The Void or The Las Vegas Wedding Chappel of Personal Identity learns to choose her fights rather than pick them

Back when I started this blog I was about to graduate, and was ready to reinvent myself. I said that I was ready to leave behind my identity as a philosophy student, that I wanted to be a person instead. After graduating I went to Iceland for three weeks where, in addition to finding myself in arm-tubes lying on the ground in the middle of a road blockade, I fell in love with consensus decision making. I fell in love with communal living. I fell in love with direct action, with anarchism, with activism. I felt empowered and alive. I wanted to spend the rest of my life living like that. So I walked through my Las Vegas Wedding Chapel of Personal Identity and committed myself to activism, embracing my new identity as an “Environmental Activist”. This wasn't something completely new, I had been an activist all throughout university. In fact, I'd been an activist all my life. At age 7 I spent my recess time at school cleaning up litter in the playground. At 9 I decided to be a vegetarian. At 14 I staged my first sit-in and blockaded myself into the bathroom in protest of a family trip to Utah. I have always had a passion for making the world a better place. Activism has always been in my blood. But that summer after graduation, I made activism my primary occupation, I made it the defining feature of my life. In rejecting my identity as a philosophy student I had created a void, a raw gaping hole that begged to be filled. What I should have done was to let the hole heal. To allow the void to evolve, to encourage something real and genuine to grow into that space. To become a real person. But voids are scary. Growing is scary. Even healing can be scary. And I was scared. So I stuffed activism into the hole and forgot about the whole issue.

But since labelling myself as an activist, I haven't really accomplished much. I've been flailing around trying to figure out what to do. I've been thinking myself into circles about what kind of activist I want to be, what form of activism I want to use, which form would be most effective, whether tactics can be justified by their effectiveness, with whom do I want to work, with whom would I be willing to work... And with all this thinking and flailing, there hasn't been much doing.

In addition to using my new activist identity as a way to avoid dealing with the post-graduation void, I also used it as a way to justify coming back to Edmonton. Because, hey, if I'm an “Environmental Activist”, and arguably the most environmentally disastrous development project on Earth (aka the Alberta Oils Sands) is happening where I grew up, how can I possibly justify being anywhere else, right? The move couldn't possibly have had anything to do with feeling lost and not having anywhere else to call home. It's not that I didn't have anywhere better to go. I obviously came here out of a sense of duty. That's what I told myself at least.

The ironic thing is that for all my flailing and thinking and self-righteous dedication to the cause, I find it really difficult to fight for Alberta, because deep down, I don't even like Alberta. I didn't come back here out of a passionate love for the place. I don't lie awake at night lamenting the destruction of my beloved homeland. It's difficult to be passionate about fighting for something you're not passionate about. And I'm tired of fighting anyway.

Shortly after taking on the label of activist I also took on the label of anarchist. In the basic sense of the word, I am an anarchist. I believe in non-hierarchy, I'm anti-authoritarian, I'm anti-capitalist at least in the sense of being opposed to our current capitalist system. But the term anarchist also brings with it a whole lot of baggage that I'm not so sure I want to carry around with me anymore. I'm not interested in class war. I'm not interested in organizing the workers. I'm tired of struggling, and fighting, and waiting for the revolution.

I was a better anarchist before I took on the label, a better activist before I made it my identity. The problem is that I let the labels become prescriptive rather than descriptive. When you can look back at things you've done and retrospectively decide that a particular label is in fact appropriate, go with it. Descriptive labels act as verbal shorthand. They make communication easier. But when a label becomes prescriptive, it ceases to serve it's purpose. I let my identity as an activist define my actions. I started doing things because I was an activist, not because I actually wanted to do them. So I'm not going to be an activist anymore. I'm going to gather up these skills and ideas and experiences that I've been collecting over the past few years and store them on a special shelf in my heart next to my vegan ideals. And I won't hesitate to dust them off when a situation calls for them. But it's time for me to start choosing my fights rather than picking them.

And now that I've pulled activism out of that gaping hole in my identity I'm left with the void again. This time I'm not going to stuff it full of something just for the sake of filling it. I'm going to have to wear it on my sleeve and let it do it's thing.

The entry that wanted to be a poem?

Hot and sticky, I climbed the stairs
one by one, then two by two as the suits rushed past,
bumping me with their briefcases,
our lives colliding while we trudged up the escalator,
propelled by the momentum of the City.

Surfacing long enough to get a coffee, I walked to the next station, anxious to hear the beep and the click of the opening barrier, ready to descend back into the underground. For me the destination was simply an excuse for the trip, the real goal being the time spent in transit.

I watched the other passengers, guessing at their lives, fabricating the stories of the girls with hoop earrings, and the elderly couples with matching fanny-packs, while they simultaneously fabricated a story for me. Jostling back and forth in unison to the clacking of the rails beneath us, I hoped that I passed for one of them, hoped that the me who lived inside their heads sounded like she belonged.


