So, today, on a sweltering afternoon, while eating chicken box takeout from Sushigo, I will leave a verbal Polaroid for Future Me.
At the tail end of my four year stint at Emily Carr University of Art and Design, I'm traveling to Granville Island on weekday mornings for my last class, an Art History class with the topic of Popular Culture and the Arts of Persuasion, which has been perusing everything from horror films to war propaganda to the history of advertising and the psychology of how these mediums have been and are being used in this endless feedback loop of influence, money, and media that is our world. I'm enjoying the content, and the seminars are ok. Sometimes though, in school, you notice people trying to force themselves to participate or use discussion just to project themselves in the way they think the seminar leader wants to see them, or just to prove they are alive. I find the people in this group a bit anxious about being overly provocative, and I also feel maybe I'm speaking too much. Regardless, the class is lightly touching on some identity politics and discussions about capitalism and reality that are interesting to me personally, and pertain to me work, so it's good to get some new material to reflect on.
Last night i went to Genderbent with Tessa and saw some incredible drag performances that blew my mind. It was in the basement of Celebrities Nightclub, which was sort of dungeon-ey but provided this intimate setting (with seating! yes!) where I felt really -with- the performers, whose gender-bending acts moved me to tears and also made me laugh and think a lot. We met Beardonce outside before the show and their performance of Ani Defranco's Not a Pretty Girl had me sincerely weeping. Rose Butch's What's Up? performance was also stunningly beautiful with their flowing white robe. Generally, the performances were very direct in their acknowledgement of the political atmosphere in the US, and what the micro-macro-everything affects of being boxed up do to a brain. Also, the queen who hosted it did Ed Sheeran's Thinking Out Loud which made me laugh a lot but also want to cry a bit to see it in that context.
Then, after class, this afternoon, I was attacked on the head by a crow! Which is a frightening follow-up to being stalked by that crow last month! Does my hair look like a nest? or the sleek feathers of another fellow crow? Is this an omen? I tried to get a free three minute reading from a psychic medium Melody recommended, but she isn't doing them anymore. I'm considering whether I want to go see this Van psychic before I leave... but I'm always sort of more scared than curious, so we'll see about that. I also ran into Jon... on my way home, which is maybe why I thought of this blog again, seeing someone from my weird teenager days! I'm pretty sure it's been about a decade since i saw the guy, but it was a pleasant encounter. Even if you don't take the time to convey anything about yourself when you run into someone from your past, it's still a bit of a trip to think about who you were then and who you are now. After that, I ran into an elderly Chinese lady who was looking for the bus, and she happened to be going to the same stop as me, so we sat together and chatted. Her name was Baisy and she was from Melbourne, visiting her daughter and grandchildren here for a couple months. She had lovely white hair, cut short, and a calming smile with one brown tooth.
It is my last month here in Vancouver before I head back to Ontario indefinitely, so I'm trying to soak it up even if it's blistering out and the forest fires are making it too smokey to see the mountains lately.
I am 30 years old.
