It’s About Time.

As a writer, I often get asked about what kind of writing I do. Usually, I just say “poetry” or “poetry and short fiction.” I’ve never actually given people a specific answer without asking them to first look at my writing. Then again, I tried to post poetry before telling you what I kind of poetry I was going to write. So I won’t post anything yet. I will let this serve as the introduction to who I am as a writer.

This is who I am. I know I probably look terrible, but I may as well get it out there. (I’ll get a better picture up eventually, I promise!!)

My story as a writer begins in first year university. That was 5 years ago. I began writing a fiction piece, in the hopes that it would result in a major springboard for my entry into the world of creative writing. I realize that I was absolutely wrong. It wasn’t for lack of talent though, but for lack of effort. Yeah, I did write, and I spent a lot of time doing so. But I wasn’t doing enough to get my stuff out there. That’s the big thing. So I kept trying. I entered the creative writing contest a few years in a row, and nothing really came out of it. I also took a creative writing course in poetry being taught by Michael Helm. That was a lot of fun, and I learned a lot, but I still wasn’t getting anywhere. It wasn’t until this past year when I really put writing at the top of my priority list. I don’t have a lot to say about it, but writing poetry and fiction are amazing experiences that have helped shape my mind.

One of the reasons I started this blog was to share my work. The other was to write about the world I experienced around me. There’s a common thread going through all the writing I do though. That is, I spend a lot of it thinking about the human experience, whether it’s mine or someone else’s or just generally. The things that I write are reflections on the way I see the world.

I don’t have much to say about what my writing is at the moment, but I would like to consider this a true starting point. I’ve introduced my work. Let the discussion begin.

Belugas

I don’t really know if I’ve mentioned this in a blog before, but one of the things I want to do in the future is to swim with beluga whales. I first came across the idea on Reader’s Digest, where they talked about different travel opportunities and tourist things to do while out in Manitoba.

I don’t necessarily want to go in Manitoba, but I do want to. The experience described is as a “once in a lifetime opportunity.”

Snorkeling with belugas is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Sea North Tours provides all the gear you’ll need: snorkel and mask, two 7mm wetsuits for layering up in, booties, hood and mitts.

A small Zodiac takes you out into the estuary. When a large pod is spotted, you slip into the water, grab a towline, and hold on.

Any discomfort you feel when that frigid water hits your face dissipates as you’re immersed in a cacophony of whale song. Belugas are known as “sea canaries” for their chirpy vocalizations, which also include clicks, whistles and squeals.

At one point I counted six belugas around me (the guide told me later it was actually 11!), keeping pace or scooting off in a blur of white. Unlike many other whales, beluga whales move their necks laterally, thanks to their un-fused neck vertebrae. So yes: they really do turn their heads and look at you!

Mother belugas with calves tend to swim beneath snorkelers, remaining a cautious distance of 8 to 10 feet away, nudging their half-size, grey babies along. The moms actually turn and swim belly-up, gazing upwards at you as they pass.

Singletons keep pace alongside me, turning their faces to smile. For an hour–or as long as you can stand the cold–you can float along with the belugas, losing yourself in the wonder of their world.

Another must-experience is sea kayaking (also arranged through Sea North Tours). Follow whale pods and tap the side of your kayak or make your own whale calls over the water: they’ll come and investigate.

The very idea of getting into the water and seeing the whales face to face is amazing, and definitely something I want to do in the future.

What kind of things do you want to do in the future? Can you see yourself doing something like this? Let me know.

Winter Wonderland

So the time of year is coming that many Canadians either love or hate. That’s right: super snowfall season!

I’m indifferent to the season mostly because it has its ups and downs for me; on one hand, it’s pretty amazing, and can produce absolutely beautiful scenes. Not to mention, it happens right around Christmas in the northern hemisphere. The downsides involve the cold, the wet and the just plain ugh.

Despite all that, my only real qualm about the Winter season is not the cold, or the fact that I’m getting sick…it’s more that people won’t stop complaining about it, which makes it worse.

