pg11: No last name for Phoebe

"My name is Scott... and today I'll say my favourite movie is Back to the Future."

As I am apt to do, I'm going to start in the middle and work my way back to the beginning. and if there's time, we'll go before the beginning, too, because chronology ain't what it used to be for ole Scotto.

I had a couple of startling dreams last night. I suppose it's a good thing I did, too, because I set my alarm faultily and it never went off. Of course, I was awake and waiting for it to go off, so this wasn't a huge problem.

These are dreams that jolt you into awakening, but are such a blur that you can only remember the bits that caused you to wake up. So here, I found myself at night outside a Shopper's Drug Mart, crossing the parking lot (this actually happened the second time I went to Joe's and was waiting for the 24 Bus to Oakville.) I pass this woman on her knees, arms bound behind her back. Standing behind her was a mugger (odd that a mugger would force a woman into the execution position but that was one of those weird little determined distinctions a dream makes - my consciousness told me he was a mugger.) He was Jamaican, if you must get a description... odd again, as I usually dream about white people, especially when criminals are concerned. But here was this Jamaican guy forcing this woman to the pavement brandishing his weapon...

It was a rectangular block of wood, about 5x5x10 inches. I have absolutely no idea how somebody is going to be threatened by a block of wood, but that's what makes it a dream. I took steps to intervene, but I - and another passerby - found myself running from the log-wielding Jamaican mugger.

I jolted awake. Not 4:00 yet, I don't think, I settled back to sleep to a dream about a very familiar-looking girl. As if rewarding me for the stress of the previous dream, I was chatting up a young lady who looked not unlike a dark-haired girl from Reach who once or twice caught my fancy. But here, she said her name was Phoebe, and to keep me from following after her (as I invariably would,) told me nothing more, that there was "No last name for Phoebe." And with that, she vanished, and I awoke, and it was almost 7.

I set my alarm later to try... well, getting more sleep, it's no rocket science. I am a bit more aware of train schedules now and certainly won't be getting the early train ever again. So I was aiming for the 7:50-something express and was right on schedule, when mom started to leave at the same time I did. So I caught a ride with her (and this will pay off later,) rather than ride my bike, which I had decided I would be doing while I still could. I ended up making the 7:35 express, which is fine but, as any train inevitably will, got me to school altogether too early. So I went down to the depths of Alumni Hall, took a seat, and napped for about a half hour before the beginning of my first-ever tutorial.

It's something, I'll tell ya. The TA, a young Irish gentleman, did his best to lead us young inexperienced kids through Plato's Crito as an example of the easily-answered* question, "What is Philosophy?" (*It's not really easily-answered, but you could say so if you're satisfied knowing that philosophy is some kind of dialogue about ideas. Or something.)

TAs are funny creatures. I've had novice teachers many times before, in high school and at Sheridan, but these people - seemingly closer in age to me than to any real teacher - are unconfused by years of teacher-college dogma and take a streamlined approach to leading the class... just discuss. After all, half the work is done by the Profs, all you have to do is give the students face time.

After an hour of this, naturally, it was time to go. I had hardly said anything, except stumbling over my unprepared response to the question in question, and felt more like an observer than a participator.

(Intermission: I actually just took a lengthy span of time to do an online survey about beer. I've been getting these e-mails for weeks and this was the first one that wanted my demographic. $10 Chapters Gift Card here I come.)

I had some time to kill so I went to pull the thorn out of the lion's paw. With a a hastily-printed OSAP confirmation (directly from their website,) I marched over to the Registrar of Innis and said, "Register me, beeyatch!" Okay, maybe the word "beeyatch" didn't come up, and I was a bit more polite, but the point remains that I demanded service, and service I got. I have to say, my experiences with the Innis registrar have been very pleasant, mostly quickly-arranged paperwork and getting the skinny on things.

That taken care of, I still had about a half-hour, so on my way I stopped off at the Bob Miller Bookroom (a bizarre underground book depository on Bloor) to buy Film Art, the text for my Cinema Studies class. If I'd had a bit more foresight, I might have put that off, but I had the time and I wasn't going to use that money on myself (heaven forbid.)

