If the entire world thought like me, yesterday would have passed as a relative non-event. I’ve always thought of February the Fourteenth as a day set aside for people in love or like to make time for each other, and I think that’s a beautiful concept. So often we get busy and the parts of our lives that are truly important fall by the wayside in the hustle and bustle. Here’s a day for you to make your significant other(s) the most important thing. Go out, have a nice dinner, have a conversation, and remind yourself of why you need to keep your priorities in order.

I’ve never thought of Valentine’s Day as Singles Awareness Day (or S.A.D. for short). Really, I think that people without romantic preoccupations don’t have much to do with Valentine’s Day. What did I do to celebrate? I sent valentines to a few people; I sat on a park bench and watched happy couples walk in the park; I ate a box of Lindor chocolates that my mother sent me; I had a job interview at a movie theatre packed with people taking advantage of Valentine’s Day falling on Five Dollar Tuesday. I did think with nostalgia once or twice, “Oh, to be in love.” It wasn’t SAD at all, though. Seeing so many people expressing their puppy love in public makes me gooey. And there is never a bad excuse for eating Lindor chocolates.

Others’ experiences with Valentine’s Day are very different, from what I gather. A number of people over the Monday before seemed to think that Valentine’s Day was going to be the worst day of their life.

On the bus that morning, I overheard a girl talking to her friend about what work was going to be like that night. She worked at a restaurant, and she had looked at the reservations and found that it was all “deuces”. Apparently it’s very hard to work a restaurant filled with only couples, and equally hard to clean off and re-set tables for two when it’s time to rollover customers. I was unaware of this, and I felt for her in that respect. However, when people are stuffed full of good food and feeling twitterpated**, I’m sure they tip well – and, working in a restaurant, you’d see all kinds of couples from all walks of life! Everybody has to eat! You probably see the newlyweds, the people who celebrate V-Day with a sense of irony, the fuck buddies who thought why not, the kids with their braces still on feeling terribly grown up, the people who have been together with decades and are still in love. Where’s your inner sociologist?

In lecture, a friend of a friend was complaining about how expensive alcohol was because he was planning on drinking himself into oblivion in honour of Singles Awareness Day. Valentine’s Day, he said, is an opportunity for couples to rub their love in everyone else’s face, and an opportunity for all the singles on the planet to gather in dives and hit on each other while inebriated and desperate. I told him that instead, he should look on Craigslist for a stranger feeling equally lonely and spend the evening doing the traditional Valentine’s Day things he felt he was missing out on. Why not get to know someone better? You don’t have to get alcohol poisoning, and you could get a second date out of it.

And finally – this is really the icing on the heart-shaped cake – a girl in one of my tutorials told me that she was going to spend the day in irrepressible anxiety because she was sure her boyfriend wasn’t going to get Valentine’s Day right. She had explicitly told him that this was her first time having a significant other on the most romantic day of the year, and that she was expecting him to go all out. She told me that what she wanted was to be picked up from her house in a limo, blindfolded, and taken to a park she’d never been to before, where the trees would be strung up with lights and a man would be playing the violin and a small circular table would be set for a two-person dinner that was served to them in courses by a chef (bringing the food from Lord-knows-where).

“I know he’s going to do something stupid like make me dinner and rent a movie,” she said, “so my Valentine’s Day has to be spent worrying and my Valentine’s Night has to be spent depressed.”

I shook my head. What wouldn’t I give to be sitting in someone’s kitchen while they put in the time, thought, and effort to make me dinner? How much would I love snuggling up in bed and watching a cheesy movie on the laptop? (How great would it be to have someone who knew where to rent movies in Hamilton, the movie-less town?) And most importantly, how great would it be to not have been outside last night? It was cold!

All this is to say, I hope your Valentine’s Day was lovely in one way or another. If it wasn’t, to make you feel better, I give you the best valentine I received all day:

* ({})

**Sure, I can make Bambi references.

I met Picture at a movie. We had been thrown together unceremoniously by two friends who had wanted both of us along but hadn’t given any thought to how we might feel not dating on a double date. Most of our early relationship was characterized by awkwardness of this sort. I knew immediately that I was in no way interested in this boy, with his tidy clothes and his self-assured condescension, and it didn’t occur to me that he would be interested in me. I was seventeen and had never been on a date before. Picture was my first – after our playing of third and fourth wheel on our friend’s date, we went on one of our own. We ate dull food and had dull conversation, and that was that. The couple that had introduced us broke up, and I briefly dated the male half before moving on to another boy for an equally short-lived relationship. By the time Valentine’s Day rolled around, I felt I had done all the dating I was going to want to do in my formative years. That was when Picture emailed me.

At some point, a three-line email asking how I was became the longest written correspondence of which I have ever been a part. Picture and I emailed each other every day for several weeks, our exchanges turning from polite formalities to thoughtful conversation. I forgot that I had not liked him and started looking forward to his “letters” as the high point of my day. We did not go to the same school, or indeed live in the same town. We were both of us stuck – in high school, in our anxiety disorders, in our minds, which would never quiet. We agreed to meet again.

