morrisseyed

It is a couple days before the start of September. I don’t know how many days it is before the start of September.  I cannot be any more precise regarding the change of months beyond a general couple of days, give or take a day or two.  The passing of time has all at once been compressed, shortened, lengthened and expanded by various forms of end-of-summer anxieties which are best described as a change-of-season turmoil.  Such a description, however, is neither “good”, “better”, or “best”.  “Best” is a superlative which demands a baseline I neither gave nor presumed to give.  And ‘turmoil’ would be a word more appropriately used in politics, epidemics, or war.

But a summer which ends flush of anxieties that can be best, however inadequately, described as a change-of-season turmoil it has been. That’s how we roll.

My inbox is full of unopened emails, and my desk is brimming full of unopened or unreturned letters.  It appears that I’ve taken on several psychoses this summer, one of which would definitely consist of wishing (or willing) away certain issues by ignoring the consequences that have already befallen my person.  One example of this would be my hair (left untethered for four months until a nice, but expensive cut this morning). Another example would be the taxes.  The Taxman is determined to make my life difficult by demanding reams and reams of paper to confirm that I’m a student, that I pay tuition, that I am funded by a federal agency, that I have employment at the same school, and that not one account is directly linked to another.  And here I was, all these years, expecting Revenue Canada to strike the hammer down regarding gratuities earned at one of several other jobs.  But no; it would appear that one arms-length agency (The University) refuses to correspond at all with two others (The Taxman, and the Federal Funding Agency).  Not so good. This mess will never end until I start paying tuition again, I suppose.

I begin another academic programme next week.  I’m putting on a brave and encouraged face for it, but I’d be embellishing, if not lying (nothing new there) if I didn’t admit that I am a little anxious about what’s to come by way of it.  I was admitted on a scholarship, but I’m still not exactly sure what’s to be done with the degree, or what’s to be done with my person to get the degree.  The programme is in a different, albeit parallel field than that which I am accustomed to.  It is also in a different faculty, and has an entirely different culture.  I’m a half-decent actor, and will be able to play the part fairly well, but in spite of those half-decent acting abilities, I’ve never been comfortable putting on a face.  Although I couldn’t ever describe my real face to someone (no one could do such a thing, except perhaps the blind), I certainly don’t like living with a different face on a face-to-face basis.  If all the world really is a stage, and we are the players, the cast, the crew, the front of the house and the back of the house, then nothing really is real.  I can live with that concept until the moment, however, when The World Out There demands that we pretend, whilst playing our roles on that stage, to actually be acting The Real.  That’s a little too meta even for me.  I can talk about it.  I can hype it up.  I can write you a beautiful piece of prose or fiction about it.  But I can’t live that second-order simulacra without feeling my person break up into its (in-)constituent parts.  Entering this new faculty, this new culture, has prompted me to constantly question my own person.  I might be in for a long week.

The programme also has certain social demands that might require me to use the dreaded Spacebook again. As well, there stands a good chance that I will likely have ventured onto the internet with yet another persona by the end of the first term to fulfill certain course-related or social-related demands.  There was a time I confidently portrayed a unified internet persona.  Those days disappeared this past summer, and I believe that latent anxieties about this programme may have precipitated this demise.  It could be that my internet persona will yet become even more fractalized before (hopefully) coalescing again.  Having fought the good fight, should I surrender my internet identity for the sake of a programme, and for the sake of a current and commonly-held opinion that internet anonymity is truly dead?  In many ways I think the war might be over, that Facebook.com has absolutely destroyed internet anonymity.  Perhaps this bullet should have been bitten long ago.  But I don’t know if I’m yet ready to lower the red flag of war and raise the white flag of surrender.  Time likely will tell the answer to this dilemma, though.  This programme will either offer me the water that will satiate my thirst for anonymity, or pass over the kool-aid and turn me into a devout convert of the cause.  And of course, whatever the answer is, I will wholeheartedly agree with it forever more.

I’m in love with this image that was sent to me recently.  It really is a call to citizens of Halifax Regional Municipality to think twice before they vote in the Fall 2008 Municipal Election.  Note that the first image is a .jpg rendering of the original .pdf which follows:

Peter Kelly and Halifax 2008: Think Twice Before You Vote

[Original Mayor Peter Kelly Bowl Cut Image, in PDF Format]

September is just around the corner, and I’m thinking of getting a new backpack.

I’ve been using satchels for some time now.  I’ve never been keen on the “backpack look” - that is, image of the student of any age with a tonne of books bulging out of their upper back.  It is just not elegant enough for my own pretentious ways.  Instead, I’ve stuck it out with the satchel, which has allowed me to keep my work bundled to my side when I’m walking about. Satchels also keep the work well-organized.  Satchels are awesome.

I currently have three satchels.  One satchel is made especially for my macbook.  It has enough extra space for me to keep a duotang and a pen.  It doesn’t get much use because of this, but on the other hand, when i do need to port only Zizou with me, than I’m always good to go.