Honestly, you have no control over it, so stop complaining about it.

Jeez. It’s been a while.

So I haven’t posted anything in a month. This is due mostly to the fact that I haven’t had anything to write about. Partly though, I’ve been busy with a lot of work both in and out of school. I will admittedly say that the schoolwork that I have is nowhere near as heavy as most people, so fortunately, that hasn’t killed me. Otherwise, my time has been divided between multiple side projects, research work, a paid blogging job (*gasp* I’m betraying my own blog), and most importantly, spending time with friends.

One of the biggest things this semester, though, has been Grad school applications. It hasn’t really been stressful or onerous – there’s just been a lot of associated worry. I mean, it isn’t completely done and dealt with, because I have 5 more sets of stuff to take care of, but having one done is a lot off my chest.

In the meanwhile, I’ve been trying a lot of new things with poetry. One example of this is with the typesetting program and language I’ve been using, LaTeX, which can actually rotate text by changing the angle that it’s put into the document. To show you what I mean, here’s an example from one of my poems.

The creative side of me has started to re-emerge, and I think that it will definitely be a good sign; I recently told someone that creative writing was just one of those things that I couldn’t “take it or leave it” with. I’ve recently added a “Portfolio” page, where I will be posting more and complete poetry; you might even get to see this poem in full. Of course, as always, you can comment on the pieces that I put up, and let me know what you think about them.

Yours in thought,
K

Actually, There is Something I Want to Say

I was in 10th Grade when I first heard one of my favourite quotations, from one of my old friends. Little did I realize, that what he said that day would have such an important purpose in my life right now.

He said to me, “Do what you love, because in life that’s what you’ll do. Do what you do, and love will come to you.”

With Grad School Applications coming in paper piles at me, I realized that I’m still not 100% sure what I want to do with myself. I think there’s a part of me that wants to stay in Philosophy, but a part of me wants to pursue Creative Writing as well. I’ve applied to and will be applying to schools in both disciplines, but one of my major concerns is the fact that I don’t know where my heart lies.

Which do I love more? Which do I want to be? Which do I want to pursue for the rest of my life?

Obviously the answer is something only I can provide, but apart from that I think that the finality of this is something I’m making worse than it is. The very fact that I can still change my program (with a lot of effort) eliminates the “rest of my life” mentality, but the question still remains; where do I go from here?


Where Do I Go From Here? – Marié Digby

This is a song I can relate to because I’ve come to realize that I will never be able to plan out my life as neatly as other people have been able to. I do know that I will keep going, because unless I do, I will never find my answer. It’s the principle of the thing.

I don’t have to worry about deciding until I get all the offers for schools I apply for. That will be a decision on its own. I’m just going to give it a shot, applying to my top five, though, and from there, I will hopefully dig through this pile of paperwork.

Social Motivator: Society’s Motivation

I don’t want to sound judgmental here, but people need to chill. It’s 8:24 PM on the night of the Municipal Elections both here in Markham, and for our neighbours to the south, Toronto. Facebook basically looks like an anti-Ford hate center. Rob Ford was the candidate who won the office of Mayor for the city of Toronto, and people have shown themselves to dislike him a lot. The thing with politicians though, is that they are just people; more of us look worse than any of them than we’re willing to admit, and those of us that do act all “holier than thou” don’t bother acting on that fact. If you really think so poorly of a certain candidate, then why don’t you go run for office?

I don’t want to say that I care either way; I have my biases, but I’m going to be fair about the decision. Toronto’s voting public elected a Mayor, and his name is Rob Ford. He won by a landslide on the merits of his plans for the next few years, while he is in office. The things he’s done in the past may not have been good for his image, but despite the fact that he is a horrible person, there are people who are much worse than him, given much higher positions of government, and who have done a lot better on a much larger scale.

