Racy Weekend

This morning I woke up to a gently throbbing temple and the sounds of cheering, live band and rain. Ottawa race weekend! Grabbed a coffee and a muffin and clapped for the athletes until my hands were puffy. Note: being on the sidelines of a marathon when you're hungover feels shameful, as does feeling the urge to complain that your hands are getting puffy. 

I have mixed feelings about whether or not I should ever attempt the marathon, but one thing is for sure; watching the race fills me with inspiration. At the risk of reproducing 'supercrip' narratives (a la Eli Clare), it moves me to see people of various physical and mental capacities giving all of their energy and celebrating the power of their bodies and minds. It's a big day!

Mush alert - as runners flashed smiles in thanks for our shouting, I felt the love of the human spirit rush all over us. I hope to carry this sentiment through to my reading of current events this week. Off to soccer in this summer storm to make some fitness magic of my own!

Frackin' vapid mayor beat out Clive Doucet and I'm still bitter.

This morning I arrived at my glebe cafe just in time to line up behind Mayor Jim Watson in his red windbreaker. 


For all of my social bounciness, quasi-celebrity local politicians and academics usually make me weak in the knees. I experienced momentary paralysis and almost peed my pants on the stairs in front of Sheila Copps, for example. But Jim Watson invited the most confident (read: defiant) eye contact I could muster. I did not feel even slightly inclined to impress him (read: flirt with him), even though this is my default behaviour around well-ish known men. Instead of smiling shyly or spilling my coffee on myself, I offered him a chair, and he sat across from me and asked me my thoughts on the Bank Street construction project, to which I responded bluntly, "I have the privilege of not being car dependent."


So then his assistant came and I sat perched on one hip with my best fake-focusing-on-my-to-do-list face while the two drank hot chocolate like school children. I eavesdropped so hard, I noticed I even closed my eyes at one point. If he weren't such an unbearable man, I would not take such pleasure in revealing his inanity:


JW: "I got into a tweet debate with a crazy socialist last night."


Assistant: "Well any crazy person can make comments online, it's not the status quo. It's not proportionate. Ridiculous."


JW: "Pff, yeah I know. I need some more hot chocolate."


My dislike intensified as I heard them scroll through the schedule for the day and strategize on how to do as little work as possible. Next time, he doesn't get my chair.

temporal musings: navel-gazing alert

Dated Wednesday, May 18th.


I'm reporting from Kensington Market on this drizzly Wednesday morning. Trying to make and race through a to-do list, mostly just to garner a small sense of health and productivity, I'm delayed by what I can only label emotional exhaustion. Tom Waits and biscotti in a jazzy cafe... I feel everything. The barista had such a warm smile, I wanted to hug her. The girl next to me was so friendly as she helped me move chairs and tables that I literally welled up with happy tears.


I think many of us would agree that we've been programmed to think of health and productivity as imbricated. Maybe there is some relationship, say, between self-actualizing and movement, but I'm talking about the more crude messages of neoliberal "responsible citizen" discourse. I'm sure critique of this kind has existed in some form at least since the dawn of capitalism, and I do intentionally resist tying my mental health to traditional notions of progress and productivity in the modernist sense, but here on this rainy Wednesday, I'm just desperately wishing for some passion or compulsion to get me to work: typical, modernist punch-your-time-card work. I acknowledge that I'm intensely privileged in this temporal sensation - I assume the majority of people on this planet are too busy trying to feed themselves and their children to dwell on "what is this grey area between leisure and labour" - but this recognition doesn't seem to help much.


As I'm already beginning to articulate the feeling of being lost (in this city, in this temporal space, in this nostalgia), I suppose I'm on my way out of it. For the last several weeks, I haven't been able to fully accept these wasteful days as necessary for "wellness" - I just feel lazy, guilty and altogether stressed out. I'm hoping that in putting these feelings into words, I'll ignite some motivation to work again, whatever that means in Ph.D. land.

lifting the cloud with my fem shovel

I suppose I've spent long enough under a rock since Black Monday (election night). It's time to come out of hiding.


The news of the Harper majority came as a shock to many of us, even though as activists, lefty professionals and scholars, we're all-too-familiar with the incredible force of the Conservative machine. What happened? Who is doing this to our country? What is going to happen to my rights? When will the foundations for the new prisons, infrastructure that will scar the Canadian landscape forever, be laid? What is going to happen to universities? In the days following the headlines, I felt numb and on the verge of tears, comforted only by friends who also confessed to feeling personally hurt and to crying into their cereal bowls on Tuesday morning.


This sunny Thursday morning, I bumped into our silver lining (Elizabeth May!) at the Bridgehead on Sparks and Metcalfe (the same Bhead, I should add, where I ran into Judith Jack Halberstam and Sheila Copps. WHY DO I EVER LEAVE THAT PLACE?!). She gracefully expressed her condolences and mutual grief and shock at the majority government and I felt a spark of love in my soul for the first time in weeks (thanks, Jeremy, for pushing me into her!!).


Following this pleasant run-in, I proceeded to the Hill with my homemade sign for the peaceful Pro-Choice Presence rally at anti-choice march ("for life"). Well, there went the love. Strong police presence, angry shouts and booing... In hindsight, it may not have been productive toward my rebuilding activist passion to attend this event (the kids and Knights of Columbus march by my window shouting "created to live"as I write this). To the east of the Hill with my "I love life, I love choice" sign, I stood with my friends and looked over a sea of children beautifully singing worship songs...


The sheer loveliness of the children's voices soaring into the sunlight was enough to move me to tears of nostalgia, but the joy and innocence of that beautiful youth choral sound was juxtaposed with old men holding professionally printed signs about butchering babies, giving men their right to fatherhood, etc. The kids held grotesque signs too, but I can hardly blame them. Afterall, I was on that side of the protest not long ago singing "Yes Lord, Si Senore" with all of my might.


It was triggering to remember a rough part of my childhood, but the toughest part of the day was how the two camps expressed hatred to one another. A line of police officers separated us. There were strollers on both sides, some women insisting their children represent the anti-choice movement, others arguing that their children are the results of choice. Honestly I think the major conflict starters were the old men on the anti-choice side who, upon seeing our pro-choice pro-condom signs, immediately shouted for their counterparts to stand in front of us. They successfully covered our frontline with a giant banner of the pope's face, so we moved east and watched from the sidelines.


I eventually left when I saw the Knights arranging a small cluster of women at the front of the march. The women wore big black signs, proclaiming "I regret my abortion" in bold yellow font. That did it. Shaming women for the brainwashing of children is where I draw the line.


My silver lining for this warm spring day: I find hope in strangers expressing their solidarity against the growing hard right. We're binding together in grief and celebration to resist these scary times...that is love. I'm also extremely proud to stand with activist Mélanie Jubinville-Stafford, who told the media that this day is about peace and explanation. She said that her social work background reminds her that anger is a healthy emotion, and with this in mind, she engages her opposition with kindness and respect. That is love.