Post-op

Fräulein has just returned from surgery. She is still a little groggy, but has chosen to do some light reading as she rests.

Sent to me by my brother:

Homework

Fräulein helping me with my homework.

Materies Morbi

I know, I know, it’s been far too long. I began grad school and got distracted with all the edumacation.

However, Dear Readers, it’s my esteem pleasure to present the blog of Shade:  Materies Morbi.

“Materies Morbi” is an antiquated medical term which refers to the direct cause of disease or death. Despite its nine lives, the fearless feline still has one notorious Achilles heel. Hence, herein you will find this cat’s collection of curiosities.”

Please do check out her cabinet of curiosities. It’s well worth the journey.

Montreal Eats

Recently discovered the blog Shoestring Montreal, which details cheap eats in Montreal.

Montrealers have a special relationship with our food, as we consider our palates more discernible, our lust for food visceral and aesthetic, and our dining experiences more enjoyable.

My new neighborhood has a hot dog and poutine joint within 2 blocks, in every direction, but Miss Shoestring provides some great alternatives.

Breakfast at Le Garage, yum!

The Family Mythology

It’s the stories that shape your childhood memories. Here I am, a young tot with curly toes and chubby fists, eyeing the camera holder, while my pretty dark-haired mother eyes me.

This is in Nova Scotia, I’m told, where I was born, where we lived when my parents were together, where there were hippies and communes, oddly-named children (including my siblings and I), music and that ephemeral thing the adults called “freedom”. And drugs. Lots of those too, I’m told.

And stories, many stories about these people, some whose faces beam back at me from old photos. Here’s my mother’s friend and her husband; she’s a Puerto Rican and he’s an Irishman. She has curly black hair and freckled brown skin. He is pale and thin, with ice-blue eyes and white hair. They named their children oddly too (Though not as oddly as us.). She has a blueberry field behind her house where we’re allowed to roam and eat at will. He is a haemophiliac who dances all night, and then drags himself to the hospital in the morning for transfusions. Her sister was shot by her brother-in-law. He eventually died of AIDS.

I fantasize that one day I’ll introduce myself to someone that recognizes my name, and they’ll tell me they knew my parents from those days. I’ll ask if it was really as nuts as it seemed. Or really as fun. I’ll ask about the stories I’ve heard, but gently, so as to coax out more tales from this stranger who knows the child-me. I’m secretly hoping to confirm my suspicions that all those ideals were a façade to live compulsively: crying freedom from establishment while collecting your welfare cheque, promoting a natural lifestyle while ingesting narcotics, being free love while not loving anyone at all, not really, not in the way that counts.

As a young adult I would observe the nuclear family and wonder how different things would have been. Although every time I imagined myself in that situation I felt a sudden, forceful, and overwhelming sense of suffocation, the same kind felt when I picture myself returning to my own childhood. These moulds are symbiotic – the popular mainstream and the ostensibly alternative – and they need each other for survival, for someone or something to rally against. I reject them both. I require something much, much more fulfilling.

Regular, and Gangstafied.

Academic Intent

So, what do I want to do with my degree?

There are several ways to answer this question. In this post, I’ll begin by what drew me to religion.

I have no family history.

Well that’s not entirely true, but it certainly felt that way. As a child, I recognized that family consisted of my mother, my 2 brothers, myself, and I vaguely connected with the idea that my father was mysteriously “out there” somewhere. We had no other family in Canada, and lived in an isolated small town a 14-hour drive from the nearest major city. I was completely unaware of any ethnic or cultural traits, and unfamiliar with even the concept of group identity. When asked by adults who my grandparents were, I would tell them, “I don’t have any.” To my young self, I did not.

When I began to visit other children’s houses – saw how they lived, who they were related too, how they behaved, what was expected of them – there was often a stark contrast between their families’ sense of legacy, and my own family’s detachment from filial influence. My mother, in order to mimic her emotional desire for distance from her family and childhood, physically transported herself as far away as she could manage. Her past was a murky and unimportant aspect. Far more pressing matters concerned me, such as food, books, playing, clothing, bicycles, and how I could convince my mother to accommodate me as soon as possible on these pivotal issues.

As children, we could wear what we wanted, sleep, play, speak, behave, bathe, and attend school whenever we felt like it. We got told “no” a lot, but only in regards to financial feasibility. If economically she could provide, she would. But that did not happen often. Quite literally, us children virtually had no rules, no expectations, no script on how to conduct our lives.

And that, dear reader, is the crux of my interest in religion.

Before you get all hokey and dreamy eyed around the notion that I was searching for god or spirituality, let me state that I am fundamentally, irrevocably, and unapologetically an atheist. What I am searching for is a sense of history. Not mere facts and incidents, but answering questions about the nature of humanity and my own history. Religion functions partly as an answer to these questions.

Religion, and the utility of religious behaviour, has held a longstanding fascination in my academic pursuits. Although omnivorous when absorbing various religions, ancient or modern, I have a special interest in New Religious Movements. In examining the social, political, historical, and geographical circumstances in which NRMs are born, we gain insight into past religious movements, as well as new understandings for future evolutions of religious behaviour.

Within dynamic religious movements, my focus is on how people act in meaningful ways, specifically with their rituals, both secular and religious. Ritual studies, or performance theory, seeks to rectify the bifurcation between theory and practice by exploring religious activity as a method that constructs meaning, where the ostensible separation between belief and practice is rejected, and a new, organic, and ever-evolving template is applied. That is, they function as a method to understand, and reinforce, notions of the universe, physically, philosophically, or religiously. I am interested in religion in action.

How people act directly reflect their history and circumstances. My degree, and future academic endeavors, is an exploration of the reasons why. I have found that the more I learn about others, the more I learn about my own behaviours.

Don’t let them fool you, all academics are studying themselves, and I am no exception.

Yippekayay!!!

So, dear reader, I got accepted to grad school.

Yep. And I’ll obnoxiously demand that everyone address me as “Master” when it’s over.  I’ll carry a big stick.

If anyone’s interested in being generous, I could really use one of these:

Can easily be purchased at the Mac Store. I’ll kiss you for it. I really will.

Under Construction

As I’ve decided to keep this blog, yet move it to another URL, there’s been some glitches in the transfer. Patience please, as I reconfigure my pictures and links.

If you’d like to be linked, just send me an email at lexiphanic (at) hotmail (dot) com.