The Athenaeum

Tag: creative

  • Have Hope for 2017

    Sitting down at the dinner table with my family I faced an awkward conversation. It started with griping about the state of the world: America, Europe, crisis after pandemic after crash. It was a depressing start to a conversation, to say the least. The picture that was painted was one resembling the worst of the first Mad Max film, or the beginnings of Roland Emmerich’s 2012: undesirable and unnecessary.

    After some thinking, I chimed into the conversation. Yes, I wasn’t going to lie, things did look bad. There were a lot of things that were beyond the scope of positivity. But after the dinner was over I stopped and asked my parents: why did they think things were so bad? Their answers were different in their wording but the general message was the same: things were changing and they were changing in a direction they didn’t like.

    It’s undeniable that the world is changing. Former reality TV star Donald Trump is now President of the United States, the UK is (trying to begin the process of) leaving the European Union, Syria is falling back under the control of Bashar Al-Assad, and the Islamic State is branching out around the world, with attacks occurring everywhere from Christmas markets in Berlin to bazaars in Turkey and malls in the United States. It’s a different world, and it’s one that doesn’t have the prettiest face. By a lot of metrics, the world is sliding back into a reality eerily reminiscent of the 1930s, with fascism, racism, and neo-Nazism on the rise and tensions erupting around the world. This all came to the boiling point in 2016, a year we’re all very glad is over.

    Denying that the world is facing a challenging new reality is arrogant and irresponsible. To say that everything is going to be fine and dandy is dangerously naïve. But it doesn’t warrant being pessimistic about the future.

    2016 will be a year that will be long analyzed by historians of the future. We lost countless stars, from David Bowie to Prince and Carrie Fisher, we saw the worst of humanity in Aleppo, and we saw hate take precedence over love through xenophobia and racism. Needless to say, it was a year that will live in infamy.

    But it doesn’t warrant despair. In the face of adversity, the worst thing one can do is curl up in a ball and refuse to believe that anything they do can change things. Even the littlest of things, from throwing your coffee cup in the recycling or telling somebody they look good today, makes a difference. It may be small and but it is not insignificant. Maya Angelou once said “people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel”. In the face of an uncertain future it makes all the difference to be there for one another.

    As much as those around us may want to pessimistic about 2016, there were just as many reasons to be optimistic. The Colombian government signed an agreement with the FARC, ending a decades long conflict that had killed thousands. Tiger numbers around the world were on the rise for the first time in 100 years. A solar powered airplane flew across the Pacific Ocean. World hunger has reached its lowest point in 25 years. People pouring buckets of ice over their heads raised enough money to help isolate the gene that causes the disease. When you look back over the bigger events, last year wasn’t so bad.

    It’s impressive how far we’ve come in the past year. The Paris Agreement has been signed, and even though there are plenty of climate change skeptics and outright deniers in high office, the ball has begun rolling towards a greener future. We’ve seen compassion in Canada, with our own Prime Minister personally greeting refugees fleeing war and utter devastation. Love him or hate him, it takes someone with genuine character to take ownership of an issue and face the fruits of their labour head-on. Even here at Acadia, our first year population has grown by 25%. New blood and new minds are being welcomed into Wolfville, a stark contrast from the previous year’s intake.

    I have hope for 2017. There are elections coming up around the world where candidates are basing their campaigns on an ‘us vs. them’ message, fearmongering and hatemongering. But while there are those candidates, there are just as many promoting what makes democracy worth fighting for: peace, compassion, tolerance, justice, and love. The fight for a free and fair society isn’t an easy or bloodless one. Relationships are ruined, reputations are soured, and feelings are hurt. But if you truly believe in something worth fighting for, stand up for it.

    There will always be headlines that strike fear into our hearts. There will always be those who preach hate and practice malice. There will always be those who believe that the impossible is exactly that- impossible. And yet there will always be those tiny instances of human compassion that amount to something greater. There will always be those who preach love and practice tolerance. There will always be those who believe that the impossible is exactly the opposite- possible.

    Let’s not despair for 2017. Let’s go out and make it a good one.