I used to ride the tube to pretend that I lived in London. I rode the tube to pretend I was one of the people who rode the tube, not realizing until it was too late that I was never really pretending. These days I ride the train to pretend that I'm not here. I pretend that I can get off at the next stop to change platforms and go in a different direction. I pretend that when I press the button, the doors will open to reveal a bustling station alive with possibilities.
I pretend that when I get off the train I'll be home.

Soon I will run down those familiar tunnels again,
craving the gust of warm air that will tousle my hair,
and fill my lungs with the dust that turns
my flip flop feet black,
hoping that maybe this time it will settle.

Cowboy Wisdom

I took the bus to my parents' house this afternoon. After having a short conversation of pointing and smiles with the child sitting across from me about the coffee I was drinking, I gazed out the window watching images of the city speed past. I found myself saying good-bye, not sure if I would ever see that office building, that flower shop, that particular piece of graffiti ever again. I was flooded with memories, riding past a park in which I had sung an a cappella rendition of 'kiss the girl' with my friends the summer I turned nineteen, past the Alberta Choral Federation where I had held a part-time job during high school as the librarian of their sheet music library, holding my breath for old time's sake as we passed the large downtown graveyard. I said good-bye, knowing that I would not miss any of it.

Ever since I've begun to entertain the idea of moving back to Britain as a real and immediate possibility, I've been happier than I have been in a very long time. Happy to be here, at this point in my life, having so much to look forward to. My Mother commented on how I don't seem angry anymore. A friend told me that he's glad to finally see me excited about life. Another friend told me that he always knew, from the moment he met me, that I would go back.

A strange customer came into the bookshop last week. I'd say he was in his seventies, smelled of rich tobacco. He told me stories of his old man who was apparently a legendary cowboy. I zoned out for most of it, but one thing he said stuck with me: He said the most important thing his father ever told him was to always tell the truth, that way you didn't have to have a good memory, and you'd never be embarrassed. Almost more important than being honest with others, I think, is to be honest with yourself. I'm finding that life is much easier, much happier, much better, when I allow myself to follow my heart instead of the idea I have of what my heart should want. Irrationally following my heart is what got me to Scotland in the first place, how fitting that it should take me back.

Blueberry Whine

I walked past a liquor store this evening and spontaneously decided that it would be nice to have a glass of wine with my dinner. When I walked in, the first thing that caught my eye was a bottle of blueberry wine. “Mmm, blueberry wine”, I thought, “that sounds perfect.” So I bought it, and walked the eight blocks back to my apartment. I unpacked the rest of my groceries, got out a wine glass, and opened the drawer to get out the corkscrew.... Corkscrew? I was sure I had one. How could I not have a corkscrew? Have I seriously not opened a bottle of wine in the entire eight months I've been living here? I guess not. I didn't have a corkscrew. So I tried to open the bottle with a metal coat hanger, but that didn't work. I was getting pretty desperate, so I plucked up the courage to knock on the door next to mine and ask my neighbour, whom I've never met, if I could borrow one. She didn't have one either. I knocked on every single door on my floor. Nothing. Eight households, and nobody had a corkscrew.

One of my co-workers lives a couple buildings over from me, so I called the bookstore to get his number. He didn't answer. It was a long shot anyway: he doesn't drink. While I was thinking of work I remembered that we got a letter in the post a couple days ago with a complementary swiss army knife key chain in it, which happened to include a corkscrew. The downtown location of our bookstore chain is only a couple blocks away from my apartment, so I walked over there to see if they got the same thing in the mail. Of course they didn't, but Chris searched the store for me just in case there was one hiding somewhere. When his search failed, he told me that there was a wine store around the corner that was probably still open. When I got there, there was a sign on the door saying they were closed for a private wine tasting party. Just my luck.

I crossed the street and went into a small upscale grocery store. I found a rack of pretentious kitchen utensils. I found five different spatulas, a garlic peeler, a garlic press, a nut cracker, a lobster cracker, a melon baller, even a citrus zester. No corkscrew. So I asked an employee for help. He showed me to another rack of kitchen supplies. We found more spatulas, two different kinds of can openers, a silicone pot holder, a beer bottle opener (we were getting close now). No corkscrew.

I was about to admit defeat and began to walk home when I decided that I'd come too far to give up. I was so frustrated by that point that all I wanted was a drink. Ironic that. That the frustration of not being able to open a bottle of wine only increases your need for it's contents. And I knew that if I returned home without a corkscrew I'd spent the rest of the night staring at the bottle in agony. So I walked the eight blocks back to the liquor store I had left nearly three hours earlier and bought a bloody corkscrew.

And after all that, the wine isn't even very good.

The Day My Visa Came Back

When I originally made the decision to come back to Canada, I made the decision with the knowledge that if it didn't work, getting back into the UK would be relatively easy. At the time, something called an ancestry visa existed. All I had to do was prove that my grandparents were born in the UK, and I'd get a five year visa to be able to live and work in the UK, after which I could apply for permanent residency. Just as I moved back across the ocean, however, Britain overhauled it's immigration policies. My visa disappeared. And my hope of easily returning to the UK crumbled with it.

