The artistic experiences of University were usually occurring in the small city apartments of friends instead of at the actual University. Most of my learning happened outside the hallowed halls (who doesn't use hallowed to describe the halls of such a high-esteemed center of post-secondary education?) After classes we would sometimes go for tea, painting pictures on the walls and exploding phrases into our journals. Or sitting in the quad while we sketched portraits or wrote abysmal lines of poetry as a group. Drinking at the Green Room and wandering the streets until the sun came up; sitting in parks near our places and watching the stars turn to daylight. Eating saltine crackers and strawberry jam taken from the side-tables at restaurants to maintain some sort of meal-time.
When all you have to worry about is finishing a paper, where to meet next, who you'll meet tomorrow, what classes will be the most interesting.
No wonder so many people glamorize their university years and attempt to recreate it years later.
Newspaper deadlines! I miss newspaper deadlines. New paper day at Sid Smith! Working at Sid Smith at a minimum wage coffee job, being up at 5:30 in the morning for work after being up until 4am writing on the dialectic. Where's the stamina now??! I've lost contact with the most artistic group of friends, which I think is natural for the artists. Where have they gone? Well, I know where some of them are but is the world so harsh that their very artistry dies along with their ideals and dreams? I worry about them more than the rest. It's the bills that keep us going, the promise of future presents for our brief selling out. To go from here to there requires time and growth and these building blocks don't come cheap sista.
I lost touch with a bunch. We lost touch with a bunch. Spread across the globe now, visiting when I can. Writing letters through snail-mail with concepts for joint short stories and mutual fiction novels...collaboration between countries in the mail! But can the project exist beyond our crafty letters or will they die as most correspondence does - but if that correspondence were to be made into a book of letters one day then oh boy.
Will e-mails turn into books of letters? Who will read the e-mail trail between the Simone de Beauvoir and Sartre-esque types when the delete button is so conveniently present when things fall apart (Achebe!)[bless-you]
To be delusional is to believe in the delusion. To live in Canada through a winter requires more then deluding yourself that summer is just around the corner.
Toronto, 2008
