Preludes And Nocturnes

I couldn’t bring myself to type that as sux or suks…..

But really. Stupid spelling. I hate when I want to type something to somebody and I rephrase what I’m going to say to avoid a word I don’t feel like looking up. Sure, once I’ve had to spell something a certain number of times I’m okay with it (like committee, for example). But there are all these simple words I just cannot seem to remember. And I’ve always been a bit of a horrid speller. Okay, more than a bit.

I worry about calling someone sweaty rather than sweetie. High heals? heels? Oh and when I have a stomache ache I will usually call it an upset tummy. Both because of stomach(?) and ache. See the first time through the one ended up influencing the other.

Bahhhh!

Nothing.

And then a little nothing. Our goal is for the car to not leave the drive-way. We will probably walk down to the Farmer’s Market tomorrow morning and get some bannock and coffee. There is this great local farm booth that sells organic veggies and we’ll stock up for the week. Last week we got collard greens, beets, these beautiful onions, and fresh basil. I made pizza with gramma’s tomatoes and the fresh basil.

Oh, and if anyone can send me a trick to remember how to spell tomato/s potato/s I’d be very very happy.

So Farmer’s market, walks around the park, mow the lawn, do a little gardening, read my book. My non-school book! And my sister has moved in so we’ll work a little more on getting the house settled, with evenings of season two The L Word and some season five Buffy.

Excellent….

xoxo
jenn

You thought I did something amazing - this kid here already has a blog. Well, I think his mom is helping him out a bit. He is the cutest little baby in these here parts. Even when I saw him power puke on his mom on monday. I think he was just playing with her a little.

clear pass - no revisions!

and the want me to publish it as a book!

I’m going to pee my pants.

Okay, actually I’m going out for lunch.

xoox
jenn

Do feel free to sing the title as if from the musical “Annie.”

Right, tomorrow morning I’ll get this done. The presentation is pretty much sketched out, the slides are pretty much done, and the brain is pretty much finished with this all. I’ve done my thing where I’ve left the nitty gritty to the last minute, but I hate preparing for stuff like this and much prefer to talk about it with people, think about what I want to do, write a basic outline, and then have it work out fairly naturally. Unlike many of the other presentations I’ve gone to, my supervisor stressed that she didn’t want me going over the entire thesis. She is fairly different from other supervisors that way. My friends have tended to provide very detailed overviews of their entire paper, while I’m going to present about eight slides:

• Intro: my name, my topic, thanks yous to all there, my research question and what made me want to do this work. My main questions was about how social sciences and humanities are connected. My two main interests are literature and law. I think something that ties these areas together are the use of narratives. Law is about stories (what we can do, what we can’t do, what we can expect in various contracts, what is being said we did, and who we are under various legalisms). Literature is also about stories. There is a relationship between these different stories. And law says some very specific things about WHO First Nations women are under the law, so I wanted to see what that translated into within texts.
• Title: “‘How Should I Eat These?’ With Your Mouth, Asshole:” First Nations Women’s Literature Responds To Colonial Discourse. Everyone is interested in what the title is from and why I used the word asshole. Great little chat as the title is from Queen of the North by Eden Robinson, and the story really ties together all sorts of things I love about this research in terms of responding via literature rather than responding directly, creating a conspiracy between the reader and the subject, and cutting the colonizer from the communication. The actual quote is an exchange between this fellow Arnold and this woman Karaoke, although her reply is not verbalised. Arnold is convinced he can ‘other’ Karaoke and position her as some Pocahontas/Indian Princess myth for his consumption (much like his consumption of the fry bread at the fundraising booth). He keeps asking her these pointed questions about what kind of an Indian she is, how does she make the bread, how to eat the fry bread and what he can spread on the bread and so on. She keeps replying with both verbal and non verbal answers. The quote is his one question and her non-verbal reply.
• Methodology: What I did was look at five authors and some of their work. I selected various literary forms (poetry, plays, novels) and saw how these authors in these different forms interacted with legalized notions of identity. I also examined their interviews to see how they talked about their own lives and how they encountered narratives of their subjectivity within texts in their lives. I also look at literary criticism, theory, mid-theorists, other authors, and various academics.
• Subjectivity/Narratives/Law: Legal narratives => Literary Narratives => Social Narratives => Legal narratives. This whole relationship between what we say about ourselves influencing what we expect from society (rights, protection, etc) influencing how law changes (or doesn’t). Or in turn, how legal narratives influence what we say about ourselves, and our personal narratives influence what society believes us to deserve… etc.
• Theory: quick chat about theory and this little story I have about Art and multi-disciplinary theoretical approaches.
• Connections:

