Just Wanted to Know If I Could Go Home

Sorry for my ultimate failure to update lately!

My life has been insane as of late.  Here are some brief updates.

I went to England for my last weekend of backpacking, to meet up with the boys from Vienna.  I can summarize the trip in one photo:

Camdentown, hookah, 4 miserable Jews and myself.

And one video:


After that, I was back in Paris for a few hours; enough to empty my studio entirely, and spend a night in debauchery and tears of goodbye with the beautiful people I met there

Table one

Table two

 Saying goodbye is hard.  It's especially hard if you are uncertain whether you'll ever see some of these people again.










But goodbyes are beautiful, too.  Because in the same way that death is what gives value to life, goodbyes are what give value to hellos. 










With any luck, I'll be backpacking again Easter of 2012.  That is, assuming the world hasn't ended.

Definitely going to miss this crowd

 

Meanwhile, I've been lucky enough to meet the best people I could have ever imagined possible to meet.  And I get to share so much joy and enlightenment with my friends back home for a little while.

The future doctors <3

Massive shoutouts to the people who made this trip a wonderful experience.  Above all: Lynette Van de Hoef, Rachel Stevenson, April Larochelle, Martha Maris, Maria Noorloos, Jemima Dickinson, Larissa Gare, Gemma King, Christina Ammon, Nicolas Sanchez, Bram Van Beek, Paula Molz, James Lloyd, Hayden Lawn, Remi Piriou, Kara Abernethy, Liz Rosenberg, Darren Helstowski, Aidan Kenny and Liam Kerry.  I've never been happier than in the company of any of those people.

Shoutouts also to the best of friends ever, and especially those who kept in touch with me from back home: Amber Lepine, Adrian Vander Vaart, Jill Van Ryn, Amber Burns, Jess Crandall, Elle Rombough, Amanda Fraleigh, Rich Oosterloo, Natalie Campbell, Chad Haverkamp, Dan Kikkert and Austin Miedema.

Some congrats are also due!  Upon my return, I was in a wedding for one of my dearest friends.  Congrats to Elle and Lael and many, many blessings.  Nathan and Janelle, some of my favourite people ever, also tied the knot this May, the day after James and Katie, some of my oldest friends.  Congrats to all three beautiful couples!

James and Katie

Nate and Janelle

Elle and Lael

Those are essentially all of my life updates for now.  I've moved into my fantastic new apartment in Hamilton, am working off the debts that I acquired this year, and am planning to take a year off to work (and travel, of course) before returning to Europe to complete the PhD.

Stay tuned!

Les Fleurs du Mal

The sun has been shining in Paris lately, and the weather has been hovering around 10 degrees for the last little while.

All the flowers appearing remind me of work.  I miss work.  I want to go back.  I want to wake up too early in the morning, stand in the warm sunshine for a full day, and cut the flowers all summer.  I want to chat all day with my work mates.  I want to attempt my limited Punjabi and work on my Portuguese.  I want to make a fool of myself trying to joke around in Spanish.  I want to weed-whack around the pond and enjoy the presence of our great blue heron. I want it dearly.

The warmth reminds me of Redeemer and how I can lay on my stomach for hours in the quad, looking for clovers, eating licorice and chatting with everyone who passes by.  I miss walking around Hamilton barefoot and not worrying what I look like.  (This carefree attitude doesn't exist in Paris, trust me).

A lot of the joy that I've found before in schoolwork has been missing this year.  I love my classmates, and I enjoy my classes, but I'm finding it difficult to sit down and read Baudelaire, or write a thesis statement.  This is beyond odd for me -- it is downright horrifying.  Which author can capture my heart and soul, if not Baudelaire?  Who am I, if not the Academic?

That being said, I have had of late a big smile on my face too many times to forget.  Most of it revolves around going out with the previous classmates, or getting to know the new ones.  Some of it revolves around the trees budding and the flowers blooming.  A good deal of it revolves around the ridiculously hilarious things my room mate says.  I am very thankful for a lot this year, and I truly am enjoying myself.  but there is still that dull ache of being ready.  Ready to go home, ready to start work, ready to feel grass under my bare toes again.

Sometimes You Just Have to Walk Away

I have 100 days left in this adventure of mine.

I have extremely mixed emotions on the subject.

