... it sure shines bright to me...

Great improvements today - progress on the article differs daily like the peaks and valleys of the Dawson Range.

Yesterday was a series of valleys punctuated by too few highs. Today, however... today was a veritable Everest.

Chief paid a visit to my cabin at 10am this morning (the same one who couldn't made our meeting yesterday), and stayed to talk for over two hours. This got the day off to an exciting start as our conversation grew more and more comfortable and I began to understand the plight and the values of this place. The environment came up about as frequently as the lack of financial resources available to protect both it and the community residents living in and with it. "Money will come and go," he says, "but the environment will always be there, no matter what condition you leave it in." And though the 'leave something for the next generation' mentality seems cliche now, it is only because it's been espoused without act or intent to act by so many so often. In this community, however, you can really see how they try to care for it. Bringing their own plates and utensils to community dinners so paper and plastic won't have to be used, and hard-lined environmental standpoints being taken in mining negotiations are only a few of the ways this community prioritizes its surroundings. Hunting and fishing are mainstays here where industry and other city characteristics are in constant flux with the boom and bust that city dwellers hardly notice.

Also, more of the little money this community has is being put towards cultural development and activities like dances and dinners, to "put people more at ease," the Chief explains. And, judging by how wound-up and hopeless I felt yesterday, a dance and a dinner really does seem to do the trick.

The interview was great; I just listened and learned so much. I wish I'd remembered to take his picture.

Then I was taken to the Band Office where I was flooded with the resources unavailable on the internet, reports and emails and press releases, vital to the completion of an impactful article.

I've got a lot to read before I leave, and that departure date could be moving forward as well, with a tentative meeting scheduled in Whitehorse with the community's main consultant. And now that the option to leave early is there, I really am reluctant to take it, preferring to stay in my little cottage, brushing my teeth out of a cup and taking reflective walks on the Yukon River between mountains of reading. I find out tomorrow if I'll be leaving that same day, and I've got to get packed and ready to go, rearrange the room for a leisurely stay rather than a desk in the middle of the room covered in papers and a television in the corner on the floor. I was asked today how it worked and realized I hadn't even turned the damn thing on. The wireless internet is great though! Some rustic cabin, equipped with wireless (and thank god too).

Took a break from writing, looked up at the stars and realized there were some. Ho! As my eyes adjusted to the dark they became more numerous and bright, and I gained an appreciation for the darkness as a foundation and origin for the light.

I realized today that there is hope in this small community, and that they're fighting to keep every scrap of it. I only hope I can do them justice and that my article will help rather than harm their chances of getting funding.

Yukon her before she kons you.

Oh, I've been 'konned, alright. I've been up in the Yukon since Saturday and she's got under my skin, and not in the "it stays with you; people come for a summer and stay for twenty three years" kind of way (which, by the way, was the story of the couple who owned the B&B I stayed at last night).

No, in the unsettling kind of way. The kind of way where only a three-in-a-row-hit-machine of Journey, Brian Adams and "Hungry Eyes" can fix (and it did - thanks KISS fm Spokane).

I'm writing a story about the water quality in Yukon First Nations with a focus on the town of Little Salmon Carmacks, where over half their wells were repaired by the Canadian Auto Workers of all people.

A great story and a cause I'm extremely excited about. Seems as I'm the only one though, and understandable so, I guess. When you've had e.coli lurking around you your whole life you try to forget about it, and when you're made used to living off handouts you don't really overflow with gratitude at each stranger that shows up to help "fix" your town. I get it. But when you show up, invited, just to tell these people's story you'd expect at least for people not to look at you like they think you just stole something from them. I think I'd shit my pants if I got invited to dinner (maybe THAT's why I haven't been.....)

I think because I'm white and polite and I ask alot of questions most people believe I'm from the government. This is why I think they've been keeping their distance, but I'm hoping they'll realize I just want to understand and to give that understanding to other people and then maybe, maaaaybe by the time I leave I'll have a couple nice stories and a few people I can call friends. Til that happens though, it's hard. Even the weather's been cold and the temptation to stay in bed or to go out in search of something familiar (read: white) has been growing stronger by the day.

