fun.

Because I only have a half hour before my hour of internet is over, we'll keep this short.

Meaning, in list form:

SOME THINGS I'D LIKE TO REMEMBER ABOUT CAMELS:

- phenomenal patience, tough skins
- very bouncy at a trot
- with long necks and solemn eyes, they feel closer to a dinosaur at times than a horse
- more frequent defecation than any animal I'm aware of
- they require the co-operation of every muscle in your ass, legs and torso in order to walk comfortably... you must stay very loose in the hips and, well, everywhere
- saddles possess supernatural ass-blistering powers
- when in heat, they puff their tongues out the sides of their mouths and inflate them with foul, camel-smelling, gurgly air
- are gurgly creatures in general
- splay legs comically when eating, peeing
- will make you smell like camel.

(Bonus: - are spooked by old Soviet tanks)

And, that's most of the story right there. Except for the part where we parked (our camels) on the dunes, watched the sun set, and stared into the black parts of the sky as the stars appeared in the Thar desert. We camped out on the dunes and learned to make (well, roll) chapatis. In short, it was just beautiful.

E. wishes to point out that she made shadow puppets with the moonlight, which was unbelievably bright. And all of this is true.

But holy shit are we sore today. I didn't have stirrups on my camel for the first bit, and so was stuck using the thigh-clamping method of staying on top of the camel. Staying on top of the camel is most of what you do while on the camel. The remaining 3% of your energy is spent looking around. What you see is amazing, of course. It just leaves your inner thighs, butt muscles, back and stomach muscles, tailbone, and skin on your rear in bad shape.

For the rest, I guess, wait for the photos. Which we meant to upload tonight, but we don't have our photo keys with us, so, sorry. We got some great ones though.

We're sad to be leaving Jaisalmer - not because there's much left to do, but because it's so beautiful. But at 6am tomorrow we're busing to Bikaner and then catching a train to Chandigarh, where S. will graciously be meeting us, again, at the godless hour of 6am. That, we're very much looking forward to.

It'll be a few days before we blog again. Take care, all. Wish every one of you could have been there last night on the dunes.

Jaisalmer and other things we shouldn't be wearing or doing

2008-02-18T08:04:00.002-05:00

Jaisalmer, two weeks in. Beautiful honey-coloured city in the desert, big central fort with a separate half-city happening inside. One we're... destroying every minute we're here.

The Jaisalmer fort is one of the top 100 most at-risk archeological sites in the world. The sewage system was enough to serve the population that inhabited it for hundreds of years, but not enough to sustain the water glut of the tens of thousands of tourists who've snaked through it in the last half-century. The fort is slowly sinking into the desert as the pipes leak out into the base and destroy the foundation. Three major buildings have collapsed since 1990. This place is in serious trouble.

... all of which we did not know when we booked our hotel inside its walls, overlooking its main gate at the town whose livelihood and heritage we're helping to slowly destroy. In case it's not obvious, I'm not feeling great about it.

Especially since Jaisalmer is so lovely. Golden yellow sandstone, everything, narrow alleys, carved balconies. Very friendly people, (relatively) relaxed markets.

And, other than the fort, the thing most tourists come here for: camels.

Before you get all judgmental on us for doing something so touristy... well, actually, I don't have a good defense at all. We're taking a camel trek here. (E. again points out that I'm refusing to use the word 'safari,' and she is right.) We were going to do it in Bikaner, but found an arrangement here that makes more sense for us, plus we hear it's better here anyway. So at 6.30am tomorrow we'll be taking our jeep out to get our camels with the four other tourists we'll be spending the next two days with. We'll spend the whole of tomorrow riding our camels through the Thar desert, stopping in a few places, and then camp out on the dunes, and ride back the next day (we're told this will involve galloping... I'm excited, my spine is not). We'll be crashing at another budget hotel that night after we get back to the city around 6-7pm, and then at 6am the next day, beginning our day-long journey to Chandigarh to meet S. and his family. We're both excited to see him, and them, and are hoping very much that we don't still smell like camel. Which we almost certainly will.

Should we tell you about the pants? Probably not, I'm sure they'll be in enough photos before the end of things. If you really want to see an accurate sample in the meantime, google image search "Aladdin."

We may or may not be able to post again before Chandigarh (where we will be arriving on the 22nd). I'm sure by then we'll have some interesting stories.

Be good.

Ugh: A Post With No Content

2008-02-16T06:54:00.004-05:00

Lazy. Had a big post in mind for today, breaking into the concern-as-colonialism problem, which I meant to start off with a long discussion about the concept of human rights - which I figured I'd eventually follow with one about the definition of colonialism and the paternalistic attitudes it's based on - and then, sometime after that, and probably in small bits spanning the rest of the trip, I was going to cough up some thoughts on how the two relate to each other.

But.

Came down here around 1pm all hot to get going, and we had a power failure (which apparently happens at the same time every day, although no one told us that). Now it's 4 hours later and I'm feeling tired and lazy. So maybe not today after all.