For the past eight months I've felt trapped. With my life in Britain locked behind a big door of bureaucracy, I've felt stuck in Edmonton, legally obliged either to stay here, or to start over from scratch somewhere else in Canada. I've been angry at Edmonton. Angry at it for sucking me back in and holding me hostage. I've tried to blame it for my unhappiness. I've tried to forgive it and give it a chance. I've tried to make it home again. I've tried to detach myself and know that my time here is temporary. I've tried imagining a life for myself on Vancouver Island. I've even tried imagining a life for myself in Calgary. Yes, Calgary. That's how desperate I am to get out of Edmonton. The truth is, I just want to go back to Britain. I miss the life I had over there. I miss my friends. I miss my oyster card. I miss having a good fry-up with my hangover. All the other viable options just look like second choices and consolation prizes.

I did the skype thing with two of my best friends still up in St Andrews this morning, and felt the familiar pull of wishing I was living with them again. So I went back to the UK visa website, hoping that maybe, just maybe, I could find a way to make it work, and I discovered something that changes everything. The ancestry visa still exists. It never disappeared, they just re-did the website and hid it in the fine print of the work visa. I feel like my life has tangibly changed today. That a huge weight has been lifted from my shoulders. I'm free of the shackles holding me in Edmonton. Free to go home.

Post-Veganism Revisited

I have to not not eat the cheesy pizza, which doesn't mean I have to, but I do anyway, because it's tasty. That's how Harry described my post-veganism last spring when I first started using the term. In my year of inhabiting this new dietary identity, I've been post-vegan in the sense that I am not vegan anymore, clearly illustrated by the half-eaten pint of Häagen-Dazs Strawberry Cheesecake ice cream sitting by my side as I write this. But I want the term to mean more than that. Rather than this being an era in my life after veganism, I want to move beyond veganism. To reject the rules, restrictions, and martyrdom that so often accompany the lifestyle. I want to deconstruct the very essence of what it means to be vegan, and to rebuild it in a way that actually works as a healthy and enjoyable way to live. What I want, is for my diet to be about what I do eat, not about what I don't.

I want to fill my body with delicious, healthy things that have been produced in an ethically sound, environmentally and socially sustainable way. Sadly, that isn't always possible, or, at least, isn't always practicable. No amount of rules and regulations, no matter how strictly adhered to, can produce a best solution. Life's more complicated than that. Sometimes the eggs from the hens who run free in my friend's yard, devouring kitchen scraps and fertilizing the garden, are a far more ethical and sustainable meal than the tofu, made from genetically modified soy grown on land that was once a rain forest, that has been shipped from a packaging plant in China. Yet that tofu will always be a better option than a McDonald's cheeseburger.

The point of my post-veganism, however, is to avoid getting lost in such ethical comparisons. The decision to always choose the most ethical option in any given situation, while more flexible than strict veganism, is a rule nonetheless. I want to eat falafel because I want to eat falafel, not because I can't eat anything else on the menu. Falafel's too good to be eaten by default. I want to eat what I want to eat and I want to want to eat things that are good for the earth, good for animals, good for me. I want to not eat the McDonald's cheeseburger not because 'I don't eat cheeseburgers', but because I want to eat something else. This means that there may come a time when I do eat the McDonald's cheeseburger. I ate one a couple weeks ago. I wanted to rebel against the last vestiges of the vegan moral code that I had internalized so long ago. I had a coke too. And for the first time in over a decade, I didn't feel guilty. It upsets me that such things as McDonald's cheeseburgers and Coca-cola exist in this world, but I'm glad that I can consume them now without feeling the sting of those whips I used to have in my mind. Letting go of the whips, I think, is a greater accomplishment than a year of veganism, than a life of veganism, because now every time I choose to eat a beetroot and cabbage salad, that decision is one made freely. I tried the stick, now it's time to choose the carrot.

Constructing the good: "wherever you go, there you are" Part II

“It'll be alright. If you construct the good.” That's what the man in the LRT station said at least. He swaggered down the escalator toward me wearing big headphones connected to nothing, mumbling to himself. I assumed he was just another harmless loony riding the train and willed him not to bother me. “Just keep walking”, I thought. “Please.” Lucky for me, he ignored my silent pleas. He stopped a few feet away from me, didn't look at me or speak to me, but mumbled within earshot: “It'll be alright. If you construct the good”, and walked away.

I've been in a funk recently. I've been bored with life, ready to leave Edmonton, biding my time until I can get out of here again. So I went for a walk tonight and told myself I wasn't allowed to come home until I was in a better mood. I wandered around my neighbourhood with a coffee listening to the snow crunch under my feet, and thought about how I always seem to be waiting for my life to begin. With every new life plan I come up with – be it building an earthship on Vancouver Island, squatting in London, or pursuing a masters degree at the University of Tokyo – I'm always telling myself that life will be better when I get there. What I realised tonight as the snowflakes danced around me was that all this time I spend positing my future life where I'll finally be happy could instead be spent living in a way that makes me happy now. At this point I found myself heading toward the LRT station and decided to take another aimless ride across the tracks; I seem to do some of my best thinking on planes, trains, and automobiles.