1. The authors talk in their interviews about various connections within the writing community. Specifically they note how their work does not stand in isolation; their writing is a reflection and interaction with what they read themselves, can contain dialogues with other authors, and ultimately is indicative of the politicization of their everyday lives when their everyday lives are governed by the Indian Act.
2. The authors also create connections within their texts. They connect their characters to the past and colonization (Dumont’s poem Helen Betty Osborne states “could be about our grandmothers, beasts of burden in the fur trade” and Mojica’s Marie portaged across Canada and then transformed into Contemporary #1). They draw connections between texts (ie: school textbooks and having to read out loud) and then use those connections to transform the experience (Lisamarie’s school note being framed by her uncle). They also explore what happens when connections of community are missing (April and Cheryl unable to access family support). In articulating the bonds of family, the authors are creation their own connection to tradition, strength, and rejuvenation.

• Articulations, Challenges, and Transformations

1. First step is to fully articulate the damaging effects of binary sexual representations - clean and non-threatening or dirty and shameful. The main issues of naming and representation is that it has such a huge impact on ability to access protection and support (ie: sexual assault).
2. Challenge these sterotypes by responding (Lisamarie), reporting (April Raintree), writing (Dumont)
3. Transforming representations via conspiracies with the audience. This is done through the performance of Princess Pocahontas, the snippy comebacks of Lisamarie and Karaoke, and the erotic writings and poetry of Akiwenzie-Damm and Dumont.

• Conclusion: This research highlights an area of study that could further and explore the relationships between social narratives and law. Specifically, there is a wonderful space of influence between altering ‘common’ perceptions and altering legal subjectivities.

Okay, this just took me about three hours as I made my slides as I went *whoot!* See, all I had to do was explain everything to someone else. GO TEAM!

xoxo
jenn

This is what I’m calling it now. My presentation. Yep, that’s all it is. *nods*

And I’m getting it ready today. I’m not going to worry about playing out all the possible questions and trying to have all my replies ready and mapped out. I’m putting together a presentation, and cheat sheet of my main points, my main theorists, and my main reasons for thinking this work is important. I’m going to just remember that I think this work is interesting and important and worth talking about - so poop on anyone else who says differently.

This presentation is about clarifying all the wonderful points I made in the thesis, and explaining to the committee anything they don’t understand about my amazing work. Yes. Very good.

So I’ve got today and this weekend to get things ready (and I’ll need to put in probably one work day in here too) and I’ll present on tuesday. Lots of people have commented on my title. They all really liked it.

My one friend wished his topic could have such a cool quote. But he’s studying weather. Not so likely. I suggested that he could change his topic to pirates and vikings. Or possibly cavemen vs. astronauts. He’s looking into that. He also asked if fuckface and dickhead were already taken so I had to go with asshole. I said I had to save up something for my PhD (which is a real joke as I’m not getting my PhD).

Okay, so I looked up websites on PhDs yesterday.

Anyhoo, Jim and I are doing okay and planning on seeing each other in September. We think seeing each other could be a good thing to do.

My roommate moves out this weekend. The house is a disaster and makes me twitch. But I’ll clean it next week after she’s done moving out.

My sister moves in at the end of the month.

New job is going very very well. My bosses all seem to think I’m nifty-keen. They may be a perm part-time position out of this (currently only runs till mid-sept).

