traces of the western slopes

alt title: uranium hexaflouride.

i'll be going to yale tomorrow. i love the fraser valley, and am eager to cross the bridge at hope. agassiz, lytton, boston bar, yale.

i am now 23, and 81 credits into an undergraduate degree. i put together a c.v. last night, and had trouble putting anything down under 'university relations officer'. asking for references was a huge ego rush, i must admit. what have i done this year? a lot, i believe. while i inherited a good portfolio, i am leaving it better than ever. i was asked to run for president next year, today. i could graduate next year. i could do a lot of things in my life at that point. i was asked tonight if i was doing my masters. yesterday, someone guessed my major as 'business administration'. have i assimilated the language so well? i am good with language. i love it. i was repeating the names of timber companies yesterday over a beer. weyerhaeuser, timberwest, macmillan bloedel, norske canada. on mitchell island, the shipping containers are piled higher than the knight street bridge. maersk. the dubai ports authority owns the port of newark, new jersey. they bought it. in dubai, they've built an indoor ski hill. there was a picture in the globe and mail of men in white robes and long beards skiing, wearing sunglasses. aviator frames.

we had dinner at a restaurant in coos bay while camping at eel creek. we sat next to a wide window which looked out onto a slough. the fog was very thick, and we couldn't see very far. we haven't been to port alberni since last summer, i believe. port renfrew, tahsis, bamfield, ucluelet. hartley bay is at the mouth of the inlet that leads to kitimat. skeena, north coast, bulkley valley-stikine, peace river north, prince george-omineca. takla landing.

i've taken out a book from the library about millenials. the book is about my generation, about me. those of us for whom the cold war was not a formative experience, but the world trade centre's collapse was. i am afraid to read this book. knowing what the leading authorities on my generation believe they know about me, i fear i will be constantly conscious of my actions and thoughts. am i being typical? and i being atypical? purposefully? i am afraid that it will change me.

the world trade centre's collapse, i.e. the collapse of the centre of world trade. rather than read my millennials book, i am reading dark age ahead, by jane jacobs. i hope that it changes me.

i've also dropped my camera off for a full tune-up. it has been unstable for about three years now, and will cost roughly $150 to fix. i pick it up monday.

tired of working

-we camped at golden ears last summer. i read 'the decline and fall of the habsburg empire' and 'mao II'. on the trip there and back we listened to the 5th dimension. i'll never forget it.
-what if, years from now, my only memories are those that i write down here? personal histories are just as fallible as any other. it's like turning on a flashlight. when it's out, you can see everything kinda. when it's on, you can see what's the light is focused on really well, but everything else is completely obscured. so it goes with history. so it goes.
-i am not tired of working. in fact, i had a wonderful day at work. i was part of the full-day retreat of the student services strategic planning team (group? task force?). it was fun. i made a speech about engagement being different today than before; a student who is unengaged with their campus community may simply be engaged elsewhere, and will not easily switch allegiance. this is an effect of, among many other things, identity politics, and is not something that we should fight. we need to accept that the SFU brand won't be the centre of everyone's life while they attend school. it was a nice building as well: the new segal school of business. it's open to the public, essentially. i'm going to use it as a nice quiet place to read while downtown.
-communication and reporting lines are crucial to organizational development. just as we are working hard to clarify these in student services, i am acknowledging their stupid weakness in the student society and dealing with their total, even stupider breakdown in my co-op. i am tired of the co-op. it makes me feel guilty, because i feel that there is more i could do, and blaming problems on a lack of competent support staff is simply to easy, however valid an issue it may be.
-a man on the skytrain home proclaimed that he was tired of working. he asked the skytrain attendant if she was on or off duty. she was off. she remarked that she loved working.

modern painters

the bum on the skytrain was trying to make conversation. he said hi, i said hi. he smiled and said 'you look pretty happy!', so i just smiled more! it was true. i am pretty happy.

see, there are these moments. i'm listening to my itunes on shuffle (5203 songs now), and on comes steely dan, razor boy. i LOVE razor boy. i just got back from destroyer and my ears are still ringing.

will iran be bombed before the midterm elections? more urgent and key, will nuclear weapons be used during my lifetime?

century egg

i bought books today. a whole lot of books.