Tonight we're leaving Jodhpur, getting back on another overnight (we checked - tickets are correct) headed for Jaisalmer. We had an extremely relaxing time here, including lots of reading and eating, which was offset by one fairly physical day where we hiked up to the old fort above the city and saw that. The fort was really incredible, as E. mentioned below, and hopefully we'll post photos sometime soon. Those who have access can look at E's photos of Delhi on facebook in the meantime. I imagine we'll do another big round-up photo upload once we're done Rajasthan, which is really only another 5 days or so anyway.

Blargh, sorry, this post has no content. Just wanted to check in, say everything's cool, etc. Also, E. is going to be posting every once in a while, which I'm very happy about, and hopefully will be nice for those of you on her side who read this.

So, cheers. See you in Jaisalmer.

Armouries

2008-02-16T01:38:00.002-05:00

I've discovered a love for armouries. It's totally baffling, but they seem to have a pronounced effect on me. No matter how tired, hungry, or tired I am, looking at swords, daggers, rifles, pistols, armour, gunpowder flasks, backscratchers (yes, these are included in some collections) puts me in a fantastic mood. We visited Meherangarh yesterday and it was amazing. M. took a ton of photos.

-E.

You never really know what to pack

2008-02-14T10:52:00.002-05:00

The books I ended up bringing:

Dennis Lee - Riffs
Michael Ondaatje - Anil's Ghost (thank you Cindy)
Elizabeth Gilbert - Eat Pray Love (a gift from my grandparents)
Lisa Moore - Opoen

And all I've had on my mind for days, you lit kids, is Margaret Atwood's brilliant poem, "The Loneliness of the Military Historian." I'm running out of internet time, but a golden pony that poos marshmallows for whoever can find me a copy online. Au secours!

Jaipur, yes, but Jodhur, oh yes!

2008-02-14T10:16:00.003-05:00

Hey again, all. Sorry for the hiatus - we were in Jaipur yesterday and the day before, and couldn't find internet there for cheaper than about Rs40-50/hr ($1.10-1.40). No deal.

One minor trauma later, we're in Jodhpur, where we'll be roosting for a few days. Before I get to Jaipur and the trauma, which after this blog post will not be spoken of again except as a cautionary tale, let me say that we're both pretty much in love with Jodhpur. Rajasthan, you know how to make a beautiful city.

First, Jaipur. We had the better part of two days in Jaipur, which was generally really nice, although during our time there we decided we'd had enough of bazaars for a few days. That's simple enough. Among the hilights were the Palace of Winds, which is every bit as Final Fantasy-esque as it sounds (so, obviously, I loved it. Nerd noise here). It's this beautiful huge construction right on a main market which is basically just a huge front that was constructed full of windows (over 900) so that women who were in strict purdah could observe festivities on the street without being seen. My hips couldn't get through most of the passageways, so obviously I'm not delicate enough for that kind of thing. There, that's my snark for the day.

The Jantar Mantar at Jaipur was really fascinating; it's this centuries-old field of huge instruments for measuring and predicting astronomy, astrology and... chronology? Time. They had ways of measuring the altitude, latitude and longitude of the sun, the accurate solar time within two seconds, which phase of the zodiac the sun is in, and bunch of other stuff that I tried pretty hard to understand but didn't. I think Emma followed a little more than I did, but there was a lot (especially about astrology) that we just couldn't piece together. Still, very very interesting. 17th century, I think.

Our hotel was really great, with a lovely courtyard, and two peacocks that the owner apparently feeds. Regardless of how you feel about that, damn are those beautiful birds, especially from 6-7 feet away.

Alright, the trauma.

Last night was our first overnight train. The overnight train process, we suspect, is in generaly going to be fine and fairly easy to use. Last night, it was not.

We booked our train tickets for the whole of Rajasthan (roughly the next week) at once in New Delhi, for convenience. We had a very long chat with the man we did the bookings with, who was very nice, and picked out our trains carefully. Last night we were meant to board the 11.57pm train, and had been waiting in the waiting room at the train station since about 8.30, because we were checked out of our hotel and had nowhere else we really wanted to go in the dark. Then, at about 11.45, when getting up to go to our platform, E. noticed that the date on our ticket said February 14 (which is today), not February 13 (which was yesterday).

So. We ran to the tourist office, who calmly assured us that it was correct, that they put the 14 because the train always runs late and therefore usually leaves after midnight, meaning the 14. He told us to get on the train. That made no sense to us, but we went to the platform.

Of course you see where this is going. Other people in our seats when we got on. The next 15 minutes were an insane blur of random locals trying to help us (who/wherever they are, we are so so grateful), pleading our case to multiple ticketing officials, jumping from car to car trying to find someone who will let us on. Reminder: it was midnight, we had our heavy packs with us, and no hotel for the night. Finally, as the train was pulling away, one of the ticket guys gestured vaguely to hop on, so we did, still not knowing if we could stay. He dragged us through a bunch of cars, out of 3AC (our class of ticket) and into sleeper class, which is noisy and comes with no bedding. He pulled two Indian soldiers out of their bunks (awkward) and put us in them. The soldiers were not impressed, although they were exceptionally kind to us. I felt awful, but we were also totally desperate. After some yelling between people in our cabin, we curled up and tried to sleep. It was freezing; we'd been expecting bedding. It's still going down to 2-3C at night, so we were pretty uncomfortable. But we were on the train.

