ode on a nostalgic turn

G'day, my precious interwebs and gentle readers,

I realize that of late I have been inordinately focused on the future; I can't write a single entry without somehow mentioning Jerusalem (whoops!) or my lofty goals (here we go again) or how things will get better for me soon (sometimes I just have to say it). This is pretty hilarious to me, because although I've always been one to dream and plan and hope, however misguidedly, I've also always hated people whose every action is aimed at the distant future. I am always aware of the the many factors in life that are beyond my control, like the timing of my death or the deaths of those whom I love, natural disasters, world wars, the premature explosion of the sun, blah blah blah, and so in truth I am loath to live only for a far-flung future that is uncertain at best.

Moving right along to the actual point...

Today I lived in the past. Not recent past, not Jerusalem, Jordan, etc. I mean high school. I mean elementary school. I would even mean junior high if I had gone to junior high; thank goodness for small mercies.

I have been gradually packing up my bedroom over the past few days, strategically avoiding any items that would require me to make qualifying decisions based on sentimental value. I've been throwing letters and cards into boxes without the slightest glance at return addresses. I've been consolidating all my lotions and makeup and contact lens cases and Pez dispensers and shampoos. I've kept the washer and dryer in constant use. I've done everything that's simple and surface-level. But today I went into my room armed with a green garbage bag and a huge cardboard box (from some cheesecake company that apparently makes white chocolate peanut butter cheesecake- uhmmmm, yes please!) and went all soullessly cut-throat on my earthly possessions. I found boxes that hadn't been emptied since I moved back home from the Renfrew house with Nik and Mads. I found roughly 4,000 bank statements, still sealed. I found all of my Jason Lang scholarship letters and certificates. I found my high school diploma. I found souvenirs I bought in Italy. I found concert recordings from three summers of SCF Choir Camp. I found shoes that I forgot I owned. I found journal entries written on scrap pieces of paper, wedged between empty cd cases. I pretty much felt like Lara Croft by the time I left for work.

But the important thing is, all this home base tomb raiding gave me the momentum and sheer force of will necessary to face the ultimate nostalgic catalyst: the yearbook. Now, I only have yearbooks from grades 11 and 12, and it's not like I feature prominently in them or think that they adequately reflect what my CMHS PVA/FI experience was all about, but they were a poignant read nonetheless. I read every comment, looked at every page. I tried very hard to remember people's names. I recalled a landslide of inside jokes. I remembered plot lines to numerous terrible plays I wish I could forget now. I recognized faces and marvelled at how easy it is for people to move from obscurity to prime importance to insignificance in my life.

And then I found the Thom Collegiate yearbook from 2001-2002. I had flipped through half of it before I realized that I wasn't actually in it, and that all the comments written therein were addressed to my brother. Good one, Nans. Way to do math. You were in grade eight when this high school yearbook was bound. The funny thing was, I had almost memorized the layout of those pages. I had kept that yearbook in my room since before we moved to Calgary. This is because in my grade nine year at Thom, I used it as a reference guide for all the hotties in the grades ahead of me. Looking through it this morning, my eyes knew exactly where to look on every page for the face of a guy worth lusting over. Their names even sounded familiar, and I know I never talked to these boys. I realized two things: 1) adolescent girls are THE LAMEST THING EVER and I am their queen, and 2) wait, I'm still awesome regardless.

Beside the Thom yearbook were three binders: one from high school film class (featuring a cut-out from a Gap men's undershirt ad with the word "boyfriend" scrawled across it in my handwriting), one containing my grade four creative writing, and one full of Pokemon cards. [I kept two of the three, and you get to guess which ones. Turn this blog upside down to reveal the correct answer.]

I spent approximately an hour reading through the stories I wrote as a nine-year-old. One was told from the perspective of a muskrat musician. Another was a pre-teen poli-drama about the daughter of a fictional US president. What I love most about young writers is that they think a page and a half of hand-written, double-spaced material constitutes a complete chapter. Oh wait, no, scratch that. I love most the names they give their characters. For instance, I named a character in one of my opuses Jeroldine. Yes. Actually.