• emily carr, the house of all sorts (1944)
  
• margaret atwood, oryx and crake (2003)
  
• fred hoyle, the black cloud (1957)
  
• audrey thomas, intertidal life (1984)
  
• nevil shute, on the beach (1957)
  
• don delillo, players, (1977)
  
• daphne du maurier, 'don't look now' and other stories (1971)
  
• daphne du maurier, the house on the strand (1969)
  
• alice munro, something i've been meaning to tell you (1974)
  

in other news, rich lured me out to see destroyer tomorrow night. i also finished the soviet experiment tonight, and am nearly done armageddon averted. i plan to spend all day friday reading anything that isn't about russia. i do, however, enjoy pictures of yulia tymoshenko. she became a billionaire when ukraine's oil and gas industry was privatized, and her husband is in exile, fleeing corruption charges. she spent time in jail herself, also for corruption.

purposeless play

in 20 years we will be making movies about iraq vets. i can't wait to see 'the return of forrest gump'. he'll grow up in a suburb. a suburb of philadelphia. drexel hill, pennsylvania. bubba will be hispanic. they'll come back from iraq and realize their dream of operating a bed and breakfast in the adirondacks. what is post-AIDS? maybe bird flu will be our AIDS?

• having read don delillo's end zone yesterday, i started re-reading white noise today. i'd forgotten both how funny it is and also how explicitly postmodern it is. at the most photographed barn in america, jack and murray remark that the assembled photographers are taking pictures of taking pictures. it is the most glib of his novels i have read yet.
  
• end zone was wonderful, but clearly formative. the elements are all there; repetition of phrases, focus on vaguely sinister non-words(CENTREX/SIMUVAC/SEMTEX), shabby maladjusted academics, obsession with jargon. a good novel, but i was often distracted by knowing the more fully-formed archetypes from later novels.
  
• we watched TRON for my birthday! TRON! the first time i saw it, i was too distracted by the gorgeous images to follow the subtext, but the anvils hit me tonight. it is about individualism v. communism, NATO v. COMINTERN, freedom v. fascism! i want to see TRON on IMAX.
  
• once again, i am up too late. i do not need to be on campus until 12pm, but i do have a report to write in the morning. i need to stop reading don delillo until friday, and immerse myself in soviet history for three more days. 1945-1991.
  
• i had serious second thoughts about the townhouse on sunday, but tonight it looked really beautiful. i have better coping skills than i generally believe, and can certainly manage the increased cost if i pull myself together. when i get concerned, i only need to imagine sitting on our new patio with coffee and a newspaper in the morning. we can start an herb garden. i have been wondering how to arrange our couch and the ethernet cable between our two computers. we have three stories! two alcoves(two!)!
  
• i'll be attending a public hearing on the gateway transportation project tomorrow, at the north surrey rec centre.
  
• i have:
  
  
  
  • 133 bruce cockburn songs
    
  • 79 destroyer songs
    
  • only 23 dire straits songs
    
  • 87 joe jackson songs
    
  • only 52 stereolab songs
    
  • 62 veda hille songs
    
  • 116 saint etienne songs
    
  • 166 richard/linda thompson songs
    
  • 51 sandy denny songs
    
  • 52 fairport convention songs
    
  • for a grand total of 269 fairport diaspora songs!
    
  • 87 cocteau twins songs
    
  • 141 joni mitchell songs
    
  
  
• douglas coupland uses repetition to make brand names absurd, while don delillo uses repetition to make brand names sinister.
  

echelon

i've got two half-written posts sitting in draft form that will probably never get finished. every day feels like a week. the end of the semester seems closer than ever, though. i feel as though i'm engaged in a protracted procrastination process, despite the lack of any projects requiring my consistent attention.

so, then. some notes:

• don delillo makes me happy in a way that few other authors can. i want to re-read the names.
  
• my stress management skills are poorer than ever. they operate inverse to the actual levels of stress in my life. the lesson may be that i can only self-actualize in a stressful environment. of course, i say that now, etc. etc.
  
• the fall of the soviet union is really affecting me! perestroika + glasnost = total pathos.
  
• i thought about 'new sincerity' for a day, but i ultimately concluded that it is bunk. instant zeitgeist nonsense. there is a term for this in generation x, i am sure. historical underdosing v. historical overdosing. fuck it.
  
• will any of my anticipated lifestyle shifts chnage me for the better? no, at least not in and of themselves. this is a fact.
  
• i am doing well in life! i am well-equipped to go places in this world!
  
• i'd like to win a free ipod, thanks.
  
• the sooner i sleep, the better i'll feel tomorrow. i plan on working for no more than 3 hours, between 11am-2pm, at which point i'll go home. perhaps i'll take my dog to the park. i'll read more soviet history, and perhaps start to read jane jacobs' dark age ahead. i'll do some laundry.