After some rough sleeping and numb appendages, we realized that they don't announce the stops on the night trains, and we didn't know exactly when our train was supposed to get in. We thought it was around 5.30am. So at about 4.45, we got out of our bunks, pulled up our packs, and stood by the door to the car so we could ask someone at each stop where we were. We were wide awake, that artificial exhausted-awake, and finally an Indian man in our section traded berths with me so we could fold one down and E. and I could sit rather than stand. He also told us when we were at Jodhpur. We still aren't sure how they know. But we're pretty sure we could figure it out again if we had to - lots of people get off and on at the larger junctions.

Luckily our hotel had sent a driver to pick us up (we love this hotel), who was on the platform waiting for us when we got off around 6am. There was no room for us when we got to the hotel as check-out time was 10am, so he led us through the streets to another building that's being renovated by the owners of our hotel, and let us into a very luxurious but only half-finished room. It seemed safe. We offered him a tip (the ride was provided free and he carried our bags, plus it was only 6.30am still at this point) but he declined, saying, "Sleep, sleep." So we did.

At 9.30am we got up and made our way back to the building, had a lovely and leisurely breakfast at the rooftop restaurant (these are common in Indian hotels and extremely nice) and got into our room a little later. After the rough sleep and the tense night, we had a beyond wonderful day today, sitting on the roof in the sun, reading and chatting, again with lassis. E. loves lassi more than any human should, which is really hilarious and great.

So today, the day today, ended up being completely great. We got a refund on our tickets for tonight's train, and Jodhpur is just lovely. Many of the buildings are this beautiful robin's-egg blue, with the odd pink and whitewash sandstone ones for contrast. We have a great view of the fort, which I won't be able to spell properly at the moment, but we're hiking up to it tomorrow, so we'll let you know how it goes and maybe post some photos in another day or two.

So all's well. This post has been all story and no thinking, but we've both been thinking a lot (I think), so we'll have another thinking post tomorrow or the next day.

I wanted to thank everyone who's reading and commenting; your comments have been really interesting. I especially want to get into the question Cindy's raised about the human rights framework as an evolved form of colonialism, and the risks of that. Gonna keep that in my mind for the next few days. Really looking forward to seeing who weighs in on it.

You guys are great. Happy Valentine's.

Oh yeah

2008-02-11T07:30:00.000-05:00

Forgot to mention, it was 20 C and sunny today, and E. and I spent most of the afternoon on our rooftop cafe drinking tea and lassi, eating oranges and pomegranate, and reading our books.

Chins up, you suckers experiencing snow!

The other side of Delhi

2008-02-11T06:41:00.000-05:00

Yesterday morning we saw a rickshaw driver beaten by a policeman. The police here carry a long stick, about 4 feet, which I didn't want to see used. We're not really sure what the rickshaw driver did wrong... obviously it was something, but we couldn't tell what. He caned him in the side of the knees twice, and hit him three or four times in the face and chest with the butt end of a shorter instrument. The street, like everywhere in Pahar Ganj, was packed. We seemed to be the only ones who were surprised.

Rickshaw drivers here have been on my mind. Taxis are rarely used here. Usually it's either autorickshaws, little three-wheeled green affairs that resemble a dirtbike with a two-person back seat and an enclosure (rent Darjeeling Limited to see), or regular rickshaws, which are a two-seated carriage pulled by a man on a bicycle. We haven't used a cycle one yet, partially because I'm having a hard time stomaching it. Some of the men pulling these little open carriages are well past retirement age. Even our autorickshaw driver confessed he works seven days a week, as many hours as he can stand. Some things I'm getting used to here - like ignoring pushy vendors, negotiating aggressively, declining any offers of help - but I'm nowhere near ready to ride through town in a carriage pulled by a 70-year old barefoot man on a bike.

And where are all the women?

During the day the ratio of men to women in public is easily 15 or 20:1. I have my guesses as to why. I suspect they're busy elsewhere.

A large percentage of the women we see, actually, are white tourists. We've noticed a pretty strange demographic: white tourists here (other than the middle-aged, of which there are tons) tend to be of certain ages. Two men travelling together will universally be in their late thirties. A man and woman will be in their mid twenties, a little older than us but not much. The only people our age you tend to see are pairs or threes of women, and you see no men our age here unless travelling with a woman. (Exception: the odd man our age here and there who's travelling alone.) It's bizarre, we have no idea why this is the case. Why would women our age be drawn to India as a travel destination more than men, particularly? If anything, I would have expected the reverse; that pairs of women would be more drawn to more familiar places (relatively) like Europe for safety reasons, while men would feel more comfortable venturing farther.

Who knows.