So it'll be alright if I construct the good. What's that supposed mean? Something told me that what was coming out of this man's mouth wasn't connected to anything meaningful going on upstairs, so I didn't spend much time wondering what he meant by it. Rather, I pondered what it could mean to me. I'm thinking it means something along the lines of: “wherever you go, there you are”. That life isn't about going somewhere to find yourself, but finding yourself wherever you happen to be. That everything can be alright wherever and whenever you choose it to be. And that the “good life” I've been searching for isn't something you can find, but something you have to construct for yourself.

This doesn't mean my thoughts on Edmonton have changed. I still want to leave. I'd still rather be anywhere but here, and I don't think anything will ever change that. What it does mean is that I can enjoy the time I have left here, and stop worrying about where I'll go next. I can devote my energy to constructing a life and living it rather than mopping about waiting to find the pot of gold at the end of my imaginary rainbow.

Near the end of my aimless train ride I shared a flirty moment with the cute boy who sat down across from me. When I got off at my stop he looked wistfully out the window at me as the train pulled away and I walked home with a goofy grin on my face, firmly planted in the good mood I'd promised myself at the beginning of my little adventure.

The entry I wrote so that I could remember having written it

My friend Molly once commented on how I often do things merely for the story I'll be able to tell once I've done them. That I sometimes seem to value the potential story more than the experience itself. She was sitting next to me at a computer terminal in a hostel in Barcelona when I received an email from my Mother, across the ocean in Canada, informing me that I had been called to jury duty. Not just any old jury duty, mind you. I had been summoned to sit on a jury for a murder trial expected to last up to a year. We spent that afternoon, Molly and I, wandering around the Gothic district of Barcelona weighing the pros and cons of doing it.* She was against, and I was leaning towards – my strongest argument being: “but think of the story I'd have to tell at the end of it!” Never mind that it would mean spending a year of my life immersed in a murder trial four days a week for less than minimum wage pay.

More recently, I've caught myself referring to potential experiences as things I would like to have done, rather than things I would actually like to do. Conversations I would like to have had, coffee dates I would like to have gone on, books I would like to have read. All experiences I expect to be tedious, awkward, or uncomfortable, but probably worth doing for the stories that I'd get out of them in the end.

I'm sure we all think this way sometimes, that the feeling of wanting to have done something is not a felling unique to me. But I get the sense that my willingness to do these things, just so that I can remember having done them, is not quite normal. I value the story so much that I am, when push comes to shove, willing to spend thirty-two consecutive hours on a bus from Amsterdam to Rome. Willing to actually fold one thousand paper cranes.

I look at it this way: experiences themselves are momentary, fleeting, ephemeral; the harder you try to hold on to them, the quicker they slip through your fingers. Experiences last a moment, but the memories of those experiences last a lifetime; and in the end, that's all a lifetime is: a collection of memories. I for one want to be a woman rich in memories, rich in stories, if rich in nothing else. When I'm old and rickety, with the wrinkles to prove it, I want to be that old woman sitting on a bench in a park telling crazy tales of wild abandon, heartbreak, and adventure. I may have a cat in each pocket. My audience may consist mainly of the ducks and pigeons that come to eat the crumbs at my feet. But one thing is for sure: the stories will all be true.


*Though jury summons' aren't usually optional, I had the luxury of turning it down on account of my being out of the country at university. In the end I discovered that the trial would begin before my final exams were over, and I surrendered to the [in]convenient timing of it all to make the decision for me.

Please step on my ideas

Always a sucker for a good metaphor, I thought I'd share this with you:

"It is of the nature of idea to be communicated: written, spoken, done. The idea is like grass. It craves light, likes crowds, thrives on crossbreeding, grows better for being stepped on."

Ursula K. Le Guin, The Dispossessed.

So this blog is me communicating my ideas; I'd like it if you stepped on them.

I'm not sharing my sandwich, and I don't want your toothbrush either

When I changed my degree for the fourth time during my last year at university, a friend looked at me knowingly and told me that I was a “Las Vegas Wedding Chapel of Personal Identity.” I think he said it out of exasperation, so used to me changing my mind and flipping my life on its head that nothing came as a surprise to him anymore. But I liked it. I like that I have the ability to reinvent myself at whim. To wholeheartedly throw myself at my decisions and dreams, and to recognize when those decisions and dreams need to change. I'm still young and figuring out what I want out of life, still basking in the freedom to define myself in any way I choose. Everything with wings is restless, I've been told, and be it soaring above the world as a restless bird or floating along in Zizek's boat, I'm content to be rootless right now.

And this, I think, is why I have so much trouble sharing my sandwich. Why normative committed romantic relationships don't work for me. Why my first reaction last night at my best friend's wedding when she handed me her bouquet was a panicked: “BUT I DON'T WANT TO GET MARRIED!!”

