The Maiden Post - it begiiins...
music|casual walks - matthew good
lit|the story of my life - giacomo casanova
film|the power of nightmares

Well, if you've found your way here, you can see that I've forsaken the mass e-mail in favour of the blog. I'm actually pretty excited about this to be honest, though I don't know how often I'll update, how thorough I'll be, or really how comfortable I am making a voyeur out of those who somehow stumble upon this website... but I suppose that's the nature of the beast. What I do know is that this past half year it took way too much to send out my former massers (especially when you're paying for every instant of i-net time), and this is my solution.

So where am I now? For the past month I've been in Calgary, recharging and enjoying doing essentially nothing but reimersing myself in Canadian culture, devouring novels, music, and film, playing some squash and guitar, and in between listening to TTC lectures (I missed the feeling you got walking out of a REALLY good lecture, when you feel as if someone has let you in on one of the world's vital secrets... so I found a stay at home substitute). As of late, I've also been recovering from a traumatizing iPod crash... learn from me, backup every track on those little guys, cause they can betray you when you least expect it (and to boot no one really feels sorry for you either)!

I begin this blog with a new adventure fast approaching on the heels of last year's peregrinations. For those of you who I've done a miserable job in keeping touch with, my last year in coles notes is as follows - spring was spent in London Ontario where I finished my degree (I've now got a B.A. in psychology and comparative literature and culture, as you can see my future is set), spent my third glorious summer in Muskoka instructing swimming and bartending, September brought about a western Canadian road trip to visit old friends, and by October I was studying french at the CAREL institute in Royan, on the French coast just north of Bordeaux. Before flying home for Christmas I also managed to indulge in a small Spanish tour largely centred on the art and architecture I wanted to see, and thus took me through Barcelona (Gaudí), Madrid (Velazquez, Goya, Picasso), and Bilbao (Gehry's Guggenheim).

That paragraph is a miserable gloss and I cringe reading it, since it does absolutely no justice to anything... but before I fly out I will attempt to post one more entry from Canadian soil, which will cover this time and appropriately be named "A Year in Ian" (but let's see if I can top that...)(god I hope I can top that).

Anyways, my new adventure will begin in 6 days when I fly to Clermont-Ferrand, France (where the fuck is that?). Clermont is a city of about 130 000 people and is located pretty much in the centre of France. It was founded in an extinct volcano mountain range and is home to the spectacular Puy de Dôme (see right) and, less spectacularly, also home to Michelin Tires. I'll be learning French at the Université Blaise Pascal (named after the famous mathematician who was born in Clermont - you may remember this from studying binomials in high school), and at the same time receiving a bursary for conversing/teaching English to students at a local high school (8 hours of work a week = 400 - 520 euros a month... life is good). This'll go on until about mid-June, and to be honest what I do after that is still a mystery... so your best bet is to come back to this website once in awhile, because you never know where I'll wind up (or what stories I'll have to tell on the way).

I've always had a fondness for personal correspondences, and I would love to get myself going on them again. So please, whenever you feel the urge (maybe even after reading this post... c'mon!), fire off an e-mail. However, I'm still anti-boring-summary e-mails - you all know the ones I'm talking about - "I'm here, doing good, saw this, hope everyone's good, love soandso". So here's what you do - you send me an e-mail telling me a funny story from that week! Or something cool you found out! Or gossip! Or a rant! Or some philosophical musing! Or just a funny photo you took the last night out! Cause those are the things I miss the most from my friends, the little day-to-day things. Besides, there're always stories that just aren't suited for everyone! Just be sure to have fun writing the correspondences, because that'll guarantee that I’ll have fun reading it too. So please, e-mail away, purewest83@hotmail.com.

As you can see at the top of my blog, I’ve included what art I’m digging into at that time. As Oscar Wilde pointed out, it’s reality that imitates art, so this will always give you a sense of exactly what kind of lense my reality is being distorted by at that time. Plus, I can pretty much guarantee I won’t be able to hold off from commenting a little on them, maybe trying to entice you to give them a shot (or possibly to ward you away from them too).

My blog is named after an old Matthew Good demo, a very simple and subtle acoustic track, where the lyrics really pull at the heart of peregrination and transience – and hence seemed an all too appropriate title for my wanderings these days... a state of being that likely won’t change for another year and a half or so. As for the track, anyone who has done any kind of wandering without knowing where they would wind up will connect with this track. Promise. In film, I’ve had a chance to watch a ton of movies this month, and the one I found the most fascinating was this BBC documentary The Power of Nightmares (thanks muff for the recomendation). It chronicles and parallels the rise of neo-conservatism and Islamic fundamentalism from similar roots in mid-20^th Century America, and really gives a historical and philosophical background to the culture of fear we see prevalent today. For a boy that likes to intellectualize everything, this three part documentary was fantastic. Finally, I’m currently reading Casanova’s (in)famous tales of his life as the greatest bon vivant that ever lived, and I have to say that besides his notoriety as a lover, Casanova was quite the intellectual as well. Not only was he a man extremely well versed in Italian poetry, but he was also favoured by the likes of Voltaire and Catherine the Great – these aren’t usually the things that come to mind with the name Casanova. Plus he managed to travel and live for at least a year in all the major cultures of Europe at his time, and do extraordinarily well for himself wherever he went - he really should be an idol in many ways besides his promiscuity. This is definitely worth a read, despite the strange looks you may get from those who understand Casanova only as the most proficient lover/slut that ever lived. And as for you people who caught the Hollywood flick and figure you don’t need to bother with the book – well, unless the movie included a ménage à quatre with two nuns and the French ambassador to Venice, then I can guarantee you’re missing a lot (if not all) of the story.

Finally, I’ve been particularly fascinated lately with how text and image interact, and since I’ll be trying to constantly upload pics on here from my trip, you may see me experiment with it at the end of my blog once in awhile. I’ll end today with something like that – I found an old photo while cleaning out my room the other day (these are the kind of things I do these days). It’s a seven year old photo of a gorgeous sunset I saw in the Rockies when I was sixteen, and you can see the dirt and smudges that have collected on it over the years, as well as the holes in the photo from the many times it’s been tacked on my wall (click on the photo to really get a sense of it). The state of the photo itself just seemd to scream of one of my favourite poems, and so I share it today. Anyways, if anything interesting strikes you regarding these little fiddlings, I would love to see hear about them in the comments. Take care everyone, and all the best to everyone as always.

P.S. – à tous mes amis français – je suis desolé que tous mes blogs seront en anglais, mais peut-être j' écrirai en français de temps en temps (c'est évident que j'aie besoin de la pratique)… mais pour maintenant peut-être ceci peut vous aider (on m'est aidé à beaucoup d'occasions). Je vous souhaite tout le meilleur du monde. Ciao!

P.P.S. - I promise to work on that whole brevity thing.

Nothing Gold Can Stay

Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leafs a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.
-Robert Frost, 1923