Perpetual Calendar

Perpetual Calendar
archives
cast
me
home

Memories of 3C

In my last term at university, I was living with Mike and Tina, and taking a 8:30 to 11:30 art class over in that weird little art building. On my way there I would stop at Williams Coffee Emporium (or whatever) and get a lemon poppyseed muffin and a coffee, which I would eat in class.

About "Memories"

I have this idea that memories are like muscles; if you don't exercise them, they weaken and fade. I don't mean the faculty of memory, I mean specific, individual memories. You exercise a memory by recalling it, thinking it over, telling it to someone else, writing it down. The more you exercise a memory, the longer and more clearly it will stay with you.

Every so often I remember something that I had almost forgotten, and I get a dart of fear; I almost lost that memory; I almost lost a piece of my life! When I recall a memory like that, I'll write it here.

There's more to it than that, though. When I recall the simple act of picking up a lemon poppyseed muffin on my way to art class, I remember how it was mostly cool and rainy that term, what it was like living with Mike and Tina, I remember taking the bus to Toronto every weekend, how the art class smelled and the feeling of conté crayon on my fingers.

If I were a better writer or just had more time, I'd describe all that stuff so you could remember it with me, but it's just a simple memory. That's why it's only a sidebar.

December 03, 2001: Not so bad being me

Good thing I didn't join Jette's HoliDailies, because I'd be 0 for 2 right now. This was a weekend for doing deeds, not thinking thoughts, so I had neither things to say nor time to say them.

The other obstacle to entry-writing was the fact that Blake spent a lot of time updating the kernel on our machine, so I couldn't get to it. It still isn't really working. Well, Linux is working, but he thinks the accelerated graphics doo-dad he installed is the problem. It's a drag; he gets really grumpy, and I get grumpy too because there's nothing I can do to help.

Sometime around two on Sunday, as I was making Christmas pudding, I got to thinking about how much work it is to put up the Christmas tree and decorations, and how no-one's going to see them, and what's the point anyway, you just have to take them all down after Christmas. Blake finally talked me into decorating, but I'm still not convinced it's worth the effort. I can put up a tree, and I can make christmas pudding, and I can play carols, but it still won't be Christmas.

Christmas has to have a big dinner, and lots of people, and Christmas stockings for the children, and sitting around opening presents and drinking eggnog. We're not going to have any of that; no stockings, no children, no people, no presents. We'll have dinner and eggnog, but that doesn't count for much with only two people.

Christmas will make a lot more sense when we have children. A little snow wouldn't hurt, either.

I finally got that stuff from my parents' house which I talked about weeks ago; a friend of a friend of a friend of my parents' dropped it off. A steamer trunk, eight boxes, one electric piano and a tapestry my father did, all of which my parents have carried around for ten years and three moves.

It took me a full day (that would be Saturday) to unpack and sort through it all. Result: four bags to give away to Goodwill, one bag of trash, two boxes of books for the library, and two bags of paper recycling. I kept the trunk, the piano and the tapestry, as well as about 30 books, a stack of LPs for Dave to look through, a couple of pieces of jewellery, a Spirograph (tm), some photographs, two dolls, one tiny t-shirt from the Krugersdorp Game Park, and a souvenir tea towel from the Voortrekker Monument.

I spent some time at lunch today talking to the wife of one of my colleagues. They've got two children, one almost three years old and the other six months old. I talked to her about what she does with her days: she does crafts with the children, she paints, she writes, she takes them to the library. She's got a piano and a guitar, and she's looking forward to getting back to playing once she has more time, because she used to be quite good.

Then I got email from Blake; he got word of one of the women we knew in university. She's married and had a baby in March. She has a degree in Russian and a degree in computer science. She speaks English, Russian, French, German, Spanish, Hebrew, Polish, and Yugoslavian. Her interests are "linguistics, especially computational and semantics; theoretical mathematics; brains; computer security/privacy issues, particularly pseudonymity, stylometry, steganography."

The bitchy me says, she's just pretending to be interested in that stuff so boys will like her because god knows plenty of that went on in university. That's another of my ways of excusing myself from tackling things: those women with big degrees? They just got them to impress boys.

Really, I'm twelve.

But no, of course not. She's obviously very smart and intellectually curious and motivated and..

...all those other things I don't seem to be.

I have a lousy 3 year degree in Math. I couldn't even finish the four year degree. I only speak English. I'm not interested in anything except music, and what have I done to pursue that? Fuck all.

Oh, and I'm interested in having babies, and keeping house, and parenting, but those things don't really count.

Okay, Brown, snap out of it!

You're taking voice lessons. You're in a choir. You're looking into taking music theory and history classes. You manage to feed yourself a healthy balanced diet 80% of the time, and you get almost enough exercise. You know lots of long words and you read a lot, mostly not trash. You're nice to animals and you have a few good friends. You have a decent job and your bosses like you.

Hmph, I guess it's not so bad being me. Although there are a couple of holes I have to fill before I can look myself in the eye. First, I know nothing about current events, apart from what I glean from the headlines. I will start reading the paper, at least on weekends. Second, all this music stuff is just cheap talk until I start learning the heavy theory and history and maybe take steps towards a degree. Must get on that.

This sounds rather Bridget Jones-ish, doesn't it, except I'm not concerned with losing weight and drinking less. Hopefully I'll be more successful than our Bridget.

I guess comparing yourself to other people isn't such a bad thing if it spurs you to smarten up. If all it spurs you to do is make up reasons why they're doing so well and you're doing nothing, it's perhaps not so good.