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.