D is also for Dizzying. Personal space and solitude don't exist in Delhi. Although there have been quiet moments on our rooftop, in our hotel room, briefly while walking along Rajpath away from the touts, there is no silence and no solitude. We're getting used to people brushing us as they pass, to motorcycles and rickshaws passing within inches of each other on the streets, to veering sideways while walking to avoid getting clipped by the bikes whizzing by.

We're having a slightly harder time getting used to the low-level but persistent harassment. On the subway yesterday, it really felt like the whole platform was staring at us. This isn't just paranoia, it's substantial. We find it happens less when we take certain precautions - dress as covered-up as we can, keep our hair tied back tidily (braided is best) and don't make eye contact - but it's unavoidable in certain circumstances. It's yet to become really threatening - I don't think either of us have particularly feared for our safety since arriving - but it does make things uncomfortable.

We both think it will be easier when Sumeet is with us, which will be in about two weeks. It makes me angry that this behaviour will stop when we have a male with us - shouldn't it stop because we have a right to move freely in public, to dress as we're comfortable, and to be shown some basic respect? - but then I think more, and it's the same in Canada. Women don't get street harassed in Canada when with a male friend, a boyfriend, or, best, their father. The same disrespect is there, the same attitude that men are not to be messed with but women are open territory when in public. Plus, as far as we know, violence against white tourists is much less prevalent here than various types of violence against women is in Canada. Once or twice in Canada I've experienced street harassment that was genuinely menacing, and genuinely frightening. Here it's a low drone with little behind it. We stand out here; it happens more; but its differences from the streets of Montreal or Toronto are differences of degree not of kind.

Which gets me thinking about one of the few occasions when I've been cat-called while with a boyfriend. It was from a moving car in New York City. My partner was actually pleased; he felt good to be with a woman who was deserving of cat-calling (... by other men [my addition]). I'm not sure I have the time right now to fully take apart what that means, but I think it's relevant.

I think that's long enough, and E. needs to use the computer. We'll have to talk later about where textiles come from, why the cook in our hotel kitchen had to come here from Nepal (we don't know the answer), and why everybody everybody everybody wants to sell us something. Whatever the social problem, poverty is usually the reason.

Take care, all.

Textiles, forts, and photos

2008-02-11T01:47:00.000-05:00

Oh my!

Sorry for the gap since the last post...

We've done a lot since. Including figure out how to upload photos onto these computers, so! A brief, incomplete visual guide to our last little while...

This is the main building of Humayun's Tomb, which was built in the 16th century. You can't see a lot of the detail here, but just about every square inch was covered in paint and carvings. It was really beautiful, and on huge grounds, which were based on an octagon motif. There were streams running out from it on all four sides, which led to smaller structures.

Note the mass of private school kids on a field trip. Private school kids on field trips have been a pattern at every place we've been. They nag white tourists incessantly for attention, usually just with a chorus of "Hi! Hi! Hi!" until you obligate, but sometimes we've been cornered, got stuck shaking dozens of hands, having extremely awkward small talk with a group of kids we're trying to ignore and are sure are making fun of us. So that's been not great. At all costs, we're trying to avoid getting stuck in a mass (by this we mean hundreds) of teenage boys, which happened once with unpleasant effects. Still, look how nice that tomb is.

This is the view down from our room to the rooftop patio of our hotel, and down to the square we face, which is just off the main bazaar in Pahar Ganj. We've been eating there a lot. It's cheap and hasn't made us sick yet. Woot! Excuse the blur.

We can't offer photos right now of a lot of what we saw, including the National Museum and Qutb Minar, this beautiful 13th century minaret, because they're on Emma's camera and she doesn't have it on her at the moment. So, some other time.

This is a very small part of the inside of the Red Fort, which is probably something like 2 square km inside. Enormous. The outside is all red sandstone, and the inside, where Shah Jahan and his family lived, gave audiences, etc, is all this sort of architecture; really ornate, very intricately carved white marble. Again, very beautiful. A lot of the paint has been chipped away, and large parts were once inlaid with gold and precious stones, which are all gone. We were still very impressed.

We also wish we could show you Akshardam, the recently built temple we went to a few days ago. All white and pink sandstone, again with the amazing carvings. Attention to detail seems to be what differentiates the peaks of Indian architecture from that of other countries. This huge structure, which also sat on massive grounds, were over 100 000 carvings of deities, over 200 elephants (around the perimeter of the temple), and uncountable other details (especially the ceilings). Something like 300 million hours of labour went into the details. So, you know, that's a lot of detail.

(Nevermind how much it cost to build, how much the land would have cost and the materials, and how much, in comparison, the actual labourers who built it were paid... that's a whole other issue.)

Today we braved the bazaar and got some things, mostly necessities like power converters and locks, but we also each bought a shawl-type-thing. The green one I brought (thanks Marcelle) has been the MVP of my wardrobe so far, turning the most scandalous tshirt into something socially appropriate. Also, it's cold at night.... I've really only taken it off to shower since we got on the plane. So we thought investing in one or two of those made sense. Also, they're pretty. And cheap! Emma's was less than $2 CDN, and mine was less than $8 (a little heavier/warmer material). Which brings me to my next point...