Ah! Seigneur!  Donnez-moi la force et le courage de contempler mon coeur.
-- Charles Baudelaire

- Ah! Seigneur! donnez-moi la force et le courage - De contempler mon coeur et mon corps sans dégoût!

Source : Citations de Charles Baudelaire - Dicocitations ™ - citation

- Ah! Seigneur! donnez-moi la force et le courage - De contempler mon coeur et mon corps sans dégoût!

Source : Citations de Charles Baudelaire - Dicocitations ™ - citation

Ah! Seigneur! donnez-moi la force et le courage - De contempler mon coeur et mon corps sans dégoût!

Source : Citations de Charles Baudelaire - Dicocitations ™ - citation

Firstly, I want to return.  I miss my friends and my family.  I miss having a kitchen and a bathroom of my own, and I miss the big, beautifully vast space that is Canada.

Secondly, I don't want to return.  I have made some amazing friends here and I can neither imagine leaving them -- some of them forever -- nor imagine living far away from them all.

Thirdly, I want to return.  I want to return to the way things used to be between my friends and I.  I want to be there for the joys and the sorrows.  I want to be able to chat mindlessly on summer evenings, have someone to cry with in the spring, be able to fight for what I believe is right in the winter, and return to my coffee dates for autumn.

Fourthly, I don't want to return.  Larissa and I were discussing it this weekend; on one hand, going home is like going back in time.  Your friends are all together, listening to the same music, dealing with the same problems, wearing the same clothes.  But on the other hand, it's like flying back in time and ending up in the wrong place.  Because while things are all the same for your friends, for the last year they have all walked together along a path on which you haven't been present. And they have all grown together and you have diverged.

There is nothing like returning to place that remains unchanged to find the ways in which you yourself have altered.
-- Nelson Mandela

And lastly, I no longer know what is 'home'.  Am I returning home, or leaving another home?

Manifesto

I can't believe I haven't put this up yet.

Everyone needs to give this song a listen or two.  My friend Josh and his co-musicians have put together a fantastic work of art.  The song, the video, the faith they have in their message -- it is all fantastic.

Mes amis Européens: c'est ça, un portrait de ma ville au Canada.  Elle est plus que ''belle'', elle est merveilleuse.  Et ce sont des musiciens de mon école.  Ils ont vraiment du talent.  Il faut que vous l'écoutiez!

A Juxtaposition of Art and War

Wanderlust.

It has to end sometime, right?  Eventually the Rootless put down roots, right?

The problem is, the Rootless have been taught to test the waters, the soil, the wind conditions and the company wherever they go.  And they have been taught suspicion.  And, sadly, you can always find a problem with something if you look hard enough.

So how do the Rootless know when they can put down their roots?  Never.

Enter, once again, wanderlust.

I Only Wanted To Begin

Our gift exchange this year.

My estimated total amount travel this holiday was 13840 km.

There are too many awesome things about being home for me to even begin to write them

I had a fantastic time.  It's a Christmas holiday that I will never, ever forget.  There are a million highlights,  but a few of them involved knocking things off of my life list:  Watching a lunar eclipse (Dec. 20-21 with Amanda and Meredeth) and watching a sunset and subsequent sunrise (Dec 31-Jan 1 with Adrian).

The moon, fully eclipsed.

But there was more than just an awesome Christmas!

Ringing in the New Year has always been my favourite part of the year.  I love the way it feels when the buzz about resolutions start, and then when party invites get sent out... all the way up to that countdown to which no one can ever sync up properly, I love New Years.  This one was my best one yet.

Toasting in 2011 with Champagne

3...2...1...Happy New Year!

Having started the year as well as I could have ever hoped, I then had to hop on the plane and come back here to France.  Even still, I am looking forward to this year a lot.  I think it's going to be pretty good. 

As always, here are my resolutions this time around:
1.  The name of my year is the Year of Discovery.  (If this makes no sense to you, email me and ask).
2. I will maintain a flexitarian diet, maintain a healthy sleeping schedule and be able to run 5k non-stop by the end of the year.
3. As I am discovering 'myself', I will work on expressing 'myself' by means of art, music, writing, photography and meditation.
4.  I will make a conscious effort to develop a healthy self-esteem and self-image.
5.  I am committed to 10 specific friendships with my whole being and will work on them all year. 

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!