One of the things I most appreciate about the Harry Potter series (and by extension, JK Rowling’s writing style) is the equal attention paid to the sacred and the profane, the big questions and the mundane. Harry Potter was the first book I read that had me questioning ideas like mortality, morality, and tolerance, but boy she did not skimp on the details when describing a dinner at the Great Hall, or how squishy and wonderful the armchairs in the Gryffindor common room must be. She didn’t miss opportunities for small character moments, whether it was Neville being attacked by a plant in the background, or enormous arcs like Neville’s defeat of a Horcrux.
It’s amazing how a story so, so universal has affected so many so personally (which of course is the massive achievement of the series). It’s your classic Hero’s Journey straight out of Campbell’s playbook, but it’s so much more, it’s so full and alive and thriving.
Maybe thriving a little too much, says the bitter 20-something-year-old.
That title sounds a lot more interesting than this post will be, but here we go.
I’ve been struggling for some reason, struggling to fall asleep. I guess I probably have to blame the holiday we had in the US at the start of the month…though even when I think about that, I was in another country and was still managing to go to sleep at a decent time. And it was only to Montreal (Canada) which is the same time zone as me. So that’s a pretty debunked theory. To be honest, there was probably some night where I was out all day, either from watching a movie or recording a podcast and didn’t get home until midnight and then still needed to unwind and decompress and so I stayed up late and I haven’t been able to kick the habit and now it’s 1:40am.
I tried to just go to sleep, but even before I welcomed the blue light of death from my laptop I was wide awake. The boyfriend and I enjoyed a day where we left work at a normal time and…then I dragged us to the library. He’s got homework from an online class and I have a script for Animation Complex that I’ve been working on for literally like two months that I’ve finally had a breakthrough of sorts on. So we powered through. Library closes at 9, headed home and cooked one of our Blue Apron meals1 2 and by then it was 10. Still a solid 1.5 hours to work (factoring .5 for hygiene and whatnot, y’all) before 12, when I usually go to sleep. I’m pretty good about switching off electronics a half hour before bed, trying to get it up to an hour, but again, it sort of sucks when you only just get home past 11 and there’s still stuff you want to do as well as boring domestic stuff you need to do.
I’ve been way better at managing the time I have…when I have it…which isn’t often…which is fine until it’s not fine. It’s fine until you grow resentful. Which is why I cling to my weekends so desperately, and tend to consider weeknights a loss. I really do need to rework that. Part of it are little things that are unavoidable like my slightly-longer-than-wanted commute, which is a compromise to live in a city that I both adore and can afford.
What does this have to do with mice and pee?
As I was leaving the library today, I made my way back to the parking garage a block away. When I rounded the corner to enter the concrete labyrinth, I was startled by a small mouse running past my feet–practically on top of them–from a patch of grass to a small hole where two slabs of sidewalk overlapped to create a perfect mouse hole tucked away. Mice don’t freak me out. I used to have a pet mouse actually. But any sort of wildlife excites me.3 I’d much rather explore a cove filled with snails, crabs, oysters, and hermit crabs than go hiking, or walk around a swamp looking for turtles and egrets. The highlight of being dragged hiking to Bear Mountain is the small zoo with animals that are either in rehab or permanently unable to return to the wild, like the adorable 3-legged fox.4
I stopped dead in my tracks and followed the mouse until it disappeared. I was SO excited, like, sincerely thrilled to see a small sampling of wildlife in a populous downtown, especially in a dang parking garage. I was so impressed with the little one, but my Eliza Thornberry bubble was immediately popped by my less than enthused boyfriend. This is not a dig at him though. I get it–it was late, his brain was fried from the day job followed by more work, and we hadn’t eaten in eight hours. BUT A MOUSE!!!
It didn’t help that the stairwell inexplicably5 smelled like pee. Human pee. Very strongly. BUT A MOUSE!?!
Hey, if our human noses are absolute shit, imagine how that poor mouse felt. I think that’s what I appreciated about that moment. Well two things.
1. The fact that two people can get two VERY different takes on a moment:
1a. I optimistically saw the mouse’s determination to survive in full force as it flourished in a seeminly unlivable environment. To be honest, I was immediately reminded of my favorite episode of The Magic Schoolbus, a…season four episode, I believe6 where the students are all transformed into animals and they learn about how different animals have adapted to survive in urban environments. To be fair, it was also my favorite because three of the kids turn into foxes and like, foxes are my jam.
Boom found a clip:
1b. The bf on the other hand, was totally skeeved out that this nasty wasteland of a parking garage he had to pay to store his car in had mice AND smelled like pee.
2. Two is the same as point 1a, but it’s my take on the situation and therefore the correct one and thusly I wanted to focus on it. Animals survive with so, so little, especially when you factor in how much humans have taken away from them.
It makes me want to survive better on what little time that I have. If it takes a few minutes in a stinky stairwell looking at a mouse that’s no doubt young, scrappy and hungry7 to remind me of that than GOOD. I’m grateful.