Oh my god, textiles.

Today was a great day.

I think we're both adjusting to the, uh... cultural climate, here a little more. We had to remind ourselves yesterday that we'd really only been here for less than a week. We're just about feeling ready to move on, which is good because tomorrow morning, bright and early (read: around 6am) we're getting on a train for Jaipur, Rajasthan. We have one night there, then we're taking an overnight train the next night for Jodhpur, then a few days later on to Jaisalmer. A few days after that we're up to Bikaner where we're doing perhaps the tackiest thing we'll be at during this entire trip: riding camels out into the desert for an overnight. (Emma is bullying me to use the word "safari," but my dignity refuses.) So we're obviously excited about that, even though it's so, so touristy. Come on. How many times do you get to camp in the desert, much less ride a camel there and back?

Don't judge us.

Alright, maybe another post later. We're getting grumpy and it's lunch time (almost 1pm).

Take care y'all.

Oh, ps, this is from when we got our bags back:

Yes, it was that good.

Delhi, equipped

2008-02-07T02:05:00.000-05:00

We got our bags. Heads exploded, tears were choked back, gratuities offered gratuitously to the delivery person. We were so sure they were lost, not delayed. God bless you, Virgin Atlantic, God bless you.

American Airlines, you are on notice.

Anyway.

We had an actual fun day full of fun things yesterday. After a brief morning stop to the Canadian Embassy (dropped off: passport application, photos, and $150 CDN. picked up: toilet paper and clean water. good trade over all), we walked for about an hour and a half through the city center, past the President's Estate, which we saw but couldn't enter, and up to the India Gate. It's a huge monument to the Indian soldiers who died in the... well, we're disagreeing whether it's the Third Afghan War or World War I. But it's huge. And gorgeous... and has the name of every soldier who died inscribed on it. We took lots of photos. The whole area was a very nice change from the incredibly hectic area where we're staying. It was wide open spaces without too too many people walking. We had a nice sit by India Gate, and found out what happens when Emma's sleeves aren't long enough. Requests for photos were declined, and eventually she gave up and put her sweater back on... at my behest.

(Emma injects: It's all true.)

After that we grabbed an auto-rickshaw and headed to the amazing Humayun's Tomb. Just incredible. It's this 16th-century complex that... well, if it had been finished, it was supposed to rival the Taj, but they stopped a little short. Still, the grounds were incredible, and the main building just beautiful. I was on photo duty for this attraction, and went a little overboard, but hey. Beautiful red and white sandstone. Some very friendly flocks of Indian private school children, who are probably making fun of us but I really don't care.

We were back on our hotel's rooftop patio by early evening, eating with the small group of travellers we seem to be sharing every meal with these days. We were both asleep by 8.30. Yes, we party hard.

Saw the sun rise this morning. Well, through the haze and clouds. Still. We had a relaxing morning drinking multiple cups of tea on the roof with an older couple we've met, Jennifer and Eep (sp?), who've been very helpful and interesting. Now we're just heading out, at noon.

Anyway. Hey, don't expect this much detail in every entry. We're still into it now, but we're going to get lazy.

Sumantra, if you're reading this, we are going to have a lot to talk about when I get back. Oh man do I wish I could call you. This has been incredibly interesting.

Take care all. Emma sends her love.

Delhi

2008-02-05T05:35:00.000-05:00

... where we've passed an acrylics place called "Vishnu Processed Plastics" and a cab company called "Competent Driver's." Where we're sitting four cars wide in a three-lane road and I catch myself thinking that we could probably fit another one in here. Where... you know what, nevermind.

Delhi is a lot of things. Most of them are things like "intense," "busy," etc. But those aren't bad - they just take some getting used to.

Our airline screwed up and we missed our connecting flight from Chicago to Delhi, and so got rerouted (+ about 12 hours) through the UK. So, after a 10 hour layover in Heathrow (which is huge, and entirely lacking in international calling cards) we gradually made it here through a process of changing flights repeatedly which we've termed "air-hitch-hiking."

We arrived in Delhi, our bags didn't. We think they're just delayed, because of all the flight jumping. We're going to find out for sure tonight. My insurance company got a call today. Anyway, we can find everything we need here, even if worst comes to worst, so we're not too worried.

After getting a cab into the city, we got only slightly lost in Pahar Ganj (to be expected), the market area where we're staying. Another slight setback: some of my documents went missing in this area, almost all of which have now been replaced. The Canadian Embassy in Delhi is really nice! We've figured out how to get currency, get around, get fed, get... and so on. Our hotel is... modest.... but is meeting our needs. We had our first Indian-meal-in-India today, and no shaky tummies yet. Then again, it's still early.

That's most of it so far - today was running errands (Emma has been a real trooper, I'm happy to report), and tomorrow we have to jump back out to the Embassy again and then we're going to do something fun. On the whole, things are definitely looking up. We're handling things well, and I think we're both more or less in good spirits. Early challenges were expected, arose, were overcome.