  • The Feminist Killjoy: Misconceptions

    My journey with feminism has been long and complicated and has most definitely evolved over the years. Looking back, it is abundantly clear that my parents raised me and my two sisters to be little feminists pretty much straight out of the womb. However, it took me quite some time to accept the label myself and to begin to engage with feminism as a political movement. That being said, self-identifying as a feminist is tricky. By this, I mean that along with accepting and embracing this label of feminist, or being a feminist, you are faced with the plethora of negative connotations that come with that label. I learned about the negative connotations behind the feminist label even before I truly began to understand the purpose and importance of feminism. The first time I was called a feminist was in a class discussion in high school when it was used as some kind of insult

    Somewhere, somehow along the way, being a feminist in people’s minds became synonymous with being a “man-hater”. This, I am telling you right now, is absolute complete and total bullshit. Now, I will gladly accept the label of an angry feminist because honestly, I am angry. A lot of the issues that the feminist movement is fighting against make me really fucking angry. Such issues range from my person (and ongoing) experience of being cat-called when I’m walking outside at night, to the fact that the current President of the United States was elected even though it was blatantly clear he has no concept of what sexual consent is and bragged openly about sexually assaulting women. Now, because those things make me really fucking angry, does that mean I hate men? No! Absolutely not.

    Here’s the thing, yeah those things make me angry but I also am educated enough on feminism to recognize that to direct my anger at individuals (read: individual men) for those actions is misguided. So, while I may in the moment yell obscenities at the guy cat-calling me from his car, I know that my anger is really with the systemic socialization of our society that teaches people that yelling at people while they’re walking alone at night is okay.

    The point of feminism is not to hate on men. Feminist scholar bell hooks said it best when she articulated the aim of feminism when she wrote that “feminism is a movement to end sexism, sexist exploitation, and oppression”. All of us in society have been socialized to accept sexist oppression, including men. Feminism is not an us vs. them battle, it is not women vs. men. It took me years to unlearn all the harmful sexist behaviors I had been taught my whole life, and I am still not there yet. There are ways I’m sure I myself still reproduce sexist oppression. Yet, through my understanding of feminism I have been able to grow as a human being and have learned how to treat other human beings better, both women and men. When you call feminism “man-hating”, you’re completely missing the point of feminism. You are reducing the sexist oppression that negatively affects everyone, regardless of gender identity – and the anger that comes with living under such a system – down to an individual level. To suggest that feminism is man-hating, it suggests that feminists are just angry, or that feminists simply do not like men. This ignores everything feminism is actually fighting against and instead just perpetuates the system of sexist oppression.

    At the end of the day, feminism is a movement that is working towards making the lives of others (and ourselves) better. Yes negative connotations and stereotypes of feminism unfortunately continue to exist. And yes, I will admit that these stereotypes initially made me hesitant to claim the label myself. However, once I realized that anybody who thinks me labelling myself as someone who cares about equality and the well-being of others makes me crazy is not somebody I want in my life, I got over it. So yes, hello, here I am, an angry (not man-hating) feminist. To anybody who knows me well, you’re already aware of this. To anybody who doesn’t – now you know.

     

     

  • I Thought We Were Exes

    I Thought We Were Exes

    Give to me
    the softsharp press
    the moons of your nails
    at the dip of my spine,
    please
    give me a reason.

    I am hollow,
    choked
    on the uncertain breath
    of waiting. I
    could swear

    it was your voice
    in the night
    behind the moon.
    But when the air cleared, clouds
    passing,
    you were gone.

    I have but one answer
    for all this trembling air:

    I heard your voice in the night.
    The uncertain breath
    off your lips
    moved
    behind this curtain
    of waiting.

  • Twilight Song

    Twilight Song

    Fireflies dance a waltz
    Beneath the honey moon’s light
    To the twilight song

  • Water

    Water

    holds babes and
    breaks quick swaddle it in the
    bath wean it into a rip-
    tide gurgle salt water
    tend
    that sore throat
    boils
    not when watched
    burned?
    hold it under the tap
    tap
    a leak in the house
    drain the wreck it holds small
    bones
    cursed by cupidity
    raised
    by unknown custody

  • Road Trip

    Road Trip

     

    We darted out from the wooded grove and into a flat, open expanse, where fields of canola and corn and fallow land spread far into the flat horizon, studded with silver mountains and the blue sky was laced with wisps of white cloud. Pale shades of yellow blended with deep greens and red dirt. Deep grooves in the earth ran parallel to each other, each without ending or beginning on either side of the road. The golden line we followed stretched onwards against the hot asphalt, snaking round shallow coulees and rolling hills.

     

    As the engine hummed and tires beat against the pavement, you watched the fence posts flash by too fast to see the names on the mailboxes from the roadside. Occasionally, we’d pass an abandoned farmhouse occupied by squatters, or a wooden barn with the roof collapsed and the paint chipped. There was a scarecrow in one of the fields. Ugly, black crows rested upon its arms. They had picked the eyes out and the hat had long since blown away in the wind. You turned your head to look at me, your light blue eyes were subdued by the bright sun behind you. It looked as though you had been crying.

