Kings and Queens

I hate living in the middle of nowhere. To have bits of me scattered between Singapore and Canada. I feel like I'm a living ghost in a real world. Things get done, life goes on, industries rise, fall, housing booms and busts... and I can't get a job becuase I am leaving in 5 months. I am temporary, unimportant and ephermeral.

Queens law school is an open door, with MajorTom standing inside the door. "Hey Hannah! What's going on?" Blue eyed and happy, we'd go for coffee.

Singapore is home.

Vancouver is.... nowhere?
And I need to be reminded that I am now here.

So be glorified Lord.

Mothers are generally almost always right

Writing my way through grief in this text, I realized some of the moral conundrums my relationship with Gene presented. I began to understand what Primo Levi (1958/1987) calls “the need to tell our story to ‘the rest’,” to achieve “an interior liberation”(p. 15). I felt I had to tell my story to move on in my personal and professional life. This story about our relationship, his illness, and my caregiving become a story of my experience and growth. In this account, I considered what I needed to tell for myself, while honoring my implicit relational trust provision with Gene the best I could. This included protecting us together and individually, and other people in the story. Thus, I tried to tell a truthful account for readers, while I omitted things,occasionally changed details of a scene,and invented composite characters to protect identities. All of these techniques are commonly used in ethnographic storytelling and memoir.

You become the stories you write—Art and I became the couple who had an abortion and wrote about it. No matter that we might feel differently now than then and see ourselves as changed from the characters presented in the story, this portrayal of ourselves is edified in print. An important element in writing autoethnography then is considering the ethical responses to one’s own story by readers. A second is considering the people in your life who might be distressed by your revelations.

They say they just want to write their own story. I tell them that self-revelations always involve revelations about others. I tell them they don’t own their story. That their story is also other people’s stories. I tell them they don’t have an inalienable right to tell the stories of others. I tell them that intimate, identifiable others deserve at least as much consideration as strangers and probably more. “Doing research with them will confront you with the most complicated ethical issues of your research lives.”I tell them they have to live in the world of those they write about and those they write for and to. I tell them they must be careful how they present themselves. “Writing about your depression and suicide attempt while taking sick leave and trying to earn tenure?” I ask, aghast, and the former student replies,“Yes,I have to write myself out of my depression.”She does, and gets a teaching award the next year.

~ Excerpt from "Telling Secrets, Revealing Lives: Relational Ethics in Research With Intimate Others" by Carolyn Ellis. Qualitative Inquiry

In everything, I am of the firm belief that I have sought and am seeking the good. Be wise, not cynical.

Many thoughts pulsing though my mind today. Wednesdays are the usual hypnotically busy days that start at 9.20. I blink and it's suddenly 3.30 and I'm waiting outside Dr Hellwig's door. My project on my grandmother is trucking along fine and I am quite pleased with the final results, albeit only for ASTU 400Q. I want this to grow, to expand, to encompass many things and many people. But with different characters there will be clashes of memories and morals. I must tread very carefully when dealing with people's stories that aren't mine. At least that has been my environmental prophetic theme of these past months. Of course, everything is arguably mine when sifted through my lense. But I have no more strength to debate post-modernity.

But maybe I will, for old time's sake. Talking to engineers, scientists, pastors... I find myself standing very alone in this island of a structural paradigm. I understand why the engineers I have bible study roll their eyes at the concept, and was pleasently amused when a friend commented long ago: I'm a scientist, of course I adhere to modernity. Not all modernists are so aware of where they stand on the ideological spectrum. Not all modernist are aware of the existance of the ideological specturm. The church, being the last bastion for Absolute Truth, naturally finds comfort in the arms of modernity. Here is when they flourished. Faced with a post modern generation, however, they flounder pathetically to grasp onto the shifting, morally-relative society.

So I was sitting at the Angus today, half an hour before Bible study with my History readings sprawled in front of me. Bonhoeffer's chapter on Simple Obedience stated that we have replaced obedience with questions and doubts. Ah! The curse of postmodernity! We think away our structures of truth to the point where we stand paralysed. But then... modernity, which I almost despise, while staking the claim of the existance of Truth turns away the thinking and feeling.

Oh. It all made sense in the end. While Postmodernity adheres to a commitment of deconstructing our social structures that promise meaning and Modernity adheres to a commitment to these structures, Christianity only adheres a commitment to Christ himself. There now, the lion and the lamb can lie side by side.

On that note, I think Absolut should create a communion vodka/wine and call it Absolut Truth. Now that is Jesus turning water into funk.

And I firmly believe that no text holds weight without knowing the person of the author.

And I'm so tired. I just want to get through the next 2 months alive, and graduate.

G-g-g-golly Sandra!
you’ve grown up really crazy...
have I been too denying of you?

G-golly Sandra!
you’ve grown up so crazy....
have I been too untrusting?

~ Golly Sandra, Eisley

Maybe... I have thyroid?

The contention that exists between the individual and his community is nessary to uphold existance. Like the forces that keep electons near the nucleous, matter and what matters is build upon tension.

We're really only balls of energy.

I have strong confucian inclinations for my character, and thus, I am contemplating sitting back and watching a little piece of me die.

You're one of a kind Hannah, you're like that model of barbie that they never released in the stores cos it was too outrageous but somehow you escaped from the shelf and now you're loose.

No pun intended.

~Mel, my muse

Slap in the face

You might as well tell me that you're ashamed of who I am and what I have to say. And to top it off, you should hear yourselves sometimes.

Blast from the past

1 MINUTE AGO: Reading old blog posts about Singapore
1 HOUR AGO: Showering
1 DAY AGO: Talking to Belmont on skype, and not wanting to sleep
1 WEEK AGO: Blank
1 YEAR AGO: 4822 Chancellor, Planning my novel
1 YEAR FROM NOW: Singapore, my masters, in love
1 WEEK FROM NOW: Same old, same old.
1 DAY FROM NOW: Hopefully talking to the boyfriend
1 HOUR FROM NOW: Sleeping
1 MINUTE FROM NOW: Roll over and turn off the lights
I HURT: myself with my anger
I LOVE: Belmont
I HATE: not having a job
I FEAR: Dennis walking back into my life
I HOPE: to be happy
I FEEL: tired
I HIDE: almost nothing
I DRIVE: people mad
I MISS: security
I NEED: obediance


crap. compared to my answers 2 years ago, my life is going down hill.


1 MINUTE AGO: Warming up Dinner
1 HOUR AGO: Talking deeply with Curtis
1 DAY AGO: Cherry Orhard Make-up meeting, Hanging out with Seth, Nav Meeting
1 WEEK AGO: Thanks-giving Holiday!
1 YEAR AGO: UBC, Canada, being young
1 YEAR FROM NOW: Still UBC I hope, IR. With relationships
1 WEEK FROM NOW: Decide on the Nav Leaders Summit
1 DAY FROM NOW: Studying
1 HOUR FROM NOW: Ditto
1 MINUTE FROM NOW: Keep eating, and blogging
I HURT: Myself with my insecurity
I LOVE: You.
I HATE: being unaware
I FEAR: Being overwhelmed
I HOPE: that things will last.
I FEEL: Intense
I HIDE: Behind my altruistic interest in you.
I DRIVE: myself up the wall.
I MISS: Strolling
I NEED: God's strength
I THINK: differently.

*Beep*

Good God, don't insult me that way.

Weh! I miss my boyfriend. :(