We'll post more after we've, you know... done something.

Sumeet, if you're reading this, oh man do we have some suggestions for you before you leave....

Take it easy all!

You'll never guess what continent I'm on

2008-02-03T09:13:00.000-05:00

No, seriously.

Long story which we'll explain in better detail later... and it's all resolved. Our Toronto-Chicago flight was delayed by more than an hour, our gates were changed with no notification, there was a baggage screw-up.... we made a heroic run through O'Hare (Emma especially... her chest still hurts) trying to get to our gate for our Chicago-Delhi flight, only to have it closed more or less in our faces (mostly more). So we watched our plane take off without us. (All of this was re-enacted for dramatic effect and photo-documentation.)

So after talking to 3 or 4 different airline people, we got redirected through the UK. We got on a 10pm flight to the UK yesterday, and are currently having a 9-hour layover in Heathrow, waiting to get on our flight to Delhi.

So everything's fine, disaster averted, and one hefty airline complaint pending. Also, there were no vegetarian meals. We ate 4 salads each and two buns.... ie. the refuse of the carnivores' meals. It was hilarious, also an environmental disaster. Derina, expect an email soon.

So that's it. Everything's okay, we'll be arriving in Delhi at about noon on February 4 (Delhi time), which is about 1.30 am on February 4 in Toronto/Montreal time. Our reservation knows, they're sending a taxi again, it's all cool. We're still more or less having fun.

Hurray! We'll post again on the 4 or 5.

Well

2008-02-02T12:49:00.001-05:00

See ya.

Linksalicious

2008-02-01T20:41:00.000-05:00

Because I have some unexpected time to kill, and it's never too late to get sucked into the blogosphere.

Ontario judge orders HIV-positive complainant to wear a mask in the courtroom and all others to wear gloves; believes virus flees body into dry air, is stuffed into his nostrils by evil HIV sprites. I'm sure I don't need to tell you what the complainant was complainanting about.

Update: Oh jeez.

The only thing that makes this a "new" low is that I just found out about it. L-girl at We Move to Canada draws connections between Katrina vanden Heuvel's article in The Nation about migrant farm workers in Immokalee, Florida and our very own agricultural practices right here in Ontario.

Swallow whatever you're drinking before checking out these PSA's about statutory rape. What Jill said.

The blog that brought me The Wire brings you the Worst American Birthdays series. (Also available: Sunday Deposed Monarch Blogging. High-brow!)

I think I think this is hilarious. But I didn't the first time I saw it. In my understanding, it's ultimately satire, which is an important function of horror movies - it's just so stripped of camp, considering the premise, that it's genuinely uncomfortable. And then I started laughing. Problem solved!

I roll my eyes, you roll your eyes, no one is surprised by any of it except the bizarre relish the author takes in detailing just how slutty she looked. The "grey rape" debate/concept, sort of like the god-awful PSA above, is what happens when almost-good ideas go wrong wrong wrong. If you strip away all the survivor-blaming (and that's a lot of, er... stripping), somewhere in there lurks an attempt to get people to think about sexual assault in a consent-and-communication framework (ie. you don't necessarily need to attack someone and physically force yourself on them to have violated their boundaries), and that's a good thing. I can't count the times it's been suggested that young women not drink in excess, not wear what they want, not be sexual in anyway because man is that asking for trouble. I have a counter-suggestion; hey everybody, don't get so drunk that you can't gage whether your partner is consenting, forget to ask, or don't really care.

Yeah, that'll do. I had planned to write a big post tonight in (belated) celebration of the 20th anniversary of R. v. Morgentaler on the history of reproductive rights in Canada, but now I'm tired, so just go to Birth Pangs.

Goodnight!

Nm

2008-02-01T13:30:00.000-05:00

We got snowed out. We're leaving tomorrow instead of today.

Now I'm stuck in limbo, with all the loose ends tied up and emotionally ready to get on a plane, but with 24 hours to kill...

Tough choices at the last minute

2008-02-01T10:18:00.000-05:00

Of course this doesn't include my guide book, notebook, or Hindi study guide, but I think I've decided on which books I'm taking:

Dennis Lee - Riffs
Lisa Moore - Open
Michael Ondaatje - Anil's Ghost (for rereading)
J.M. Coetzee - Waiting for the Barbarians (also for rereading in a new context)

I think....

My last full day in Canada for four months

2008-02-01T00:46:00.000-05:00

... was full of great people. After spending most of yesterday having fun with my brother (which was totally worthwhile) and not getting anything done, I was all agrumble and anxious this morning until A.G. called from Nicaragua, which really just perks a person right up. It's been strange not hearing certain voices every day, and it was really comforting to get that hit of familiarity this close to departure.

Later I got to grab some food with T.G., who I'm excited for - I'm happy to hear that people are noticing that she's way too competent for her current job, and there may be people out there who will go out of their way to help her out in the near future. Also, the moving to the UK.