Well, I'm going to head to bed now. More on this later.

You know you love me.

xo xo -

Jeroldine

rainy days and pens and paper

I am

standing here in my disaster zone

of a bedroom

reading Coleridge out loud

to the mirror on my wall

I was

packing up novels, anthologies, Bibles

into wine and vodka boxes salvaged from the Co-op liquor store

boxing up academia

as if it were the remains of

a frat party

or

a pretentious hors d'oeuvres-laden meeting of the undergrad minds

my Harbrace, my Nortons, my Gilbert 'n Gubar

are now just the makings of some wicked upper body strength

and an increasingly defeatist attitude toward relocation

my precious findings from the poetry bookshop in Hay-on-Wye

are now just decisions to be made

(can I really not take it with me?)

but this Golden Book of Coleridge that I'm holding is so small

and delicate as a robin's egg

I can't not take it everywhere

(I hear my Kantian self whisper chidingly,

"my dear, this is your duty")

so as I look in the mirror now

I see myself not dimly

but in future tense

laden with tattoos inspired by Ondaatje, family, and the Romantics I count as bedfellows

reading odes to solitude on the Mount of Olives overlooking the Temple Mount

recalling generations of others' forebears-

wanting anything but solitude-

offering up precious sacrifices in hopes of reconciling

with a god who would know them

I see myself recalling Wordsworth on the terrace

overlooking Gai-Hinnom

a terrace mottled with countless gunshot wounds

an everyday monument to the six-day sacrifice

of a breathing ancestry finding its footing again

rebuilding a future from the rubble of history

binding bricks with the bloody mortar of controversy

and I hope I will not have cause to wonder then

whither the visionary gleam has fled

but why is the rum gone?

Good day, my lovelies.

Of late I have been rather numbed to reality; my lack of interaction with friends and lack of interest in the tasks I am forced to complete has rendered me rather apathetic to myself. But the other day I experienced a little bit of much-needed ecstasy in the shower- wait, why would you think that? go wash your brain. I mean ecstasy in the sense of clarity achieved by viewing oneself from beyond the confines of subjective embodiment, obviously.

I felt like I had been transported back to the Ben Hinnom valley and was looking up at the walls of the old city of Jerusalem, waiting for the no. 124 bus with a crowd of Palestinians. I could simultaneously almost hear Daniel Rossing's calming voice speaking about Israeli identity. The warm water falling on me became the dry desert heat of Wadi Rum. The nauseating cacophony of my pointless anxious thoughts transmuted into the steady hum of my exuberant imagination. My hunger for my typical morning bagel with cream cheese became redirected towards cucumber and tomato and goat cheese and something, anything, with olive oil.

It's always surprising when I find myself in a state of holistic remembrance; it always catches me off guard. It's like the triggers are hidden beneath layers of meaning and preoccupation and self-analysis, and the more you try to locate them, the more they evade you, until you can only hit one entirely by accident. The only consistent trigger for me is the smell of thyme, all the others are basically one-use, untraceable, disposable cell phones. Excuse me, that's my life calling and other 90s whatnots. But for actual.

Every time I wake up to the reality of my trip-self, that more contented, more alive, more compassionate, more intelligent, more fulfilled me, I have to do something to make her happy. I have to do something that will make the girl who sat in the back of a rusted old Toyota and smiled like a dementoid at the red sand and monoliths of Wadi Rum feel proud to know me, or at least not ashamed to have made my acquaintance. I have to crack open my copy of To Jerusalem and Back or cue up one of my Mount Herzl lectures or peruse a Musalaha update to realign me with the self I hope to consistently be some day. And I have to start living as though I enjoy the people who surround me, because in truth I absolutely do. I have to do something to remind me that life can be full and beautiful here, too. Something to make me refrain from apathy and apostasy. To see the glass as full to the brim.