The second satchel is pure rock’n'roll.  It’s made of hand-crafted and tanned leather, from somewhere in south america.  this powerful monster came to me by way of los gerkins, who picked it up on their 2007 travels.  i’m freaking in love with it.  One compartment fits the laptop perfectly, and the other has enough space for one or two duotangs and a textbook.  Oh yes, and some old leathered patagonian of some sort built into it a pocket that fits my cell phone quite well.  I’m a big fan of this monster.  It screams “style!” and “awesome!” in a most understated way, which once again reinforces my pretense.

Often, though, I need to go back to my first love, the MEC Carry-all satchel.  I’ve been using this MEC

MEC Carryall. Over Ten Years of Being Awesome.

satchel for over ten years now, and am currently in my second incarnation of this old reliable.  I bought my first satchel at the old MEC on Front St E in t-dot back in the day while traipsing about town with Powell.  He already had one in green, and I was in love with its form-factor.  I clearly needed one of my own and put down the $30 bucks for one right there.  I keep using that guy, born in 1998, until around 2004 when the time had come to put it out to pasture.  Luckily, the Pineapples had the exact same satchel (in the same colour, no less), which she had bought in the same year, so I easily shifted to her underused bag with ease, grace, and style.  No one but us knew the difference.  The only difference, frankly, is that my old blue satchel a the small yellow stain on the front flap, which was a result of a disastrous t-dot street-meat experience outside of sidney smith hall - the mustard fell all over the sidewalk, with a tiny bit of splashback onto the satchel.  I love that the so-bad-for-you French’s mustard could not be washed out of the chemically treated blue canvas of the bag.

I have often toyed with knapsacks along during this decade of shoulder bags.  Every now and again I walk into MEC and look for The Perfect Backpack.  I would often buy a pack, work with it for a couple days, and then come to the sad conclusion that like infinity, perfection can never be reached.  This is followed by a walk of shame back down to the store where I must return the pack.  MEC takes them back without a problem, but I feel bad every time I do it.  Since MEC is a co-op, I know they’ve got a record of the three or four packs I’ve bought and then returned within a week.  I feel that the next time I walk in to buy a pack they might prevent me from approaching the cash.  Instead, an intervention will be held somewhere between the canoes and caribineers.  Several MEC attendants will surround me and tell me that this business must stop, that I must come to terms with the fact that despite my love for MEC and my belief in their total awesomeness, that The Perfect Pack is a myth, a legend, a part of our folklore.  I am not so much looking for a pack they’ll tell me, so much as i’m looking for One Ring To Rule Them All.   ‘

One pack I did own, use faithfully for some time though, was the MEC Velo 25.  There was a summer when I decided that I’d bike about the countryside a couple times a week.  Such an ordeal required me to outfit myself with the requisite gear, so I traipsed down to MEC and got my hands on this guy.  The MEC Velo is long and sleek.  It is built to hug your back, distribute the weight of its contents as well as its own gross, and also to prevent the production of wind resistance when on the road.  There is also space for a camel-sack on the inside.  Anyway,  I quickly realized that the Velo 25 would make for a good school pack (despite its large size) because its form prevents the development of that dreaded “backpack-look” I mentioned earlier.  This pack does not stick out from one’s upper-back like a malignant tumour or growth.  There is the “I’m an active outdoor enthusiast!” look that must naturally be countered, but my normally more-or-less-fit frame gives me enough confidence to to wear the stuff those freaks find themselves in without feeling like a poser.  And besides, the backpack has become ubiquitous, so i think i can deal.  I’m of the opinion that wearing a backback, however bright the colours may be (which is a serious fashion faux-pas, I do admit), can never be as bad as wearing trainers/running shows or track pants or warm-up gear to the office/class/seminar/conference/meeting.

my precious. one pack to rule them all.

My Velo 25 passed away a year or two ago.  It lived a good life and hauled a good haul.  Now I roll only with the three aforementioned satchels.  I’ve recently encountered the problem, however, that my old frame doesn’t roll as well as it once did.  i’m not as strong as i was once, and my satchel use is mucking up my back.  the constant weight-shift to one side is destroying a shoulder and a hip, and i’m none-too-happy about this.  All of this means that the annual search for the perfect pack appears to have begun again.  but this time i will enter it with an earnest gusto.  tomorrow, or saturday, I will head to MEC and re-acquaint myself with the Velo 25.  i will create a 5-column checklist to re-evaluate my options to find my precious, the one pack to rule them all, and i will prioritize not only fashion statements but this newfound Old-Man-ness.  I will enter my middle years with a pack set to distribute its weight away from my sore tired frame, and then i will conquer and destroy my adversaries in a brilliant splendour of synthetic fibres, mesh exteriors, and full-body-zippers.  can’t effing wait.