hey friends.

i should post about my last few days in edmonton before i tell you about DC.

well, in the last days of march, i spent most of my time sewing. nathan came over to the studio a couple of times to keep me company, and on one of those days, we went over to the downtown theatre afterwards to catch the late showing of tim burton's alice in wonderland. i love tim burton, and i love alice in wonderland in general, and i loved johnny depp, so it was mostly pretty good. there were a few things i didn't like though, like all the jabberwocky business. come on. i just wish all movies would cut out action scenes. they're a boring waste of time, and i like my movies to go no longer than an hour and a half. although nathan and i just biked to remedy to pick up wraps and ate our wraps on the northwest side of the high level bridge overlooking the river valley and hung out at the studio and then watched that movie and then biked home separately, it felt like a really, really fun/nice night.

on april 1st, sid (the designer i had been sewing for) showed his collection at western canada fashion week. i was more than a little bummed that absolutely none of my friends bothered to come (but thankful to bri, who sent me a nice little note at least mentioning that she would have liked to have been there, but couldn't), but my sister came with me, and her company was good. it was pretty exciting but mostly surreal to see the things that i had made up on the runway. i will miss working for sid. we didn't work together much in the studio, because he was gone on his internship in NY most of the time, but when we were working together, it was really silly and fun. we laughed a lot, and laughed really hard. he's just such a good, humble guy. plus, he taught me how to put in a zip fly! i will forever be indebted. oh, anyway, after his show, emily and emily's best friend aidan and i went to some bar in northern edmonton to watch christian hansen and the autistics, largely because at the last show i had seen them play, they played an amazing cover of r. kelly's ignition. seriously. it was so good. they played it again at this show, and i danced my face off.

i spent the next week working on stuff for my faculty's cree language project. on the saturday of that week, i drove my mom and my littlest sister to the airport for their weeklong vacation in turks and caicos. then i met up with kaylin at café mosaics for breakfast, and then we wandered around the provincial museum, thanks to the free passes i had for there. we had some really great talks, and i love that she thinks really similarly to me on some pretty controversial/heavy issues. robin came over in the evening and we hung out. it was nice to have his company.

i spent the week after that helping the boy i tutor with his human ecology final (it was a take-home essay - we wrote about gangs/warrior societies). i also did a lot of visiting and packing, and i drove to vermilion and back with emily to drop off some of my stuff at my parents', since i had my mom's car while she was on vacation.

i wrote my FINAL undergraduate exam (for advanced cree) on friday the 9th, and i'm pretty sure i aced it. kelsey bussed to edmonton from calgary the next day, on a greyhound bus with a broken window next to her. she also got sick and puked on the bus on the way back to calgary. thanks for coming, KDS. on saturday we went to the handmade mafia, and then went for lunch at block 1912 (which is really a great place, and i've known that for years, but i hardly ever go there for some reason. i'ma try to go more often when i'm back in edmonton in august). then we went to united cycle so i could try out a bike i had had ordered in for me (but i didn't buy it, because i'm not living in edmonton anymore). we also stopped at EBC so i could show kelsey around. she wasn't all that impressed (she's a mechanic at a bike shop in calgary, which is apparently much bigger). then we were both tired, so we went home, and had the longest talk i have had with anyone for probably... ever, maybe. we just sat on my couches and i knitted and we talked for six hours straight. it was nice. then we walked around and tried to find somewhere to eat, but it was 10:00 and everywhere had just closed, so we settled for delicious/stomachache-inducing wendy's. the next day we went to café mosaics, and then i bought some cuuute short shorts at bamboo ballroom, and some coloured tights to go with them. i think that short shorts with coloured tights are one of my favourite looks, coming in just behind jumpsuits. now i just have to gather up the confidence to actually pull those looks off. oh, we also drove to the airport to pick up my mom and sister from their trip. maybe we did something else, but i forget. kelsey got on the bus at 4:00, and then apparently puked a bunch. i'm not sure why her experiences on greyhound are always so bad. mine never are. soon kelsey is leaving on a biking/wwoofing trip around alberta/b.c. i hope she packs warm socks and isn't too cool to wear a helmet when she's on the highway and doesn't freeze when she's camping in the mountains and doesn't get too sweaty when she's going uphill.