We went bowling with a large group of friends and couldn’t take our eyes off of each other. I’m trying to remember how it felt. I know I wanted to be alone with him. I know I didn’t want him to leave. It felt as though I was never going to see him again.

We kissed for the first time on the Friday before March Break. He was going to Mexico, and I skipped school to go and see him. My grandfather drove me to his town and made a big show of asking for his phone number and ensuring that he was going to take good care of me. We spent the day packing his things and walking around his town. I remember that his house was very quiet and that the light was still gray, as though it were winter. We sat on his bed and he traced circles on my knees with his fingertips. I initiated. He kissed badly. He put his mouth entirely around my lips. He emailed me from Mexico while I had second thoughts the whole week long. I remember a lot of second thoughts.

We sent emails near-daily over the course of our relationship. I kept them all in a word file that I deleted after the break-up – I wish, for the purposes of this story, that I had kept them. So much of it is lost now, so much that I never intended to lose. This is what I remember:

• I remember that he was the first to say that he loved me, and that I replied with “I know.” He made fun of me for stealing a line from Han Solo.
• I remember that his birthday was on May 4^th, and that he didn’t know that was Star Wars Day until I told him.
• I remember sitting with him in his room, talking about how everything would be better between us if we would just talk more often.
• I remember him lying on top of me, grabbing a fist full of my shirt and whispering in my ear, “Someday, I’m going to make you come.”
• I remember telling him that I’d been sexually assaulted as a child, and thinking that he was the first person I’d ever told who hadn’t looked at me differently after.
• I remember he used to burp in my mouth when we were kissing, as though he thought I wouldn’t notice.
• I remember him kneeling beside me in the darkness and saying, “I may not be a good person, but I’m going to be good to you.”
• I remember he got better at kissing as time went by.
• I remember watching him cook from a seat at his kitchen table. He was a wonderful cook.
• I remember thinking that I’d marry him so that I could have his father for my in-law.
• I remember this helpless look he’d give me when I got impossible to deal with – as though I were something he wanted to understand but couldn’t.
• I remember framing a picture he’d made of a little boy climbing into a tree to claim a heart-shaped balloon for a little girl standing in the field below. I gave him one frame, and put the other in my room, so that we’d be able to look at them and think of each other.
• I remember his last words to me were “Go fuck yourself.”
• I remember thinking that things could have been different.

It’s hard to say exactly what happened to us, but I think I knew while it was happening that somewhere along the line I would forget what we had been. I wrote to him one night when we were discussing the possibility of consummating our relationship that I wanted my first time to be with him so that if we didn’t last, I would always remember how connected we had been, how much I had loved him. I don’t remember now, but I trust myself. He must have been special if he was worth leaving breadcrumbs for.

The long and short of it is we fell apart. I started to feel as though he didn’t love me, and he started to feel as though he didn’t know me. Our best friends started dating each other, and we felt a strange dichotomy with them, as though they were going to turn out to be the ideal relationship, and we were going to be left unable to measure up (how astute of us; those two friends are still together, and the two of us don’t speak). As I felt myself slipping out of love with him, I clung to my emotion. I couldn’t feel it anymore. I was angry at him. I wanted him to make me love him again. He couldn’t. We fought. We said terrible things. We tried to fuck our way out of it. We tried to talk. We tried to buckle down and bear it. One day I woke up and realized that there was nothing to be done, and at that point my mind was made up. I was exhausted. I didn’t want to fix it. I wanted to take what energy I had left and get over it.

The break-up was long, drawn-out, and full of animosity between us. He thought that we could fix it if I was willing to try harder. I thought that if I stayed around nothing would change. We haven’t spoken for two years, but if I had to hazard a guess, I’d say that even now if you mentioned my name in his presence he’d spit. I suppose I’m glad of that, in a way; I’d prefer that one of us remember, even if it’s with bitterness. We were young and foolish, and for a short time, we were crazy about each other. What a terrible thing to lose.

I try to inform the people whose stories I tell that I am telling them, but I don’t know how to talk to him. I suppose the best I can do is say what I wish I could say, and hope that the universe will get it to him somehow:

You know who you are. This is for you. Take it however you wish, but know that it is intended as a peace offering. I don’t know where your life has taken you, but I hope you are well. Every time I think of you, it is with fondness. I don’t regret anything; I’m glad of everything that you were to me. I only wish I could remember better, and that we cared enough to remind each other. I’m trying. I’m working to make sure you are not lost.

When I opened up to that exact article in my course reader, none of the following thoughts went through my head:

1)     I understand what this article is going to be about.

2)     I am interested in reading what this article says.

3)     I feel as though this article is necessary for my learning.

Instead, my thought process went something like this:

1)     Aren’t… animals, humans and nature all the same thing? Kind of?

2)     Critical analysis, really.

3)     Feminist… eco… social… No one is going to read this article.

I didn’t read the article, if you must know. I struggled through the first two pages for an hour and a half before I gave up. I tried following the lines with my finger. I tried reading aloud. I tried purposefully applying interest to the subject. Nothing worked. I found myself reading one sentence over and over again without absorbing the information. For those of you who would claim that if I had just stuck with it, I would have found a groove in the article, I give you the first sentence:

“I discuss in this article ways a critical feminist-socialist ecology might begin to re-envisage the projects of animal ethics and defence in a form both more integrated and more effective as a liberatory theory and political movement than the present offerings of animalist theories.”