I hate to use this example, but Adolf Hitler, upon rising to power, did wonders for the world on an economic level. He may have had social issues, but Rob Ford certainly isn’t anywhere near him on that scale. There are a few things people need to realize about the election. First off, this is the way democracy works; the majority voted for one person, and that’s the person that represents the majority. If you don’t like it, that’s fine. Do I think it means you should leave the city? No, because that’s just irrational. Secondly, society will always look at the negatives of someone at the top. It’s what we did with George W. Bush. That man may have been raised by monkeys, but considering we didn’t give him the benefit of the doubt at all, it raises the question of whether we’re doing the same thing despite realizing the economic potential we have at this point. 

I say, this is the way the people voted, and you can disagree, but anything beyond an intellectual discussion about why you think someone else should have won, is just a waste of breath.

Can I Still Be Thankful?

I’ve been through a lot over the past year and a half. I’ve had so many ups and downs, and for each of those times I’ve been thankful. There have been people who have helped me become a better person, and there have been moments that have taught me about my capabilities and my limitations.

Yesterday, I realized that even though I’ve received a lot, I do still continue to receive a lot, and have a lot to be thankful for, but I’ve often thought that there must be some end to how thankful I can be. But then again, emotional physics kind of correlate with real world physics, and despite my limited knowledge, I do know of the principle of conservation of mass and energy. In emotion and expression, it works the same way. The projectivist writer Charles Olson once wrote of the projectivist poems that whatever energy you take in, must go in in equal amounts, and basically, must be evident in poetry. In that same way, whatever you receive must be returned in equal amount, and so long as you have something to feel thankful about, you should express that gratitude.

It’s a basic principle that guides the world; it’s one of the basic ideas in physics and chemistry; whatever goes in, must come out in equal amounts. It’s like balancing a chemical equation. You can’t have an equation that reads H₂+O₂ = H₂O, you need to balance it to say 2H₂+O₂=2H₂O. It needs to balance out one way or another.

Anyways, I still have a lot to be thankful for, that I know I haven’t quite balanced out properly. I’ll start with “thank you for reading this.”

A night sky in August. The faint starlight was a rare sight.

PS. I can’t believe I actually used a chemical equation.

What Does Success Mean?

I recently heard the phrase “C Students in Life” (courtesy of Philip De Franco – video at the end) and was led to consider what it means to succeed in life. Now, De Franco describes a “C Student in Life” as someone who basically “half-asses their way to mediocrity"” and says he can’t respect someone like that. He raises an interesting point; life isn’t really worth anything, regardless of the end result, if you half ass your way through life, and end up not really earning it. This is the kind of thing that leads me to ask why people who work so hard end up living merely mediocre lives.

On the other hand, supposing you were born into, or undeservingly were given a great life, with money, people, and a myriad of happinesses, and you decided you wanted to work to earn it as an afterthought, or a thank you, by giving to charity, and helping people left and right, or opening your fortunes to the world (such as starting a software company, or, in a more abstract way, using your gift of a beautiful voice to sing and entertain people) then I can respect that.

I think in this same way, success has a lot to do with whether you’re grateful for where you are, or not, and how much you relate this gratefulness to that which you enjoy doing.

Via Philip De Franco (YouTube)

It looks like Autumn is finally starting to set in.

If You Can Hear Me…

“Hello? Is anyone there?”

He knew there was something out there. He heard it with his own ears. What it was was indistinguishable though, and despite his obviously strong will, he didn’t really want to go out there. He was out in the middle of nowhere after all.

Huff. Huff. Huff.

There it was again; he tried to go back to sleep. The sliver of moonlight in his eyes keeping him from drifting off; there was something out there, not that he’d wanted to know what it was.

“Who’s out there?!” His voice was raspy.

Huff. Huff. Huff.

The cold air and the dark outline of the trees was outlined by the stars, and against the wind blowing were the sounds of wolves and owls.

“Who’s out there?! What do you want?! Why are you here?” His voice was louder now.

He had given up on sleep at this point and just sat on his mattress, holding onto his cell phone, with its backlight on. But as he sat there, he heard noises which sounded only like pat, pat, pat.

