Baba Yaga

reeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeegiiiinaaaaaaaaaaa

I hear the calling of the open road; my gaze fixed upon the rising sun.

Ready must thou be to burn thyself in thine own flame; how couldst thou become new if thou have not first become ashes!

-- Nietzsche

"I want to interpentrate all that lives, in no matter what form it reveals itself. I want to sow it with love, but I also want to smash the ossified, if need be, for the sake of the creative spirit... I do not want someone simply to accept our insights and join us on that account. An insight (as I understand it) must be attained through necessity, suffering provoked by its very fullness, one must have felt one's self 'uprooted', must have played with life and danced with death, must have suffered for the sake of the intellect and have overcome it through the creative spirit--one must have wrestled with man."

- Ernst Toller

---

EDIT:
and then a moment of realism...

"He who despairs over an event is a coward, but he who holds hope for the human condition is a fool."

- Albert Camus

I want this shirt.

i cleaned my apartment (partially... about 2 hours worth. its livable again)
i am going to do my school reading for tomorrow (first time touching a book in over three weeks)
i am going to write an essay proposal
i am putting on a pot of tea

i am going to be.. a student! not just a theatre technician. there is life outside of theatre. remember that Ashleigh.

And if i get that done at a reasonable time.. i might treat myself to an episode of 24

oh, and i'm picking my courses for next (4th?) year...
* Graduating Practicum (Lighting)
* Philosophy - The Politics of Hannah Arendt
* Art - Drawing I (studio class)
* Theatrical Stage Craft (tools and woodworking class!)

the graduating practicum is a double credit class, hence 4 classes not 5. I also know that in the winter semster I will be doing my Stage Management Graduating Practicum: Medea by Euripides, directed by Kelly Henderek. Though after 4th year I will be a couple of elecetive credits short of graduating. So I've got another half year to go after... which I may do at UofT?

( 2008 Bibliophilia In Review: Seriously Delayed Posting )

ARG I LEFT MY PHONE CHARGER AND LAPTOP POWER CORD IN TORONTO.

this is just... ridiculous. you know that point... where things are just to horrible for you to even be angry and your just start laughing? yea i'm there.

no phone = no contact with anyone in the city. and it is the weekend so i can't run into anyone at school. this means: i cannot borrow someones laptop at all.
which would be nice.. because i have no laptop. but have two papers to write for tuesday.
my parents will be priority super fed exing me the stuff asap... but it wont get here until monday because its the friggin weekend. and on monday i am working. all day. so i wont be here to accept the package. and the post office will be closed by the time i get off work. Having to work all day on saturday, sunday and monday also means I wont be around for the hours the library is open, to write papers there...

also, before my phone died i got a voicemail about a job offer to be a Lighting Operator for a show at the Globe. I'm supposed to call him back and talk about it. AHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.

SO i will not have a laptop or a phone until 3pm on Tuesday, at the earlist. which is well past when the papers are due.

but its ok. i am laughing at the sheer ridiculousness of the situation (and my own stupidity for not making sure I packed those oh-so-essential items).

so peace. i am disappearing for what will hopefully only be a short while.


51% power remaining on the lappy. oh gooood aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!

Ashleigh is considering writing a paper on Hobbes' Sovereign as internalized morality and how this may be the only way to actually acheive the absolute power which Hobbes talks so much about.

I was thinking about this... and at first it was kind of depressing - the idea of being caged from the inside out. But then I tried flipping it around and wondering why that idea is depressing and not empowering. I think it could be empowering, since it means that we actually retain our individual abosulte power. We do have the capacity to be completely self determining, and it turns out that we never gave up our individual power at all... we've retained it! Any limits are self-imposed.

I believe I am slowly getting closer to reconciling my obsession with Hobbes with my belif that human nature can include compassion and love.

so,

peace and love! (I'm off to Regina tomorrow).

so it appears I wont be back in Toronto until June this summer.
I got a gig working as the stage manager and lighting designer for the Ballet at the Conexus Art centre in May. The Conexus being like.. the Regina equivilant of like.. Massey Hall or something. So i am excited. and terrified.

I am, however, back for a week starting this Thursday. see you all?

I partially cleaned my apartment today. enough that I don't look around just see stuff everywhere. I cleared enough carpet to warrent vacuuming.

I am coming home on thursday, arriving at midnight, and will be flying out again on friday the 20th. Valentines day has me in Ptbo seeing the Spades... Sunday might have me cross country skiing with the family... Tuesday night has me seeing a play with my Mom. Otherwise I am pretty free. A couple of other people from the theatre department will be around T-O too, and I believe we are planning to hit a play at Soulpepper at some point.