That says: “I’m going to talk to you about how you can like animals without having to be a vegetarian.”

This article spans a stupefying thirty-seven pages under the headings “The Need For Better Integration”, “Ecofeminism: Dualistic Sources of Alienation in Ontological Vegeterianism”, “Ontologizing the Other as Edible”, “Sacred Eating, Ethnocentrism, and the Exclusionary Imperative”, “The Exclusion Assumption and the Animal/Plant Boundary”, “Conceptualization, Ethnocentrism, and Uncritical Reversal in Ecofeminist Ontological Veganism”, “Exceptionalization Predation”, “Idealizing Versus Demonizing Predation”, and “Narratives of Nature, Narratives of Culture, and Tragedy in Animal Lives”. All that, and do you know what the article says?

It says: “Being aware of what we eat does not necessitate being a vegetarian. In fact, pushing for the entire human population of the world to be vegetarian is highly imperialist, because the morals behind moral vegetarianism are based upon Western ideals of morality. Furthermore, the reasoning behind this argument for vegetarianism is that living things should not be used as resources; by this definition, plants, too, should not be edible. It is best to try to avoid cruelty in our food industry and understand where our food comes from. Whether or not you are veggie does not have to be a moral issue.”

I don’t know about you, but I would read that article. I love talking about selective eating practices, morality in consumption, vegetarianism and veganism. In this day and age, when we have so much choice about what food we eat and where it comes from, eating has become a moral and ethical practice, and that is absolutely fascinating. I want to read about that. I want to talk about it. It’s a great issue.

Unfortunately, the author of this article* has a bigger issue that has completely swallowed the discussion. It’s quite ironic, actually – she is talking about how a universal moral code surrounding vegetarianism would ostracize people outside of the West; meanwhile, she is ostracizing everyone outside of her academic circle. It is fundamentally unfair to talk about the issue of poor people being unable to afford the food that would be necessary to sustain a vegan lifestyle while speaking in a language understood only by those who have obtained a formal education. And even among those people, there were a lot of heads being scratched.

If you want to have a conversation with a lot of people because you think that the conversation is important, make sure that they can hold their own in the conversation. Do you think a featherweight champion would show up to a caged fight with a heavyweight? No. Why would the average concerned citizen of the world talk to you if they have to get a PhD first? You’re not better than the average concerned citizen, and the average concerned citizen isn’t better than you, but you’re on different wavelengths. It will take several hundred thousand dollars for them to get on yours. How much effort would it take for you to use words with equal meaning and fewer syllables?

While you work on that, I’m going to have this conversation with Soybean instead. She can say what she means without using the word “ontologizing”.

*Val Plumwood

A few months ago, Chips, Libeling and I had a conversation about the words I don’t use and why I don’t use them. The debate over word choice spanned a few days, and was interspersed, as most of these lengthy conversations are, with little chats of other sorts – one of which was a recommendation of music. Liebling and I had recently downloaded Nicki Minaj’s album Pink Friday and were listening to the song Roman’s Revenge obsessively; we insisted that Chips listen to it and concede its brilliance. The song is full to the brim with words I don’t use, and after listening to it, Chips asked the very astute question, “Why are you okay with these words being used in songs, but not in everyday conversation?” Somehow, that question was never fully answered; Chips has requested that I flesh out my ideas here.

I think I should begin by offering some explanation as to why I don’t use certain words. I believe that words are not just the means by which communication as an end is reached; I believe that words themselves are an end, and that the manner in which one chooses to express oneself must befit what one is expressing. Therefore, if there is a certain way in which I would like the world to view me, I must tailor the language I use to suit.

The example used during the conversation itself was the word “bitch”. I don’t use the word “bitch” because, in my experience, it does not have a meaning, but an intention. The word “bitch” does not mean anything; it is used with the intent to cause someone to cease what they are doing. When you call someone a bitch, it could mean any number of things. It could mean they are being unnecessarily aggressive. It could mean they are being arrogant. It could mean they are being a poor sport. It could mean they are being whiny. It could mean they are being rude. They are obviously doing something that bothers you, and presumably you know what that is – why would you choose a word that has so many different meanings when you could say exactly what you mean? You could say, “You are being very arrogant. I’ll find it easier to be around you when you take it upon yourself to show some humility.” The difference is that, when you use a word like “bitch”, you don’t want to have to have a conversation about what is bothering you and why; you want the irksome behaviour to stop, immediately. Call someone a bitch and their first instinct is to apologize and stop whatever they’ve done to warrant such a title – whereas if you tell someone that you think they’re being arrogant, they have the opportunity to defend themselves.

I don’t want to be a person who uses words of which I don’t know the meaning. I don’t want to be a person who assumes that, because a behaviour bothers me, it must be wrong. I don’t want to be a person who is unwilling or unable to defend her judgements. Most importantly, I don’t want to be a person who avoids conversations. Therefore, I don’t use the word “bitch”.