I got stood up by the CHIEF today. The fucking Chief. Ambassador of the community, head of the band, their elected representative and the man who suggested I come visit (probably not thinking I'd show). We were supposed to have had a meeting today at one pm and where is he? In another community. He double booked. I was so excited and nervous to meet him and I had a little present and everything. I almost cried when I showed up at the office and his secretary told me he wasn't there.

The day did get better tho - a couple younger guys that work for the bands on the wells took some time out of their work days to show me around town (THEY showed up to our meeting). We visited some of the community wells and then walked around the interpretive centre. One was friendlier than the other, but all in all it was good fun - we joked around and I felt like I didn't have to watch my words for once this trip. Our visit was far too short, and I didn't want to leave these friendly faces when they dropped me off at my cabin.

What no one realizes is that the people who espouse that "the Yukon stays with you" shit all have one thing in common - they. be. white. as. shit.
Or, you know, as something actually white.

Don't get me wrong, the expats up here are really friendly and great to talk to. They'd share a liver with you if it was possible, and I wouldn't have made it this far without them giving me rides, shelter or food.
But they aren't really "Yukoners." Real Yukoners probably wouldn't call themselves that in the first place; they'd call themselves Northern Tuchone, Tlingit, or one of the many other First Nations who've called the place home for so long they still remember how to snare a mammoth like a rabbit.

But those people don't talk much. And this freaks the shit out of me; it makes me turn quiet and, in turn, probably makes me seem freaky, sneaky and unapproachable - a vicious, vicious circle that corrodes reporting when you only have four days to do it. And I'm tryyying to get out of this funk, I really am, but it's really hard when your welcome wagon is missing a wheel and was left at the highway for you to ride your own damn self in on.

The real Yukon is hard. It is a hard-knock fucking life and I have it lucky - if you're brown or you have a first name for a last name or you were born anywhere North of 60 except Whitehorse then you've got plenty of reasons to gripe.
The summer's not bad, the First Nation Council will take care of people and provide jobs where it can, but when winter comes and funding's being given out in 1989 dollars not even the Band's magic can get you paid. If you don't have a full-time job, usually for the Band Council or the government (INAC, AFN, Yukon Council of First Nations or Yukon Territory Government), then you're going on E.I.. The reason I say Whitehorse isn't that bad is that, being the capital, it houses most of the government jobs. Of the nearly 19,000 people making up the 'experienced labour force' in the Yukon over 2,000 work in the government, says the 2006 census, making it the fifth largest employer in YT after sales and service, mining and administration. And how many First Nations do you think are getting those jobs? From what I've seen and heard walking around the capital, not enough to shake a stick at.

Of the few lifetime Yukoners that I did have a conversation with lasting five minutes or more, two women sitting at a picnic table in Whitehorse were saying they were going to be heading to Alberta soon, and one of them jokingly asked if I'd take her back to Ontario with me. "It's hard here," she explained. "Too hard." Her cousin had died just the day before in a car accident, and her brother had died the week before for a reason she didn't get into. She teared up when I told her I was heading further north to Carmacks, and she warned me about the construction and the gravel roads up that way that caused her cousin's accident.

Coming up here as a Euro-Canadian you get a distant, hesitant feeling from natives who seem to fear you'll follow the trend and set up camp here, hang around the cities with the other ex-pats and take up the jobs the natives can't get.

Residential schools have left a painful legacy here, and even though the last ones were shut down thirty years ago or more the effects of the abuse suffered there has trickled down the generations making drop-out rates high and graduation rates low.

Among the miriad of photos of elders and past Chiefs that decorate the halls of the Band Office conference room are two group shots in front of a wooden structure like a large log-cabin. The Council Clerk explains to me that these were taken of residential school students in her parents' time, and that her mother thankfully escaped being sent because of a bad leg that wouldn't heal - who'd have thought one would ever see that as a blessing? "Most people don't like talking about it," she explains, "and whenever they do they cry." Students suffered mental/emotional, physical and sexual abuse from school instructors and supposed caretakers, and the Council Clerk feels that the vulnerability of her mother's broken leg would have made her an especially large target for sexual abuse. "I don't like these photos hanging here," she says. "We should forget every memory of those schools."

Some students were in attendence for their whole adolescences, emerging without life- or parenting-skills. You can see now how this would take more than just a government and church "I'm sorry" to heal the wounds caused by the system.