     

    I remember in the winter, when we had first walked down to the green space together. Around and around the track we walked, hours upon hours, until our conversation started to falter and you split and left me standing alone in the field. The snow danced around you as you walked away, out from the lighted paths and into the night. The look you gave me as you glanced back over your shoulder was the same you gave me then, in the car: your face was still darkened, but I could see the outlines of your furrowed brow and pursed lips, and your head was surrounded by the bright earth in the window behind you, a halo of rapeseed and wheat.

     

    This was a look of lonely hurt, of fear, and of confusion. It marked a coming change – a new era in our lives. Red lights flashed up ahead, signalling the approaching cargo train. The striped barriers descended. The engine driver waved his hat at us as he passed, and a deep rattle persisted as the flatcars moved by carrying no containers on their back. We sat idling and watched them go, and talked for half an hour or so until we had made up our minds. The decision was reached there at that silent junction, long after the bars had risen and the slow heavy train had disappeared from sight and slipped quietly between the mountains.

  • Loose T-shirt in a Tight Space

    Loose T-shirt in a Tight Space

    I’m sure it started in a warehouse

    but eventually you’d wear it down

    to be little more than threadbare

    red hair

    still stuck to its seams.

     

    You left it in your dresser

    for far too long

    it used to lie

    in a heap of haste

    on the carpet by the bed

     

    the lazy blue hues reminded you

    too much of old

    summer day dreams

    caught up in a haze of

    cotton sheets and cotton

    t’s cast

    off.

     

    It’s so much more than

    the American Apparel

    tag or iconic

    unisex complexity

    jammed in between

    jeans and sweaters

    or separating bodies

    pressed together

    plant based fibres

    woven tight to fight

    the quickened breath

    of chest on chest and

    air breathed between

    four lungs

     

    your breath

    her sweat

    knit tight

     

    between the dishonest thread count

    a businessman came up with

    in his pyjamas

    working from his mother’s old laptop

    while he lounged on the futon.

    Screen printed somewhere in the basement

    of a low budget

    geek chic enterprise

     

    when you ordered it online

    the colours looked brighter

    but pictures and computer screens

    and smiles and affectionate pleas—

     

    they can be deceiving.

     

    who owns it

    while it is crumpled

    on the carpet by your bed

     

    you let her wear it

    when it’s dark outside;

    on her way to the bathroom—

    the hem barely covering

    the top of her thighs

    she hasn’t worn it

    in a long time

     

    her red hair

    is still stuck in the seams

    and you haven’t worn it since

     

  • Brevity and Superfluous

    Brevity and Superfluous

    I remember how the water crested.

    And also the pupils that remained fixated

    beneath the deluge of a dimming August sun

    on iridescent Scotian lakes.

    I remember how your hair floated;

    swelling with the sonorous tremors of

    the ephemeral cosmos tugging.

    Love tints everything,

    and hate eventually undercuts it.

    When I escape the fatalist clutches of each,

    and the memories merge with tangibility

    it’ll dawn that maybe I was in love with a girl

    that couldn’t love herself.

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • Directions

    Directions

    Walking alone through night on the third day of fall; walking to the store to buy a lighter – hair loose and makeup is fading, smiley lips at the busy busy people with their various lives – I look like I’m going somewhere by the way I gaze ahead and slightly skyward and the way the heels of my boots sound on the ground (he told me once that he is in love with the sound of my footsteps on wet pavement).

    I’m not going anywhere, really- the lighter was an excuse to get out of the house and to have a sense of direction in what really is wandering alongside other people (I wonder if they have meaningful direction, and if such meaningful direction can be revealed by the speed at which people walk).

    In the convenience store I ask for a lighter (they quietly wonder ‘what does she smoke?’) and I want to tell them that I don’t smoke much weed unless I’m drunk with friends who offer it with glazed eyes and the suggestion of escape. I never smoke cigarettes because I don’t want to be sad like my father on Christmas day who allows himself his “Christmas Cigarette” and looks both anxious and nostalgic and full of regret even though he always says “I have no regrets.” I don’t tell them any of these thoughts and feel inexplicably guilty for keeping them to myself.

    Walking home down the same street which now looks ominous. The sun has fully set itself (goodbye lovely streaks) and the moon is out and pale and menacing because it lights the faces of strange men; I allow myself to accept that they are not strange; they are strangers strangers. (Does the moon become menacing, or anything else, depending only on what it illuminates?) I walk quickly past the areas where men gather outside and discuss their monotonous lives punctuated by girls’ “cute butts” (they are profoundly still; lacking meaningful direction).