Different arguments apply to other words. I don’t use the word “slut” because its negative connotation implies that there are right and wrong ways for consenting adults to express their sexuality, and I don’t believe that’s true. I don’t use the word “faggot” because there is no equivalent for heterosexual people, and I don’t believe that heterosexuality is a deviation from the “normalcy” of heterosexuality that should be marginalized through insulting language. I don’t use the word “cunt” because I don’t like the way it sounds. I have convictions surrounding the words I don’t use, and I am ready and willing to verbalize them; I am also ready and willing to hear counter-arguments that could change my mind about what words I do and do not include in my vocabulary. It’s one of my favourite conversations to have.

When I had a conversation with Liebling about her use of words I don’t use, my intention was not for her to begin censoring herself. On the contrary, my intention was to have a conversation, like most of the conversations we have, that would allow both of us the opportunity to see things differently. I explained to Liebling why I don’t use certain words, and she explained to me why she uses those words. Naturally, I think my reasons for not using certain words are good reasons; if I didn’t, I would have to problem adding words like “bitch”, “faggot”, and “cunt” to my already colourful vocabulary. Would I have been absolutely delighted if Liebling had said, “You’re absolutely right; I shan’t use those words anymore”? Of course! I would be infinitely more delighted if the entire world came together and said, “Let’s stop using words that have no meaning, words that marginalize, and words that are intended to hurt and only to hurt. Let’s say what we mean, and put in the work it will take to expand our languages until we never again have to say, ‘There must be a word for this…’!”*

I try to have this conversation with my friends who use such words because I like to hear their opinions on the matter, and I like to think that at some point I’m going to meet someone for whom the “form as function” model of communication is as much of a revelation as it was for me. I find there is something very satisfying at working at language, in making it work for me instead of working for it. If I can one day turn someone on to that satisfaction, I’ll get to feel smug for a good few minutes, and I imagine it will be lovely. I also make a point of keeping myself out of conversations in which words that actually offend me are used. I won’t be complacently present while someone is called a slut; I will express my feelings on the matter so as not to appear rude when leaving the conversation. I would never stop being friends with someone based on the language that they use, but I feel I would be compromising the person I want to be if I sat in silent discomfort as a conversation moves forth with my involvement presumed.

This is where (after a very long trek; my apologies) the question of music comes in. Chips wants to know why, if I cannot sit in a conversation during which words that irk me are used, I can listen to a song with these same words and remain comfortable. Contrary to what such a long blog post might suggest, the answer is relatively simple.

I believe that art is a reflection of the artist, and that artists are observers of the world they inhabit. Songs that use derogatory language exist because we live in a society in which derogatory language is acceptable and common. The words we hear in music are not going to change until the words we use in every day conversation change – not the other way around. It is our job not to censor music, or any other art for that matter, but to examine whether and why it offends us. It’s very easy for us to point the finger at artists and say, “You’re not allowed to say/do/express that!” when they are only saying, doing, and expressing what already exists in the climate from which their art arises. Simply put, instead of asking myself, “What does it say about me that I engage with this kind of art?” I ask myself, “What does it say about my world that this kind of art exists?” In the case of music, one must be careful to listen actively, and never to mindlessly consume. The idea is that, when one finds symptoms of the world’s ailments in art, one does not rage against the art; one turns and addresses the world.

*Many deficiencies of virtue in Aristotelian Virtue Ethics are labelled “nameless” because there simply isn’t a word for things like “lacking in an understanding of the proper level of pride to take at the proper time”. 

This week we are opening the discussion on deep ecology, the main premise of which is that the environment has intrinsic value and therefore should be protected. One of our articles discussed the feelings of awe, respect, and even love that the environment inspires in people who behold it at its most wondrous – we wouldn’t spend the money to see ocean reefs and tropical rainforests and misty, rolling hillsides if we didn’t think that we would get some sort of experience from them beyond, “Oh. A hill. That’s that, then.” These feels of awe, respect, and love, the article says, are moral instincts; they are our physical body telling us that something extraordinary is happening through goosebumps and the desire to whisper.

I know that sounds like bollocks; even though the logic is there, the sentimentality overpowers it. I liked this side of the argument better: The Kiidk’yaas was a Sitka Spruce tree with rare genetic mutation that made its needles gold. It was very old and very sacred to nearby Native tribes, until in 1997, Grant Hadwin got a chainsaw. He felled the tree. When my professor told this story, accompanied by pictures of the Kiidk’yaas standing out in all its golden glory from the spruces surrounding, everyone in the lecture hall gasped in horror. Why? Well, because of moral instinct, that’s why. Yes, we can explain why we feel this way, but the reaction is really just that: it’s a reaction. We immediately feel that there is something wrong with this situation.

It's the big golden one.