The community of Carmacks has between 400-500 residents and nearly 90 individual wells and one community well providing water to the well-less. These wells are maintained, cleaned, treated, and the community well water trucked over the whole community by one man who must also find funding and solutions to provide the community with a safer water source. Why doesn't anybody help him, you may ask? Because no one can get certified. Why's that? Because no one can pass the math portion of the certification tests.

It gets to you up here. It really fucking gets to you. The hopelessness, the dependence, and the temptation to sweep in with a solution. Trying to understand the situation I feel as though each time someone tries to stand they get pushed back down by something different, and it's hard to get your energy when you're living off the scraps of what you once had. Sure First Nations can hunt and fish whenever they want, but with commercial fishing boats catching the big fish and throwing them away if they aren't the specific kind they were out for you don't catch much.

But every community is different and for every ten seemingly hopeless people there's one or two with a plan and a passion for their community, and these people will see us through. Though they might not be officially certified they're doing what they can unofficially, helping out part-time in the summer and gaining experience to pass on until someday somebody will be able to get their certification and a steady paycheque. You'll find these people hanging around the band office or the elders, keeping up the old ways that the schools tried to take from them or their parents, going to their fishing camps or trap lines and taking the younger generations. If you come at the right time of year they might even lend you their extra tent and show you how it's done.

So there is hope, but you have to look for it. And it's not in a government office unless it's a cheque without strings or a promise that can't be taken back. It's not in the Whitehorse Walmart or the coffee house staffed by white people. These places are safe because hope is hard and they have it easy. Hope is found where there seems to be none. It's in water regulations that don't see race; it's in the people who fight against the odds to graduate from highschool, and who show their children the love they might not have had. It's in those who put in 10 - 12 hour days to help their neighbors and to train and talk to and listen to the younger generations.

up his creek without your paddle, NOT dirty

I did it; I snagged me a man.

And now I'm wondering if I'm ready to have snagged one. Having finally recovered from the last "relationship" I was in (which wasn't so much a relationship as me letting him plan out the rest of my life for me, a method that doesn't exactly jive if you have, oh, I dunno, goals and dreams?) and struggling to find a balance between asserting my own voice in day-to-day activities and using it to illogically overwhelm others (read: sticking my nose where it doesn't belong and making outrageous suggestions), I find this balance equally precarious in my relationship with this one person.

Should I not cut out a path for myself upon which I can firmly stand and evaluate life's zigs and zags, or do I throw in my lot with another and make it up as a go along? The latter can be dangerous, as it becomes easy to just coast along until you find yourself in his canoe minus your personal paddle. I don't want to be back in that place again. Good thing about this guy is I don't think he'd let me.

But will I let me?

What is cause to be mad over something? If you let a little thing go will it turn into a big thing? To what extent does being understanding allow yourself to get walked all over, and how firm is just firm enough to drive someone away?

How much do I let go?

They say you have to pick your battles, and excellent phrase indeed. But upon what criteria? I think one must account, to a certain extent, for life's uncontrollable poppings-up, and for the fact that some people anticipate these (and to the negative can end up obsessing over them), whereas others do not, or do so to a far lesser extent. Does this make them inconsiderate, or just not big planners?

I think the key comes back down to figuring out what I want, to plotting out my independence and sticking to it. So I like sticking to a schedule, that doesn't mean he has to; it does, however, mean that he has to remember when we make plans (which he does). And I also have to stop freaking out about every mistake becoming a precident: if it happens on a recurring basis and hurts your feelings then bring it up, but everyone makes mistakes. Furthermore, if he apologizes for those mistakes then believe him, drop it, and let it go, give him a chance. If he keeps doing it, then you put your foot down, but impatience is not a way to ward off getting hurt. In fact, it invites pain.

However, to what extent am I able to mellow out in anticipating future cock-ups from him in particular without it effecting my ability to anticipate and plan for the future in general, period?

Basically I'm nervous that if I mellow out again I won't be able to stop it, like last time, and I'll suddenly stop planning my day around my goals but around his whims, trusting him to say no and not me, and that I'll let every little slip pass by until I'm incapable of stating my own feelings. If I go too far to the other side I'm afraid I'll become like a prison warden, selfishly defending myself to the point of not letting anyone in.

