small satisfactions

so i'm almost almost almost done a b.a. at mcgill and i'm having a very difficult time keeping on track with school. the inspiring and perhaps a little extreme motivation i once moved forth with has deserted me for some happy cabin in the boreal forest where sweet friends and oh-so-many crafts abound. it turns out it wasn't such a wise idea to just take three classes so that i could 'concentrate' on my thesis. i spend a lot of time drinking coffee in cafes, browsing through articles on IQ policy in Nunavut while skimming Aristotle's Metaphysics and recalling the effect of transportation on the urban form while Visconti was making Senso.

i.e. unfocused to the max.

so it occurred to me that it might be to my advantage to use this venue to write about things i'm thinking about...

or rather to encourage me to think about things by creating a venue for me to present any ideas i manage to come up with.

it seems more and more obvious as i grow older that (oh, my floundering ego) i am totally dependent on the satisfaction that comes with the recognition of the work i've done in order to facilitate any sort of motivation to keep working. and though i'm fairly certain there are at most three people reading what i write here (hyperbole?), this is probably the perfect place to write about stupid ideas that my friends are tired hearing about (they don't care - not because they're not the greatest friends, but because what i am saying is almost always completely irrelevant with regards to our relationship and their own fulfilling lives, and more about mememe [ick]), because at least i get to do so thinking that there's maybe one person skimming it.

i thought i would start with Aristotle since it's the last philosophy class i have to take and it's so much better than I expected, but i'm being a terrible non-contributive student and not spending anytime actually thinking about the things that i've been reading. i'll probably think via flying-finger-frenzy on here

but not right now because i just wrote an exam in the Canadian City, which didn't go well but i don't care! what a relief to not care. it's a second year class and the last one i have to take for my degree, so i'm just trying to make it through. anyways, blahblah small satisfactions, we had to write some definitions for which i was under-prepared. one was for "Cosmic city" (? no idea. i should Google it right now). i wrote

"Cosmic cities are incredible examples of well-planned urban environments constructed by terrestrial beings that may be viewed via the telescope available for public use at the National Museum of Astronomy in Quito, Ecuador. They have served as examples for the revitalization of the downtown cores of such great Canadian cities as St John's, Nfld. and London, Ontario."

my hand cramped, i smiled a secret smile, chewed on my pen and looked at the teacher who made eye contact with me and told me i could go even though he'd just made an announcement about having to stay for the last 15 minutes of the exam if you finished at any point from here on in. what a nice guy. i'm a fool. just two more months of school.