The other article we read was a sceptic’s response to deep ecology. The premise upon which deep ecology is based, said the author, is dogma. That is, deep ecologists feel the need to protect the environment because they feel it has intrinsic value, and they feel it has intrinsic value because of the way they feel when experiencing nature. Deep ecologists approach this feeling as fact, and believe that anyone who experiences nature and does not experience a sense of awe, respect, and love must be misperceiving somehow, and that these people must be corrected. This is dogma in the purest sense of the word: The views are not changed to suit the facts, but the facts are changed to suit the views. The fact is, not everyone walks through a deeply wooded area and feels a oneness with their surroundings. They’re not misperceiving. They’re not immoral. They’re not wrong. They just don’t feel about nature the way that deep ecologists do.

I have been close with my grandfather since I was born, and he has been close with nature all his life. He has always been my contrary evidence to the villainous hunters in Disney movies. I remember going with him to his shack in the bush, how quiet it was – nothing but the bird song and the sound of melting snow dripping into our footprints. I remember spreading out food for the deer and bears that lived there so that they’d be fat through the winter and keep bringing forth strapping young. I remember helping him skin two clean kills and driving back into the bush the next day to hang their hearts in a tree. My grandfather thanked the animals he killed, and used them to feed his family. He returned their hearts to the woods because he thought that to keep the heart of the animal would be some form of blasphemy, and that if he did, he would never get a good shot again. Other animals ate the deer’s hearts and in that way they stayed in the forest, feeding and growing the ecosystem. Naturally, growing up with such a man, I have always felt as though nature were alive and conscious. I walk through the woods and feel myself in nature’s thoughts – but all the same, I understand that there are people a-plenty out there who walk through the woods thinking, “God damn, the mosquitoes out here are monstrous” and nothing more.

They’re not wrong – first because the mosquitoes are monstrous and second because it’s their opinion. Whether or not nature has intrinsic value is likely not something we’re going to get a definitive answer on within our lifetime. Until we do, I think there’s something we can agree on.

Whether nature’s value is intrinsic or not, nature does have value. It could very well be that nature’s only value is as a resource to humanity or as an aesthetic feature in our lives, but it’s valuable. Without it, we couldn’t exist.

It is at this point that my question becomes whether it is equally as productive to preserve the environment for our sakes as it is to preserve nature for its own sake. It would be nice if it were feasible to say, “Going by moral instinct, we just won’t do whatever feels wrong.” What feels wrong to one person doesn’t necessarily feel wrong to another, and the world is not a lecture hall of four hundred students who have the time and resources to effectively hash out which option can claim the moral high ground. Can we reconcile deep ecology’s protection of nature with the values of people who don’t believe that nature has intrinsic value? Will sustainability work as well if we’re doing it for ourselves?

In the words of many a hippie, “I just, like, don’t know, man.”

*No it isn’t. 

My family is currently in the middle of what it is choosing to see as a crisis. About a year ago, my grandfather left my grandmother for another woman. Three years previous to this, they had both sat down and discussed the fact that theirs was a marriage of convenience, and that now that their children were grown and gone, neither of them thought that the marriage would survive. The entire family knew that they were both unhappy, and was secretly relieved when my grandfather broke things off.

That’s what happened. One would think, looking at this story, which took less than a paragraph to tell and seems to be melancholy but not necessarily dramatic, that my grandparents got divorced and my grandfather remarried and my family was disappointed that this very comfortable part of their lives was different, but moved on and learned to assimilate into the new now. Unfortunately, my family isn’t wired that way.

What happened instead is that my grandmother started slandering my grandfather and his new girlfriend mercilessly, both to the family and to people outside of the family. She spread rumours that he was mentally ill, that she was happy in their marriage and he left her destitute, and that the woman with whom he was now living was a harlot who made a game of stealing married men. My grandfather stopped coming around to visit the family because everyone believed what my grandmother was saying about him, and he didn’t want to engage his kids and grandkids in a tug-of-war between loved ones. In the past year, I’ve seen him only a handful of times.

For my part, I was emotionally past the separation about ten minutes after I heard about it. I love both of my grandparents, and I had known (ever since living with them for nine months when I was ten years old) that they weren’t happy together. My grandmother thrives on being useful – she needs to be asked to take care of her family. My grandfather wanted an adult life outside of babysitting and continuing to raise his now-adult children. They both look at their lives very differently, in ways that aren’t compatible. I knew that it would probably be difficult for everyone for a while, but I thought that we could all be accepting of the fact that things change.

It’s been a year since the separation, and my grandfather is still estranged and my family is still participating in back-and-forth dialogues about him as though this were some sort of military action. Most of this occurs via email, and I am included in the list of contacts to read the arguments about who’s said what recently, and who’s done what wrong, and who’s visited my grandfather and “that woman”, and who is daring to have something else to do with their time besides talk about all of the above.

Perhaps the worst part of this is the dishonesty that takes place in these conversations. My family is large, and I have had the opportunity to speak to every aunt, uncle, cousin, grandparent, and great-grandparents about the separation (not to mention the frequent conversations that I have with my mother and siblings) on more than one occasion. Every single one of them has lied to me. They have made up stories in order to placate some people and implement others. I know my family, so I tried from the beginning of this whole ordeal to remain neutral and, unfortunately, take no one’s word as truth. It wasn’t until Christmas break that I realized this was not going to be enough.