Where do I draw the line? How do I forgive him, mean it, and keep my own voice... like he can?

At times we can ask no more of the search for meaning than to lead us to beautiful descriptions of ugly things, not to make them beautiful, but bearable.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7KvkJdcmqek&feature=related

Wisdom

I'd like to bury something precious at every place that I've been happy, so that when I'm old and ugly and miserable, I'll come back and dig it up, and remember.

- Sebastian, Brideshead Revisited (cred: inthenextapartment.blogspot.com)

Thinking about the times I've been truly happy I've come to this perpetual turn around: how do I know I was truly happy? Did I just believe I was happy because I believed that that was what happiness was, because I'd been told to?

I generally have a fairly good bullshit radar, but it falls short when turned inwards. The above neurotic rant is a perfect example of what turns me around and stops me from completing something risky and from actually persuing something meaningful, frightened both of not knowing what it'll mean, and of failing at it.

A wise woman wrote recently of turning off the static in one's head. I am unable to do this, despite fairly perpetual introspection, and it urks me. She also spoke of the difference between doing what one likes and what one is good at.

This got me thinking: what do I like?

I like being good at things.

As shallow and pathetic as that sounds, I've always turned to the things I'm good at and concentrated my efforts at becoming the best at them. This gives me unspeakable satisfaction, and also great cause for self-loathing. Result: static.

Lately, however, I've been searching to find things that I enjoy regardless of my level of success while doing them, and to persue them regardless of the fear of failure. The last bit is the hardest. Especially when you would like to make a career out of this thing you may discover that you like: if you end up doing poorly at it and making a bad impression with someone influential then *poof!* opportunity gone.

Or is it?

I must scrounge up the courage to find out.

I mean, really: my dream is not to succeed in Wall Street finance, which means I'll probably get more than one shot at it.

Let's face it, as an editor who has to look at shitty article after shitty article, it really wouldn't bother you too much to read one more. Plus, what would be more impressive? Receiving an incredible article off the bat (quite impressive), OR, receiving several crap articles from the same person that begin suddenly not reading like crap anymore (more impressive because situated among low standards).

As Lloyd Dobler says, "If you start out depressed, everything else is just a pleasant surprise."

So there we have it: grab some cohones, send out some shitty pieces, and perhaps the drastic improvements that come with practice will stun someone into publishing my articles!

Dear Yoda,

Probably one of the worst parts about being young is being aware of it.

It makes it really, really hard to enjoy your own sweet youth when you're conscious of the fact that in 2-5 years - or even in one year, in the case of you really unlucky bastards - you'll be so much better at what you're so fucking excited about now. This realization paralyzes you. It takes the naivety from your youth and makes you want to just sleep that time off, rather than being wide-awake on a nightmare ferris-wheel of alternating enthusiasm and failure.

Lately, I've been interested in writing, editing, publishing, and I screw up ALL THE TIME. I get upset at the staff of my 'zine for forgetting to do things or bring things, then twenty minutes later am scrambling to cover up the fact that I've just forgotten the same thing. I forget to mention the name of the company who paid us $1500 to mention them (nearly double our yearly budget). I have ignored my gut and paid the price. I have asked one person to do a project, then gotten somebody else to do the exact same project, just in case, and offered to pay only one of them. I'm always late. I have ambitious ideas and overlook the fact that they are not financially viable. I forget to book the caterers. I have made my share of mistakes, and will continue making them, because I'm young, and I suck.

But I love what I do: whether it's apparent or not, I care deeply for my staff and for the writers I help publish, and for the content of my own writing. I just wish I could fast-forward to the time when I'll be able to really do them justice and to when my mind won't be a buzzing swarm of "coulda, woulda, shoulda"s.
It's like running as fast as you can with a black sack over your head - you don't even really know what you're running towards or in what direction you should be running, you're just running, aimlessly, and you know it.

You bump into shit and you knock over old ladies and you wish someone would either intercept you and pull the sack off saying "Hey! STOOPID. It's that way," or do you a real fucking favour and knock you out cold. Because it's not the running around that sucks - that's the kind of blind faith in the universe which you'll look back on in 10 years and be filled with misty-eyed yearnings for your adorable former self - it's the being aware of it that robs you of the chance to enjoy your youth.