Then he felt something.

Crash.

Having fallen over, he couldn’t tell who it was that was next to him.

“Who’s there?”

"I’m here for you.”

Has Anyone Else Noticed This?

Has anyone else noticed the fact that people at this time of year try to keep summer around as long as they can?

One of the biggest things is that people will try and make their lawns look greener than it ever was in the summer time. Oddly enough, it looks more like summer than it did in summer, in some places.

I think the true beauty of the seasons lies in the amazing colours of twilight – that’s when you can tell that it’s really autumn.

I have to say, the colours are absolutely a big part of the season for me, because it means that I get to take pictures of the world showing off. Even more than that though, I think autumn has helped me realize how much I wish it were summer still. I’ve done quite a lot of things with my friends despite it getting cold out, but I still want to do more with them.

View Full Album

My album consists of pictures from school, a trip downtown, Art Side Out, and other random things that happened in the past two months. The season’s not over yet, and Canada’s weather is completely unpredictable, but one of the things that often gets me moving and thinking about how opportune we are to be living where we do, and to get the chance to see the things that we do, no matter how small they are, is always a great time. If you’re interested, you can check out my other album, full of pictures taken of the autumn sky.

Cheers!

P.S. I’ll be blogging a lot more now, hopefully, because I think this is quite a relaxing hobby for me. If I don’t keep up, any of you are free to email and bug me to post something.

Write the Novel You Know You Have Inside You

So here I am, at around 12:30 am, and I’m searching the web for ideas for a list of things to do before I die. I came across this one. Interestingly, I’m going down this list, and checking off the things I’ve already done, like “get to know your neighbours” and “plant a tree.”

I keep going down until I get to this particular one: “Write the Novel You Know You Have Inside You.” How do I respond? By blogging. Of course, it has to be my first response because it’s what I’d prefer to do over going to sleep, realizing that I have to be up in about 6 hours.

Apart from that point, though. I thought I’d blog (after a long time) because thinking about where I want to be, and the kinds of things I want to do, made me realize that there is a lot that I know I’m capable of, but that I haven’t quite let myself do yet.

One of the biggest worries for me is what I’m going to do in the future, because despite the fact that I’m happy now, I’m not sure where I’ll be in a few short months. To some extent, I know what I want – I just haven’t pushed myself to get there, and the thought that I’m presented with now, that I already know that there is something inside me worth doing, means that now I have to live up to it.

So my question for myself, and that I often find myself asking, is “where do I begin?”

Where did many great writers begin? In the beginning. I guess for me, it’s somewhere I can start looking from.

The Way Society Rolls

It’s been an interesting past little while, and even though I haven’t been blogging quite as much, I intend to catch up. It’s been hectic, and among the groups of things that have been going on, there are a few that have caught my eye. Before I go into what they are, I just want to say that the reason they’ve caught my attention is because they solicit a kind of response from people that makes me want to think “What?”

I’m obviously not knowledgeable enough to go into details about everything, but I think that the effect that my attention turns to them is simply because they make me wonder if people really have a reason to react in the way that they do.

The first of these major things is the BP Oil spill. Now, with the idiocy between BP trying to clean up the ocean by saving the oil rather than saving the ocean by stopping the oil, period, and Obama imposing a ban on deep ocean drilling, and the US Judicial system giving Obama the presidential cock-block, I don’t think we have to look very far to see that a lot of this nonsense could have been avoided by sacrificing that oil well and just blocking it up. I know, it’s not that easy, but it should have been the obvious option, and I think everyone is just getting fed up of the whole thing. It is pretty obvious that the motivation for a lot of what’s going on is based on a background agenda. With BP Oil, they want to save the oil for economic reasons, and Obama’s pushing his agenda as acting out of concern for the country. The Supreme Court’s decision to lift the ban was done for political reasons, to show that they could still assert power and to some extent take power from the President and give it to the people(which evidently consists of the business that pay for a large portion of their payrolls).

