It’s true, this post isn’t actually about new pants at all. The title is a nod to an excellent metalwood song from “The Recline”. I highly recommend that record; in fact, I’m listening it to it right now.
I have been productive lately. Today I handed in a short paper, read over half of Derrida’s “Monolingualism and the Other”, and attended a disapointing 476 native lit lecture. After the class, (and after a grumpy discussion with some colleagues about my native lit class) I ran into Mathias on the 99 b-line. Mathias has deep interests in Heidegger, Derrida, and especially Nietzsche. His brilliance, calm demeanor, and knowledge of the academic community I wish to enter into ensures him a high level of respect from myself. He was on his way to Kwantlen, Surrey via SkyTrain. The sky train really is an excellent link to inferior places, and certainly improves life for people living in those places (I speak “those people” but that catagory has more often than not included myself).
Upon arriving downtown I rode the escalators up to Winners. First though, I had to pass a homeless person asking for money. When they realized that I was not giving them any money, he hissed at me. Perhaps it had something to do with my hair, beard, or cowichan jacket. It is not nice to be hissed at, but certainly is an understandable response from someone whom the system has left behind.
It was possibly the first time I have shopped at that kind of a store and not been bored stiff waiting for someone to find what they wanted. I walked directly to the size 12 male shoe shelf, picked out the 4 pairs of shoes that appealed to me, tried them on. When I decided which seemed the best, I laced them up and walked around the store for ten minutes. Satisfied, I paid for them and left. Fifty dollars may seem steep, but I seem to keep shoes for about a year so it’s less than 15 cents a day. Shoes are really excellent, certainly worth 15 cents a day. My life would be a lot worse without good shoes.
Aside from the brown leather shoes I chose between (arn’t I suppose to be a vegetarian?), I was intreaged by a simple red or blue addidas style pair, branded “Simple”. They were quite elegant, but 30$ seems to much to pay for running shoes that don’t appear like they would be very good for running at all. (Need “Simple” mean, “it appears like a simple athletic shoe but has none of the support”?). I also considered so called “Vegan” shoes, but they were thin-soled and made my feet look really small. Really very small, I’m not even kidding.
After buying shoes I purchased two slices of pizza from AM classic pizza, and went into Dunne and Rundle photography to see if they were selling anything interesting. If Neal is reading this, they are selling a minolta (I’m not certain if it’s rokkor) 135mm lens F3.5 for 40$ Canadian. I can pick it up for you if you like, I know you’re good for it. Yes, I know it’s a half stop slower than you want. Upon entering the store, what to my wondering eyes did appear but Erin! I hadn’t seen her since before she left for Australia, two years ago. We discussed what it means to have aspirations and dreams, our futures (she is off to Concordia to pursue fine Art). Currently she is engaged in an Art project demonstrating the fluidity of Gender. It proves you don’t need to read difficult theory to engage in the political act of destabalizing gender norms – you can just go out and perform non-traditional gender (speech) acts.
Hmmm, it seems like this journal is just “what I did today”. I would never write this down, other than for the fact I am such a great typist. If this bothers anyone, I will try to write less.