Over Christmas break, I went with my grandfather to deliver presents to different members of the family. He decided that he wanted to go while no one would be home so that they could have their gifts without feeling obligated to engage in some sort of showdown. One family, however, was at home when we arrived – one of my aunts and her daughter, who is about a year older than me. I haven’t spoken to them face-to-face in many years, because they tend to avoid family gatherings. The family always said it was because my aunt was antisocial. On this day, my aunt confessed that she had no interest in the amount of drama that the family was always wallowing in.

The visit was lovely. We caught up on all the things that had been going on in our lives over the past few years. My aunt asked where my grandfather’s girlfriend was, because she wanted to meet her. She said she just wanted both my grandfather and my grandmother to be happy, and that if the only way for that to happen was outside of a marriage, that was fine. My cousin said that she had been simply refusing to speak to my grandmother and other members of the family about the separation, because it was too much work to try to keep up with the latest gossip and keep everyone happy. I was so relieved by their honesty and sanity. I said to myself, “Finally. Here are some people who have this thing in perspective.”

I went back to my mother’s house that evening and raved to her about how wonderful the visit had been. My grandmother had been telling everyone for the past year that this aunt and cousin had no respect for my grandfather, and wouldn’t even let him pull his truck up in their driveway – yet here we all had been, sitting together, visiting, talking, like normal, sane people. We had even managed to discuss the separation without slandering anyone or yelling at each other across the kitchen. I told my mother that she should call these people and talk to them directly about what they had told me, because it would probably make her feel better about being caught between her two parents. When I returned home after Christmas break, my mother was happy and excited at the prospect of things finally returning to normal; she thought that if she could get my aunt and cousin to come out with their neutrality, it would reveal how many lies were being spread, and bring down the swelling on the issue.

A few days ago, my grandfather sent out his first family-wide email in a year. His last one was sent immediately after the separation, and in it, he detailed the circumstances under which he had left my grandmother, and the way he hoped things would work from that point on. In this latest email, he expressed his disappointment in the way his family had handled things, and suggested that everyone move on.

The backlash from this email was catastrophic. Everyone took it upon themselves to write out an email defending their right to slander whomever they wished and to continue dwelling on the past, because obviously this is the worst thing that has ever happened.

I skimmed most of these emails and deleted them, but they continued to crowd my inbox, so I sent a two-sentence email asking that I please be removed from the list of people to be sent these dialogues, as I had no interest in taking part. A few short hours later, I received yet another email – this time from the aunt with whom I had visited over Christmas.

Since I’ve been back home, my mother has had the chance to speak to many family members about my revelatory visit with this aunt. Contrary to what they were now expressing in email, it was my understanding that my family members were just as relieved by my aunt’s neutrality as I was. Contrary to what my aunt had expressed to me in person, she was now emailing the family to say that she had invited me and my grandfather into her home out of obligatory politeness, that we had made brief small talk (none of which touched upon the separation), and that she had then asked us to leave. That in regards to her neutrality, our conversation about the separation, and her friendliness toward my grandfather, I was lying.

I felt the eyes of every member of my family turn toward me.

I decided to take some time to think about how I was going to respond to what felt like a very personal attack on me. I talked to my mother. I became very tired. I became very angry. Finally, I became resigned to what I had to do.

I spent a few hours carefully choosing the words I was going to put into a succinct and honest email. In this email, I did not defend myself or insist upon the truth of what I had said to my mother about my aunt. Instead, I told my family in no uncertain terms that I would never speak of the separation again, and that anyone in the family who had something to say about the separation had nothing to say to me.

My family members have responded in a colourful variety of ways. I have been told that “fuck off” would have taken less thought (although “fuck off” is not what I meant, and I am evidently willing to think about things). I have been brushed off as a “child fresh out of high school” (so what could I know about anything, right?). I have been informed to “open [my] eyes: [I] am involved whether I think so or not” (even though involvement is generally characterized by participation, which I’m not offering). I have been told that I will never be spoken to again (by people to whom I haven’t spoken in upwards of five years). I have been alerted as to my responsibility for the “attacks” made on my family (as though an email calling me a liar were somehow hurtful to someone else). I have been accused of deliberately lying and hiding from the negative consequences.

I have become the scapegoat, and I am okay with that.

Knowing my family for my entire life has taught me that blood is not thicker than water; in fact, it’s not thicker than much. If I had chosen not to withdraw from the verbal tirade, they would still end up finding something – my discomfort in their town, my left-wing libertarian values, my promiscuity, my inability not to question absolutely everything. My family are good people, but rarely are they accepting of the plethora of differences in the individuals that comprise the world’s population.

What am I supposed to do? Move back in? Put a Conservative sign on my front lawn? Get my hymen surgically re-implanted and cross my legs until marriage? Lie to anyone about anyone in the hopes that it will reveal my inherent superiority? Talk about divorce as though it were worse than death*?

Don’t I wish I could think so little.

*“Divorce is worse than death” is my grandmother’s slogan.