Sharing your sandwich means allowing someone else not just into your life, but into the decision making space of your life. Until I plant myself somewhere, until I'm ready to build a life for myself with some degree of permanence, until I can commit to a life and identity for myself, I can't commit to a life with another person. When you share your sandwich with someone, when you grant them a title – be it boyfriend, girlfriend, partner, or anything else that spells some kind of exclusive commitment – you entitle them to a degree of decision making power in your life. They gain the right to be included in the choices you make that impact their lives. And I'm not ok with granting someone else that kind of influence, even if those choices are as insignificant as what time I get up in the morning or what I eat for dinner. As long as my wings are restless, I don't want to have someone else entwined in my daily routines. I need the freedom to pass through the Las Vegas Wedding Chapel of Personal Identity whenever I please, without needing to consult anyone but myself.

I'm beginning to see that this may not be the way I am forever. I feel a stable identity lurking in the not so distant future. This transitory existence of mine is beginning to get old, and I'll soon be ready to put down roots somewhere, to plant a permaculture garden with some permanence and to know that I'll be around long enough to see a full five year crop rotation. Maybe then I'll be able to share my sandwich. Or maybe I will always need the feeling of independence and freedom of being able to cut my roots and fly away on a moment's notice, not that I necessarily will, the possibility might be enough.

All I know is that for now, I'm not sharing my sandwich, and I don't want your toothbrush either. I'm only 21 after all, I'm allowed to be young and free and stupid. I've still got a lot of revolution to live.

Anticlimactic Ramblings of Me, Myself, and my Mother

My Mother keeps telling me, “wherever you go, there you are”. I roll my eyes at its redundancy every time she says it, but I think what she's trying to say is that my discontent in Edmonton is a state of mind. That I can make anywhere my home if I try. That it's not Edmonton's fault that I hate it. And she's right. It's not Edmonton's fault, it's mine. But I don't want to try. Don't get me wrong, Edmonton's shortcomings are many, but the only insurmountable one is the fact that I grew up here; and even that is only insurmountable because I'm making it so.

Living a sustainable life, one full of permaculture and direct action, would be difficult here. It would always be an uphill battle, but it would be possible. There's something to be said for not taking the easy path. And if an anarcho-post-vegan wannabe revolutionary could win here, well then, we could win anywhere. But the thing is, even if I won here, even if I could be the kind of activist I want to be here, even if I could build a life of permaculture and direct action with beets growing year round in my very own earthship, my perspective of this city will always be skewed by my experience of it as a child. We've all had the experience of returning to a place from our childhood – an elementary school, a zoo, a playground, a childhood friend's house maybe – and been overwhelmed by how small it seems now that we're all grown up. That's what this whole city looks like to me. Landmarks that once seemed huge, intimidating, and full of mystery to me are now, upon my return as an adult, disappointingly anticlimactic. I know that if I were genuinely new to this city I'd be able to walk down Whyte Avenue, go into the downtown public library, explore the river valley, and be impressed. But because I knew these places as a child, they all just seem smaller than I remember.

It's different for my Mum, she grew up on the other side of Canada. She moved to Edmonton as an adult and made it her home. Wherever she went, there she was, and still is. (I'm still not sure that phrase makes any sense at all.) But I don't have that relationship with Edmonton, and never will. Any life I make here will always seem to me like a kind of failure. The anticlimactic disappointment I feel here is doing nothing to sweep me off my feet. And maybe I could overcome these feelings if I wanted to, but I don't. I don't want to end up in the same place I started. The circularity of it feels too easy, too predictable, too... anticlimactic.

"I give up", said the Las Vegas Wedding Chapel of Personal Identity

So I've decided to give up on Edmonton. I realize that's probably not surprising given the tone of my last few posts. But there it is. I give up. I've met some cool people here. I've found some good projects. I could build a life here and surround myself with awesome people doing awesome things. Awesome people and awesome things I really believe in. But nothing can ever change the fact that this is Edmonton. Nothing can ever change the fact that in order to get to those awesome people and awesome things I'll have to exist in Edmonton, riding the bus with Rednecks, trying desperately not to overhear their mind numbing conversations. Nothing will ever change the fact that this is Edmonton, and I hate it here. And life's too short to live somewhere you hate.

The only thing keeping me here, the only reason I convinced myself it was a good idea to come back, is the tar sands. The guilt and humiliation I felt when I realized that the worst development project on earth was happening where I was from. An American friend in Scotland once told me that she liked to think of herself as from America, as in, not there anymore. That's how I feel about Edmonton, about Alberta. I'm from Alberta, but I don't, can't and won't belong here anymore. And as for the tar sands, maybe I can find a way to fight them from afar. I can't be the kind of activist I want to be here anyway.

The way I look at it, activism can be divided into two camps. There are actions that aim to destroy something negative, activists who fight against the things they don't like in this world. And there are actions that create something positive, activists who devote their energy to creating the world they do want. Don't get me wrong, it's far more complicated than that. Most of the best actions contain elements of both destruction and creation. And that's good, because both are needed. But in general, each action, each activist, each campaign has a focus. In Alberta, there's a lot to fight against. A lot of things I'd like to see destroyed. And there are people out there fighting. But I'm tired of fighting. I'm not even sure I ever really enjoyed it.