So yes.

see you soon.

---

aside from the cleaning i spent my whole day listening to poetry and drinking tea.

ashleigh wants you to know she won.
everything,.

absolutaley everything.

so the Battle of the Sexes: Browne vs. Johnstone is tomorrow tonight

it's a drink off. we will also be having nine contests of skill, one every half hour
one of them is a rap battle (we are allowed to write the rap ahead of time because neither of us have freestyling skills)

so tomorrow night.

i will be in a rap battle.
and i'm totally going to win.

omg watch this

heavy tech week.
very tired.
very sore.
very bruised.

sleep now.

more tomorrow.

since last night I watched The Fast and the Furious (again)
I thought it was only fitting to watch Talledega Nights tonight.

Bibliophilia:

So in 2008 I read 40 books. I set a goal of 50 (not including plays) for 2009.
So far I have read 20 (including plays). But hey, it was a busy year. I'll post a year-end literary review thing soon. Until then...

finished:
Poor Folk by Fyodor Dostoevsky. - it was no Notes From Underground, but it was still pretty solid... kinda heart wrenching at times. Still, there's some glorious prose.
This is also the book I selected for a bookcircle/sharing thing. I had to write notes in it and stuff... which was hard for two reasons: first, because I'm generally very against marking up books, and second, I was often to absorbed in the story to make note of anything. Mostly I just put "awww this is sad" or underlined lines I thought were particularly well written. It felt weird though. Writing in books with pen... crazy!

up next/currently reading:
Bloodletting & Miraculous Cures by Vincent Lam
The next installment for the bookcircle thing, provided by Katy. she has written in it. and now I will write in it too. hurrah! I will start it tonight.

The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Campbell
about half way through. I really like it, and think people should read it... but there are particular things about her style I still hate (especially just having taken a course in which I studied democracy, neo-liberalism [and the two major thinkers connected to it], the two major topics of her book). Having come at the whole neo-liberal thing from a purely theoretical/philosophical side, it's kind of hard to read someone trash it from the "this isn't democracy" side. It's not that it isn't democracy... it's just not what she wants democracy to be or mean. Not agreeing an idea is not the same as it being incoherent; something Klein does not seem to understand. I am not defending neo-liberalism. I tried my best to tear it to shreds in two separate essays this past semester, but I did so with an understanding of the conditions, goals, concepts and picture-of-human-nature that it encompasses. Still, the stuff that bugs me is stuff that probably won't bug you (unless you have also spent a lot of time studying Milton Friedman, Fredrich Von Haykek, Thomas Hobbes and the development of democratic theory). It's a good book and so far I agree with the message she's trying to get across. </rant>

Newly Acquired:
Exit Ghost by Philip Roth
The Adolescent by Fyodor Dostoevsky

me want now please.


also i am done for the semester and flying back to Toronto tomorrow night.

I am procrastinating by doing other homework.
(is that even coherent?)


Academia:
* PHIL 245: normative heterosexuality in liberal and ecofeminism - overdue DONE
* THEA 251: reading for tuesday / reading for thursday
* THEA 410: production book [aka everything i was supposed for the class before] - due: wed
* PHIL 290: neo-liberalism essay - 3000 words - due: thurs
* THEA 251: take home exam - essay 1: 6 pages / essay 2: 4 pages - due: thurs/or/fri
* THEA 344: production calender. maybe. also other stuff... maybe? sort of. probably [not?]

exams:
PHIL 245 - dec 11
PHIL 290 - dec 16

Academia:
* PHIL 245: normative heterosexuality in liberal and ecofeminism - 2000 words - overdue
* THEA 251: Power's Body oral presentation done and done.
* THEA 410: production book [aka everything i was supposed for the class before] - due: wed
* PHIL 290: neo-liberalism essay - 3000 words - due: thurs
* THEA 251: take home exam - essay 1: 6 pages / essay 2: 4 pages - due: thurs/or/fri
* THEA 344: production calender. maybe. also other stuff... maybe? sort of. probably [not?]

exams:
PHIL 245 - dec 11
PHIL 290 - dec 16

tonight is the Bonjour, la Bonjour strike (also I am dressing. also i am watching [again])
cast party. probably wont stay long, probably wont drink. there is too much to do to be hungover, or tired, tomorrow.

i am tired and want to go home.
and i will.
soon.