Finished it off with my grandparents and J.P., who is getting married next summer. I'm to keep an eye out for plate-sized mirrors and jewelry for the bridesmaids (which includes me). And the full series box set of X-Files DVDs - of course there's a reason we've been friends for so long.

I'm realizing, partially through talking to some people who have experience in the area, that a lot of the advice in our guidebooks is really ethnocentric, and proceeds from the assumption that any decent white person will be traumatized by any degree of exposure to anything (or -one) not Judeo-Christian and North American / Western European in origin. This is not totally surprising. One of the "resources" I was given at the travel clinic I went to was a booklet on different types of diseases found in different parts of the world (eg. cholera, typhoid, dengue fever) accompanied by maps of where the diseases are high- and low-risk. Pictured below: the entry for Traveller's Diarrhea.

The entry states that the cause of the "disease" is exposure to unfamiliar bacterial cultures. As you can clearly see by the map, unfamiliar bacterial cultures apparently ravage everywhere outside North America, Western Europe, and Australia. Baffling. I understand that my pamphlet is geared at Canadians, but surely this map incorrectly suggests that something is just wonky in the microbial life of all developing areas which isn't wonky where we live. (Of course that's not true; any perfectly healthy person born and raised in any of those dark-blue places is likely to get sick as death when introduced to 'benign' Canadian bacteria [-ae? -um?].)

So, within reason, I'm going with a new strategy: Ask The Locals.

I can't believe how many new things I've had to acquire for this trip. New backpack, new shoes, new camera cards, new first aid supplies, new water purification stuff, new thermal leggings, new hot/cold long-sleeved shirt, new immunities... I got new glasses today, because my prescription was 2 years out of date. Apparently my eyes have disintegrated way more than anyone's eyes should disintegrate in two years. I blame Robert Lecker, my computer screen, and the hours 3 through 7am.

I got the "why India" question a total of 4 times today. I've more or less resorted to "Read this... you'll see."

But, in case anyone is still unconvined:

Here's the place which will just be so great that I can't wait to get there.

See you soon!

The argument against cheap suitcases

2008-01-26T15:41:00.000-05:00

Zippers rip, swears are sworn, tea is made, emails are read, and the next thing you know, you've lost a full two hours you really needed for packing.

grumble

I will say, though, that I'm having my first experience packing as much shit as humanly possible into my new (non-cheap, nigh indestructible) backpack. It's already a strangely intimate relationship. Although I'm surprised by how much it holds, it really doesn't feel like the appropriate capacity for a 4-month trip through varying climates. I guess that's the challenge. I've been wearing it around my apartment a lot lately, trying to figure out how to wear it and move with it when it's loaded up with weight. I also keep discovering more things that zip, detach, cover, or lock - and each time, each one seems extremely necessary. Which makes me think I need to work on this relationship some more before leaving.

Wolf Parade and Sonnet L'Abbé, you float me on the hard days.

Long-term traveller's advice

2008-01-24T16:51:00.000-05:00

You post yours in the comments; I thank you very much.

Other bloggers, help out

2008-01-24T15:15:00.000-05:00

If anyone knows how to post using jumps (eg, for long posts, I can show the title and first few paragraphs, and offer a link with "Read whole post" or "More after the jump," thus keeping my main page tidy and non-sprawling), help out in the comments?

Troubling predeparture conversations

2008-01-24T13:33:00.000-05:00

A: "Where are you flying into?"
me: "Delhi."
A: .....
me: "What?"
A: "You know how people say nothing can prepare you for India? When they say that, they mean Delhi."
me: "I thought when they said that, they meant Mumbai...."

Oh well. They probably meant both, and that's just fine.

So I've set myself up this space to post while on the road, partially as a record for myself and partially to avoid assaulting you all unnecessarily with 'update' emails.

I've been doing some thinking about why I'm doing this trip, why I'm doing it now, and what I'm hoping to get out of it. It's been a strange thing to think through; it's hardly unusual anymore for my demographic to go places our parents would have been unlikely to choose, and for long periods of time. It sort of feels in some ways that travelling outside of North America and Western Europe (I have yet to hear a satisfactory term for this group of areas, probably with good reason) has become for our generation what the two-months-in-Europe-after-graduation trip was for previous generations (though, of course, plenty of us still opt for Europe). I wonder what both of these mean. I certainly see myself wanting many of the same things, and probably sinking myself into similar problems.

People have tended to react to my trip in one of two ways. The first, which tends to come from the older generation, is a mix of cautious support and curiosity as to why in the world anyone would choose India as a destination. (Early email a concerned family member: "Italy, France, Belgium, Germany, England, Scotland, Ireland, Greece, Austria. Even Hungary. All these countries have bathrooms in them. And did you know that India was right beside Pakistan? I'm sure you didn't." [NB: I did.]) I haven't really been able to explain it to anyone who's had this reaction, and don't expect I'll be able to. The second reaction, which has usually come from my own generation (and community) has been one of total understanding and excitement.