Looking back at all of the activism I've done, I see now that it was never the fight that was important to me. Sure, blockading the road into an Icelandic aluminium smelter and stopping a full shift change of workers was a lot of fun. But what was important to me was how we got there. How the entire thing had been planned by consensus. How a group of like-minded and passionate people had assembled from all over Europe to work together. And how we had refused to go ahead with any plan until everyone felt comfortable with it. The most important thing I took away from my time in Iceland was the experience of the temporary community we created. That while the focus of the Saving Iceland campaign was to fight against heavy industry, we were at the same time creating a model for the world we wanted to see, planning our destructive actions using methods and systems we believed in.

Without the simultaneous creation of a life I want to live, I find it difficult to remember what it is I'm fighting for. And it's become obvious to me that I can't create the life I want to live here in Edmonton. Because of the way the city is, because of the way I am, because it's the city I grew up in and will always seem boring to me, because I can only grow vegetables four months out of the year. So I give up. Right now my plan is to run off to Vancouver Island and build myself an earthship. But for the last few months my life plan has been changing almost weekly, so I'm still open to suggestions. I am the “Las Vegas Wedding Chapel of Personal Identity” after all.

"LRT" stands for Lunatics Ride the Train

My daily morning commute to work involves getting on the LRT* downtown, riding it across the river, and getting off at the university. I squeeze my way out of the crowded train doors and am propelled up the escalator camouflaged among the hoards of university students hurrying to their morning classes. Most mornings I spot someone I went to high school with. I remember their faces, but not usually their names, and I never speak to them. We sit across from each other plugged into our respective ipods pretending we're not recognized. I imagine them wondering what happened to me after high school, wondering what it was like to go to university in Scotland if they even knew that that's where I went. I'm always impressed by the fact that they don't seem to have aged a day since we graduated. Still the same kids living at home with their parents, riding the bus to school, clutching the lunch their mother had packed for them that morning. It's probably an unfair assessment. I'm sure that they've all grown up just as I have, and I acknowledge that my perception is more about me feeling good about the decision I made to leave right after high school than it is a reflection of or a judgement about their lives.


One day I was on my way home from work, and as the train approached my stop I decided on a whim not to get off. This was back when I was still culture shocked and trying to re-learn the city. I realized that while I had ridden the train to the university and back nearly every day, I had never gone past the downtown core in the other direction. So I stayed on. I crossed over the tracks (literally and figuratively) and rode the train all the way to the end of the line. I peered out the window at the part of Edmonton where the other half lives. And I watched with fascination as a mother and her son sitting across from me ate their dinner. The mother carefully placed her backpack on her lap, gracefully unzipped the bag, and pulled out their meal. She unwrapped a bottle of water from within a plastic shopping bag – a protective layer which I wouldn't of thought necessary, but which for her seemed only natural. She took out a knife and fork, and cut her son's piece of pizza into bite sized chucks before handing the styrofoam take-out box over to him. She then proceeded to eat her own slice of pizza, holding it by the crust with a napkin to avoid getting grease on her fingers. And when she was done with her pizza, she took out a can of pop. Almost obsessively, she wiped down the can with a clean paper napkin. Still unsatisfied with its cleanliness she reached into a pocket in her bag and pulled out a straw. That's right. She drank root beer out of a pop can with a straw. But this is where things started to get weird. After carefully unwrapping the straw and placing it in the can, she dropped the paper wrapper on the floor. They finished eating, she re-wrapped the water bottle and mindfully placed in right way up in her bag, she wiped down the straw and put it back into it's pocket, she scrutinized her son's face for crumbs and scolded him for getting tomato sauce on his sleeve. And when their stop came they got up and left; leaving the mess of used napkins, the straw wrapper, the pop can, and the styrofoam box behind them.

Shortly after they got off I noticed a woman digging in her purse for her keys as we approached the next stop. Now above ground, she pointed her remote car starter out the window to what I assume was her car in the 'park and ride' lot next to the LRT station. I had forgotten those existed – remote car starters that is. They're a Canadian thing.

I was now at the end of the line, and I waited for the train to go back in the other direction again to take me home. The way back was less eventful, but I did notice a man standing in the doorway wearing a baseball cap that said “Redneck” across the front. When he turned around I noticed that he had the same thing embroidered on the back of his trench coat, and I silently but seriously questioned my decision to move back to this city.




*Edmonton's pathetic excuse for an underground/overground subway a.k.a. “Light Rail Transit”. It only has one line, and off peak it only runs every 15 or so minutes, give or take as much as it likes.

Happy Valentine's Day

Almost exactly one year ago I was staying at a squatted social centre, residence and community garden on the outskirts of Barcelona. Can Masdeu, the autonomous self-sufficient commune I alluded to in my last big post, changed the way I see the world. I'm only now, a year later, beginning to understand how deep an impact my time there had on who I am as a person and the way I want to live my life. And I was barely there for a week.