Moving on, another interesting moment I think is interesting is the G20/G8 Summit happening in Toronto. The problem with these things is that they’re going to be congesting traffic and closing up a large chunk of the downtown core, and this is going to lead to several inconveniences for many of the people in and around the area. One of the major things is that protesters lately have been gathering to raise issues, and while it’s not a negative thing, I wonder if it has had any kind of effect on the politicians. I wonder if these protesters really think they can get through to the politicians and if not, why they continue to try.

Finally, there was an earthquake in Southern Ontario today, and it was apparently a 5 on the Richter Scale. All I saw on my facebook feed was earthquake related posts for a good half hour. I felt a slight tremor at best, and my mom experienced worse; my cousin and brother didn’t feel a thing though. I was frightened, but only slightly, while other people were overreacting to the situation. But what makes people respond the way they do?

I find this to be the question I would like to have answered, even though it won’t always be so easy to do so.

Social Motivator: The Olympics and What They Mean to Canada

Over the past few weeks, I’ve been cooped up in my room in front of my laptop (*sigh*), watching the Olympic Winter games. For some reason, they were a big thing for me this year, despite me not really being a sports fan. I guess it had something to do with the fact that they were held in Canada.

One of my interests as a scholar is to try and unravel what certain things mean. I don’t mean “mean” in the sense of semantics and definitions, I mean “mean” in the sense of value-meanings that people interpret within a context. Kind of like what peanut butter and jelly mean to bread; the difference between what it is for a four year old and a 16 year old is remarkable.

I was thinking about it before in terms of books and literature, such as Milton’s epic poems, and the works of literature we have now, and trying to figure out what it was about some works that enabled us to see their meaning in a context; one might ask what Milton’s Paradise Lost was about, and perhaps one might answer that it is about the historical moment Milton had just lived through. What does it mean though? Well, Paradise Lost means revolution and change.

But what about the Vancouver Olympics? I originally thought it was because it was just because it was home soil, but I realize that there is a lot more to it than that. The events surrounding the Olympics really displayed the quality of the Canadian spirit. From the death of the Georgian Luger and Joannie Rochette’s mother, to the amazing victories and moments to be celebrated throughout the past weeks, there is something in the air, all across the country, that affected me in an interesting way. So what does it mean? What does this vibrancy and energy stemming from the Olympics mean to Canada?

My own answer I think lies in the way Canada faced everything that happened this year. We embraced all those moments and faced them like Canadians, with Glowing Hearts. The pride that I saw come from all the Canadian victory ceremonies that I witnessed really reflected a sense of unity and solidarity that can only come from a nation brought together, not to win medals, but to show the world what we’ve got, and to welcome the entire world into our backyard.

Shane Koyczan, on the day of the opening ceremonies, recited one of his poems, “We are more,” and while he didn’t do justice to what Canada is (he couldn’t have) he did mention a few things that rang true of Canada’s aspirations: “we dream so big, there are some that would call our ambitions an industry.” It is a very real fact that the Olympics mean more than anything to Canada; it was a year of firsts – first Gold on home soil, record number of gold medals, and first time runs for some athletes in the Olympics. It was also a year of greats - great opening and closing ceremonies, Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir’s flawless performances in ice dance, Joannie Rochette’s powerful and emotional performances during female figure skating, all around amazing hockey performances, record breaking scores for our girls hockey team, athletes that made our nation proud, and fans and supporters that made it all possible. But there was something more than all that. We had one more ambition; in the Vancouver Olympic Theme song, performed by Nikki Yanofsky and Annie Villeneuve, the lyrics at one point say “And in my heart there’ll be no doubt, the arms of the world will come reaching out and embrace me to be all I can be.” These very words are Canada’s aspirations; they have been since the dawn of the 20th Century, since we first found our ground on the world stage. This is what I think the Olympics means to Canada: it is a stage for Canada to perform, to show that it is something more than what the world tends to see it as. “We are all the ways you choose to live, a nation that can give you variety because we are choices, we are millions upon millions of voices shouting ‘Keep exploring!’”