]]> http://thesmallendofnothing.wordpress.com/2012/01/23/the-yearlong-monday/feed/ 5 kwissa http://thesmallendofnothing.wordpress.com/2012/01/18/bruges-is-in-belgium/ http://thesmallendofnothing.wordpress.com/2012/01/18/bruges-is-in-belgium/#comments Thu, 19 Jan 2012 02:01:23 +0000 ratchetthecombine http://thesmallendofnothing.wordpress.com/?p=137 ]]>  Life has gotten so much easier and more fulfilling since I stopped spending the bulk of my time on the internet. About a month ago, I decided that I was going to quit 9GAG, Texts From Last Night, My Life Is Average, F My Life, and Damn You Autocorrect cold turkey. I had a hunch that my reluctance to do required readings, attend lectures, write and practice poetry, and get the various limbs of my body of work up and running did not stem from my having better things to be doing – rather, I had easier things to be doing.

I didn’t think about my daily internet intake. I just sat down in front of the screen and gobbled it up. It made me laugh, and laughter is good for you, right? Of course it is. The internet, however, is difficult to vouch for, especially when you’re spending upwards of six hours a day passively consuming memes. There were many sleepless nights, and many papers written within twenty-four hours of the deadline. Now, if I want to stay up too late, I make the choice consciously, instead of checking my clock and thinking, “It was ten thirty a minute ago!” when really, it was ten thirty three and a half hours ago. I have all my required reading for next week done. The two essays due next Friday? Written. And I still managed to finish a 1500 piece puzzle, read two novels*, update my website, put together an information package on literacy and communication, and email said package to three hundred schools – not to mention keep y’all philosophizin’, and talk to my mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother for an hour each.

If you had asked me last semester whether I could get that all done between noon on Sunday and nine o’ clock on Wednesday, I would have given you this face:

"The rest were rubbish by spastics, but this one's quite good."

Sure, keeping up with everything I’d like to get done through the week is a lot more difficult than sitting back and thinking about everything I’d like to get done through the week while looking at pictures of turtles eating strawberries. But boy, does it ever feel good to have the weekend stretch out in front of me, un-tempered by school work or any other professional obligations. I can have The White Knight over this weekend, and we can make sad puppies happy at the animal shelter on Saturday afternoon, and go to Guelph Slam on Saturday evening, and I don’t have to worry about cramming Monday’s assignments into Sunday night.

What I’m saying is, sometimes the only way in which one may make things easier for oneself is by making things more difficult for oneself. Food for thought. Now here is a picture of a turtle eating a strawberry.

*Generals Die in Bed by Charles Yale Harrison and Klee Wyck by Emily Carr – both very good.

I’m not thinking about having it. I just had the Metahipster over for a weekend, and we got into such positions as would warrant an audition tape for Cirque de Soleil. (Too much information? This blog has a complete honesty policy. Hide the elderly and faint of heart.) I’m never sexed-out, but my libido is sitting back and observing things without its chasing shoes on at the moment. No, I’m thinking about sex in a much more philosophical way. Bear with me here:

The first unit in my history class is called The Age of Imperialism – so, naturally, we are learning about imperialism. One of the motives behind industrial countries’ imperialist domination of much of the rest of the world in the twentieth century was nationalism. Nationalism is (I quote) “a learned emotional loyalty that individuals project toward a group with which they perceive common bonds”.

I love two things about this definition. First, I love the notion that nationalism is learned, and not a natural state. Second, I love the notion that the common bonds between nationalists are perceived, and not necessarily existent in and of themselves.

I come from a family of devout nationalists. My family perceives common bonds with all other Canadians. They believe that there is something fundamentally different between the blood of Canadians and the blood of all other people on the planet, and that our blood is inherently better. They believe that this patch of land upon which we reside belongs to Canadians and Canadians alone, with “Canadians” being people who possess certain inherently better traits owing to their inherently better blood – although if you asked any one of my family members, “What are the traits that all Canadians share?” they would not be able to give you an answer.

Obviously, I am not a nationalist. I don’t think that nationalism is right or wrong, per se; it’s just not an emotional loyalty I ever learned. I don’t know how to be proud to be a Canadian. What’s a Canadian? Am I supposed to have a loyalty to the society in which I was born simply because I happened to be born into it? What a random, arbitrary way of determining one’s identity!

This has been Part One of my philosophical thoughts about sex. Now, on to Part Two:

I have been spending an enormous amount of time on a sex positive website called Sex is Not the Enemy. The website’s message is this: Anything that consenting adults decide to do with themselves or each other in a sexual context is okay. You don’t like sex? Okay. You love sex? Okay. You’re monogamous? Okay. You’re polyamorous? Okay. You like missionary sex? Okay. You like contorting yourself into positions that leave you with pulled muscles in places you didn’t even know you had muscles? Okay. Whatever you want, as long as everyone involved is a consenting adult. Oh. Kay.

Here’s the scene: I am in my pyjamas, in bed, having just finished reading about imperialism and nationalism. I am going to sleep in a few minutes, but before I do, I want to surf this delightful website, because its splendid optimism makes me feel peaceful. While I am scrolling through images and blurbs, I come across this:

“One of the more high-level charges frequently brought against feminism is “you want men and women to be the same!” The intended image, I think, is a society of people with shaved heads in gray coveralls addressing each other coolly as “comrade” and regarding sexual passion as a primitive relic.