It's a magical place where work means sitting outside in the garden picking carrots to eat for dinner that night. Sitting outside in the sun. Wearing a t-shirt. In the middle of February. A place where the washing machine is powered by a bicycle, and where everyone does the dishes. While I was there I noticed that the community had a group meeting scheduled, the sole purpose of which was to plan the next meeting. But I'd rather live in a world where I get to help plan the meetings, than in this world where I don't know when and where the meetings are, as if I'd be allowed to take part even if I found them.


My experience at Can Masdeu was one of innovative sustainability. A vision of the future I want to see. A concrete example I can now relay to skeptics who label me a crazy hippie with my head in the clouds. But that's only half the story. Only part of why the experience has made such an impact on who I am. The story begins with why I was even there in the first place - a loss of innocence story my high school English teacher Mrs. Douziech would be proud of.

In a fairy tale romance I had followed my Dutch Anarchist lover there. I had met him the week before in a squat in Amsterdam, and he was twelve years my senior. I couldn't make this shit up even if I tried. By all accounts it was the craziest thing I'd ever done. The most impulsive. The most liberating. Probably the stupidest. But it was exactly what I needed to do.


I was reminiscing about all of this at the beginning of this week. Remembering how it had felt to surrender to life, to follow my heart. To experience an intense connection with someone I barely new and to not question it. To not worry about who he was or why it was happening or what it all meant. But to just trust the chemistry and to follow it to wherever it would take me.

While our romance was short lived, and although he plays no significant part in my life anymore other than the odd update email, that relationship will always stand out as one of the most important experiences of my life. For what he taught me about life and about love, and for the places, people, and ideas he introduced me to.

And after all this reminiscing, I got to thinking about the relationship I had been in for the last couple months. It was nice. I was comfortable. He was a good friend. But I had never intended it to become what it did. I never intended to be his girlfriend. There was never anything passionate and exciting about it. I was never swept off my feet. But I enjoyed his company and was happy to have someone to curl up with and to watch Battlestar Galactica with late into the night. Before I met him I had been desperately lonely, pining for the friends and life I had left behind in Scotland. Something about the normative monogamous relationship sucked me in. But that night of reminiscing made me realize that something was missing. That I had been settling for something nice but not wonderful. And I wrote this in my Journal:

"I need more space. I need my sandwich back. There's too much dependence, too many assumptions. I'm bored. I'm feeling stifled. Labeled. Boxed in."

Twenty four hours later he dumped me. So I guess we were both about ready to move on.


The night we broke up I went over to my best friend's house for celebratory gin and tonics, and of course to cry a bit. I'm not going to pretend that I wasn't sad. But it was a nice letting go sadness. I missed him, but it felt right to let him go.

I woke up at five the next morning with a tinge of a hangover and couldn't get back to sleep, so I lay in bed for two hours thinking. What I realized was that what I was most upset about was not about losing this guy, but that now that my distraction was gone, I would have to deal with the fact that I'm actually really unhappy living in Edmonton. I've tried to make it my home, I've tried to put down roots, I've tried to skate on it's surface, and nothing I do makes my existence here pleasurable or meaningful. My relationship with Edmonton is very much like my relationship that just ended. It's comfortable and easy. Edmonton is like a good friend that will always be here for me when I need it, but there's nothing passionate or exciting about it. I want to fall in love with a place. I want a city to sweep me off my feet and show me a way of life I can't turn down.

I have a one way ticket booked to London for the beginning of June. I don't think I'm coming back again.

Zizek on Roots

"What I like is that the solution is the boat. What is the definition of boat? Is that it doesn't have roots. It's rootless. It floats around. That's the solution. We must really accept how we are rootless. This is for me the meaning of this wonderful metaphor. Boat. Boat is the solution. Boat in the sense of you accept rootless. Free floating. You cannot rely on anything. You know, it's not a return to land. Renewal means you cut your roots."

Slavej Zizek in a documentary on the film "Children of Men".

Home

I've been trying to write this blog entry since I arrived back in Canada. For nearly five months I've been redrafting, incapable of pinning down exactly what it is that I've been feeling. I think I might finally have it this time.

During my three years in the UK I put down real roots. I grew up. I became the person I had always wanted to be, and that person, that identity, was at home in the UK. I was over there for a long time... an important time. I invested in people, in organisations, in social structures and cultural norms. I learned how to be an adult there. The place had transformed me enough for it to truly become my home. And then I graduated from university, and I looked at myself and I saw an environmental activist. And I looked at my "home" (my old home, my Canadian home) and I saw the worst development project on earth. I saw the Alberta tar sands, and I knew that I had to come back here to Edmonton to do the activist thing. I mean, if even Albertans can't bring themselves to fight for Alberta, who on earth will? (That's my official story at least. Coming back to Edmonton, difficult as it has been, was also the easy option. You know, with the end of my student visa and my parents being here and all. Lucky for me the circumstances made the noble decision to come back here also the convenient one. But I try not to think about that.)