Keep exploring.

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Links:
Nikki Yanofsky & Annie Villeneuve singing “I Believe”
For the Opening Ceremonies, visit this link and search for “Opening Ceremony” (without quotes).

Social Motivator: What Are We Doing With Our Lives?

I had a realization that I am a university student at UTSC. It goes farther than that though. I’m also a Humanities student. One thing that I realized though is that it isn’t a particularly humanitarian discipline. Over a lunch meeting with the dean and vice deans here on campus, Rick Halpern (UTSC’s Dean) told me (along with a bunch of fellow students) something which stuck with me; there’s a difference between Humanities and humanities, a tangible difference.

One of the questions I find myself asking is “Where am I going in life?” I find myself asking that question yet again, because the path of Humanities students is very obscure or interdisciplinary. There is nothing that is essentially Humanities. But then again, Humanities is often regarded as the field of study concerning humanity – human ideas and life. Saying we’re Humanities students does not entail that we’re humanitarian or by any means humanities students. The difference is that studying about humanity is not the same as studying and engaging with humanity.

So here’s the question again: Where am I going in life? Lately, I’ve been too busy to notice the world that needs help. I don’t have a goal, nor do I have plans on being a humanitarian. But I’ve been thinking about it tonight. And I realize that even if my future will take me no where near the purpose of humanities, as a Humanities student, I can’t forget that there is something more.

I still have a lot to figure out…

I recommend...

Social Motivator: The Sound of Silence

In the words of Simon and Garfunkel, “what you see is the inability of people to love each other, …called the sound of silence.” We often think of silence in terms of metaphors – as the inability to love, as a kind of solitude, as a kind of release, or as a sweetness. Despite all these metaphors, people still deal with it as a natural thing, as a part of the human moment. Yet so many people still have no idea what to do with it.

In a Ted Talk given by John Francis in 2008, we hear about a silence which lasted 17 years, and the very first words he says after it. More importantly, we hear about the silence which allowed him to change the world. In his talk he shares the story of what motivated him, and what he learned through the silence. If we could just say nothing, and listen to the world and everything that goes on in it, what would we learn? In his talk, Francis describes learning how the world moves, and how people are moved – he talks about an experience where he’s teaching a class without using words, and the kind of discussion and learning it invites in a classroom; it was enough to even teach him, despite him being the instructor.

This silence is everywhere. Buddhist monks practice this silence and stillness in their meditation, and as such, they learn to see the world in ways which one would never hope to imagine. I like to sit in silence before I begin writing a poem, so that I can hear what the world has to tell me. The sound of silence isn’t a silence at all; in fact it is a vivid and loud resonance that creeps throughout the world. It isn’t an inability of people to love, but rather a call for people to listen and love. To conclude this blog, I want to share with you a piece by John Cage, called 4’33”. It is supposed to get us to listen to the art which is the world around us.

Personal Motivation: The Year in Review

Happy New Year to all! 2009 was a year of many interesting memories for me, and despite the last two weeks reflecting on major events, none of them really relate to my personal experience.

Throughout 2009, I learned many things about myself, experienced many adventures and grew as a person. Just a few examples of this follow:

1. New Friends: I met at least two new people who I am so thankful to have in my life. You should know who you are. It needs to be said that you have helped me to grow up as a person.

2. Old Friends: Throughout the year, you reminded me what it meant to love someone more than yourself, and one of you taught me what it means to love someone more than anything in the world.

3. Tough Times – There have been some challenges throughout the year, but I learned two very important things because of them; the first is that I need to take risks so that I can stay true to what I believe in, and second that sometimes the only way to fix things is to let go.

I’ve gone through a lot more than this, but obviously I wouldn’t be able to fit it all. Throughout the year though, I’ve seen things change, people change, and more importantly, my own change. Whether it’s for the best or for the worst, I couldn’t say. But since 2010 is here, I’m going to just keep going forward. Hopefully it doesn’t turn out a disaster.