Reflections on a new year and the looming 40th
by ezra on January 5, 2012
That dot is me floating under the moon in a beautiful Quebec lake in 2011
Many cultures imbue numbers with great significance and others engage in the mass psychological delusion of New Years resolutions each January 1st. For my part, I don’t have irrational faith in the potential for numeric interventions in the chaotic unfolding of my destiny but I do quietly partake in the renewal ritual of cleaning up one’s messy metaphorical room at the turning of each new year. Having said that, 2012 is a nice even number that will hopefully mark some much-needed balance and focus in my life and in these first few days of January I have been consumed with thinking about what needs to be achieved and how to achieve it.
If 2011 was the year I intensely thought about getting older and reflected on the difficult project of “growing up,” 2012 should be the year I embrace grownupness – and indeed getting older as this reality comes on with a vengeance at the end of May when I turn that dreadful age of forty. I turned thirty in 2002, the year so many wished George W. Bush would keep eating pretzels (after choking on one), the year of the Enron backlash, the year the US invaded Afghanistan, the year the International Criminal Court was established, the year the African Union formed, the year the US Congress passed the Iraq War Resolution, the year of the first massive march against climate change (in London, UK), the year the Euro was officially adopted by the EU, the year of the tragic Chechen standoff in a theatre in Moscow, the year of the G8 summit in Canada where the world’s richest countries made promises to the poorer nations they did not keep, the year of the Prestige oil tanker disaster off the coast of Spain, the year Bush created the Department of Homeland Security, and the year I marked the end of my twenties.
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by ezra on December 9, 2011
Wow, two months since I posted here. Swamped as usual. Suffering from a total writer’s block and unable to really dive into my dissertation-writing. I keep reading and reading and when I sit down to write I feel like I don’t have anything worthwhile to say. But some things were working against me – summer, a big move to a new apartment (with my own office finally!), the ongoing distraction known as Cinema Politica, and most recently, teaching a fourth year undergraduate course at Carleton University on alternative media. With those things behind me (Cinema Politica is finished for the semester and the course is over, save for the huge stack of papers I have to mark by the end of this weekend), I should be ready.
I’m really trying to knock out a rough chapter before I take a short holiday break, beginning December 20th. That gives me ten days. If I can do an average of four pages per day, I can do it. But there’s nothing up there (in my head)!! Argh!! I keep hearing everyone goes through this, but I really feel like there’s no way I’ll ever get this dissertation written. Really. Let’s hope my next post on this blog will be one celebrating a chapter (or two) under my belt.
The picture above is from a special academic forum/workshop I attended this past spring called NYLON (New York-London). It’s a network of super smart people. You have to have a PhD to be a member so most are profs, but they invite the odd graduate student to attend some of their workshops and I was lucky enough to take part and have my paper discussed by this secret cabal of braniacs from the US and UK. I’m over on the left side and to my immediate left is my awesome supervisor Ira Wagman. To my immediate right is the insanely prolific academic Craig Calhoun, who, aside from founding NYLON, is a very pleasant individual. Two intense days of intellectual discussion and boy was I exhausted but also exhilarated. I could use one of those right about now. I’ll have to instead settle for the inspirational effect of snow falling out my window…
O'Leary has no place on Canada's national broadcaster
by ezra on October 16, 2011
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