During my flight from London to Edmonton, somewhere over the atlantic ocean, my conception of "home" got confused, and I lost a part of myself. When I arrived back in Edmonton, everything looked vaguely familiar. Familiar enough that it felt like I should have known where I was, and yet vague enough that I was actually totally lost. It's taken me five months to relearn the city and to get my Edmonton feet back. I knew that moving back across an ocean after three years away would be an adjustment, but the reverse culture shock hit me far harder than I could have imagined. My first day back I was sitting in a cafe waiting for a friend, and a waitress came over to ask if I wanted a drink while I was waiting. When I asked for a cup of tea I was presented with a list of over 15 herbal varieties and I nearly died. I looked up at her dumbstruck. "I just want a cup of tea", I thought. "What do you mean what KIND? I just want tea."

But the culture shock I had to deal with ran deeper than just moving across an ocean and a continent: I also left my home in the counter-culture to return to the normative bourgeois culture I'd spent three years learning to reject. After exploring the squat scene in Amsterdam, and spending time in an autonomous self-sufficient commune in the hills outside Barcelona where I was free to frolic in fields of permaculture, I was hungry for revolution. I spent a summer living the anarchist dream at a protest camp in Iceland where I got to illegally chain myself to things and live in a community run by consensus. Leaving my comfortable downtown apartment in the morning to go to my 9 to 5 job with a product (red) ipod in my pocket and a Starbucks latte in my hand is not surprisingly a significant shock to the system. The question: "who AM I?" is a common train of thought in my head these days.

I'm also, for the first time in my life, not a student anymore. I'm floating around in a post-degree limbo, thankful for the opportunity to define myself as a person rather than a philosophy student, yet holding on to the idea of a post-graduate degree as the only safe and respectable trajectory for my life. During my evening commute home after my 9 to 5 workday, I often feel stagnant. As if the growth and self-discovery of university has ended to make room for the mind-numbing routine of "the real world". Which I know is a bunch of garbage. I know that I'm still learning, still growing, still evolving; I just don't have those new pieces of knowledge highlighted in a textbook to prove that they're there.

The last time I tried to write this blog entry (about two and a half months ago now) I had just found the Edmonton food not bombs group. This is what I wrote then:

"I almost felt at home in Edmonton the other day. The moment was short and fleeting, but it was there - the first of its kind in the two and a half months that I've been here. As I opened the door to the housing co-op two of my new friends live in, I was met with the sight of large cardboard boxes overflowing with fruit and veg past it's sell by date, and an aroma that can only be described as "vegan". In that brief moment I was transported back to a place where I knew who I was and what I was doing with my life. I belonged. The cell phone plans here in Canada baffle me. My refrigerator is as big as my closet. My feet are suddenly two sizes bigger, my waist two sizes smaller. And there are actually pictures of beavers, moose, and children playing hockey on my money. But standing outside the downtown library sharing vegan curry and eating stale cinnamon buns? That feels normal."

I thought then that I was on to something. That I'd found something like home in this city. A place where I could put down roots again. I realized soon after, however, that rather than finding a new home in Edmonton all I'd done was found something that reminded me of the home I'd left behind.

When I decided to come back to Edmonton I told myself that I'd give it a year. I signed a year long lease on an apartment, and I promised to give the city a chance. If at the end of that year there was still nothing that made me want to stay here, I'd leave again. But for at least a year, I'd really try to make it my home. Over new years I went to Illinois for a week to visit a friend from university. While I was there I realized that I hadn't really been trying. I had already decided that Edmonton wasn't going to cut it, and I had put an expiration date on my time here. Which meant that I wasn't allowing myself to invest any energy in anything. I didn't believe that I'd be here long enough to see any projects through to the end, or to commit to any of the new friendships I'd made. I had been here for four months, but I hadn't really BEEN HERE. When I returned from my trip I decided that the only way to actually give Edmonton a chance was to operate under the assumption that I am going to be here for a while. Longer than a year. Indefinitely even. And for the past month that seems to have been working. I've been investing in projects, in people, in the idea of a life in Edmonton. I've been putting down roots. I have finally been putting down roots in Edmonton.

Or so I thought until the beginning of this week. I've been seeing someone for the last couple months, and what I realized this week is that I've been putting down roots in him, not in Edmonton. He's been my home, my anchor. But that's not fair on him, and it's not healthy for me. I'm beginning to think that maybe for the time being, I just need to learn to live without roots. Because I can't put them down here. Edmonton is not my home anymore, and I don't want it to be. There are things I need to do here, yes. I know that I need to be here for the next few years. But that doesn't mean I need to identify as an Edmontonian. I'm Canadian, maybe even Albertan, but I stopped being an Edmontonian when I was eighteen, and I have no desire to return to that identity. I feel most comfortable skating on the surface of this city, navigating the line between native and outsider. And that's how I intend to go on.

A few months ago the Indian man who runs the Mexican take-away I often go to for lunch asked me if I was from Europe. I said yes.