There is, however, a difficult subset of this group, who follow up their approval with a question to the effect of, "Are you going there as a spiritual journey?"

That question sends me off in a million directions. My gut wants to say no; I'm not expecting some mystical experience to happen; I feel like this question comes from an embarassingly orientalist set of ideas about what India is; I have never had a moment of transcendence triggered by bright colours, a foreign language, or the smell of incense or curry* here, and don't really expect it to work any differently there; I feel that human beings are basically the same everywhere, and I don't expect any one or group of people overseas to answer my questions any more than I expect anyone here to; that it's not appropriate to look at other parts of the world (or anyone else) as answers to the parts of ourselves that remain mysterious.

But I also know that that answer is disingenuous. First, of course I believe that we do define ourselves with and against others, and that on some level, you need to allow yourself to do that in order to accept other people's humanity - at its best, it's an act of sympathy. Second, although it's easy for me to say that I'm not seeking any kind of religious experience, spirituality is an entirely different question.

I consider myself a spiritual agnostic. I'm moved by beauty, by suffering, by justice, by history. I'm moved by chaos and paradox. In this spirit, I can say that the last few years have been a profoundly disorienting and grounding experience for me; I believe strongly that the organizing principle of the world and of life is chaos (mantra #1: "crazy shit happens all the time") and that this needn't dislodge our sense of self and justice (mantra #2: "don't be a dick"). Trying to understand my place in this world, and in history, has become very spiritual.

And this trip has a lot to do, for me, with locating myself within these things. Our generation does not have the option of ignoring the non-Western world, and we have good reason to be angry with our parents (where applicable) for doing so. I think I'm drawn to India, specifically, because it strikes me as a particularly hard place to rationally come to terms with; it doesn't fall easily into the "developing world" paradigm that gets applied so liberally** to anyplace that doesn't have easily visible markers of 'advanced democracy' and ' late capitalism,' and allows us to, for example, talk about areas as bafflingly varied as "Africa" and "South Asia" as if they were homogenous. Without having been there yet, India (and here I do mean the whole of India) encapsulates something for me about both the mechanics of the world and our moment in history, and I think this comes from the contraditions and multiplicity of things it contains. Within four months, and within a single nation, I'm going to see some of the oldest structures on the planet (some of which predate the Roman ruins by hundreds, even thousands of years), and then move on to a few cities which are becoming some of the most important technological and economic hubs in the world. India is a constitutionally secular society which has been dealing with issues of religious and regional plurality (with varied degrees of success) since long before Canada was a twinkle in some British lord's eye. Not to mention the issues of population management, which will become a serious global concern over the next century, not only due to the increasing global population but due to scarcity of resource concerns, displacement due to climate change and...

Well, I could go on, but I'll save all of that for the road. In the meantime, I'll be trying not to think every experience into some abstract comment on the cosmos and its relation to worldly justice, and to see the places I'm going to as openly as I can, and for what they are. This is by no means the end of my reservations, intentions, hopes, or assumptions.

In closing, a word on the title of this blog: last year I read Anne McClintock's brilliant article, "The Angel of Progress: Pitfalls of the Term 'Post-Colonial," which got me thinking in a serious way about the current prevalence of the prefix post-. We're stuck, we're told, in a culture*** that's post-modern, post-capitalist, post-communistic, post-democratic, post-feminist (yuck), post-9/11, post-just-about-every-movement-that-has-tried-to-take-the-world-seriously. Post-colonial, of course. McClintock's insights about the way these terms obscure our ability to talk about so many problems that still exist are great, and I won't repeat them. But I think what all this adds up to is a sense of floating in a void, of being disconnected from what's happening around us and in the places we can't see, and of feeling like no one's contributions are meaningful. I worry that the term that's missing from this list, and is the sum of all those terms, is post-responsibility. One major artistic theme of the twentieth century was our individual dislocation from history, our inability to see any semblance of ourselves in the stories of the past, and how that prevents us from seeing and telling the stories of the present, and worse, of the future. I think this view requites an awful inflexibility in the way we look at history; it may not happen on horseback anymore, but I'm not sure it ever really did.

I want to work through these ideas; I think the post is bullshit. I think we all need to get back into our bodies, back into history. I think I'm going to India on a spiritual quest to confront the question of where and who I am, and where and who we all are.

(Of course, I also enjoy the pun on traditional mail; these are my letters to you, which appropriately enough will come electronically rather than by the actual, traditional post.)

And, of course of course, the 'comments' button is at the bottom of each post for a reason.

* Okay, so I've had some pretty transcendent curries... but I think this has more to do with how badly the traditional Anglo-Saxon diet accomodates vegetarians than some spiritual property inherent to the spice. I'll let you know later whether this was, in fact, curry witchcraft.
** Wording deliberate.
*** Few words make me cringe harder than "culture," but there it is.

in which i find a bottle of cuervo

2008-01-06T13:44:00.000-05:00

blah blah blah. i'm jonah goldberg. being jonah goldberg is, in fact, my point.

!linXXor'd!