If I'm not surrounded by Rum, I can still buy some Fuller's London Porter to tide me over.

what's in your crock pot?

I am exhausted; sleep has been playing its coy, evasive game with me for the past week, and I don't find it very sexy. Nobody likes a tease.

Because I feel so monumentally useless in my exhaustion, I thought I would attempt to write something important that would realign me with myself and make me feel good for something. And I realize that while I've spent a good deal of time writing about my overseas adventure and how much I achingly miss what I experienced during it, I haven't done a good job of explaining how I intend to change my life because of it. I've shared my new dream with a few people, in a rather haphazard manner, but I would like to state it for the record. I have a history of losing faith in my ability to achieve dreams, but I don't want that to happen this time. So by stating this for the record, my hope is that my faithful readers will hold me accountable to my dreams. Imagine that this is a wedding between me and my future, and you are the best man or maid of honour. Help me keep my promise.

When we were in Jerusalem, we were greatly privileged to hear from a wide variety scholars, pastors, and activists. I know that we were all very grateful for the opportunity to appraise prevalent Israeli issues from so many perspectives, but it was an intensely confusing time for all of us. For example, one night we could hear a passionate lecture from a Zionist and think that Zionism made perfect, righteous sense, and then the next day we could hear testimony from a Palestinian Christian about how the IDF had killed his non-combatant family and stolen his livelihood. I felt stuck in ideological limbo for most of the time I was there. But when we welcomed Salim J. Munayer into our classroom at Tantur, my mind found a little peace. Salim is the founder and director of Musalaha, an organization whose sole purpose is to bring about reconciliation between Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs. I don't need to explain everything about it here; if you like, you can visit their website or read their Wikipedia page. I don't think it's possible to visit Israel and the Palestinian Territories without feeling an overwhelming sense of your own helplessness and therefore the region's hopelessness. But suffice it to say that in hearing from Salim, I finally felt that there was hope for humanity's survival in that hotbed of hateful controversy.

I felt broadly inspired when I heard Salim speak, but I didn't instantly know what I know now about my calling. As with most of my dreams, the dream to work for Musalaha developed slowly on a near-subconscious level; "slow-burnin' love" is what I have come to call it. It's the same process I went through in September: a clear catalyst starts the process of deep internal realignment, and after a brief gestation period, a new life concept is born in my mind that re-lights the fire under my soul. Add to this dream crock pot a few divine brain interventions, and you've got yourself a life calling.

So what is it that I hear calling? A new way to promote healing in a broken land that brings together my soul's yearning for reconciliation, my heart's desire to be back in that land, and my musical gifts that I couldn't bear to let go to waste. I have never been so excited for anything, and I have never felt more like myself in this excitement. But waiting is hard. Being uncertain of when this dream will begin to influence my reality is almost physically painful for me at this stage. But if I can earn enough money in this next year, then grad school in Jerusalem will be within reach. And once I have my degree in Middle Eastern Cultures and Religions, then I can begin to work the way I want to work. But I'm not just excited for grad school because it is a means to an end; I have never been so excited to just learn and study and fully devote myself to an academic task, because my learning will have direct implications for my life's work. Anyway. What's this life's work I keep teasing about? Creating an Israeli-Palestinian children's choir.

I plan to start with a choir camp that branches off from Musalaha's already existent children's camp program, and then to build that short-term choir into a long-term project. The culmination of the dream would be a choral festival that brings youth from all over the world and unites them in song. If you've never experienced anything like that firsthand, the idea seems cheesy and naive and romantic. Let me assure you that in reality it is not. Music is a gift; it is a glimpse into the beauty and power of God. And therefore, music has the power to reconcile people through their differences, the power to bring joy, the power to open the heart so that it truly feels and moves in ways it never did before. Reconciliation, joy, love...these are the roots of hope. And hope is obviously a particular obsession of mine.

So there you have it. I hope it doesn't sound like my crock pot is full of crack.