At 11:00, I headed to the Wymilwood Cafe, a nice little eatery by Victoria College. It was there that I was set to meet Alyssa for the first time in person since January 1 if memory serves. I sat and waited until about a half-hour past the hour when she finally comes through the door. She apologized for the lateness, explaining that she had gotten halfway here when she realized she'd forgotten something very important... the whole reason we set up this meeting to begin with. She produced three books.

By a not-really-astounding coincidence, I've found myself in a few of the courses she took last year, when she was the 20-year-old Frosh. As textbook costs are basically agreed to be astronomical (especially for the Astronomy text, har har,) and in need of cash herself, she agreed to sell me a few of her old ones, including the aforementioned space-book, and two poetry anthologies. We spent a brief moment negotiating the fees, and eventually decided that $60 per book was a good enough price that I wasn't ripping her off. She had plenty of time before her next class, so we spent a half hour or so catching up.

Mostly, we talked about school. We related experiences - mostly her to me, and I stuck to my role of wide-eyed newbie. "Gee golly this campus sure is big and my commute is oh so long, yuk yuk, why I surely am foolish for havin' done that." I bring this point up a lot to try to alleviate my unsureness about the matter. Having not moved out seems wrong, but living at U of T wouldn't feel right neither. I'm not somebody who can live at/near/for school. Maybe I need to believe my life is about something other than that. And if that means taking the train for a few hours each day, so be it. I don't think anybody truly begrudges me that. I also don't expect them to have sympathy (though I playfully ask for it by always adding, "Man, what a stupid guy I am for that.")

She may be reading, she may not, I know she's busy.

I've never viewed myself as part of a system. If I'm to survive, I have to at least imagine I have freedom to come and go as I please, to drift. I don't need U of T, truth be told, if all I wanted to do was find a job at a magazine or other publication. What I do need is to be out in society and live life and gather experiences and be a person, and U of T is a place for that. Plus, at least for 2 years, the Queen has very kindly agreed to comp me, so long as I keep my marks up.

I wonder if I'll ever discuss this with the parents.

Eventually, we parted ways. We made arrangements for me to get her the cash, and I took off with a bag 70 Lbs heavier than it had been when I left the house. I stopped off for a quick lunch (I had been at Wymilwood so long, I figured, it would have been weird if I suddenly had something to eat) and headed to Innis for my 1:00 tutorial. Of course, it was about 12:20 when I got there. Hurm.

Well I waited, and as it invariably does, time passed and I schlepped my load up to the 3rd floor for a modest gathering. Another TA, same deal, plenty of amicable chatter. Her name's Kira, she's an MA student and probably not much older than many of the people I hung out with at Sheridan, if at all. Probably closer to the age of my brothers in fact. She had us go around the room and say our names, whether we had any film background, and our favourite films.

I always squirm at that question, I never know what to say, I like a lot of very different movies. I could say Clerks, or Being John Malkovich, or Adaptation, or Lost in Translation, or Star Wars, or the Breakfast Club, or Footloose...

I announced my name and explained I'd taken "some production courses in high school" (not specifying the nature of the rather intensive WOSS Commtech program, how much I rocked it, or my insane quest to get Half-Past made.) As I said at the dawn of this post (which feels by now like I wrote it eight days ago,) I decided to go for a joke and claim that "Today, I'll say my favourite movie is Back to the Future." And that's as true and honest an answer as I could get if I wanted to limit myself.

The answers from around the room varied from Memento to the Graduate to Cinema Paradiso to A Cinderella Story. Kira, the TA, explained that she was a fan of Bergman and Fellini, and Italian Neo-realism and modern Latin-American cinema. She also liked Tootsie and What About Bob.

Then followed a brief discussion of Citizen Kane, with people discussing its merits with varying degrees of technical jargon. One guy went on about the low and high angles to depict Kane. Other people noted the soundtrack. Having had enough of silence all week, I decided the time was right to pipe up. Being the conventional sort I am, I noted its archetypal story of a rise and fall from power (with much clumsier words than those) and others still praised its unconventional non-linear structure. She noted other technical achievements like time-cuts and deep-focus shots, rare-to-nonexistent in those days. Word. She stressed the technical and practical (as opposed to thematic) nature of the course. Apparently we are going to learn a lot about editing, which is fine by me.