between kelsey leaving and me boarding my plane to DC, i tutored cree a couple more times, packed up my place, cancelled my kickball party because of the gloomy weather but was still fortunate to have many of my favourite people (in order of appearance: jordan, emily, aidan, jessica, bri, joel, bethany, leila, kim, nathan, patrick, and rob) join me at remedy for wraps, borrowed a sweet camera from my friend kevin so i would have one while i'm in DC, and... that's about it. so that brings me up to my first days in DC, which i will write about next time.

sorry this is so long and not very interesting. this really is a journal for me, though, so i'm more concerned about keeping a record for myself of what i did than entertaining you. sorry.

we must evolve towards each other

the top highlights of these last couple weeks have been the conversations i've been having with people. these sorts of things are one of the top most nourishing things for my spirit. in no particular order, here are some of my favourites:

-talking with nathan, becky, and "the car boys" at natasha's about christianity and "being jesus to people." i mean, that's kind of what it was about. (some backstory: i've been attending this thing that natasha and nathan host weekly, which is basically a small group affiliated with their church, and although i definitely don't identify as christian anymore, i like having conversations about the sorts of things that come up in christian small group settings, and i like hanging out with natasha and nathan.) anyway, the conversation made me angry in the way that i love being angry, when my whole body shakes and my voice gets really low and quiet and shaky but calm. i think it was a particularly hard conversation for nathan and me (we didn't get in a fight, that's not how it went at all - it was just really difficult, i think, for both of us for different reasons), but it felt really good to talk things out. and i especially loved being able to talk/think critically with nathan about ways that we (as christians (although i'm not identifying myself as one here), as allies, as whatever) can positively affect change in our communities without being colonial about it. one of the reasons i got sort of emotional about it is that, like i mentioned before, there's sort of been some shit going down in one of my social circles concerning this sort of thing, and i think we (again, as allies/christians/whatever) need to be really conscious about our motivations and assumptions and methods in the things we do. that's sort of vague. ask me about it in person and we'll talk about it. i like talking about things like this.

-talking with bri, bethany, karen, nathan, and kim p. (in separate conversations) about church and community. bri and i talked about how king's became our church/community when we went there, and how we both felt sort of lost once we graduated from there and lost our "communities." however, we've both since built up some really nourishing, healthy communities around ourselves with really lovely people. later, when i was talking with bethany and karen, i think they both agreed that the same had happened for them. but then a few days later, when i was talking with kim, she pointed out the difference between church communities and the communities we build up by ourselves. although it's really nice to have the "community" that i feel like i have, with all these amazing, politically/socially/environmentally sensitive people, the communities that we build up on our own are sort of flawed because they consist of hand-picked community members. by contrast, church communities consist of people that we may not necessarily get along with, or have very little in common with, but the one thing that ties us together is a commitment to working through tough shit together, presumably through a broadly agreed-upon perspective or set of assumptions. which, i think, is pretty neat. and which brings me to nathan, because i think he is a pretty shining example of someone who tries really hard to work through tough shit with people.

-talking with leila about gender, ethics, and polyamory. you can ask me about this one in person, because it's the internet and i just don't want to get into on here or misspeak, but i'll let you know that it was informed by a lecturer (janet hardy) we both heard speak (although not at the same time) and a film (red without blue) we both saw (again, not at the same time). anyways, one of the highlights for both of us, i think, was recognizing that leila's self-proclaimed "immature" masculinity (marked by curiosity and a need for adventure and mischief) is balanced in a really healthy way by incredibly mature femininity (marked, i think, by pretty overwhelmingly nurturing, loving, and graceful qualities). i'm also learning a lot about my own fear of/contempt for more... how should i say... advanced?... forms of masculinity. at least, masculinity as i understand it.

-talking with leila about how we both feel the 40-hour work week is bullshit, and our shared impatience for people who work jobs they hate.

-talking with some of my classmates about reconciliation. i want to be part of communities that recognize that people hurt each other, and commit to working through that shit together in a good way.

-talking with kaylin about a mazillion things, from the wonder of evolution to healthcare to the ways that we love people. man, she's incredible.

so, in conclusion: this is what i'm going to miss most about edmonton. these kinds of conversations with these kinds of people. i know there are probably neat people who live outside of edmonton. but i'm not sure if they're THIS neat.