    At this time of year the white hydrangeas look the most beautiful in rain or the light of dusk (I once cried while he was walking beside me; it was morning and a white hydrangea in the light rain as well as his hand in mine was enough beauty to both break and sustain me).

    With the lighter I light a bundle of sage. It is green and white sage. It smells like the forest and like something else I cannot name. Something reverent. After a while I run cold water over the wand of sage to quell the glowing embers before he is home and I am no longer with only myself.

  • eggs

    I brank a dottle

    I mean I drank a bottle of wine tonight

    and ate sausage and egg

    wrapped in chewy pancake

    a crepe?

    I went from being hungry and tired

    to just tired

    and filled with a loneliness

    not even an egg could cure

    amazing egg

    chalky gelatin vessel of nutrients

    the body needs so much to function

    I blame the wine

    nothing good ever came from drinking alone

    except the realization

    that you’re better than twelve dollar grape juice

    be an egg

    I need you to survive

    with a lazy eye  and a crutch

    called self-pity

    I ate it up and savoured the vinegar taste

    of eggs

    amazing eggs

    I want to be a pure globe

    with sunshine in the middle

    I guess in a way I savoured

    the vinegar of my attitude with

    gold winner California wine

    sweet sweet wine for a bitter bitch

    old hag

    old hag at twenty-one

    I wanted to be soft and chewy

    but I became a bump

    I’ll never be mad about it

    because I ate eggs

    amazing eggs

    even better than what they grow up to be

    chicken is an insult really

  • Grime

    A soft bee’s window knock reminds

    of its existence. How the bee made such

    an error does confound, Bee must be blind

    to filthy glory that sticks to touch.

    If I were Bee, I’d wonder if there really

    were a window in this whole abode,

    this house that stings the eyes. It wears a dirty

    cloak and mossy hat, but used to glow.

    It sits in silence, anticipating

    a time when caring hands and heart retreat

    from absent aimless wandering

    to lovingly sanitize its homely peat.

    If I’m to live here, the clean I shall invoke

    Before I’m swallowed by the dirty cloak.

  • Politics of a Breakup Between Friends

    I brought a box of your junk

    back and laid

    old weapons on your doorstep

    it’s an armistice

    to begin this new chapter

    full of treaties and thinly veiled hostilities.

    We each sign sallow documents

    with our own pens

    so much for every touch

    we used to share.

     

    Negotiations begin over warm drinks

    in a quiet cafe on Main Street

    the same place where it ended

    and we didn’t cry

    as we looked back over the battlefield

    we had walked through to the

    other

    side.

     

    Allies

    still. I hope.

     

    Discussions about Friday nights

    and mutual friends and

    old past-times

    it’s time to disentangle ourselves

    but when you stand to leave

    I still feel knotted up and

    ill at ease.

     

    Every street seems to be inscribed with your name

    and a memory

    and my name is only scattered

    somewhere beneath the snow.

     

    I remember when you kissed me last

     

    fuck.

    sometimes it’s so hard to be alone.

     

    We can still laugh and I ask you about your mother

    if I get the chance

    how’s she doing and how’s your dad?

    but it’s a much emptier question now that

    you’ve emptied me from your life.

     

    I find the streets look different now and

    sometimes I can’t remember what it is

    we used to talk about on those long walks

    back from my apartment to your house

    or how we used to fill the silence

    of a summer afternoon.

     

    I started seeing someone else

    and it’s been a month since I met you

    in the cafe and

    it’s been 46 days since

    I thought my heart would never be the same

    but the guilt

    it tingles in my bones

    and the shell shock of a different

    hand to hold

    makes me wish I’d never

    met you at all.

     

    There are more things left between us still

    to sign and divide

    but this time

    the mighty pen

    lays on the table between us.

     

     

     

  • Objectification (Synonyms for Woman)

    a chick

    a fox

    a rocket

    a bomb

    a thing

    that can fit inside your pocket

    breasts

    a chest

    a dog

    like hens

    if it offends

    then you’re wrong

    a cougar

    a cow

    a dime

    a dame

    so many names

    but just not mine

    she’s a doll

    roll call

    come get some tail

    such a whore

    but wait there’s more

    cause she’s a whale

    something sweet

    that you could eat

    or maybe hunt

    if she hates it

    and wants her name said?

    she’s a cunt

  • Inside Out

    Inside Out

  • A note

    A note

    A note - Anonymous

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