Eventually the bell struck 2 and off we went, me hauling my 8-year-old child-sized backpack down to St. George station. From St. George to Union, with a snack between arrival and departure from 3A, and finally I got to Oakville GO.

I mentioned earlier (and I find it hard to believe I actually remember saying this, after the lengthy of this badboy,) that I was suddenly very glad that I hadn't ridden my bike that morning. The fact is, the backpack was back-breakingly laborious to lug around and I was suddenly having doubts about its ability to remain intact under the stress of its contents. Plus, full of books, I couldn't stash my jacket in it, and it was hot as dog-bollocks out. So I managed to hop on the bus. And who did I see?

Piotr B. He's someone I've known since, I dunno, Grade 3. I've never really been friends with him, except in that once I got to high school I had suddenly been friends with everyone who came from River Oaks, as we'd all be around each other so much we felt more comfortable than the new people I'd be meeting. We had a few classes together in high school, from Grade 9 Gym to Grade 11 English. I'm not sure he was in my Writer's Craft class, but Guthrie seemed to mention his brother quite a bit.

We chatted a bit and he expressed surprise that I was "Frosh" (what a lousy derogatory-seeming term.) I glossed over the circumstances. He asked, incongruously, if I'd joined any clubs, and I said no. I'm not a club kind of guy. I don't have many interests I feel strongly enough about to share with others, at least in public. The anonymity of the Internet is one thing, but to go to a meeting place every week and say "I like this thing so much I want to portion out my time accordingly and devote so much of it to that thing." I don't live with such zeal, sadly. Maybe I find it uncouth. Maybe I should look up "uncouth" before I keep banding it about.

I got home and it was relaxation time. It's been an easy-breezy evening to end a week that feel like a month but was merely 5 regular days. If I'm to not go crazy, I can't really see them as anything other than that.

Back to before the beginning, I was walking down the street yesterday, on my way to Astronomy, when I was stopped at a street corner by a girl with a basket. "They're free," she says, holding out the basket. Unflinching, I say, "Cool" and reach in. I paused a moment before realizing that I'd just grabbed a condom.

I'd been getting a few freebies, particularly on Tuesday when I ran into some Bible-maniacs who gave me a free package with a pillowcase, a New Testament, a highlighter and a book attempting to dispel the existence of evolution. I find it odd that they see Evolution as an affront to the existence of God. As far as I'm concerned the ever-expanding and changing diversity of life on Earth is one of the most majestic of all His (potential) crations. Wondrous as it is, why spoil it by just saying "God put it here, it was always like this." Pfah.

I like buskers, I like to support them. But for my own amusement, I tend to give meager, almost insultingly low funds to them. I could stand and watch that Japanese lady at the Union Subway stop for an hour and a half and only toss a quarter and a nickel in. I'm a bit of a jerk, I suppose, but I think it's better to them than nothing.

After all, their job is that they play music nobody asked them for in a place nobody wants to hear them for peoplew who have other places to be. 30 cents seems reasonable, when I put it that way. If I must be so practical, that is - I still enjoy their music and feel they deserve more, but am far to cheap to provide.

I'm halfway into a poem for Wednesday that looks kinda promising, as far as things I can show other people and workshop. With poetry, I always think of the three layer idea I've kept for many years, that the bottom is the same as the top but in a different context. Specifically: Bottom - trite, greeting-card verse that rhymes but doesn't say anything. Middle - deeper-probing free verse that actually touches emotions. Top - Clever and/or deep poetry that maintains strict rhyme and meter, all the more well-emphasized for it. I try to keep on top of this, myself.

Maybe I'm weird. Maybe I'm crazy. Maybe the way I see the world ain't right. Maybe it's all too right to me. Maybe I'm the only thing that really exists, or maybe I'm just tired.

Keep on rockin'
Scotto