That, and the being made aware of it.

There are some older, more experienced sages whose luxurious, immobile apathy mocks you quietly as you scramble through the bookfair, gathering business cards like plastic-wrapped collectors' items, and talking for thirty minutes to the guy who runs the newspaper written by animals (not in the point of view of animals, by them) for a chance at five with the guy at the next table who you've deemed 'really matters'.

The kind thing for these sage individuals to do would be to take you aside, gently, under their wing and say, "Listen, that guy you're suffering to talk to? His ideas are shit and he jacks off his dogs. He's in cahoots with the animal newspaper guy, don't talk to him, save your precious time. The real guru is the deadhead at the corner table." Yet, instead of letting you enjoy your idiocy or of helping you maximize your youth and vigor by giving it a little direction, they sit and sneer as you knowingly humiliate yourself for lack of better alternatives, glaring in a way that says "you're doing something wrong, but I'm not going to tell you what it is."

One does well to remember from time to time, however, that this guy used to be just like you, and that, just because he's employed his selective amnesia to make you temporarily feel like shit, it won't stop you from using that blinding, ruthless zeal to get hired as an intern at his magazine, get a hold of the tax records, and take that shit down from the inside.

So green-leaves take heart: the day is fast approaching when you'll either figure it out or get better at disguising the fact you know nothing.

And yodas, stop giving me that 'I'm going to roll my eyes at you as soon as you turn your back or sooner' gaze. I can't help it; and it's not so many millennia ago that you were just as green on the inside as out. Strain to remember. Use the fucking force if you have to. And, after all that, if you still aren't going to help a sister out, at least put a fucking smile on your face and restore to my glorious youth what little dignity it has.

Stranger Danger

It's odd to hear someone flashing back to when s/he was in university, and from a similarly libral-directioned stage in life; it makes me anxious to figure out what the story is right this second, to choose my life path and choose it right to avoid any looking-back crises down the road. And while I realize this a a futile and juvenile fear, potentially stunting present growth in ironic anticipation of future stagnation, I have gleaned some pieces of wisdom from the search this anxiety inspired.

I have engaged several professors in mentoral roles, in the hopes that I may preempt any future 'grown up crises' by reliving theirs, so as not to become a 'looking back' girl myself, but rather someone able to move comfortably in the future from their grounded position in the past and present.

This is incredibly unrealistic.

Yet, I've been given some real gems, so far.

As I waited for Joanne outside of one of the only vegetarian restaurant on-campus (still trying to impress my ultimate role-model, the woman I hope to one day become 1/16th of), panic darted through my mind thinking she was so important and busy that she'd forgotten our lunch date set nearly three weeks prior. I called my boss, "Do you have to confirm on lunch dates? What's the cut-off - one month? Should I have sent her an emai- I should have sent her an email." "No, no, no," she cooed, "I'm sure she's just running late."

As it was a sunny day, I pulled out a cigarette and decided to make the best of the situation by leaning against the building looking bad-ass, smoking and reviewing the edits on a piece I was working on.

These, I thought, are the moments when I am truly grateful for cigarettes/cigarillos/whathaveyou, in that they give you the opportunity to appear as though you're doing something, ie. smoking, when in reality you're just getting stood up.

And just as I extinguished my smoke, Joanne crossed the street, remplis avec apologies for being so tardy. I waved my hand, made faces and said, "Nooo! Don't worry about it!"

And I meant it - I love this woman. She could take me on a guided tour of hell and I'd say 'Thank you!' (but, of course, she would never actually do that, which is also why I love her).

After a brief recounting of some poor sod she'd met on her last plane ride (going to meet his internet bride in China - "I hope his children are either greedy, or love him," she said, "because that poor bastard's gonna be broke and left for dead this side of two years."), we launched into my life questions.

I began to explain to her my agorophobia at having so many options open after graduation, and the accompanying anxiety marked by the need to have to first lay out the next seven years before making a decision about a summer job, my fall course-load, or a pair of dress-pants.

I told her my big three - journalism, publishing, teaching - and the most profound and eloquent advice proceeded to flow from her for the better part of an hour, during which time I sat quietly gazing at her, misty-eyed, enchanted, feverishly battling my desire to pull out the cassette recorder in my purse:

"You should change careers based on the option that you think you will be happy with for the next 1-3 years," she said. "Only ever plan that far in advance, no master plan needed.