I’m off to work on my presentation.
xoxo
jenn

I will make this quick and non-proofread as I’ve got those eyedrops in that make me feel woogly and ill and I just want to go crazh on the couch…

but I did want to tell people that Jim and I talked last night and we are going to try. We don’t know how it will look or what that means exactly, except that we still need to try some more. And hope. So we’re going to try and figure out what that means. We are not getting married in September. We are not sure that we are getting married. We don’t know. This is where the trying will come into play. But we’re not nothing. And I’m glad of that. So I’m all mixed up emotions girl, but I love him and he loves me and we know that much is true. Everything else in the world seems to be loose approximations.

Okay, my eyes are too wonky and I so totally can’t see right now. But I did see enough to pick out these with the help of my mom. I’ve been into some heavy retail therapy. I’m redoing the lounge (er, living room.. but bettie has influenced me as we’re calling it the lounge now) in blue, chocolate, and cream. I just bought an ottoman cube in cream with blue and chocolate circles on it. I have a blue couch, a cream arm chair, and the main wall hanging is an aboriginal inspired turtle in blue, chocolate, orage, and deep red. I will be getting some further accessories in chocolate (tv stand, table, and a few other pieces). I like the idea of somehow redoing the area via accessories rather than by buying a new couch.

Oh, and thesis announcement came out today. One week. I cried. Happy and scared cry. But mostly happy and disbelief I’m actually going to finish this thing. Two years ago I walked into the Dean’s office to quit. he kept me in school and now I’m finishing. I thanked him. He almost cried, I almost cried…

This is kinda what I’ve done lately.

Working on not doing that so much. Makes me tired.

I’m off to the couch. Things are certainly better. Well, except my eyeballs. Someone needs to turn down the lights.

Thank you to everyone for the emails and phone calls. I’m at school right now as I had some stuff that had to be done for work. I am keeping this light as I wore a fair bit of eye make-up on purpose so I couldn’t cry at school. That’s not a pretty look.

I’ll be okay. I think the truck that ran over me yesterday backed up to hit me again today as I think I feel worse. I’m totally stripped bare today so everything seems sharp and prickly. I can’t write any more right now, but I did want to thank everyone. I don’t want to seem cut off from people so I’m having my comments open. You all are a very important part of my life and I love you all.

• excitement of past two weeks
• all the time put in by my dear friend sarah
• phone calls to friends all over the province last night
• booking the perfect venue and being excited about a wine tour and tasting for the guests
• my pretty dress and the shoes mom and I found yesterday to match my pink sash
• putting together the amazing flowers yesterday - wildflowers in blue and purple and yellow and pink with mini gerbers and lillies
• the excitment about sharing my life with him - all the plans of kayaking and hiking and all the places I’ve been researching to go up north with traditional First Nations carvings and masks
• having someone in my life who will just as easily discuss the issues of economic trade… or who we like best to win on Beauty and the Geek or ANTM.

I think it is easier to focus on the work and the planning right now. The rest of that list just sucks. The rest of that list is about morning coffees and snuggles on the couch. The rest of that list is about cooking dinner for our friends and talking for hours about anything and everything.

So it seems this won’t work after all. And talk about love becomes almost academic. You know what I mean? Because what do we do about something so fundamental? What do we do about something that becomes the very heart of being true to yourself? And before I somehow lapse into bad teen inspired poetry, I’ll just say that I didn’t feel like phoning everyone. So here is it in my blog. And I’m turning off comments for right now. My mom is in town and she’s coming over so I’ll be fine.

Right, working on just doing those quick updates.

Job is good. I got praise in a meeting yesterday with the Dean of Graduate Studies. This is cool.

Thesis prep full-steam from here forward (as has had no steam to date). Defense in less than 2 weeks. Eep.

Wedding venue fell through yesterday so giving it a bit of a look-see today and hope to solidify something by the end of the week.

Walked up (and then back down) a mountain last night with B. My ass. Oh my ass!

But holy go team exercise!

Spent weekend packing roommate and then getting kitchen set up again. This house is a disaster zone. But I seem to be too busy to get wiggy about it. Only a minor eye tick when I walk in the living room.

*tick*

*tick*

xoxo
jenn