Well… yeah. I do want men and women to be the same. But that doesn’t mean I want people to be the same. If men and women were the same, there would still be tall and short people, shy and flamboyant people, cold and nurturing people, people who want to do it on the first date and people who’re waiting for a ring, people who work as nurses and people who work as pilots, people who wear short skirts in the winter and people who wear long sweaters in the summer, people in pink and blue and red and black and purple. They just wouldn’t have it decided for them randomly at birth.

Vive la difference? Vive la six and a half billion differences.”*

And now I’m thinking far too much to go to sleep, but I decide to try regardless, and think more in the morning.

This isn’t the first time I’ve thought about sex and gender and the way that there are so many expectations wrapped up in both that are made to seem natural. I used to sit on the yard in grade school and watch the boys play football and the girls gossip and wonder, “What if boys were told from day one that they were feminine? What if they were given dolls at gift-giving holidays, and taught how to match colours and how to apply makeup? What if girls were told from day one that they were masculine? What if they were given Tonka trucks at gift-giving holidays, and taught how to kick a ball and how to throw a punch?” This time, though, was different. This time, my brain was full of all my thoughts about nationalism, and I wondered, “What is a male or a female? Am I supposed to have a loyalty to the sex in which I was born simply because I happened to be born into it? What a random, arbitrary way of determining one’s identity!”

Can you make a statement that is true of all men or all women? Can you finish the sentence “All women have….” or “All men are…”? No, you can’t. Suppose I were to say “All men have penises.” It’s just not true. There are men born in women’s bodies all the time. This doesn’t even account for the plethora of people on the planet who are perfectly content considering themselves neither male nor female.

What if there aren’t really binary sexes, or binary sexual preferences, or binary personalities assigned based on where and how you’re born? What if there is no way to categorize people that makes sense?

Regardless of where you are in life, you can question your identity. I wonder to what degree we would all be the same if the factors of our lives that were randomly determined were different. What if you were born somewhere else? What if you had a different body? What if you had different parents? What if any one of the billions of seemingly inconsequential circumstances of your life changed? Who would you be then?

I don’t know – and that makes me think that attempting to fix societal norms based on things as arbitrary as the political boundary in which we are born and what we look like between our legs is just a whole lot of pushing into categories that are just way too small.

*The Pervocracy: Gray Coveralls

I love the students in my philosophy class who have been exposed to far too many stereotypes of philosophy students – so when the professor asks, “What is the problem with act utilitarianism’s argument that an action is only good if it increases utility?” they stroke their scraggly beards, look up into the fluorescents, and say, “What is utility?” instead of raising their hands and saying, “Utility does not account for morality.”

I love the sweet, virginal church-goer who sits next to me in my global history class. Today, when the professor asked, “What was Charles Darwin saying with his work On the Origin of Species?”, she replied loudly, “’I hate Jesus.’” I told her that I couldn’t recall ever having read the sentence “I hate Jesus” in On the Origin of Species. She told me she hadn’t read it.

I love people who stop to answer texts when they’re at the head of a big crowd of people headed in the same direction, thus impeding traffic. I love people who stop to kiss their lovers goodbye in doorways, thus impeding traffic. I love people who don’t move to the back of the bus when more people want to get on, thus impeding traffic. I love people who stand in the rows in lecture halls to chat with their seated friends while everyone else is trying to sit down, thus impeding traffic. I love people who throw themselves into traffic.

I love people who listen to their MP3 players in lecture halls so loudly that everyone, including the professor way up on stage behind the podium, can behold the glory of the emotionally intense, thought-provoking lyrics to “Where Dem Girls At”. Cease attempting to assign responsibility for group harm done to the environment! Disregard all discussion about the compatibility of cultural imperialism with culturally relative morality! Stop this meaningless chatter about the implications of nationalism on the global community! Where dem girls at? Seriously, have you seen dem? I bin lookin’ for dem girls all over the fuckin’ place. Where dem girls get off to? Hey! Hey you! On the other side of this lecture hall of four hundred people! WHERE DEM GIRLS AT?

I love Descartes, writing his philosophical musings as though he were a thirteen-year-old girl writing in his diary. He was that little white boy on the playground who could never get through a story because he kept adding meaningless details. “I was sitting in my house – well, not just in my house, but in the parlour, by the fire, and I was wearing this robe that my mother made me last Christmas – although I don’t suppose she made it, not really; she just bought the pieces of fabric at a store and sewed them together. Does that count? Anyway. I was sitting in front of the fire, contemplating the nature of truth, and I came to the most startling conclusion. I’m surprised I even had the capacity to think so intensely, because my pen was running out of ink, and I was so late in life at that point that I was getting tired – although, had I not waited until later in life to engage in such thoughtful meanderings, I would never have been able to live my life in a reasonable manner regardless, there’s just so much that I’d have to stop and consider…”

I love people who complain about how expensive textbooks are and follow up with, “I’m going to drive the car my parents bought me for Christmas home to my several thousand dollars of exercise equipment to work out the stress of these exorbitant university fees. Then I might soak in the hot tub for a few hours.”

I love Natasha Leggero, but I fear I might become her.