"And choose it based on the skills it will require you to exercise to perform the job's daily tasks - if a job only gives you the chance to encounter or exercise your passion once every 6 months, that one opportunity will not be worth the 100-some days of tiny, precise torture til you get there."

I began thinking that this may be a bit idealistic, an option for those who perpetually have options; yet I suppose that just makes the main fulcrum on which this advice revolves 'keep your options open', something anyone considering a career choice or change should remember.

"I never planned my career," she said, "though in retrospect each move looks quite calculated. I merely chose the option that excited me, and that most closely matched not just what I was good at doing, but what I loved doing."

And she's absolutely fine now. She's set, in fact. One of the most saught-after lecturers in the world, an expert in various fields (though she says she did not choose these fields either, that they were merely areas that interested her and that she yearned to know more about, building up her knowledge slowly until she hears herself introduced as "Joanne, expert in the Charter" or "Joanne, a leading researcher in race-relations" and thinks 'Really? Huh.'), Joanne is just so fully in-touch with her passions and what she needs from an activity she'll spend the majority of her day doing that she's not afraid to demand what she needs from a position, and gets it.

And even though she has what I would call one of the most demanding, emotionally-draining jobs in the world, she's able to balance her rights-championing hard-ass self with this aura of 'I'll be fine-ness' and an ability to laugh that's contagious. And I start thinking, I will be fine. So I choose the wrong job, it's not a one-way street, I can have more than one career in my life, because what I like and what I think will make me happy now may not satisfy me in the same way five or ten years down the line. The only way I truly would not be happy would be if my choices neglected my current passions and favoured the projected feelings of this ten-years-later-stranger. If one puts those blinders on now, the rest of her life could be lived looking ahead, as one giant 'process', and will never be appreciated for its uncanny moments of being exactly where one wants to be (physically, emotionally, etc.) in that moment, of getting caught up in an achievement or an occurance merely for the feeling it gives one in that second, and not for how it will look on a resume.

These are the moments you'll look back on and love as a forty-something flasher-backer and, like a future crisis, their occurrance can't be scheduled.

our house, in the middle of the street (read:crisis)

I've recently come upon a blog of a rather well-known woman trying to find herself (in my books, being known by VF's James Wolcott is well-known - and no, it's not Virginia Woolf) and I became inspired. In one day I've discovered her blog (thanks again, Wolcott), mulled over the concept, created several of my own (yes, several - titles continued to allude me by sounding either like outgrown expressions of teen angst or like chick-lit novels), until finally, inspiration struck:
this evening, catching up on past entries of her Elizabeth Gilbert-esque journey of culture, couture, confit, and self-contemplation, I felt dreadfully sad at her lamentations of directionlessness. Sad, and strangely sympathetic. For, while this self-seeking woman is much more well read, well travelled and, quite definitely, better fed than I, and while our situations, nationalities, ages and professions are or seem entirely different (and this comparison is definitely not meant to discount her, quite the opposite), I couldn't help but think, this woman is not lost; I've found her, and she's sitting in front of my computer... only she got to go to France.

Different women, different ages, same questions, same space. As she sits, in the next apartment, surrounded by old transcripts, letters of recommendation, essays and projects, I'm sitting in my own small apartment, in a room just like yours, and quite like hers (though I'd imagine her musing is conducted in a much chiquer space), surrounded by my own recent print history of sleepless nights and 'well done' s, and wondering, what the hell for? Et voila! L'inspiration, she strikes, comme ça: while it's a comfort to know that the 'where am I going' crisis is not limited to twenty-somethings, it's also quite haunting to know that question can remain unanswered.

So, as in the golden days of literature when a rose was still a rose and inspiration wasn't copyrighted, I propose a similar project - in my quest for direction and a reasonable plan comrpising a reasonable length of time, I'll share any guidance or gems of advice received, and any small revelations I've had while staring at soup or waiting for the bus, all the while getting back in the habits of writing and reflection, trying to find what's definitively me. And perhaps, from one dame to another, with two blogs from two rooms, we can make sense of this mess, find what we love and, some day, get paid for it.

And hopefully I'll be blessed with the gift of concision somewhere along the way.