Please enjoy this video clip of an elementary school teacher feeding her students literal garbage:
It’s now 2:15am. Good night.8
Footnotes
1 Delicious shrimp po’ boys
2 I should really do a post about my experience with them…
3 Except squirrels, seagulls, and Canadian geese. Fuck those guys.
4 Car accident
5 Not that I want an explanation, christ.
6 I know it’s season 4 because I re-watched that whole show on Netflix. Fight me.
7 #YayHamlet
8 Told ya this was a shit post. But at least it wasn’t a shitpost. </nerd>
If the lateness of this post is any indication, my blogging has been way, way off. The fact that my archives now skip an entire month is really disappointing. The fact that this year I managed to have multiple posts per month and I couldn’t even get a basic recap post out in time is really disappointing. My lack of inconsistency is frustrating to me–I know that I’m doing this for myself, and that this is something I’m doing because I want to, but I do think some more pressure would be good for me. I really need to set up self-imposed deadlines.
Books Read: 1Ghachar Ghochar was a confusing and short read. Not really sure how I felt about it–it’s definitely a book I’d want to discuss with others who’ve read it.
Blog Posts Written: 0
Videos/Projects: 0
At the Movies: The highlight of my movie-going was seeing Edgar Wright’s Baby Driver, which is a wonderful reminder of why both mid-budget movies and directors actually having control of their films (as opposed to the studios) are dying breeds that need saving. I also saw Cars 3, which was less than stellar.
Lowlights: Between OT at work (which, isn’t in itself a bad thing), moving house, and general obligations, I just didn’t have time. And that sucks. And that’s still my fault. That means I’m not utilizing the pockets of time I do have.
Highlights: Seeing Kingdom Hearts in concert. Without a doubt, that was an absolutely magical evening, and an experience that I enjoyed even more than I did seeing Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings in concert. The format of this concert was select songs played over gorgeous cinematic footage from ALL of the games–even the more obscure mobile ones. Since many of the songs are meant to play on loop as you travel around, I really appreciated how they created segments based on character themes or final boss battles and beautifully went from one piece to the next. They also played the trailer for Kingdom Hearts 3, which had only just been played at E3.
A major part of this that I haven’t mentioned yet was that the composer of Kingdom Hearts (as well as many Final Fantasy’s) was there. She came out at the beginning to introduce the show, and came out towards the end and actually played the piano for the encore song, which was the credit song for the first game. It was absolutely magical, and I cried when I heard Dearly Beloved, among everything others.
Another small highlight was seeing the Ferdinand trailer in theaters (before Cars 3)!
On that note, I was pleasantly surprised by how much I loved the first trailer for Ninjago, which is from Warner Bros. and very much in the same vein as The Lego Movie and The Lego BatmanMovie.
Another month that quickly went down the pipe. Too fast, 2017, too fast. I don’t even have much to say about this month…I sort of blinked and it was over. That being said, let’s get right into things:
Books Read: 3 Finally wrapped up a couple of books I started last month–one about writing and two others I’d like to mention: Superfandom is a book about fandom culture and the psychology behind it. Great, fun read. The third book I read was Designing Your Life, which was written by two Stanford professors after their class of the same name proved to be so successful. I’m still a book behind according to my GoodReads, but that’s ok.
Blog Posts Written: 4 including this one. None on AniCom again. It’s so hard for me to figure out how I want to split up material for that site–what should be a blog post/article, what should be a video, or podcast, or some combination. I also definitely am over-thinking this too. I managed to squeeze two out today, one being this end-of-month recap (which makes sense), but the other was a response to a Facebook thread I decided to opt out of, about privilege.
Videos/Projects: 0/5 No new videos this month, but I either got started on or made significant progress on a number of different projects. I spent around 10 hours this past weekend at the library with the wifi down, sooooo I got a lot done. ; )
I was casually scrolling through the dumpster fire that is my FaceBook feed this morning can came across a post someone made sharing this video:
“So the lesson is that some people are born into better circumstances than others? That’s not profound, it’s banal. It’s also not exactly hidden to people with this ‘privilege’. It’s also not as important as making good life choices and applying yourself.”
“Is it my fault that over the course of 3 generations my family has moved from peasantry to the 1%?”
“I do not, in fact, accept any obligation to people born in the ghetto or otherwise in difficult circumstances.”
“”Privilege” is merely the latest progressive update on “original sin”.”
And some attempts at a discussion:
“No. you just have to be aware that for some people it is much harder to achieve your standard of living and help to accommodate those who cannot quite reach that level.
“Privilege in this context just means you have certain advantages in life that you may not even be aware of. It’s only a problem when you start blaming others for not succeeding as well as you when they don’t have those advantages. This kind of privilege is something to be grateful for and humble about.
The more traditional version of privilege is “private law.” That’s where you use your wealth and power to make sure that the law for commoners doesn’t apply to you. Because you’re better and deserve to get away with stuff. That’s the territory you stray toward when you get arrogant about your advantages.”
And more negative responses to those statements:
“It’s only a problem when you start blaming others for not succeeding as well as you when they don’t have those advantages. The real problem is the reverse. I don’t see many people asking the government to put a tax on poor people. I do see a lot of demands by ‘disadvantaged’ folk to take what is earned by others.”
I started writing a massive text response (which I will be reproducing below) and I had a moment where I balked–these people won’t change their minds just from my argument, surely not if they are capable of saying such things as listed above. I spoke with my friend who also felt that, while intentions were good, I was mostly doing it for myself (which is valid and probably the reason we get into such comment fights). These people did not seem like the type of people that I could have an actual discourse with, if they seemed to lack any empathy or self-awareness to…frankly…how privileged they sounded.
I think a lot of the ideas of being mindful of privilege have been reduced purely to wealth in this thread, but that’s only one part of it. Continue reading “A Response to Privilege”
